Chapter 69
Ella
Friday
Miles and I were supposed to meet at the Elmwood Center yesterday afternoon and drive together to Evermere for dinner.
I was planning to surprise him with a homemade dinner, a dessert baked by Miss Nour and, for the background music, the soundtrack from the film he helped compose.
I’d spent some time searching for the movie clips on YouTube, and a little longer extracting the audios from a website I’d found. Just a little thought, that’s all.
But I woke up feeling a bit sick, my throat irritated and my nose stuffy.
I texted him that I wasn’t going to work and asked if we should postpone our dinner plans for the day after.
His text message said yes. Yet, around 9 p.m., Miles showed up at my door, offering me chicken soup and a sprig plucked from the pink flowers that have long grown at the CIC.
It was late, I was in my pajamas, tired, and smiling corner-to-corner seeing him there. A silly smile that wouldn’t go away. The kind you wear when your heart is trying to tell you something.
“So he spent the night? Is he sleeping on your couch right now?” my sister asks on the phone, whispering, as if he could hear her.
“Yes,” I answer, standing in my garden, doing my morning photosynthesis.
“And nothing happened between you two last night?”
“No,” I say. “We ate on the couch, watched a movie, listened to music, chatted… and then we both went to sleep.”
“You’re afraid to cross that barrier,” she assumes.
“I don’t know, Mira,” I answer, but she’s right, “Yeah, maybe I’m afraid,” I admit, “and maybe he doesn’t want to cross that barrier.”
Miles knows about me ending things with Bill, four months ago. We talked about it at a restaurant, on the night he met his dad, during our introspective “Miles’s and Ella’s lessons” conversation.
There was the occasional friendly hug between us. But no other attempts to get closer, to create an unintentional moment, to wordlessly make me consider.
And I couldn’t read too much into it. I’m overthinking. This moment in Miles’s life is not about me. I’m a friend supporting a friend who has just met his father after all these years. That is what this moment is about.
But what if that’s how we’re ever meant to be to him — friends? And how does that make me feel?
“I can’t believe it,” my sister says seriously. “That was so romantic.”
“What?”
“Last night!” She exclaims it like it’s obvious. “The day you couldn’t go take care of others; he came to take care of you.”
“Ella?” Miles’s voice comes from behind me. I turn around to find him raising a hand to shield his sleepy eyes from the morning sun.
There’s something disarmingly beautiful about him in that moment. His light brown hair tousled, eyes half-lidded in that green-gray haze.
“Hi, good morning,” I smile at him. “Mira, I’m sorry. Can we talk later?”
My sister says goodbye over the phone, and yells it to Miles too, as if he could hear her (once again).
I walk to him.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t notice you were on the phone.”
Which meant he didn’t hear that conversation. Thank God.
“Someone from the Elmwood Center called me. I have to get there,” he says, his voice still rough from the morning. “Thank you for letting me crash on your couch, how are you feeling today? I see you couldn’t help coming outside, looking at the sky like a sunflower,” he jokes.
I chuckle and shrug my shoulders. “It’s natural medicine.”
His smile widens, and his eyes linger on my face for a few extra seconds.
“I have to go,” he says at last, breaking the moment. “Are you staying at home today?”
“I’m feeling better. I think I’ll organize a few things and head to Verryn before lunch.”
“Great! Then… can we meet later?” he asks, his feet starting to walk backwards, like someone in a hurry to go.
“Of course!” I reply. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah! We’ll talk later. Let me just go grab my shoes.”
Miles disappears into my living room. I feel that he’s being secretive for some reason. Or… am I just overthinking again? What does it even mean, this thing we call overthinking?
He walks back outside a moment later, shoes on, car keys in hand.
“Thank you very much for my chicken soup,” I say.
“You’re very welcome.” He smiles at me, a familiar, bright, endearing full smile. “Then I’ll see you later, Ella.”
He starts to walk away, waving to me one more time as the car reverses.
My phone buzzes. I glance down at the screen. A text from my sister:
Words of encouragement: I remember this specific one time when I saw you and Miles together.
You were laughing as you walked into the house, your towels still soaked from the ocean.
