“Not a chance, Wilbur.”
He shrugged, laughing it off.
Track 14: Wait, What?
We flew to Detroit on Christmas Eve. Will was a neurotic head case about flying, so I made him a playlist and bought him some fuzzy socks. He tried to convince me to make out with him, saying it was the only thing that would calm his nerves; I knew it was a ploy. After we landed, he stood up to remove his guitar from the overhead bin and I noticed the girl across from us eyeing him. He winked and shot her a sexy smile and then looked at me with feigned confusion and mouthed what? We headed out to the curb and waited for his sister to pick us up.
“So, do you have a lot of ex-girlfriends in Detroit?”
“A couple. I had one girlfriend in high school… Brenda. She dated me as a cover.” He flashed a small, mirthless smile. “Yeah, she was having an affair with our history teacher; I had no idea at the time. She was my first and said I was hers, but she knew very well what she was doing and didn’t seem too satisfied with my amateur ways, if you know what I mean.” He chuckled and then grinned from ear to ear. “The summer after we graduated, she turned eighteen and broke up with me that very day. I think her and the teacher are married now. I would have been totally heartbroken except that I had already met Kate… who was a lot of fun. She was a nurse and ten years older than me. I learned a lot from her. We dated off and on until I moved to New York. She’s married now but we’ve kept in touch. That’s it really. I dated girls in New York but nothing serious.”
“Were you in love with Kate?”
“In a way I was, but we both knew it wouldn’t work. We just had fun with it. She said she loved my guitar hands. She’d let me practice all kinds of things on her.” I rolled my eyes at him and simultaneously thought Kate was a very wise woman. “What about you? I bet you had lots of admirers in Ann Arbor?”
I flushed. “Not at all. I didn’t have sex until college. I didn’t even have a boyfriend in high school. My first time was with a soccer player at Brown. He told me he loved me after one date, then he basically stole my virtue and stopped calling me.”
“Guys are dicks, Mia, stay away from ‘em.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulders to keep me warm while we waited.
Will’s sister Reina pulled up in a mint-green minivan. She rolled down the passenger window and yelled, “What up, homie!” Will flashed her a peace sign. I could tell she was a character. She wore a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and mom jeans and her hair was a wild nest of curls sprouting out of a high ponytail. Her only resemblance to Will was her dark, deepset eyes. She reached over to shake my hand as I hopped in the back. “Hi, Mia! We’re so glad to finally meet Willie’s girlfriend.” I nodded and smiled at her and then turned and shot a peeved look at Will, who was loading our bags. He shrugged and mouthed, go with it.
I squeezed between two little kids and leaned forward. “Thanks, Reina, I’m really happy to be here.” The little boy and girl I was sitting between were beautiful with red hair and freckles. They looked to be four years old and they were seated in matching car seats. “I’m Mia, what’s your name?” I said to the little girl.
“Maddie.”
“Oh. Is this guy your brother?”
“No… I don’t know that kid,” she said flatly.
Reina chimed in. “Yes, they’re twins. That’s Conrad.”
I turned toward Conrad. He smiled and said “Hi” in a tiny monster voice.
I looked back at Maddie and leaned in toward her. “I like you,” I whispered.
“I like you too,” she said. “Let’s be friends.”
“You bet.”
Will jumped in the passenger seat and then turned around. “Hey, Freckles. Hey, Bam Bam, what’s up?”
“Hi, Uncle Will,” Maddie said.
Conrad started giggling when he saw Will’s face.
We drove to Will’s parents’, which was located in a little Detroit suburb. After their kids all moved out, they downsized from what Will called the six-bedroom craphole he grew up in to a modest three-bedroom tract home. The first thing I noticed when we pulled up was that there was an inordinate amount of Christmas lawn ornaments scattered across the snow-covered yard. The driveway was full of cars, so we parked five houses away and carted our stuff up the street while Reina dragged the twins along. When we got to the front door, people started pouring out toward us. Will turned to me and raised his eyebrows. “Are you ready for this?”