The Way We Learned to Love ✓

47 - lily

july 2020 : 2 months ago

Lily mindlessly popped a piece of popcorn into her mouth, her eyes glued to the television screen.

"So pick me, choose me, love me," Meredith was begging Derek.

He looked kind of dead inside as he stared back at her. Lily wrinkled her nose and grabbed more popcorn. She never realized just how cringe-worthy this scene was.

A trace of fresh lemon lingered from their cooking endeavor, filling the air with the scent of summer. She was spending her 4th of July afternoon at the Caruso's house, firmly planted on the couch to binge old episodes of Grey's Anatomy with her aunt. She had come over in the morning so that Aunt Jenny could show her how to bake the lemon pie recipe that she brought to the family cookout every year. Lily was scared of messing up and ruining it – she was a tragically slow learner when it came to all things cooking-related – but her aunt was a good teacher. As soon as they moved it into the fridge to chill, they sank onto the couch to reward themselves with a good Netflix binge.

Moosey was stretched out on the floor by their feet. As silly as it was, she felt bad leaving him out of the festivities, so she bought him along with her aunt and uncle's permission. He was being well behaved so far—although he and Beary had been serving each other some serious side-eye, they didn't make any attempt to approach each other. She had taken Moosey into the yard for zoomies before they started baking and now he seemed too sleepy to take too much interest in the cat.

There were footsteps on the hard floor behind them and then a quiet jangling sound as Uncle Robert grabbed his keys off their hook by the front door, evidently about to set off on some errand. Aunt Jenny tilted her head back to look at her husband as he was passing by and exchanged a small smile with him. She didn't say anything, but she probably didn't need to—a smile could say a thousand words so long as the person seeing it was fluent in the language of you. He leaned down to give her a quick kiss on his way out and then disappeared out the door.

Their attention was already diverted back to Grey's by the time Lily heard the garage door open and close, but her fingers started to fiddle with loose strings on the knitted blanket that covered her lap. Her thoughts began to float away as if being slowly carried out to sea.

Sometimes she never realized that she had started to drift at all until she was suddenly miles from shore. But other days, she willingly let herself be pulled away by the tide in hopes that those crystal waters could offer her more clarity than the constant chaos on land.

She wished there was a way to bottle up whatever that special thing Henry's parents had was. They always seemed like they were still so happy together, so in love. And the older she got, the more she wanted that kind of life for herself. She loved Liam more than she could even fully comprehend, but there were still so many days when she felt like she did a bad job at loving him well.

It was nothing that he said or did that made her doubt herself—he believed in her so, so much and made sure to remind her of it. It was that she already knew that he was the only one for her. She never wanted to know what kissing a different pair of lips was like, never wanted someone else's soul to be this entangled with hers. She wanted him to be the one holding her when she fell asleep each night and the one who was there when she woke up every morning. And with each day that passed, with each day of loving him more and more, she grew more scared that she had the capacity to one day make a catastrophic mistake that would demolish this life they had together.

"How do you do that?" she blurted, looking over at her aunt.

Her eyebrows furrowed slightly like she wasn't following the question. "Do what?"