And I thought: Am I ever going to meet a guy who makes me feel like I want to spend every moment with him?
Someone I want to spend as much time with as you two spent with each other, and never get tired of life around him?
If spending time with Miles still feels like that, tell him.
I walk around the Elmwood Center.
I have spent the last four hours at the Research Institute.
The sleep study is finally yielding patterns.
Better sleep seems to correlate with improved verbal function in the mornings.
Patients who get deeper sleep are calmer in the mornings, more oriented, more present.
One even remembered his grandson’s name again. Just like that.
There’s so much we don’t understand about how rest and memory interact. Sleep might be more restorative than we’ve ever given it credit for. The full report is due in two weeks; I’ll run the data again tomorrow.
The team and I took a 20-minute break, and I headed to the Elmwood Center to grab a folder I remember leaving here last week.
“Ella?” Miss Vó calls from the arts & crafts room as I walk past it.
“Miss Vó! Hi! Painting today?” I say, approaching her and the canvas on the easel in front of her.
I peek at it. She has painted a beautiful hibiscus flower, full of a palette of different pinks.
“It’s for my granddaughter,” Miss Vó smiles proudly. “She asked for it, to decorate her bedroom.”
“It’s so beautiful. She’ll love it,” I say.
“Ella,” Miss Vó looks at me, her eyebrows drawn together, “I just heard Mr. Marlin is moving to another place. I immediately thought we could prepare something… just a little gesture, so he knows he won’t go unnoticed. He will be truly missed here.”
My head nods along to Miss Vó’s words about a surprise party idea, but my brain is elsewhere. Miles is taking his father to New York. He must have found a nice place for him there. The call he received this morning — and the reason he had to leave so suddenly — should have been only about this.
My smile fades instantly, and Miss Vó notices.
“Are you okay, dear?” she asks.
“I am,” I say, pulling myself together. “I completely agree with you. Let me check when he’s leaving, and we’ll prepare something.”
“Perfect!” She claps her hands once and offers me a warm smile.
I excuse myself from the room.
Miles.
I need to find Miles.
The bigger, biggest, biggestest reason for my happiness these past days.
My heart feels tight.
I’ll miss visiting Mr. Marlin every week.
I’ll miss spending this much time with Miles.
I’ll miss Miles.
My hands search my pockets for my phone, but it’s not there. I think I left it in my computer backpack.
I walk through the hallways.
I need to talk to Miles.
Maybe he’s not even at the Center. I should just call him. But maybe he’s in his dad’s room. I should just check there. Or maybe he’s already busy packing. I should go get my phone.
Why didn’t he tell me? We shook hands on being completely open with each other from now on. We were together this morning. We were together all last night.
I knew he would go back to New York. He couldn’t live in that hotel room forever. His agent has been super supportive and has kept his calendar intact and organized. Miles has been playing and composing here. But he had to go back to the studio.
He had to go back to his life.
And I feel this knot in my throat… because I haven’t been brave enough to tell him that I’ll miss him constantly in mine.
Mira is right. Spending time with Miles still feels like I’ll never get tired of life around him.
How old should a person be before they stop feeling new feelings?
When we were seventeen, I felt that he was my best friend, my loudest laugh, my purest comfort, and my genuine shoulder. Now he’s all that and more. Something else. He’s wild butterflies in my stomach, the silent skip in my heartbeat, the uncontrollable, silly smile I can’t hide.
I walk toward the researchers’ office, where my backpack and my phone are. My thoughts spin in circles, my heart beating with a mix of anticipation and readiness.
I walk briskly, until the moment I flutter past the window to the Center’s garden and my eyes do a double-take.
There he is. Miles. Standing alone, his phone pressed to his ear.
I feel that skip in my heartbeat.
Inconstant. Love is a constant inconstancy. Or is it life? And what’s the difference?
I won’t let my heart miss this moment of bravery.
I enter the garden and approach him slowly.
“Ella!” His face lights up when he sees me. “I was calling your cell phone,” he says, holding his phone up to me. Then, his tone softens. “I need to tell you something.”
My hands are shaking slightly, so I press them to my sides to stop the tremble. How can you feel so comfortable in someone’s presence and yet be shaken by it at the same time?
