Only Mostly Devastated

by Sophie Gonzales

  There was only about fifteen seconds left on the clock when I realized we were going to win. Even I was into the game now, cheering and clapping along with everyone around me as Will passed to Darnell, who passed to number twenty-two. It looked like this guy was going to land a shot, but as it left his hands it was intercepted out of nowhere by a Frankston player, who dribbled the ball a little down the court. Then, way too far away for it to possibly go in, he took a shot. And then, impossibly, it did go in, increasing their score by three points and putting them one point above us on the scoreboard.

  “No!” I shouted, and Juliette swore emphatically beside me.

  We only had a few seconds left. There was no way we could win now, right? The ball was passed quicker than I could keep up with down the court. Back and forth, back and forth. Then, one of the Frankston guys went to pass to another, but Darnell quickly dodged around the front to block the second guy from receiving. The ball bounced out of bounds, and Darnell crossed the line to take the pass. He bounced the ball a couple of times, scanning the Collinswood team. He brought the ball in, and it looked like he was going to pass to a blond guy who broke free of his own defender. But then, Will tore through out of nowhere, and Darnell shot the ball at his chest. Will grabbed it, flipped around, and in one fluid motion took the shot.

  It went in with a swish of the net.

  I knew from the roar of the crowd surrounding me that it had been a winning shot. The scoreboard flipped over to put us one point ahead of Frankston. A few seconds later the buzzer sounded to signal the end of the game, and the Collinswood team swarmed inward to Will and Darnell, hugging them and clapping them on the back, shouting with joy.

  Then a couple of the guys lifted Will onto their shoulders. Unlike the way he usually acted around that group, though, he didn’t look self-impressed or cocky. Actually, he looked kind of astounded.

  “Come on,” Niamh said to me, grabbing my hand.

  “What?”

  “We’re going down there, come on!”

  We weren’t the only ones going onto the court, but it clearly wasn’t the norm for people in the crowd to spill in around the players, though. It seemed like more of a close friends and family thing. But Niamh tugged me, pulling me after her down the stairs. Then she broke away from me and ran to Darnell, who picked her up and spun her around.

  Will spotted me as the guys lowered him to the ground. I hung back on the edge of the court, suddenly self-conscious. I didn’t want to ruin this for him.

  But he came over anyway, approaching me with long, confident strides. “Hey,” I said when he got closer. “That was amazing, I—”

  He cut my sentence in half by grabbing me by the shoulders and kissing me.

  I let out a squeak of astonishment. This was the exact last thing I could’ve expected to happen at that moment. Well, maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe the last thing I expected would’ve been the grand entrance of the Great, Ethereal Being, floating in on a cloud and playing the accordion while a group of warehouse aliens performed an interpretive dance to the tune. But in the realm of things that were actually possible, Will throwing his arms around me and kissing me hard on the mouth in front of everyone who mattered ranked approximately number one million, five hundred and fifty-two thousand, three hundred and seven. Point five.

  He broke away, and didn’t even check to see who was looking. He just locked his eyes on me. “I love you,” he said.

  There were no words. I couldn’t think of a possible way to reply to this. I just stood in dumb shock. Then I looked around on Will’s behalf. About half of the basketball team had paused in their tracks, staring at us with open mouths. For them, this was probably less expected than synchronized dancing warehouse aliens, I guessed. In the stands, Juliette was beaming down at us. And Will’s parents, who’d gotten about halfway down the stairs to congratulate him, were simply standing and watching with blank expressions.

  I turned back to Will who, it seemed, was purposely not looking behind him to check on people’s reactions. “Why aren’t you at your gig?” he asked.

  Why had the world suddenly tipped upside down? What, exactly, was going on? “Uh, I skipped sound check. It starts in fifteen minutes.”

  “Did you drive here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on.” He grabbed my wrist, and now it was him who was dragging me. This time, toward the side door. Dizzy with shock, and suddenly surged by an adrenaline rush, I broke into a run with him, as we pushed through the door and broke into the cold evening air to sprint across the parking lot to my car.

