by Roan Parrish
“I hate stuff that’s good for me.”
My flight left from Detroit at 9:30 a.m., but Will was staying until the next day so he could try to talk to the parent of one of Nathan and Sarah’s friends about providing some support if Claire needed it.
Will drove me to the airport in silence, flicking through radio stations and finding nothing he wanted to listen to, then flicking it off again.
We were both exhausted. The easy intimacy of the morning had given way to a day made long by necessities. We’d gone grocery shopping for Claire while she met with a psychologist, then I hung out with Nathan and Sarah while Will took Claire to buy new things for the house.
We hadn’t had a moment to talk, but it wasn’t as if I’d know what to say anyway. Things felt… different? Will seemed different. But he was also in the middle of a crisis and away from home, so I reminded myself for the umpteenth time that it was definitely not the moment to address it.
“Thank you,” Will said as he pulled to a stop at the curb. “For coming here. It never really occurred to me that you would, but… it should have. I—hell, I should’ve known you that well by now. Anyway, thanks.”
And he kissed me, leaning over the cup holders and gearshift. Kissed me like it was a thing we did again. Then he was gone, saying he’d see me back home, leaving me standing at the curb staring after his rental car with my head a total mess and my heart a quivering, hopeful thing.
15
Chapter 15
March
Charles wasn’t back from spring break yet when I got to the dorms. I wasn’t used to having the space to myself, but it came in handy because apparently the only thing that I was capable of was pacing. I knew I’d done the right thing by not asking Will a zillion questions about the status of our relationship before I left Michigan. And I wasn’t looking for a marriage proposal or anything, but it was disconcerting as hell not to know where we stood.
I forced myself to go down to the dining hall, where I choked down a bowl of cereal and then sat staring at nothing as I used the vanilla soft-serve machine to make Coke float after Coke float. When my knee started bouncing out of control, I realized I had just majorly over-sugared and over-caffeinated myself at nine o’clock at night, and forced myself to go back to my room, pocketing a few cookies for later.
The hum of the fluorescent light drove me to distraction without the incessant tapping of Charles’ keyboard and finally I grabbed my phone and sent an SOS, knowing I’d be useless until I made some sense of things.
Can you skype for a sec? I sent to Daniel. It’s about Will so you won’t like it but pleaaaase?
Do I have to kill him again? Daniel wrote back almost immediately. Then, Yeah, signing on.
I blew out a deep breath in relief and threw myself onto my bed, flipping open my laptop and opening Skype. Then I waited. Daniel always thought you went online to sign into Skype before he remembered it was an application, so I figured it’d take him a minute.
“Hey,” he said before his camera was turned on. “Sorry. I thought I was opening it but I accidentally redownloaded the thingie. Anyway, what’s up? What’d Will do now?”
“Click your camera button.”
“Huh, oh. Now?”
I nodded as his face appeared on the screen. He was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the couch. His dark hair was mussed, like he’d been running a hand through it, and he squinted at the screen for a moment, then took off his glasses and tossed them on the coffee table, rubbing his eyes.
“Hi.” He waved. He always waved on Skype even though he didn’t do it in person, and I couldn’t help but grin at him despite vibrating with caffeine and feeling like I was about to puke from my guts being tied in knots of uncertainty—although, maybe that was just all the soft-serve.
“You grading?” He only did that particular eye rub after staring at student papers.
“Yes, god help me. Rough drafts. Why did I ask to see rough drafts? Seriously, kill me where I stand.” He shook his head as if cursing his former self. “Anyway. What’s the deal with Dickface?” Then he jerked away from the screen. “Oh shit. I forgot. His sister. Is she okay?”
“Yeah, she’s doing better. Will’s staying out there another day to help her get some stuff sorted.” I wasn’t sure how much of Claire’s personal info Will would want me to share, especially since he and Daniel weren’t exactly buds. “Saw the cabin. I think it misses you guys.”
A wistful expression played across Daniel’s face. “Yeah. I miss it too. I think….” He looked around. “I think I might take Rex there over the summer. Like, surprise him or whatever.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet!”
Daniel looked away and got all self-conscious like he did whenever I said anything like that, so I changed the subject quickly.
“So, in Holiday, we… like, I guess, slept together again, but I don’t know if that means we’re… back on the way we were, or…. It seemed different or something. And I can’t talk to Will about it yet because, duh, family crisis and stuff, and also because he’d be about zero percent interested in discussing it, but it’s honestly killing me and I won’t be able to sleep or work or do really anything until I know more. Just… more. Also, sorry, full disclosure: I’ve had, like, a lot of Coke just now, so. The soda, I mean. And ice cream. Like. A lot.”
“Yeah, I thought my picture was shaky, but I guess you’re just vibrating.”
I filled him in on what had happened between Will and me in Michigan, but I found myself not quite wanting to describe Will’s shift in attitude. His vulnerability. The way he seemed to need me. Not just because Will might want to murder me for telling personal details about him to Daniel. But also because I felt protective of this side of Will that only I knew. As if keeping it to myself made me somehow closer to him. It was our secret.
A door slammed on Daniel’s side of things and Rex walked behind the couch, arms full of grocery bags. He did a double take at the screen and bent down.
