The Ghost of You and Me

by Kelly Oram

  Wes shakes his head and mutters a single word under his breath as he opens his door. I don’t hear it, but I bet I can guess it. It’s probably the same word that runs through my head every time I have to deal with her.

  He’s still glaring at Trisha as we exit the parking lot. She’s resorted to pacing back and forth in front of her car, ranting to Liz with wild hand gestures. “I seriously can’t stand her,” he grumbles.

  I suppress a smile. I’ve never really liked her much, either. I’m not sure why I stayed friends with her for so long. It’s actually kind of nice to be on the outs with her. Lunch with my orchestra friends had been a fun, refreshing change of pace that I’ve decided to make a permanent arrangement. Wes is seething right now, but I just can’t seem to drum up any anger. I guess I’m really over Trisha and her clique. That’s a freeing realization.

  Wes asked if we could talk, but the drive to the hospital is silent. I know his shift for the internship doesn’t start for half an hour, and since hearing his rant to Trisha, there’s something I really need to get off my chest, so I park instead of dropping him off. I’d rather not be trapped in the car—there’s so much tension between us that it’s starting to feel claustrophobic—so I kill the engine and get out. The fresh air is an immediate relief.

  Wes catches up to me when I wander over to what I’m starting to consider our bench.

  “Wes—”

  “Bailey—”

  We don’t laugh when we start at the same time, but the tension does ease a little. I don’t give him the chance to speak first. I need to say something. “It wasn’t your fault, Wes.” He scowls, but I ignore it. “He asked me to drive him home that night,” I blurt suddenly. “He tried to give me the keys.”

  It’s a secret I’ve been carrying for a year. The single biggest regret of my entire life. I could have prevented Spencer’s accident. I could have saved his life without ever knowing it was in danger. He could still be here.

  “Why didn’t you?” Wes asks softly. There’s no accusation in his voice, but I feel the guilt all the same.

  “I wasn’t sixteen yet. I didn’t have a license, didn’t know how to drive. I’d never even been behind the wheel of a car before. I was scared. I was going to call someone to come get us, but Spencer said his parents would kill him for getting drunk. When he said never mind and started to climb into the driver’s seat, I told him I wasn’t going to get in the car with him. I thought that would make him stop, but he was still mad because of the kiss, and he took off anyway. I should have just driven him home. I should have taken his keys when he offered them to me.”

  I cut myself off when a sob bubbles up in my chest. Wes surprises me by climbing to his feet and offering me a hand. Warily, I wipe away the few tears that have escaped and let him pull me to my feet. He doesn’t let me go once I’m standing. He laces our fingers together and starts walking us toward the main road where there’s a small park area with grass, trees, and a few picnic tables.

  “He got drunk that night because of me, Bailey.”

  I shake my head. “Again, that was my fault. I told him about our kiss.”

  Wes pulls me to a stop and stares me down with intensity. “Did you tell him everything else? Did you tell him why I kissed you? Did you tell him what I almost did? What you saved me from?”

  My heart drops into my stomach. I’ll never forget wandering into Jake’s parents’ room looking for Spencer and instead finding Wes, alone, sitting on the bed, bedside table drawer open, Wes staring into the barrel of Jake’s dad’s pistol.

  “No.” I can barely choke out the reply. Watching him flip the loaded chamber shut and lifting the gun to his head still plays in slow motion in my nightmares. “I’ve never told anyone about that. Even though I wanted to, and I was terrified you’d just try again later when there was no one to stop you. But I promised you I wouldn’t, so I didn’t. Not even Spencer.”

  Wes squeezes my hand and pulls me to the nearest picnic table. “My fight with Spencer was about more than just that kiss. A lot more. It was something that had been between us for years. Since we were kids. Since we made that dumb time capsule.”

  “Will you tell me?”

  I hold my breath as I wait for his answer. My heart starts pounding in my chest. I can’t get a grip on my emotions. There are too many thoughts swirling around in my head. What happened between him and Spencer? What was in that stupid time capsule? And how did it have anything to do with Wes nearly killing himself the night Spencer died? I can’t see how any of this is related, but I know it is, because it’s Spencer’s unfinished business.

