35. Lily
LILY
“Hello?” She fumbled for her phone and pressed it sideways to her ear. “Sebastian?”
“Lily.” His voice was a sigh, thick and immediate, in the dark.
“Are you okay? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
She checked her phone, wincing as the blue glare speared her corneas. “It’s two in the morning, why are you awake?” That was what she said, anyway, her voice strangely low, even though there was no one to hear her. What she meant was, “Why are you calling me right now?”
“We went out.” That was it, she realized, the extra warmth in his voice—alcohol. “I couldn’t sleep. Sometimes I can’t stop thinking. I just lie there, all of my thoughts running together; it’s like this endless circle. It’s worse when I’m drunk.”
She muffled a sad laugh into her pillow. “That’s anxiety, Sebastian.” He didn’t respond. “Do you have an anxiety disorder?”
He paused, and she heard a dull thunk that sounded like his skull hitting a wall. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He fell quiet again. “Probably.”
“What were you thinking about?” She lay on her side, in an old T-shirt and stretched-out underwear, phone illuminating the two inches in front of her face in cold light. With her eyes closed, she could almost forget that he was hundreds of miles away in a foreign city.
“You.”
Oh.
They both went quiet. Lily’s mind edged around the implications, trying to swallow its hurt, trying to remind itself that she didn’t want him to want her. Under her blankets, which had been cozy moments before, she suddenly felt hot, suffocated.
“Sorry for causing you anxiety,” she said finally, unable to really commit to tossing it off.
“That’s not what I meant.” He sighed heavily as he fished for the words.
“I was thinking about…” He swallowed. Her pulse betrayed her.
“About how things used to be. About Conrad, and…” It was a thousand degrees now underneath her comforter, but his words pinned her in place.
“About the Elumnara, and that letter.” Her heart stuttered at the mention of the letter, and she thought again of those words.
“You don’t need to think about the Elumnara right now.” Her voice carried an unfamiliar tone, and it took her a moment to realize that she was comforting him. No one had ever wanted her comfort before—she hadn’t known she’d had any to give. “You should go to sleep.”
“That’s why I called,” he said, and she could feel the relief in his voice, now that he’d finally found the thread in the drunken knot of his thoughts.
“I was thinking about all of this shit, and this summer. I was so happy before—I thought I was happy. And this summer, I wasn’t sure—I didn’t think I’d ever be able to be happy again. But I think I am.”
“Is that bad?” She barely trusted herself to speak.
“It’s different. Everything feels inside out and now I don’t know if I was ever happy before at all.”
She took a while to mull that over. “I don’t think happiness is as simple as people make it out to be.”
“But I don’t even feel like I’m the same person I was.”
This time she laughed for real. “That’s called growth, Seb. You’re growing.”
“Like my tree.”
Lily pressed her face into the pillow so he wouldn’t hear her snort. “Maybe.”
“You’re laughing at me.” He sounded accusing, but she could hear the smile in his voice.
“Maybe.”
“Anyway, I was thinking about all of that, and then I started thinking about you, and I called you, because I don’t feel that—overfullness, anxiety—when we’re together, and I knew you would tell me to go to sleep.”
“You should go to sleep.” Saying anything else was an impossibility.
“I can’t. I’m too awake now.”
She swallowed. “Okay, then tell me what it’s like. In Québec.”
He shifted on the line as he switched the phone to his other ear.
“It’s snowing. I’m lying in the window seat in the apartment watching the snow.
There’s a big, brutalist library—it’s so hideous, I cannot even begin—across the street, and all the lights are really dim.
Everything is so quiet, except for the radiator.
It’s steam, like the ones in the dorms.”
She listened as he described Québec, all of it—everything they’d done over the weekend—in drowsing detail, until he went quiet on the other end of the line, and all she could hear was his breath coming in slow, even waves.
She whispered into the phone, “Goodnight, Seb.”