“Hey, Leo.”
Daniel smiled as Rex came into the screen and twisted around to him, though the couch was between them. He focused back on me when Rex went to put away the groceries.
“Okay, so, where did you leave things?”
“Well, he drove me to the airport and he thanked me for coming. And he really meant it, I could tell. But I don’t know what it means. Like, before the… um, Tiramisu Incident, we were sleeping together but not dating or whatever.” I rolled my eyes at the word. “But… Will just seemed different in Holiday. Like he thought of me differently?”
God, that sounded so stupid. But Daniel nodded.
“But Will’s made it clear from the beginning that he doesn’t want a relationship. Like, very clear. Will doesn’t really pull punches when it comes to being honest. Or blunt. Or, well, you know. He doesn’t actually pull punches, period. So… I guess I don’t know why I think things’ll be different.”
Daniel ran his hand through his hair like he was trying to find a way to say something I wouldn’t want to hear.
“Oh, just say it, it’s okay,” I told him.
“Yeah,” he drawled. “You know Will isn’t my favorite person, but that’s not why I’m saying this. Just, usually if someone tells you they don’t want a relationship, then… uh, they don’t want one.”
“I know.” I sighed. “But….” I could see how it sounded. Like Will had told me no and I was looking for excuses not to take him at his word. “Look, the thing is that he… he acts like we’re in a relationship sometimes. You know? And, in Michigan… fuck, I dunno. You’re probably right. Will means what he says; he doesn’t, like, play coy or whatever.”
The knot in my stomach tightened in a way that had nothing to do with the ice cream.
“I’m sorry, man. I wish shit were different. I mean, I don’t really get the Will thing, but I get that he’s different with you.”
My face, in the Skype window, was pathetically miserable, and I made it tiny so I didn’t have to
look at it.
“He is,” I said. “He really is.”
Rex appeared onscreen, sliding onto the couch and putting his hands on Daniel’s shoulders.
“I couldn’t help but overhear,” he said, nodding toward the kitchen.
“’S okay. I mean, you probably know Will better than either of us.”
Rex’s face did this very thoughtful, serious thing and he shook his head tightly.
“I don’t think so.”
The tiny me onscreen looked like he’d been given a Christmas present. God, Will really hadn’t been kidding the times he’d said I was easy to read.
“Can I ask you something?” Rex said.
“God, yes, any thoughts, opinions, questions, and insights are extremely welcome.”
“You said that Will means what he says.” I nodded. “What does that mean, exactly?”
I opened my mouth, but then forced myself to really think about it. Rex asked these questions sometimes—questions where you thought the answer was obvious but then later realized you had no idea.
“Will’s the most honest person I’ve ever met,” I said. “Like, you’re really honest, but… you’re polite and stuff so sometimes you just don’t say things. Like if they’d be rude or offensive or whatever. Will… he’s even super blunt about things when it makes people uncomfortable, you know?”
Rex was silent for long enough that I got paranoid the call had dropped, but I could see them moving.
“I know what you mean,” he said slowly. “But being blunt isn’t the same thing as being honest.” His hands tightened on Daniel’s shoulders and Daniel leaned back into him. “Just because Will is okay with offending someone or telling someone a hard truth about themselves… that doesn’t mean he doesn’t get scared. For himself, I mean. It doesn’t mean he always volunteers the truth about what he’s feeling.” He paused again, like he was trying to find the right words. “And sometimes he says things so strong to make it easier for himself.”
He shook his head and looked at Daniel.
“I don’t know how to say it, exactly.”
Daniel bit his lip. “Mmm, like, he asserts things really definitively in order to shut down conversations about topics he doesn’t want to think about?”
Rex nodded and said, “Yeah. Yeah, that,” and Daniel seemed like he was thinking about it.
“Whoa,” I said, also thinking about it.
“Leo,” Rex said gently. “Will isn’t superhuman. He’s just as scared and uncertain as any of us. He just has different ways of dealing with it. And not everyone’s so great at talking about that kind of stuff. Sometimes they show you things in other ways.”
“Wow, I feel like the biggest idiot in history,” I said. Then, when Rex looked guilty: “No, no, you’re fine. I just mean, I seriously didn’t think about the ways that Will might be… scared about stuff. About relationship stuff.”
Which was a pretty major oversight, considering everything he’d told me about his past relationships.
Rex and Daniel were quiet, Daniel’s shoulders pressed against Rex’s legs, Rex’s hands on his shoulders. I wondered what if felt like for them, looking at their image on the screen. Seeing their connectedness reflected back at them.
“I really love him, you guys.” My voice was a whisper, and I hadn’t meant to tell them that before I’d even told Will. But once I had, I went on. “I know it probably sounds like I think he’s perfect or something because of what I just said. And I don’t. I just think maybe….” I shook my head. It was too sappy to say out loud.
“Maybe you’re perfect for each other,” Daniel murmured, like he wasn’t even talking to me. Rex’s expression turned soft and private, and he touched Daniel’s hair, just for a second.
My thoughts were flying at the speed of light, but it was all stuff I should be saying to Will, not to Daniel and Rex. I saw myself nodding onscreen, just a tiny window against the large view of Daniel and Rex, caught up in each other.
