Chapter 20 #2
When it broke off, Liv stayed frozen, hands still braced on the railing. Anyone else would’ve been breathing hard, flushed and trembling after a scream like that. But Liv stood as still as the trees, not an inch of her moving.
Ellis didn’t look away.
As the crowd thinned—some heading to the restaurant, others back toward the tram—Ellis stepped up beside Liv and gripped the railing. A breeze stirred her hair as she closed her eyes, then tipped her head back and let out her own rippling yell.
It echoed just like the first girl’s had, ricocheting into the dusk.
It wasn’t as shattering as Liv’s. It didn’t carry the weight of unfinished stories or fractured memories clinging to the dead. Ellis’s scream felt different. It felt free. Liberated.
And I could feel that from her.
I could feel the weight she carried—the weight she wore like a millstone around her neck—loosening more and more with each day we spent on the road.
Each day we spent with Liv.
“You going to give us a scream, Dove?” Liv asked, still facing forward. “It’s oddly cathartic. I feel better.”
I laughed softly and shook my head. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” Liv murmured. “Sometimes I think you’re more tightly wound than we are. You just hide it better.”
Ellis glanced over her shoulder at me, her fingers loosening on the rail. “You surely have things to scream about. How about your uncle—the one who stole Margaret’s ashes?”
“I already stole them back,” I said with a grin.
“What about all the people who think you can’t run your grandmother’s shop?” Liv asked, turning to face me now, a glint in her eye. “Scream for that. Scream for all the people who don’t believe in you. You have things to scream about, Dove.”
I looked at her, my eyes flicking between Ellis and Liv. Then I stepped up to the railing, letting my hands curl around the cool metal as I stared out into the vast sky and the desert stretched far below. My lips pursed. A small frown pulled at my face as I glanced once more at Liv.
And then I screamed.
My voice carried on the air and echoed around us, the sound ripping through the quiet like a storm. I felt the tension I’d grown so used to carrying—so good at hiding—loosen in my chest, as if I were releasing it from my mouth and into the endless sky.
I screamed out Uncle Bill’s cocky face.
My mother’s snide comments.
My own fears about not being the person Margaret thought I was.
I screamed and screamed and screamed.
And when I was done—when my throat was raw and my knuckles had turned white from gripping the railing—I exhaled hard, dragging a shaky breath into my lungs.
Liv let out a low whistle, rocking on those dangerously high heels. “Damn, you needed that.”
Ellis’s feet shuffled, and she came to stand beside me, her pinkie brushing mine on the rail.
Liv didn’t say anything else. She just smacked her lips together and looked back out at the horizon.
None of us had the answers to anything—we’d established that much around the fire last night—and maybe that was okay. Because for now, we had each other. And we would keep taking it all one step at a time.
Until we couldn’t anymore.
The restaurant was all things cozy without feeling cramped.
Soft lighting flickered off the warm wooden panels, and the glass walls revealed a view so breathtaking that Ellis had choked on air when she stumbled inside after me, clutching my arm in pure delight.
Her eyes had lit up with such amazement, it made my head spin.
Liv had vanished somewhere between the lookout and the host stand, leaning into my ear with a wink and whispering, “Don’t screw it up.”
Now it was just Ellis and me, sitting across from each other, a single candle flickering between us. We were both wearing what I was sure were nervous smiles that mirrored each other. The candle’s reflection trembled in the window, and Ellis fidgeted slightly, toying with the edge of her napkin.
The waitress had only just left us after bringing menus and table water. I decided enough was enough with the silence and let the ease I’d learned over the years fill the space between us. Leaning onto my elbows, I let a glint spark in my eye.
“So,” I murmured, coating my voice in put-on casualness. “I’ve been meaning to ask…”
Ellis’s eyes snapped to mine, filled with curiosity and caution at my tone.
“That failed date Liv was giving you shit about in the car that day—was it really that bad?”
The groan that left Ellis was pained, but I could hear a hint of laughter behind it—whether at herself or not, I wasn’t sure. She brought the menu up to cover her face, shaking her head.
“Of course you would bring that up,” she mumbled behind the cardboard.
“Look, Liv made it sound near catastrophic, and I feel like enough time has passed now that I can ask for a shred of context.”
Ellis dragged the menu down slightly and narrowed her eyes at me.