  When Wes looks away from me without answering, I become desperate. “Please,” I beg.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does. I need to understand.”

  I jump to my feet, unable to hold still anymore because I feel like I’m about to explode. And then I do. Wes frowns up at me from the picnic table, and I just lose it. Maybe he’s not frowning in anger, maybe he’s just confused or even surprised by my desperation, but I can’t help myself. All of the bitterness I’ve been burying since this whole mess started explodes from me. “He was my boyfriend! I loved him more than anything in the world. My life has fallen apart since he died, and he came back to help you.”

  Wes’s face pales. He stands up and tries to take my hand, but I yank myself away from him. I need some space. “I haven’t been able to even breathe since he died, and he showed up asking me to help you. Me. Who you never even liked! Me, who you hated for loving him! Who you wanted out of his life!”

  Wes scrubs his face and then drags his hands over his head. “I didn’t want you out of his life, Bailey,” he shouts, suddenly as out of control as me. “I wanted you out of the relationship because I was in love with you! I wanted you for myself.”

  Wes was in love with me? The world around me spins, and I’m forced to sit. I plop down at the picnic table with a heavy thud and look back at Wes. I can’t process. There’s just no way. He stares back at me helplessly. I look away first and try to take a few slow, deep breaths through my nose because I feel as if I’m about to hyperventilate or vomit. Or both.

  Wes sits across the table from me and drops his backpack down between us. Before I can even register what’s happening, he pulls my old Hello Kitty jewelry box out of his bag and pushes it across the table to me. “Open it.”

  I’m suddenly terrified to see what’s in it, but I have to look. My curiosity has been killing me since I learned of its existence. Unclipping the small rusted latch, I carefully open the dirt-stained lid and let out a startled cry of surprise.

  When we were nine, I convinced myself I was going to marry both of them. I made a lemonade stand in my front yard to earn some money, then used my handful of hard-earned quarters to buy a couple of those cheap little rings from the gumball machines in the grocery store. I bought one for myself, too, and declared us all engaged when I gave the boys theirs. The rings were cheap gold, girly metal bands with big jeweled hearts on them that turned our fingers all green, but Wes and Spencer proudly wore those rings all summer.

  All three of those rings are in the jewelry box—mine tucked safely in the little padded ring slot and Wes’s and Spencer’s both in the plastic bubbles they originally came in. The only other thing in the box is a piece of paper rolled up like a scroll and held together with one of my old hair ribbons.

  Tears prick my eyes as I pull my ring out and slide it on the tip of my pinkie finger. “I thought I’d lost this.”

  “It was in the jewelry box when we took it,” Wes mutters. “That’s what gave us the idea to add ours to it.”

  When I look up, he’s staring hard at the picnic table and rubbing his flaming neck.

  “You said you guys buried this when you were eleven?” I ask.

  His gaze slides to the time capsule, still refusing to look at me. “Yeah.”

  “I gave these to you when we were nine. You both still had your rings?”

  “Of course
we did.” Wes shrugs. “We were two boys hopelessly in love with the same girl.”

  Wes plucks his ring from the box with a sigh and pops the top off the plastic bubble. “Read the contract.”

  “Contract?”

  Wes doesn’t explain, so I pull out the scroll and untie the old ribbon. Written in sloppy eleven-year-old boy handwriting is a signed and dated contract stating that because they were both in love with me and couldn’t decide who should get to be my boyfriend, for the sake of their friendship, neither of them would ever ask me out. It even said on pain of death at the bottom.

  It was so ridiculous and so dorky and so…them, that I bark out a laugh and have to swallow back a wave of emotion. Once I’m sure my voice will come out steady, I say, “What are these smudges by your names? Were you guys eating Ding Dongs when you wrote this?”

  Wes looks at the contract, and the side of his mouth curves up into an almost-smile. “That’s blood.”

  I’m equal parts appalled and amused. “You signed it in blood?”

