It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover (z-lib.org).epub

He was about to kiss me on the mouth when we heard a car pull into the
driveway and the garage door start to open. I jumped off the island, looking around
the kitchen frantically. His hands went up to my cheeks and he made me look at
him.
“Keep an eye on the cookies. They’ll be finished in about twenty minutes.” He
pressed his lips to mine and then released me, rushing to the living room to grab his
backpack. He made it out the back door right when I heard the engine to my father’s
car shut off.
I started gathering all the ingredients together when my father walked into the
kitchen from the garage. He looked around and then saw the light on in the oven.
“Are you cooking?” he asked.
I nodded because my heart was beating so fast, I was scared he’d hear the
trembling in my voice if I responded out loud. I scrubbed for a moment at a spot on
the counter that was perfectly clean. I cleared my throat and said, “Cookies. I’m
baking cookies.”
He set his briefcase down on the kitchen table and then walked to the refrigerator
and pulled out a beer.
“The electricity has been out,” I said. “I was bored so I decided to bake while I
waited for it to come back on.”
My father sat down at the table and spent the next ten minutes asking me
questions about school and if I’d thought about going to college. Occasionally when
it was just the two of us, I saw glimpses of a how a normal relationship with a
father could be. Sitting at the kitchen table with him discussing colleges and career
choices and high school. As much as I hated him most of the time, I still longed for
more of these moments with him. If he could just always be the guy he was capable of
being in these moments, things would be so much different. For all of us.
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.