I rotated the cookies like Atlas had said to do and when they were finished, I pulled them out of the oven. I took one off the cookie sheet and handed it to my father. I hated that I was being nice to him. It almost felt like I was wasting one of Atlas’s cookies.

“Wow,” my father said. “These are great, Lily.”

I forced a thank-you, even though I didn’t make them. I couldn’t very well tell him that, though.

“They’re for school so you can only have one,” I lied. I waited until the rest of them cooled and then I put them in a Tupperware container and took them to my room. I didn’t even want to try one without Atlas, so I waited until later last night when he came over.

“You should have tried one when they were hot,” he said. “That’s when they’re the best.”

“I didn’t want to eat them without you,” I said. We sat on the bed with our backs against the wall and proceeded to eat half the bowl of cookies. I told him they were delicious, but failed to tell him they were by far the greatest cookies I’d ever eaten. I didn’t want to inflate his ego. I kind of liked how humble he was.

I tried to grab at another one, but he pulled the bowl away and put the lid back on it. “If you eat too many you’ll make yourself sick and you won’t like my cookies anymore.”

I laughed. “Impossible.”

He took a drink of water and then stood up, facing the bed. “I made you something,” he said, reaching into his pocket.

“More cookies?” I asked.

He smiled and shook his head, then held out a fist. I lifted my hand and he dropped something hard in the palm of my hand. It was a small, flat outline of a heart, about two inches long, carved out of wood.

I rubbed my thumb over it, trying not to smile too big. It wasn’t an anatomically correct heart, but it also didn’t look like the hand-drawn hearts. It was uneven and hollow in the middle.

“You made this?” I asked, looking up at him.

He nodded. “I carved it with an old whittling knife I found at the house.”

The ends of the heart weren’t connected. They just curved in a little, leaving a little space at the top of the heart. I didn’t even know what to say. I felt him sit back down on the bed but I couldn’t stop looking at it long enough to even thank him.

“I carved it out of a branch,” he said, whispering. “From the oak tree in your backyard.”

I swear, Ellen. I never thought I could love something so much. Or maybe what I was feeling wasn’t for the gift, but for him. I closed my fist around the heart and then leaned over and kissed him so hard, he fell back onto the bed. I threw my leg over him and straddled him and he grabbed my waist and grinned against my mouth.