Lily accepted the offer. We ate in a comfortable silence that didn’t feel like the heavy, suffocating quiet I was used to. Over scrambled eggs and burnt toast, she told me about her paintings—how she captured the foggy Oregon coast and the way light filtered through the Douglas firs. I listened, fascinated by how she saw the world. I only saw broken parts that needed fixing; she saw colors and emotions waiting to be brought to life.
When breakfast was over, I grabbed my keys. “Ready?”
She looked at her damp clothes, still sitting by the dryer, then down at my oversized sweatshirt. “Can I… borrow this for the ride? I’ll find a way to return it.”
“Keep it,” I said, avoiding her eyes. “It looks better on you anyway.”
The drive to the downtown Eugene bus station was short. The sky was a pale, washed-out gray. When I pulled up to the curb, Lily didn’t get out right away. She turned to me, her blue eyes searching my face.
“Thank you, Marcus. For not being like the others. For making me feel safe.” She reached into her canvas bag, pulled out a small scrap of paper, and scribbled something on it. “If you ever want to see what I do with those colors… or just want to talk.”
She pressed the paper into my hand. It had her phone number and a small, hastily drawn sketch of a pine tree. I watched her walk into the station, her small frame swallowed by the morning crowd.
When I got home, the house felt emptier than before. The scent of her vanilla shampoo lingered in the bathroom. The blanket was perfectly folded on the couch. For seven years, I had craved isolation. Now, it felt like a prison.
Two weeks passed. I buried myself in work at the garage, and at night, I practically lived under the hood of my dad’s Ford pickup. But every time I reached into my pocket for a wrench, my fingers brushed against that scrap of paper. I told myself it was stupid. She was a rich college student, an artist. I was a grease-monkey living in a ghost house.
But on a Tuesday night, when the silence grew too loud, I dialed the number.
She picked up on the third ring. “Marcus?” Her voice was breathless, excited. She hadn’t forgotten.
That call led to another, and then to a meeting at a quiet coffee shop near the university. Over the next month, Lily became a regular fixture in my life. We were from completely different worlds, yet we clicked. She brought a vibrant, chaotic energy into my structured existence. I took her to hidden spots along the McKenzie River; she took me to student art galleries where I felt completely out of place, though she never let go of my hand.
For the first time since the accident, the walls I built were cracking. I told her things I’d never told anyone—about the night the police knocked on my door to tell me my parents were gone, about the crushing weight of keeping a house I couldn’t afford to lose. She didn’t offer pity. She just listened, her hand resting on my arm, solid and warm.
But fear is a stubborn thing. The closer we got, the more the old panic clawed at my chest. If you love her, you will lose her, the darkness in the house whispered every time I came home alone.
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