“I know, Miles,” I start, not letting myself give up on the words I’ve been trying not to swallow.
“I’m so happy you’re taking your dad with you, so you can be closer and be part of each other’s lives.
But I need to tell you that I’ll miss you too much.
That life is funnier with you. That I can’t imagine the possibility of losing touch with you.
And that I can’t let you go without telling you I have feelings for you.
More than just my highest-quality-friend feelings. ”
There.
I said it.
He looks into my eyes, then steps closer to me. This closeness is the thing that triggers my butterflies into flying wildly around my stomach.
We fall into silence.
“You’re not talking,” I start rambling in my fast-forward mode. “You think I’m crazy you think this makes no sense you think we can’t lose this friendship and we’ve lost it before and I know and you’re right and I was—”
And then he kisses me.
And the whole world around us isn’t really here anymore. It’s just us, locked in this moment, as if time has paused and everything else fades into the background.
“Ella, I want to share something that’s very easy for me to say out loud to the world,” he says, aware that everything I’ve just admitted was difficult for me to say.
Miles takes a small step back. His eyes hold intensity.
“I didn’t know much the first moment I saw you.
I just knew you were going to mean something to me.
I didn’t know what. My soul was attracted to yours the same way a moth is drawn to light, or the same way you’re drawn to anything blue, simply because it’s blue.
I love the way you pay attention to others, the way you don’t listen to reply, you listen to understand.
I love the face you make when something falls because you’ve been clumsy.
I love how you feel bad for not letting a car merge into traffic, and how you always check the mirror afterward to make sure they made it.
I love the funny voices you use when you’re joking around.
And so much more that makes you, well… you.
Because that’s you. And you’re the love of my life.
So, forgive me if I’m being cheesy, forgive me if I’m saying way too much, but sometimes… a guy just knows.”
His words paralyze me.
Here I am, struggling to say something so simple, giving an inch of vulnerability. And here he is, verbalizing all these beautiful words, diving into the vulnerable ocean that is loving someone.
After all, I think that is what this is.
To fall in love — is that what this is?
I’ve never known a feeling like this before.
It’s terrifying… allowing someone to see your heart is theirs.
“But…” I manage to say.
“I’m not taking my dad to New York with me,” he says, and my eyebrows raise.
“No?”
“I’m taking my dad to Evermere.” He smiles.
“What?” I continue my monosyllabic answers.
His dimples deepen on his cheeks.
“I’m sorry I haven’t told you yet. I’ve been trying to figure it out on my own.
My dad confessed he would love to live in the countryside.
And he refused the idea of living in a house with a full-time caretaker because he says it’s the “living in community” that has given him back years of his life.
We started talking about it. And on that night you and I stayed on the phone for hours, I went to bed but couldn’t sleep.
I paced around my hotel room until 4 a.m., thinking: Why not? What’s in my hands?”
He pauses, as if making sure I understand.
“I’ve met with doctors and staff at the CIC plenty of times. That’s actually why your chicken soup didn’t arrive until around 9 p.m.”
I smile and he continues, “I talked to my friends, and I talked to my agent, and I can make it work. I’ll restore my grandparents’ old house, bring it back to life.
I’ll have a studio in the house so that I can spend seasons in Evermere when I want to.
I’ll still keep my room in the apartment I share with Asher in New York.
Some days I’ll be there, other days in Evermere.
Of course, I’ll have meetings and work commitments, but it’s not really that far.
Just under two hours by car.” He looks at me with a soft smile, his eyes warm with the depth of the decision.
“I’ve decided I want to have a place in the town, in the community, where I’ve never felt more at home.
And my dad gets to live at the CIC, surrounded by birds, trees, fresh air, and that community too.
And I get to be close to the girl that showed me how to fall in love with it, and who made me fall in love with it all. ”
There’s a lump in my throat from the tears of emotion I’m holding back.
“I thought…” My voice chokes, still overwhelmed by everything. “I came here thinking you were going to say goodbye to me.”
He shakes his head, then steps closer and slowly holds me in a hug.
And in that moment, my vulnerability feels safe. It allows my body to relax into his arms, and into the vulnerable ocean that it is to love someone.