“I do. Even though you never let me read anything.”

“Well, Ryle found the journals. And he read them. And he didn’t like what he read.”

Atlas sighs. “Lily, we were kids.”

“Jealousy doesn’t have an expiration date, apparently.”

Atlas presses his lips into a thin line for a moment, like he’s attempting to push down his frustration. “I really hate that you’re stressing over his potential reaction to things that haven’t even happened yet. But I get it. It’s the unfortunate position you’re in.” He looks at me reassuringly. “We’ll take it one step at a time, okay?”

“One very slow step at a time,” I suggest.

“Deal. Slow steps.” Atlas adjusts the pillow beneath his head. “I used to see you writing in those journals. I always wondered what you wrote about me. If you wrote about me.”

“Almost everything was about you.”

“Do you still have them?”

“Yeah, they’re in a box in my closet.”

Atlas sits up. “Read me something.”

“No. God, no.”

“Lily.”

He looks so hopeful and excited at the possibility, but I can’t read my teenage thoughts out loud to him over FaceTime. I’m growing red just thinking about it.

“Please?”

I cover my face with a hand. “No, don’t beg.” I’ll give in to those blue puppy-dog eyes if he doesn’t stop looking at me like he is.

He can see he’s wearing me down. “Lily, I have ached since I was a teenager to know what you thought of me. One paragraph. Just give me that much.”

How can I say no to that? I groan and toss the phone on the bed in defeat. “Give me two minutes.” I walk to my closet and pull down the box. I carry it over to my bed and begin flipping through the journals to find something that won’t embarrass me too much. “What do you want me to read? My retelling of our first kiss?”

“No, we’re going slow, remember?” He says that teasingly. “Start with something from the beginning.”

That’s much easier. I grab the first journal and flip through it until I find something that looks short and not too humiliating. “Do you remember the night I came to you crying because my parents were fighting?”

“I remember,” he says. He settles into his pillow and puts one arm behind his head.

I roll my eyes. “Get comfy while I mortify myself,” I mutter.

“It’s me, Lily. It’s us. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

His voice still has that same calming effect it’s always had. I sit cross-legged and hold the phone with one hand and my journal in the other, and I begin to read.