“Thanks, you guys. Seriously, thanks a lot. I should go.”
Rex gave me a kind smile and Daniel gave me a goofy wave.
“Good luck,” he said, and I saw Rex reach for him just before the screen went black.
I thought a lot about what Daniel and Rex had said. I couldn’t sleep because of all the Coke, so I went back to pacing.
Rex was right. Will did sometimes use strong opinions to shut down a conversation he didn’t want to have. Had I been so distracted by Will’s bluntness about small things that I overvalued his honesty about bigger things? Scarier things?
Also—and this was so simple I almost dismissed it the way I had Rex’s question earlier—what if Will was just… wrong. Not lying, just… what if he’d spent so long believing he couldn’t be in relationships for x, y, and z reasons that he hadn’t stopped to reevaluate when a new variable was added to the equation. I actually snorted at myself. Like: NEWSFLASH, it has been suggested that there is the possibility Will Highland is occasionally wrong. Paging everyone everywhere.
So maybe I should just… what? Wait and watch? Look, as Rex had said, for the other ways that Will might express how he felt.
That was that, then. I would watch, keeping in mind my two new laws of Will dynamics: 1. It was possible Will was scared and uncertain, and 2. I had to look at what Will did in addition to what he said.
Easy enough, right?
16
Chapter 16
April
I watched for a month. And all the while, Will’s presence glowed like a lantern in the heart of my life, even when he wasn’t around.
School was a whirlwind of busy and Will was up to his ears in all the work it took for him and Gus to launch the business, so I didn’t see him as much as I’d have liked. But when we did get a chance to see each other I paid attention in a way I never had.
One afternoon when the subway got delayed on my way up to Will’s apartment it hit me with a startling clarity. This was the problem with scripting romances in your head. When someone doesn’t hit the beats, you expect of them you have no idea what their actual behavior means. Will had tried to tell me. So had Gretchen. Even Layne, in her way, had told me. That this was what being a romantic looked like: paying more attention to your own expectations than to the very real person in front of you.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“I know, right?” replied the guy to my left, looking up from his crossword. “I should just get out and walk. Be faster.”
I nodded in sympathy, but he didn’t make a move to go anywhere.
The sex between us had been intense ever since we got back from Michigan, and tonight I was drawing it out, taking the whirlwind that Will began with and harnessing it, amping us both up, then backing off, keeping Will on the edge as long as I could. At first he threatened to push me away and finish himself off. But he didn’t. He looked up at me, and I saw the moment when he accepted that I’d make it good for him if he was patient. He kind of rolled his eyes and groaned, like he was giving in to me, but really I think he was giving in to himself.
More and more, I’d noticed a kind of restlessness in him, a desire to be distracted. He’d wander around the apartment, picking things up and putting them down like he was confused as to what they did. I’d ask him to help me with something, and he’d transfer his attention to it gratefully.
Or I’d start something and he’d grab my clothes and my hair as if reminding himself that he could. Because we’d both been so busy lately, usually we’d fall asleep right after sex. It had taken a few times of this happening for me to realize that I was staying over. And Will was letting me.
Tonight, though, after I finally let Will come, I pressed him onto his stomach in his soft bed and rubbed the tension from his shoulders and back, kissing up his spine until I could lay myself down over him. I kissed his neck, his ear, the curve of his jaw, then I buried my face in the crook of his neck. He let out a soft groan and mumbled something into the pillow that I didn’t catch.
I rolled him toward me, sliding an arm under his neck.
“What’d you say?”
“I said, are you staying?”
I smiled into his hair.
“’Kay.”
He fumbled for the bedside lamp, couldn’t reach it, and let his arm drop onto the bed. I leaned over him and flicked it off, lying down on my back next to him.
“Hey, Will?”
He grunted.
There were a hundred things I wanted to say to him. That I loved him and I wanted to be with him and I thought maybe he felt different about me now than he had before Michigan. I wanted to tell him that if he needed to still sleep with other people, I was willing to talk about it if it meant we could… I dunno, have something more.
But the words stuck in my throat. It was too much and not enough.
He’d never asked me to stay before. It felt like a step in the right direction, and I wanted to just let it happen, to enjoy that it was happening right now and not scuttle it by picking it apart or making him self-conscious.
It could wait, I decided. It could all wait until after finals, when we could really talk.
“Nothing,” I said. “I just like being here with you.”
He reached for my hand in the darkness.
Will had never come to see me on campus, so I was surprised when, lying in bed, I looked up from my calculus book a few days later to find him at my door. He looked out of place in the dorm hallway, surrounded by scrubby students in sweats and jeans with dirty hair and harried expressions, where he wore black ankle boots, a black-and-white houndstooth shirt tucked casually into gray wool pants, and a black overcoat.
“Hey!” I started to stand up but somehow got all tangled in the sheets and kind of slumped back down. Will smiled and stalked over, pressing me back to the flimsy mattress and kissing me deeply.
“Mmm,” he murmured into my mouth. His cheeks and hands were cold, and I tried to pull him down into the bed with me, but he resisted.