  22

  I could barely focus during the gig. Throughout the whole performance, I fixed my attention on the table at the back of the room where Will sat. For the first couple of songs, he sat with his shoulders hunched over, making himself small. All I wanted to do was throw my bass on the ground and run across the room to hug him and tell him everything was going to be fine, but I couldn’t.

  Then, during song number three, Darnell, Matt, and the girls burst through the front doors of the Lost and Found in a group. Will watched them through dull eyes as they filed into his booth. I was desperate to know what they were saying, but heartened by the fact that the girls were there. I couldn’t imagine Matt giving him a hard time without Lara tearing him a new one, and there was no way Darnell would say anything that might upset Niamh.

  But still.

  The worst part was later in the set, when Will’s parents entered, pulling their coats tightly around them. As soon as the rest of the group saw them enter they scattered to stand against the far wall, giving the family some privacy. I wondered if Will had told them where he was, or if they’d figured it out.

  I wondered if they were mad.

  Sayid and Emerson definitely noticed how distracted I was, because they kept looking at me with pointed expressions. I just gave them a smile and shook my head. Don’t worry. I’ll explain later.

  They were probably the last few kids left in school who hadn’t yet heard about what’d happened at the game.

  Finally, we played our last song. The place cheered for us—including Will’s parents—and the band started packing up. I began rolling up an aux cord as Sayid checked his phone. His eyes went wide, then he looked straight at me. It wasn’t hard to figure out what he’d seen.

  “Hey, Ollie,” he said, shoving his phone back in his pocket. “If you need to go and speak to Will about something, don’t worry about the rest of the equipment. We’ve got this.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, buddy, go.”

  So, my head spinning with tension, I went.

  I dragged my feet, waiting for Will to make eye contact with me and indicate if it was a good idea for me to come sit. He gave me a nod, so I swallowed, sent a quick prayer to whatever the hell might be listening in, and sat at the booth next to him.

  Mr. and Mrs. Tavares both smiled at me, which was the biggest relief ever. Even if the smiles were a little tighter than usual.

  “You did a great job up there, Ollie,” Mrs. Tavares said. “You have a real talent.”

  “Thank you,” I said. My voice came out as a thin sort of squeak.

  An awkward silence fell over the table. I don’t think Will’s parents knew what to say. And I definitely didn’t know what to say. Did I ask if everything was okay? Apologize for kissing their son? Bring up Will’s amazing shot at the end of the basketball game that now felt like it’d happened sometime the year before?

  “Are you kids going to be out for a while?” Mr. Tavares asked.

  Out as in, out of the closet, or out as in, out celebrating?

  “Yeah—the rest of the team is partying at Reese’s house. I think Matt and Darnell want to swing by,” said Will.

  Okay, yup, out celebrating. Glad I didn’t reply with “I’m planning on being out permanently,” then.

  His parents nodded, and Mrs. Tavares looked to me. “Would you make sure Will gets home safely after?” she asked.

 
Unless I was very much mistaken, that sounded like something a parent might say to her child’s boyfriend. “Yeah, yeah, of course I will.”

  “Thank you. We’re going to head home,” Mrs. Tavares said, scooting out of the chair. “We still haven’t had dinner. But, Will?”

  He jumped.

  “Remember what we told you.”

  As they walked out of the building, their heads bowed together so they could speak in low voices, I turned to Will. “What did they tell you?”

  His eyes were glassy, and he drew in a ragged, shaky breath. “That they both love me.”

  Oh.

  Oh, thank God.

  Juliette was waving to catch my attention across the room, to see if their group could come back over. I held up my pointer finger. “And what did Matt and Darnell say?”

  Another deep breath. “More or less the same thing?”

  “That’s great. So why don’t you seem okay? Aren’t you happy?”