“It wasn’t… it wasn’t catastrophic. Just… awkward.” She set the menu down and rubbed the back of her neck. “Like, epically awkward.”
I held her gaze, waiting patiently. Ellis sighed.
“Look, my therapist had given me an assignment,” she said on an amused exhale, her tense shoulders relaxing.
“She wanted me to stop being obsessed with dying. To stop… I don’t know, revolving my entire personality around it.
Going on a date—or making a friend—was one of the tests.
So I jumped into it with reluctant gusto.
It was just so…” She waved a flippant hand and grimaced.
“She was lovely—the girl, Katie. I just didn’t know how to date. How to talk to someone.”
We were briefly interrupted by the waitress, who took our order.
I requested a pasta dish, and Ellis opted for the same, handing back her menu with a polite smile.
She discreetly checked the time on her phone before filling her glass with water and taking out her tablets.
I waited patiently, pouring my own glass while she finished. When she was done, I raised a brow.
“Continue,” I said with a grin.
A hint of a smile danced on her lips.
“It was so stilted. She asked me all the normal questions you’d ask someone on a date,” Ellis said.
“And I just kept circling everything back to my health. Dying. I felt so bad for her. I could see it on her face. Anyway, she went to the bathroom, and when she came back, not long after, her phone rang. Her mom. An emergency.” She shot me an amused look, and I bit my lip.
“Ouch,” I said with a grin.
“I deserved it,” Ellis said with a shrug.
“I was relieved, honestly. Anyway, I just started walking in the direction of my therapist’s office to give her a mouthful about what I thought of her stupid project…
and then this woman walked out of your shop.
She looked so… happy. Blissful. I just walked in without thinking. ”
The restaurant buzzed around us as we ate and talked, the sun almost fully set now. When Ellis took the last bite of her food and the sky outside slipped into a dark, dazzling blue, a faint red-orange glow burned low on the horizon.
I watched her.
She looked deep in thought as she chewed, gazing out the window while we sat in comfortable silence.
She wanted to say something—I could see it in the slight furrow of her brow.
I didn’t rush her. I kept the space, eating my own food and looking out the same window, taking in the slow scattering of stars beginning to dot the sky.
“I used to think,” Ellis started, her voice low.
I turned to look at her. “I used to think that everything I missed out on—growing up and as a teenager—that it was just gone forever. It felt like I’d been written out of a script.
The script of normality everyone else got to follow and live.
And I’d become this side character people stopped thinking about. ”
She pursed her lips, and I leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, listening.
“This past week feels like… like I’ve hijacked someone else’s script. Someone else’s lines. A story that was meant for someone else.” She frowned and tapped the table once. “I guess I did. This was Liv’s trip—the one she didn’t get to take.”
She set down her fork and let out a soft breath.
“I know I’m lucky,” she whispered, her green eyes meeting mine, filled with a depth that threatened to swallow me whole.
“I’m so lucky to be here, but sometimes…
sometimes it feels like I’m faking it. Like I don’t wake up every morning knowing I’m on borrowed breath.
And that no matter what action I take—any task I do—I’m scared this heart will…
her heart… will give out. That it’ll all be taken from me.
All over again. And that small glimmer I feel—the daring to hope I could have more—it’ll all be gone. Again.”
Ellis’s voice cracked on the word again, and she blinked. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t fill the silence with well-meaning words of understanding. I just waited, because I knew she wasn’t done.
“I’m scared,” she admitted, her eyes filling.
“This past week I’ve felt more alive than I ever have.
Felt more emotion than I’ve felt in years.
So many new and old sensations I’d forgotten about.
And now I’m worried I’ll waste it, because I have no idea what to do with that aliveness.
And you… you’ve just come out of nowhere, and it’s a lot, Dove.
It’s so much—and not enough—all at once. ”
I tilted my head, about to open my mouth to say something, when she hit me with her next words—and they nearly knocked the air from my lungs.
“You’ve made me want things I’ve already grieved,” she said softly, blinking away the tears that had been building. “Things I’d long ago given up on, to protect people from what it’s like to be in my world. I grieved it. Gave up on it. And now… I feel so selfish.”
I smiled at her gently, trying to calm my racing heart as I looked at her across the table—her blunt and pure honesty so alarming, and so alluring, all at once.