8. Sully #2
“Sorry, Coop,” I said after he ordered his favorite beer—a stout from Ivers, one of many local breweries. “No more weirdness, I promise.”
Cooper chuckled like he didn’t believe that to be true, which was probably fair, considering the next thing I did was open my phone and click on Ellie’s and my last exchanged text, which was saved at the bottom of my messages.
It was from three years ago, when she’d reached out after my parents’ divorce.
I hadn’t responded.
It would have been too painful, talking to her. Besides my parents, she was the only other thing I ever remember thinking would last forever.
I’d been coming here a lot lately—to our text thread. Not because of that last unanswered message or any of the other messages in our conversation history. I didn’t dare dive through those and open more wounds.
No, I’d been spending a little too much time checking on her—
“Christ, are you looking at her location?”
Goddamnit. Theo caught me right as I’d clicked on Ellie’s contact photo, hovering at the top of our messages, which brought me—yep, to a map.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Theo swiped my phone away from me before I could look at it, which was likely for the best.
Ellie had never stopped sharing her location with me when we broke up.
Maybe she realized, maybe she didn’t. But I admittedly took advantage of it either way.
When she first moved away, I checked where she was…
a lot. It was almost like I’d needed the confirmation, needed to see it in real life.
That she was across the country. That she’d really moved to Boston.
That she wasn’t here. And she wasn’t coming back.
Her little dot hovered in Natalie’s house mostly. It moved back and forth between there and the MIT campus, and in some ways, I was so fucking proud of her. To see her there, pursuing her dreams, even though it killed me to be so far away from her.
But then the dot started moving to other places, and I knew I had to stop before I spiraled and started looking up addresses or pinpointing locations.
It was intrusive. It wasn’t my place. I didn’t have the right to know details about her, not anymore.
But after caring for her, loving her, being her best friend for a decade, it had been a hard fucking habit to kick.
How was I supposed to not worry about her?
Not wonder if she’d made it back to Natalie’s at night or to school on a snowy morning?
How was I supposed to not constantly obsess over her, even if I was mad as hell at her?
But I’d done it. I’d stopped. Cut her out of my life completely in all the ways I knew how. When she’d moved to California after finishing at MIT, I only knew because I heard Natalie talking about how she was going to miss her in Boston.
Ever since Noah’s engagement party, though…well, I’d fallen back into old habits.
It had started because I’d wanted to make sure she made it back to California okay. I’d peeked—just long enough to see her at home again.
And then I’d heard that she’d flown back to Boston for Natalie’s trial last week, so…I looked again.
Her dot had been hovering in the courthouse, right next to the rest of my family: Noah, my parents, and, of course, Natalie.
My chest had felt like it was caving in, knowing she was there with all of them and I wasn’t.
A few days after the trial, I caved and checked Ellie’s location one more time—once again giving the excuse that I wanted to make sure she’d made it back to the West Coast.
I’d stared at her dot for a while, hovering in the same place I’d seen it before she’d gone to Boston for the party. Presumably, it was her apartment, but maybe not. Maybe it was a friend’s place or, God forbid, a guy’s.
Fuck me.
I wasn’t sure why I’d pulled up her location tonight.
There was no reason, no reason at all, except for the fact that my siblings had brought her to the forefront of my mind.
That, and the all-consuming need I had to make sure Ellie was okay, even though there was only so much I could glimpse, so much I could do, from staring at her location.
“Shut up,” I muttered, putting my hand out so Theo could return my phone. “I just—” I sighed, not really having a good excuse except for muscle memory. “Just close out of it and give it back, man.”
But Theo was staring at my phone screen now, brows pulled together.
Cooper had crammed himself next to Theo’s side, peering over his shoulder.
“Oh, shit,” he laughed. “This is Ellie’s location?”
“Yeah…” I answered, feeling a sense of unease come over me. “What?”
I tried to snatch my phone out of my brother’s hand, but he leaned back, smushing his large body into Cooper and giving me a cautious look—like he was afraid of what I’d do if I saw whatever he was looking at.
“What the fuck, Theo?”
“Dude, I…” He grimaced, his eyes flicking from the screen to my face.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but—” My brother glanced at our friend, who was still practically clutching his shoulder, and I’d had just about enough of both of them.
I could feel my pulse hammering away in my neck, increasing in tempo the longer they held my phone hostage.
“You’re freaking me out.” I reached out again, this time managing to snatch my phone back. “She better not be at a fucking hospit—”
The words vanished on my tongue as I looked at the screen and felt the immediate flood of relief.
And then, something else entirely. A mix of unnamed emotions tangled inside me.
No, thank fucking God, Eleanor was not in a hospital. It was something I, somewhat irrationally, worried about on an admittedly regular occasion, ever since that night when I’d raced to find her on a bed in the ER.
But she was somewhere else—somewhere I never would have fucking imagined I’d find her. Not in this timeline.
“What the hell?” I breathed.
I felt myself standing. Not sure why. Not sure what I expected I’d do with myself, but I couldn’t simply sit still.
“Yup,” a voice confirmed—either Coop or Theo, I wasn’t totally sure.
I ran a hand down my face and then zoomed out on the map, as though maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe there was a Lake Minnetonka in California I just didn’t know about.
But no, the only thing zooming out did…was confirm everything.
Eleanor Summers was here. In Minnesota. Only about twenty minutes away from where I sat in this Minneapolis brewery.
She was in a house, at the lake.
And not just any house. And not just any fucking lake.
Nope, my ex-girlfriend was sitting at my mom’s house.