  “I just, uh, I’m just waiting for something bad to happen.”

  All the adrenaline and excitement from earlier seemed to have trickled out of him. His eyes were puffy, and his shoulders tense, his hands curled up into fists in his lap.

  Under the table, where no one in the room could see, I grabbed his hand. “Nothing bad’s going to happen. That’s it. You’re through the bad part.”

  “But what if my parents were just pretending to be okay because they’re in public? You saw them; they weren’t exactly jumping up and down with joy.”

  “They said they love you. They asked me to bring you home. Do you think they would’ve done that if they didn’t want us to be around each other?”

  He grabbed a napkin off the table and squirreled it away into his lap so he could pick at the edges. “No. I guess not.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay. I am.”

  His smile was less shaky now. I returned it, and bumped our knees together. “So … you kissed me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “In public.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We weren’t even together, though.”

  “I’m sorry,” Will said. “I’m an asshole. I wasn’t even thinking straight. It’s just, I was high off winning the game, and you came, and it just made me realize that you had my back, and also I don’t think I knew how badly I wanted you there until you were. I’ve been meaning to ask if we could try again, but I didn’t know how to when I couldn’t promise anything. I wasn’t ready yet, and I didn’t want to drag you down with me while I figured myself out.”

  “I shouldn’t have said that. You weren’t dragging me down because you needed to take your time.”

  “No, but I wasn’t in a place where I could give you what you needed.”

  I nodded. “So what changed?”

  “I don’t know. A few things. Like, my dad being suspicious enough to ask me to keep the door open, but not demanding I tell him what was going on or steer clear of you. And also, Lara coming out, and Matt still wanting to be with her even if she likes girls, too. It made me feel a little braver, I guess. I was still scared, but I was tired of being scared. The not-knowing was getting worse than the thought of just jumping in and dealing with whatever happened.”

  “And now the hard part’s over,” I said. “Your parents know, and your best friends know. And they still love you.”

  “Yeah. I really think they do.”

  I took a deep breath. “And so do I.”

  This, I was pretty sure, was finally an appropriate time to say that. And Will didn’t reel away from me, or panic, or scramble to respond. Instead, he grabbed my hand and tilted his head back so he was looking at the ceiling. It seemed like he was trying to force his tears to slip back down their ducts. “I don’t deserve it.”

  “But I do anyway.”

  He let out his breath like every bit of tension in his body seeped out with it. “I love you, too. I think I always did. I was just scared of what saying that might mean.”

  “And now you’re not?”

  “Not even a bit, Ollie.”

  After everything. Meeting by chance, and falling too fast, and breaking up, and falling again, and pushing him away. All of it. This was the first time anything to do with us felt calm and rational. There was no impulsivity in this moment, or thrill of being discovered, or the passion and lust of discovering someone. It was just us. Two people who weren’t strangers anymore, and who were now well versed on all the things that could stop them from working out, and who’d maybe figured out a way to fit together anyway.

  Apparently tired of waiting for us, the rest of the group made their way back over to the table as one.

  “All right, well, they didn’t look too angry,” Matt said, waving at the door with one hand.

  “Nah, not angry,” Will said offhandedly, the affectionate tone of his voice gone right out the door. Some things never changed. “They’re chill.”

  He kept hold of my hand under the table, though. So. That’d changed.

  “Oh, sweet. And, uh,” Matt said, turning to me with a flourish. “Hi, Ollie.”

  “Hi, Matt.”

  “I cannot believe this has been going on since summer, summer, and no one thought to loop me in,” Matt said, obviously joking. “That is a bad start. We have bad blood now, Ollie, I’m sorry. You’d better do a fine job getting on my good side from now on. Everyone knows the best friend gets to call the shots in a relationship.”

  “Who died and made you his best friend?” Darnell asked, bouncing his head to one side in disbelief. “But for real, why didn’t we know?”

  Will shrugged, self-conscious.

