He was quiet so long I wondered if he’d fallen asleep, but his hand crept up, and his fingers laced through mine like they were designed to fit right there. In a minute, I would pull my hand back and make up an excuse to stand and walk away. But I needed that touch for a tiny bit longer.
“Hanny.”
“Yeah.”
“There are a couple more things I didn’t say right before. I need to say them the right way now. Is that okay?”
“Sure.”
“Do you remember how angry Dave was after your parents died? He was mad and nothing else. He was a bunch of rage walking around wearing Dave’s skin for almost a year.”
Will was painting a picture that didn’t match my memories, mostly because the months after the accident were a blur. Just grayness. “I don’t really remember that,” I said, feeling like I needed to apologize. “I was out of it for a long time. Everything I remember from that year is fuzzy around the edges, and the few conversations I remember having with people sound like we’re having them from opposite ends of a tunnel in my memory. I know I walked and talked. And I ate. So much. It was the only thing that felt good. Aunt Cindy gave me treats whenever I wanted because it’s the only thing I expressed any interest in, I think. And I must have gone to school and stuff. I don’t even really remember Sophie too much during that first while.” She’d come over. I wasn’t there mentally for whatever we were doing physically—playing with Barbies? Getting into Dave’s long-abandoned Lego sets? I didn’t know. I wasn’t ever going to get those memories back.
Will squeezed my hand for a second like he could sense the emptiness that was trying to creep up on me from the dark days. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to push on your bruises. But I didn’t know how much you remembered about Dave. He was scary. Or I guess I was scared for him, never of him. So I looked up all these articles on grief and anger and how to help him. I even went and saw the guidance counselor at the school a few times to figure out what I was supposed to do.”
It broke my heart. This was exactly why I loved Will. As a sophomore in high school, he was doing all this stuff to help his best friend because that was the kind of person Will was. How was I supposed to get over someone like that? I slid my hand from his, pretending I needed to cough. “You’ve always been a good friend to him.”
He pushed himself up and straightened to look at me, and it startled me how close he was. He was nearly as close as he’d been when he kissed me. I could smell his toothpaste. He stared at me before he cleared his throat and spoke again, but he didn’t move away.
“I learned a lot about anger that fall, doing all that reading and pestering Mr. Garnet about how to help Dave. And I learned that anger is always a reaction to one of three things: Embarrassment. Hurt.” He reached over and touched a strand of my hair, winding it through his fingers. “And fear. Anger is an outlet for fear. It lets you take an emotion that’s gnawing you from the inside and turn it around on the world. Or your friends. That’s what Dave was doing to me.” He let the strand of hair unwind from his finger, then curled it around it again. “That’s what I did to you earlier. I was so mad. Everything has been wrong since you told me how you felt, and I was blaming you for it.”
I drew my head back, slowly, watching the curl unwind from his finger again, hoping his eyes would stay there too so he couldn’t see the embarrassment flooding my cheeks. “I said I was sorry. I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.” I braced myself to push up off the couch, but the movement tipped me toward him. He leaned forward and kissed me again. Every nerve ending in my body lit up, heat sweeping down from my cheeks and racing along my skin until even my palms tingled.
He pulled me toward him, and he lifted his lips from mine only to brush them across my scorched cheekbone and down to my jawline, exploring, leaving feather-light kisses that burned like fire anyway.
I squeezed my eyes shut, overwhelmed by the sensation. “What are you doing?” I murmured as his mouth traveled back to the corner of mine. “Why are you doing this?” It was a plea to stop wrapped up in a plea to understand, and he heard it, leaning back enough for me to breathe.
“Hannah,” he said, and my name was a sigh. “When I kissed you before and said I didn’t know, I’m pretty sure you thought I meant that I didn’t know how you felt. And I didn’t know, until you told me. But that’s not what I was talking about. I meant that I didn’t know how I felt until you told me how you felt.”
My heart stopped, stuttered, and started again, this time racing. “Tell me what you mean because my guesses might drive me crazy.”
“I mean that when I say Jay isn’t right for you, it’s true, but it’s also selfish because I’m a jerk who wants you for myself even when I’m terrified I’m not the right guy for you. And because Dave is going to hate this. He trusted me to watch out for you like he would. This is not that.” He brushed his lips against mine. “This is so not that. I meant to stay away from you. I did. But I can’t. So I kissed you. Again. And again. And again. And I’m going to do it as many times as you’ll let me.”
I froze, not sure how to even process what he was saying. Will, the boy I had fallen wildly in love with years ago, the man who had captured my heart again despite my best efforts, was saying he wanted me. Loved me? He hadn’t said that. But he was as into our kisses as I was, and he didn’t want me with anyone else. It was like getting my granted wish, gift-wrapped on a silver platter, waiting for me to open it and make it mine.
I reached out and touched his face, feeling the rasp of his late-day whiskers against my palm, running my thumb lightly across his lips. He was saying he wanted this to be my right, to do this whenever I wanted to, to know with a single touch that he was mine. I had dreamed of this for so long. For too long. And with a tiny sigh, I pushed him away, slid off the couch, and walked away.
