It Ends with Us Summary & ending explained

I'm sitting on the ledge of a roof, one leg on each side, twelve stories above Boston, and I can't stop thinking about how easy it would be to fall.

Not that I'm going to. I just buried my father today, and this is the only place I could find that's quiet.

This morning, in Plethora, Maine, I stood up in front of the whole town to give his eulogy. He was the mayor. Everyone loved him. I had planned to name five things I loved about him, and I stood at the microphone, and I couldn't think of a single one. So I said nothing at all. For a long, terrible stretch of seconds, I said nothing. Then I walked off.

Because the man everyone loved hit my mother. For years. And I watched.

The roof door bangs open. A man in scrubs storms out, doesn't see me, and starts kicking a patio chair. He kicks it again and again, and the chair just sits there, unbroken.

"I don't think the chair is going to lose," I say.

He spins around. He's tall, dark-haired, furious, and probably the best-looking person I've ever seen up close.

"A little boy died on my table tonight," he says after a while. "His brother found a gun. It was an accident."

His name is Ryle Kincaid. He's a neurosurgeon, almost done with his residency, and he has a plan for his life that doesn't include love. No girlfriend, no wedding, no kids. "Relationships aren't for me," he says. "I want success, not a family."

I tell him I'm twenty-three, I work in marketing, and I don't do one-night stands.

We make a game of it: one naked truth at a time, the things you never say out loud. He tells me what he wants from life and what he doesn't. I tell him about the eulogy, and about my father. It's the most honest hour I've had in years.

Then his pager goes off. At the door he stops and looks back at me. "I really wish you wanted one-night stands," he says.

And he's gone. I don't even know if I'll ever see him again.