  No. Nope. Not good enough. “When was he supposed to tell you guys?” I asked. “When you were making jokes about who wants to marry me? Or when you were throwing shade at him for grabbing my arm at the dance? Or, maybe when you were laughing about us being boyfriends if he mentioned something about me at lunch?”

  Darnell’s mouth went into an O shape, but Matt looked affronted. “Ah, hell, man, we were just joking,” he said to me. He looked to Will for backup, but Will wouldn’t meet his eye. “Wait, Will, we weren’t being serious. We didn’t think you were actually … like …”

  “But I was,” Will said. “I’m bi, I think. Just like Lara.”

  “I’m sorry. We seriously didn’t know.”

  “Yes, well, maybe from now on we can cut the gay joke crap as a blanket rule,” Lara said in a cutting tone. “How about it?”

  “You’ve got it,” Darnell said, and Niamh squeezed his arm.

  “So,” Juliette said. “Are we going to that party now, or what?”

  We all looked at Will. He flushed red, and shrugged. He didn’t seem capable of much else right now. “I dunno. People might be weirded out about before.”

  “Hell no, you have to go, you won us the game,” Matt said. “If I’m going with a goddamn concussion, you’re going.”

  “Is it the same thing, though?” I asked, and Lara choked back a laugh.

  “But what if …” Will trailed off.

  “You’ve got us with you,” Darnell said.

  “Yeah. Like they’d even try that shit,” Matt added.

  “Besides,” Lara jumped in, grinning over at Juliette as she did. “Even if they did. We can scream louder.”

  “So, when are you telling Will?” Mom asked. She sat in the living room, clutching a steaming cup of black coffee, along with Uncle Roy and Dad, both of whom had beers in front of them instead of coffee. I was running in and out of the living room, packing my car with blankets, folding chairs, and a cooler filled with soda. I didn’t know if everyone wanted Coke, or Diet Coke, or root beer, or Dr Pepper, or Mountain Dew, so screw it, I was taking all of it.

  “Tonight. I told you it was tonight.” I grunted under the weight of the cooler as I shuffled it through the propped-open front door to load into my trunk. I kicked something unidentified, and I peeked around. A marble. “Crista, I told you to pick up your marbles, pe
ople can slip on those things!”

  “Oops! Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  “You should be,” I said under my breath, fighting a grin as she abandoned her iPad and scooped up the stray marble. What kind of new-age kid played with marbles these days, anyway? Wasn’t that a little vintage?

  Not that I was going to hold it too hard against her. It was only pretty recently that she’d started poking her head out of her turtle shell again. A laughing, noisy Crista, tormenting Dylan and running around the house experimenting with new toy setups was far preferable to the quiet, nonchalant kid she’d turned into after Aunt Linda passed away. It wasn’t that she didn’t miss her mom anymore, of course. She still brought her up. All the time, in fact. It was just that she’d adjusted to the idea that life would keep on going without her mom, and she’d finally decided to catch back up with it.

  “I know it’s tonight, but when tonight?”

  I blew my bangs out of my face and shrugged. Honestly, did it matter when? “I don’t know. I’ll wing it.”

  “Don’t do it in front of everyone,” Mom said.

  “Uh … why?”

  “Because. He should get the chance to react in private before everyone else jumps in, okay?”

  Dad tapped the neck of his beer against his chin. “Clearly, your mother has never forgiven me for proposing in front of a crowd of strangers,” he said.

  “Well, all I’m saying is you’re very lucky I was going to say yes, anyway,” Mom shot back.

  “Good thing I’m not proposing,” I said. “All right. I’ve got to go, so—”

  “Ollie, can I play your guitar while you’re gone?” Crista asked.

  I hesitated in the entryway.

  “I’ll supervise,” Uncle Roy promised. “Only very gentle guitar playing tonight, all right, Crista? We aren’t in a rock band. If Ollie comes back to find another scratch on that thing he might lock you up and throw away the key.”