  Wes finally meets my eyes. “We were eleven.”

  “What’d you do? Stab yourselves with safety scissors?”

  Wes looks away again, but he grins at the grass. “We each picked a scab.”

  “Oh, gross!” I drop the bloody-scab paper with a horrified laugh.

  Wes chuckles, but his amusement is short-lived. “You remember that night at Trisha’s party?” His voice takes on an empty quality, and his gaze slips out of focus. “When we were thirteen, and we played spin the bottle?”

  Did I remember it? Of course I remembered that night. That was my first kiss and the night that I finally made a choice between Wes and Spencer. That night changed my life.

  “When Trisha said we all had to play, Spencer and I told each other that just for that night, if your bottle landed on us, or ours landed on you, that it was okay, just that once. We said that, just in this one instance, we both had the green light.”

  I flinch at the term. Was that what Spencer meant the other night? That since he was dead, Wes now had the green light to make a move on me?

  “When it was your turn…”

  “My bottle landed on Spencer,” I finish.

  Wes puts his ring back in the jewelry box and looks me straight in the eye. “Your bottle landed on Spencer, and your face lit up like I’d never seen it do.”

  My chest caves in. I’d been so relieved to get Spencer, because I’d almost had to kiss Jake. But I would have been just as happy kissing Wes.

  “You floated on air for the whole next week,” Wes says sadly. “When you asked him to be your boyfriend, he said no at first, because of our pact. But you were so devastated by his refusal that I caved. I told him he had to say yes. I gave him the green light.”

  For a minute, I’m stunned speechless. “You told him to be my boyfriend?”

  All these years I thought Wes had hated me for asking Spencer out. I thought he blamed me, and yet it had been his insistence.

  “I had to. You were so sad, Bay. I couldn’t stand it. And I knew Spencer wanted it more than anything. He said no out of loyalty to me, but I knew how much it had killed him. He’d been so shocked that you chose him. He was already figuring out that he was a geek by then and that you and I weren’t. He couldn’t believe that you’d chosen him. I couldn’t stand in the way of my two best friends’ happiness.”

  This is all just so…mind-blowing. Of course the story exactly fits the Wes I grew up with and loved. I have no problem believing that he would be so selfless. I just don’t understand the rest of it. I close my eyes as I try to make sense of the following years of pain he caused me. “Then what happened?” I whisper.

  Wes closes the jewelry box with a sigh. “I thought I could handle it, but I was wrong.”

  I suck in a breath, finally understanding. And as I think about it, it all makes so much sense. Every glare, every time he blew me off or snapped in anger. It all takes on a new meaning now. And I feel terrible. “Wes…”

  Wes jumps up from the table and begins pacing back and forth between the picnic table and the nearby tree. “You guys were so in love, Bailey. For years.” The accusation comes out with force, but there’s no anger fueling it. “I couldn’t stand it. I avoided you because I hated seeing you together, and I couldn’t hide it. I was jealous and bitter and miserable. I knew you thought I hated you. I wanted to explain it to you, but Spencer didn’t want me to tell you. He said it would hurt you. I got so angry. I understood why he said no, but I knew you didn’t get it. And I wanted you to know that I didn’t hate you.”

  “Wes…I’m so sorry. I honestly had no idea. Spencer was wrong to ask you not to tell me. I wish I’d known.”

  Wes continues as if I hadn’t spoken. He’s lost in his own head now, bombarding himself with painful memories. “I started to resent him. I even started to hate him after a while.”

  I hop to my feet with a gasp and try to stop Wes’s manic pacing. “You don’t mean that.”

  He comes to a stop and meets my eyes. His are filled with shame. “I do mean it.” He looks away again and takes a deep breath. “I was messed up, Bailey. I’d been depressed for months. My parents were in the middle of a nasty divorce, and then my mom got sick, and that night I got so drunk. I hadn’t planned to kill myself, but I’d heard Jake bragging about shooting his dad’s gun, and the next thing I knew it was in my hand and I was ready to end everything.”