Chapter 23
“Where are you going?” he asked when I reached my front door and it was obvious I was leaving. He didn’t sound angry, only confused.
“The leasing office, I think.” I didn’t even know if they were open so close to dinnertime on a Saturday. But I needed to be out of his space right that second and for every one after that. I needed far more than twenty yards of hallway separating me from Will. I should have done this the day I told him how I felt but that I was moving on.
He vaulted himself over the back of the couch, nearly stumbling when he landed. “Hannah, talk to me. I have no idea what’s going on. Please?”
It was the hurt and genuine confusion in the last word that made me turn around. He had no idea what he’d done. He hadn’t come in here trying to hurt me. But that was always the issue with him: he never understood the effect he had on me.
“Your point in coming over right now was . . . what, Will? To tell me that you suddenly think I’m hot and want to make out with me?”
His head jerked back. “No. Not at all.”
“Then what? Confess undying love? Kiss me as an experiment? What, Will? Why are you here?”
He swallowed, looking so uncertain my heart squeezed before I hardened it again. “I don’t know. I wanted to be as honest as you were. You’ve had the guts to tell me how you feel twice, and I figured it was my turn.”
I hesitated and walked away from the door, but not to run to him, not to fling myself into his arms and pretend we were going to start our happily ever after. “Wait here,” I told him, heading for my bedroom. I walked into my closet and reached for the top shelf, pulling out a small box I’d made years before at Bible camp one summer. It was the size of a brick but built with cheap balsa, feather light and painted hot pink, my favorite color when I was fourteen.
I walked out and handed it to him. “Open this.”
He flipped the flimsy clasp and pulled out the sash inside. Flaking glitter glue spelled out “Midwinter Prince” across the cheap satin. “How’d you get this?” he asked, his fingers grazing the raised letters.
“Your senior year you didn’t want to go to the midwinter formal. Do you rememb
er that?”
His forehead furrowed. “No. I went with . . .” His eyes squeezed shut for a second while he tried to come up with a name.
“Emily Scully. But you didn’t want to go because you were on the court, and you said that midwinter formal was a consolation prize for the basketball team and that everyone was football crazy and you were tired of being the afterthought. You did a whole rant about how athletes in every sport deserve recognition and you weren’t going to be a puppet in the student body’s lame attempt to pretend that they treated all sports equally.”
His lips twitched. “I barely remember that. I can’t decide if I was an idiot or a visionary.”
“Do you remember why you ended up going with Emily?”
“No. I think that’s the only time we went out. I’m sure I just needed a date for the dance. She was cute, I think.”
I pulled the sash from his hands and folded it back up to fit inside the box. “Emily Scully had a crush on you that entire fall of your senior year. And you never even really acknowledged her. She was cute. Really pretty, actually, but not in the cheerleader/popular-girl way you liked. She was normally kind of quiet, I think. But she would try hard to get your attention, talk to you, all that kind of stuff. I was always hanging around yours and Dave’s lockers. I watched it.”
His smile had disappeared. “I don’t remember any of that.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Do you know when you paid attention to her?”
He shook his head, looking like he didn’t want to hear the answer.
“Since midwinter is a girl’s preference dance, Emily asked me one day to feel you out and see if you’d say yes if she asked you. But because of my dumb crush on you, I didn’t want to help her out. So I told her you weren’t going because you thought the dance was stupid. So she said she was going to ask a junior guy instead. Sophie and I were talking about it by Dave’s locker that afternoon, and you interrupted, and you were like, ‘Senior girls shouldn’t be dating junior guys.’ And then the next thing I know, that whole rest of the week you’re flirting with Emily and inviting her to sit by you at lunch, and by Friday, she’d asked you to the dance.”
He leaned against the back of the sofa. “I think I know where you’re going with this, but I hope I’m wrong.”
“The second you realized you couldn’t have her, you went out of your way to get her.” The parallels to our situation were so obvious that my eyes stung, tears of stupidity and embarrassment.
“This isn’t like that,” he said. “It’s not even close. I didn’t know Emily. I know you. I know everything about you, from how you like your nachos to the things that make you sad. And it’s been killing me for weeks now that I was one of those things. I hate that. I would never want that, and if I’d known how you’d been feeling, I would have acted much, much differently.”
“I didn’t want that! I love our friendship. When I realized I’m in your permanent friend zone and nothing would change that, I had to work through some hard feelings, but I realized that I’d rather have that friendship than nothing. That your friendship isn’t a consolation prize. It’s a blessing. It always has been. It wasn’t only Dave you saved back in those hard days.”
“Oh, sweet girl,” he said, reaching out to draw me into his arms. I nestled my head under his neck again, a moment of weakness where I knew I should push him away but couldn’t. “I would have given anything to put you and Dave back together after your mom and dad died.”
I stayed there for a full minute, soaking in his warmth and strength, wrapping his soft “Oh, sweet girl,” around me before I drew away. “You did eventually.” I walked past him and stood at my window. I couldn’t face him while I said the next part and have him see into me as easily as I watched what was happening two floors below me at the pool. “But you’ll be what undoes me again if I fall into this. You don’t love me; you love the challenge. Or whatever it is you think you feel,” I hurried to add, not wanting to humiliate myself by reading too much into his kisses. “But I’ve grown up enough now not to settle for what I can get. If I were to dive into this with you, where would we be in a few weeks? Or a few months. Which would be worse, truthfully.
