Day 68
MacLaren's Bar
That night, the gang was reunited at the bar: Marshall, Robin, Ted, Barney, and Alyx, together for the first time in an atmosphere that, while not one of pure happiness, was no longer filled with awkward or tense silences. It was the closest thing to normal.
Ted and Robin were still in their love bubble, of course more subdued now as the initial thrill of new love had faded, but more comfortable with what they were building together. Barney was the center of the general conversation with his misadventures—this time, an encounter with a woman from NASA who turned out to be a kindergarten teacher. Marshall drank his beer in moderation, not as a means to drown his sorrows but out of habit, and Alyx, seated beside him, simply observed her friends without overanalyzing everything or monitoring Marshall's state, just watching them with a sense of peace and appreciation for their company.
"Let's make a toast," said Ted, raising his beer mug. "To moving forward, by force if necessary, but forward."
"To force!" Barney cheered. "And to NASA women who are actually kindergarten teachers—just little white lies, guys, little white lies." They clinked glasses.
Marshall glanced at Alyx beside him and gave a small nod. His way of saying, We made it and We got through pancake day.
Alyx returned a slight smile. Saying, Yes. We did.
At that moment, after the toast and their brief exchange, as conversations and amiable laughter resumed, a figure slowly appeared in the window that ran along the hallway toward the bar's entrance.
At first, it was just a faint shadow until Alyx focused on observing that figure that looked so familiar, making her pulse race before her brain could even determine who it was.
When the exterior light briefly illuminated the face, she saw it.
It was Lily.
She was thinner, her red hair in a more serious cut. She was wearing a jacket Alyx didn't recognize, and her face bore an expression marked by a whirlwind of emotions Alyx couldn't distinguish from so far away.
But her eyes, large and luminous even from a distance, were fixed on them. On their group, scanning it, stopping only on Marshall, who was laughing at something Barney had said, and then on Alyx, who was petrified with a frozen smile on her lips.
Alyx stopped hearing the bar's hustle and bustle, Barney and his stories, while feeling the air escape her lungs. She saw how Lily's eyes searched for hers through the glass, and it was like a punch to the stomach. All the controlled pain, the imposed order, the slow reconstruction—everything was completely shaken by that single glance, making the foundations she was barely rebuilding tremble.
Lily watched them. Her hand rose slightly as if to touch the glass or push the bar door and enter. Her mouth moved to form an unintelligible word that never came out.
But in the end, she didn't enter.
Doubt crossed her face. She looked at Marshall, still oblivious, happy for an instant in his bubble with his friends, and she looked at Alyx, whose face was now a marble mask, every muscle tense to avoid collapsing.
She saw only that complete picture: that life kept spinning without her.
And then, as if an invisible force pulled her back, she took one step back, then another, and another, until her figure blended with the shadows of the night, and in an instant, just as she had appeared, she vanished from Alyx's sight.
Alyx let out a choked gasp that only Marshall, seated nearby, heard. He turned his head, following her gaze fixed on the empty window.
"Alyx? What's wrong? Are you okay?" he asked, slightly concerned.
Alyx blinked once, twice, and forced herself to breathe. In her head, the image of Lily—so close and yet so far—burned in her retina. Should she tell him? Shatter this fragile peace that had cost them so much to build? Bring back the ghost just when they were beginning to bury it?
Her instinct for protection—the same one that had made her care for Marshall all those days—rose with force. Telling him now would be like throwing a grenade into the middle of his slow recovery. It would completely destroy him again.
Another voice in her head told her that keeping that secret was betraying the truth. It was creating a new lie between them.
"Alyx?" Marshall's voice was full of genuine concern now. Ted, Barney, and Robin had stopped talking and were looking at them.
With a superhuman effort, Alyx averted her gaze from the window and fixed it on Marshall, forcing a smile that hurt every muscle in her face.
"Sorry, it was a dizzy spell... from the heat, I think." Her voice sounded strange and too loud. "What were you talking about?"
Marshall studied her for a second too long but let it go as Barney, who resumed his story with the same enthusiasm, distracted him.
Alyx took her glass with a trembling hand and took a long drink. Her eyes kept returning to the window from time to time, as if expecting her to return and prove she wasn't the mirage of a past that was alive, breathing, watching them, and returning.
The facts were: Lily had returned. She had seen them. And she had left.
That moment for Alyx was a clear reminder that this summer of broken hearts wasn't over; it was only the intermission. The real storm that would shake their lives had just arrived—one that would involve decisions, secrets, and emotional pain was already foretold.
And she, trapped between her love for Marshall and her love for Lily, would have to decide which side to be on when the storm finally broke.
Ted's Narration, 2030
"And so, kids, that summer finally began to close. Marshall became a functional person again. Alyx began to search for her own path. And I was blindly happy with Robin.
Your Uncle Marshall and Alyx thought they had made it, and we thought we had already moved on. What we didn't know—what none of us knew at that moment—was that that night at the bar, while we toasted to moving forward, the past was watching us from the window, and with it, our future was about to be rewritten."