  I don’t know when I started crying, but my sniffle catches Wes’s attention. He turns to me and cups my face in his hands. His expression melts, and his voice turns soft. “And then you were there,” he says reverently. “Like a guardian angel. Taking care of me even though I’d treated you so horribly for so long. You told me how much you cared about me and how devastated you’d be if anything ever happened to me, and I…I couldn’t help myself. I kissed you.”

  My eyes fall shut as I replay that kiss in my mind. I can still see the look of adoration that was on his face when he leaned forward and claimed my lips. I can still feel the desperation and the passion he’d thrown into it. I can still taste the hunger of it. I’d chalked it up to too much alcohol and relief that I’d stopped him from ending his life. I’d never once considered he might have wanted that kiss. Not in the way I’d wanted it.

  Wes lets go of my face and steps back. “I meant it as a good-bye kiss,” he whispers. “I was really going to do it.” His voice sounds hollow, and his eyes look haunted. “But when I kissed you, you didn’t push me away.”

  It’s my turn to look away in shame. He’s absolutely right about that. I didn’t push him away. I did the opposite. I fell into that kiss as if I’d been waiting for it my entire life.

  When I completely turn my back on Wes, he takes my hand and tugs me gently back around to face him. “I was so sure you hated me,” he says. “Why wouldn’t you? I deserved to be hated. I thought you were only saying all that stuff about caring for me and not wanting me to hurt myself so that I wouldn’t kill myself. Because helping me even if you hated me was the right thing to do, and that’s the kind of person you are. But when I kissed you, you kissed me back.”

  His voice sounds as if he’s still awed by my desire, even a year after the fact. He stares at me with a sense of wonder and steps so close I can feel heat coming from him. His breath wisps along my cheek, and his gaze falls to my lips. I gulp loudly and have to pry my tongue away from the roof of my dry mouth.

  “You kissed me like you meant it,” he says softly, “and it gave me hope. It was a stupid, selfish hope, but I couldn’t go through with suicide if there was a chance that you wanted me. If my death was really going to hurt you like you said it would, then I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t cause you that pain. I’d already hurt you enough.”

  I can’t handle the intensity pouring off him right now. I can’t breathe, and I can’t clear my head enough to think straight. I can smell his aftershave. I can tell his breathing is labored. I’m certain his heart is pounding as fast as mine. I w
ant him to close the distance between our mouths, but I’m also too overwhelmed by everything he’s telling me, and my emotions are spiraling out of control again.

  Instead of kissing him, I step back, breaking our connection, putting some much-needed space between us. “I meant everything I said that night,” I admit. “It would have killed me to lose you that way.”

  With the moment between us disrupted, Wes’s eyes suddenly cloud over with a storm of self-loathing. “Instead, you lost Spencer. Because of me. You saved my life, and I turned around and got Spencer killed.”

  I suck in a breath. He sounds so devastated, so broken, that for once I want to take the blame. I want to be responsible for Spencer’s death if it will remove the burden from Wes’s shoulders. “No, that was me.” Passion creeps into my voice as I lay my argument at his feet. “You said I kissed you like I meant it. I did mean it, Wes. That’s the worst part. You may have kissed me first, but I betrayed him. When he walked in and found us kissing, he didn’t see his best friend making a mistake because he was too drunk to think straight. He saw his best friend and his girlfriend sharing something special. And one of us wasn’t drunk at all.” My vision blurs and my voice breaks. “You weren’t in control of your actions that night, Wes, but I was. I broke his heart. I cheated.”

  “No.” Wes shakes his head emphatically. “He knew it was me. He knew you never would have kissed me on your own.”

  “That didn’t matter. I talked to him right after he walked out. I apologized, but I didn’t lie to him. I told him that I hadn’t meant for it to happen, but that when you did it, I couldn’t stop you because I’d always loved you both.”

  Wes’s eyes pop open so wide that I flinch. Did he really not know I had feelings for him? Shyness overcomes me, but I force myself to keep going. Now that we’re having this confessional, I can’t stop until I’ve said everything. I need to make peace with this. I need the closure.