“What I feel for you isn’t going away. It hasn’t for ten years. Longer, maybe. But you’ll get twitchy again, and you’ll go to the next thing, the next girl, the next challenge. And that would rip out my insides. I’d survive. I’m not pathetic. But I don’t want to have to do that. I don’t want to grieve another loss.”
“You’re wrong about what’s happening here,” Will said, his voice quiet. “This isn’t me wanting you because I can’t have you. This is me accepting truth.”
“Accepting truth? What does that even mean?”
“It means that after you wrote up my revised profile, I read it and thought that you’d described a man I’ve always tried to be, but I haven’t always been successful. You wrote about who I am, not what I do, not a list of hobbies that I can crosscheck with someone else until I find a decent overlap. You wrote about my core. And the thing is, I could write that for you. I see you that clearly. I always have.”
“But loving someone as a friend is not the kind of love I want. I feel blessed to have that with you, but I have that with Sophie too. If we dated or tried to turn this friendship into something else, the connection between you and me would end; it would have to.” I turned away from the window to face him. “It’s your nature. I never should have pushed this. Leave it, Will. Please.”
“I can’t.”
“Then I’ll beg. Because it’s already going to be so hard for us to fix, but now it’s on you, not on me. Leave this alone. Leave me alone. Let me put myself back together. It feels hard but not impossible right now. And you’re tempting me to give up even that small chance of our friendship with these kisses and hopes, and . . . and . . .” I shoved my fingers through my hair and hunched over. “Go, Will. Please.”
“How am I supposed to leave you alone? I live down the hall. I’m going to see you every day and want you every time I see you.”
Want. Not love. Want.
“I’m fixing that part. I know the front office won’t let me break my lease, but I think they’ll let me move into a new unit, maybe in building A,” I said, naming the one farthest from us.
“That’s it? You’re so convinced that you know how I feel about you, what I want from you? You’re taking everything I say and using it against me. I feel like there’s no way to convince you that I mean what I’m saying.”
“Because there isn’t, Will! There isn’t. And I’m begging you as my friend, as Dave’s friend, to go.”
He started to say something, and I could feel the hard stab of more tears coming. “Please,” I said before he could get the words out.
He swallowed and nodded, folding his arms across his chest, his right hand kneading his left bicep, a sure sign that he wanted to punch something. He’d put a few holes in walls when he was in high school. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I didn’t do this right at all.”
“You never had a chance,” I said with a watery smile, willing him to leave before the tears fell. “I’m too much of a mess, and my twelve-year crush on you is too full of landmines for this to ever have worked. I’m sorry I let my inner teenager take over my common sense for a while. I’ll tie her up.” The first tear slipped out.
“I hate leaving you like this,” he said.
“Then you should know how much I hate having you see me like this. Maybe that will help you jet out of here.”
He nodded again. “Okay. Okay. I . . . okay.” He closed the distance between us in two steps and pulled me into a hug. “You’re always trying to fix and take care of things. But I’m going to do this. I’m going to be the guy you tried to convince the rest of the world I am in that profile. This will be all right. We’ll work it out.”
He closed the door quietly behind him. I stared after him, timed how long it would take him to disappear into his place. Then I left too, straight to the leasing o
ffice to beg for some breathing room.
Chapter 24
I glanced at my computer screen and then at my cell phone. I did the weak thing and picked it up to text Sophie. Remind me again.
She sent an instant reply. You CAN do hard things.
I set the phone down and scooped it up again to do the first hard thing. I punched in Jay’s number. “Hey,” he said, sounding delighted to hear from me. Which sucked a lot. But it was the exact reason I had to make the call.
“Hey,” I said. “Remember how I was like, ‘I’m an emotional mess’ and you said that was cool and for a little while we had a good thing going there with our friends-with-benefits situation?”
There was a long a pause. “Had? Past tense?”
“Would you be up for grabbing a meal and talking some stuff over?”
“Does the talking involve you telling me something about how this isn’t working for you?”
It was my turn for a long pause. I didn’t want to say it, but I had to, and I knew it.
But he answered before I could. “That’s definitely a yes.”
“Yeah.” I sighed, hating the whole conversation already.
“Well,” Jay said, his voice tight. “I know you warned me, but I still didn’t see this coming. It seemed like we were hitting it off really well. What changed?”
“Nothing,” I said, guilt roughing up my voice. “I guess that was the problem. You’re so great. Fantastic, actually. And if you couldn’t pull me out of my head, I don’t think it can be done. It’s totally unfair to you.”
He sighed. “I can’t say this doesn’t bum me out, but I’m glad you’re saying something now and not a million years from now. This stings my ego, but I’ll survive. I think I’m going to pass on dinner or whatever. I’ve got the gist.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, not caring that my misery was probably shining through. “I wish I could clone an emotionally healthy version of myself and set her up with you.”
“It’s fine,” he said, and his voice had that distant quality in it that happened when someone shifts you to their “polite conversation only” column.
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