Will pulls me so that I’m sitting on his lap, my thighs around his. He runs a hand underneath the skirt of my dress, tracing it up my leg. I close my eyes and bury my fingers in his hair, groaning. For so long, Will has been my what if guy. What if we had both been single when we met?
He kisses the spot below my ear as he pushes my underwear to the side. “I thought you were the coolest girl I’d ever met. I was considering breaking up with my girlfriend. Sending her a text.”
“What?” My eyes pop open, but he doesn’t stop what he’s doing.
“But then I found out about you and Jamie.” Will’s watching me intently, and then he does the thing with his thumb.
“Oh my god.”
“I still hate that guy,” he says. “I hate that you told him about the resort before me.”
Will’s fingers are making it very hard to be verbal. But after a few seconds, I manage to ask, “You’re jealous?”
He presses his teeth to my neck. “So fucking jealous.”
It shouldn’t thrill me, but it does. I stand just to slip my panties off, then I reach for the button on Will’s pants. He pulls a foil packet from his pocket, and when I lower myself onto him, we both go still.
I murmur when I feel him pulse inside me. I start to circle my hips, looking for friction, but he holds them still and brings his lips to my ear.
“Want to know something else?” he grits out.
I nod. Adverbs have abandoned me.
“I didn’t need your help varnishing the mural,” he whispers, his thumb going back to work between us. “It would have been much faster if I’d done it myself. I could have finished in half the time, but I wanted to hang out with you.”
I murmur again because I’ve lost all the words in my vocabulary.
“And I thought very long and hard about what you kept in your bedside table drawer.”
I’m too focused on the need between my legs and the hunger in Will’s eyes to have even a shred of embarrassment.
It’s fast, almost feverish. Will watches my face the whole time. He must be able to tell how much I like the things that come out of his mouth, because when I’m close, he puts his lips to my ear and tells me to come, and I do.
I lean my forehead against his, catching my breath. I want to lie down in bed and replay my day with Will with the knowledge that he was jealous. And then I want to sleep.
* * *
—
Telling Whitney I’m staying is perhaps the most rewarding experience of my adult life. She begged me to bring Will to dinner at their place in Huntsville. She’s just stashed Owen in the Jolly Jumper that hangs between her living room and kitchen when I give her the news. She screams and bursts into tears, smashing me against her.
I look at Will over her shoulder, and mouth, Wow. He and Cam are laughing, and the Jolly Jumper is squeaking with each of Owen’s leaps, and Whitney is saying, “I’m just so happy.” It’s loud and lovely and I think, This is what a good life sounds like.
Cam makes spaghetti bolognese, and when Owen gets fussy, Will walks him around the main floor of the house, singing in his ear. He’s dressed in jeans and a white shirt, sleeves rolled past his forearms, and both Whitney and Cam ogle him like he’s a gift from the babysitting gods. At one point, Whitney asks him to move in with them.
Over dinner, Whitney launches into the story of how we became friends. Cam chimes in, “I still have a dent where Fern socked me.” Will squeezes my thigh under the table and gives me a secret smile. He’s heard this one before.
When the baby has gone to bed, Whitney steers me into the kitchen under the guise of helping her serve dessert. She wants to know what’s happening between Will and me, and I tell her the truth. I have no idea. All I know is that he’s decided to stay until the day after the dance. We ordered dinner from the restaurant after our quickie on the couch yesterday, and then he spent the night in my bed. I thought about asking him to leave before we fell asleep, but I couldn’t get the words out. I wanted him to stay.
Other than Whitney’s prolonged inquiry into Will’s oral health regime, the whole evening goes off without any awkwardness.
But then the bells toll on Will’s phone.
Whitney is trying to talk us into having another drink and sleeping in their guest room instead of me driving the twenty minutes back to the resort, but as soon as Will’s phone sounds, he excuses himself and heads into the kitchen.
He’s gone long enough that Cam and Whitney give each other pointed looks.
“I’ll go see if everything’s okay,” I say.
When I walk into the kitchen, Will glances up from his phone. His neck is red and he looks as though he’s about to issue a stern warning. “I gotta go,” he says to the person on the other end.
“Are you all right?” I ask when he hangs up.
Will blinks twice. “Do you mind if we take off?”
I tell him I don’t, but my stomach lurches. We say good night to Whitney and Cam. Will thanks them for the invitation and the meal, but he’s tense and distracted. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes.
What’s wrong? Whitney mouths when Will isn’t looking, and I shake my head.
The drive back to the resort is quiet except for the crackling of country music on the radio. I keep glancing away from the road at Will, but he’s looking out his window, twisting his ring.
“Has something happened?” I say when I pull the Cadillac into the Brookbanks parking lot.
Will’s frown deepens. “It’s family stuff.”
A puzzle piece falls into place. A bell ringtone for Annabel.
“It’s your sister you were talking to?”
Will doesn’t answer.
I consider letting it slide. Talking about his homelife does not equal the escape from reality he’s clearly seeking. But I reach across the console and put my hand on his knee. “What’s going on?”
“Annabel has started looking for her own place, for her and Sofia. She wants to move out,” Will says after a moment.
“Oh.” I hesitate. “And that’s bad?”
“It’s . . .” He looks out the window, then at me. “It’s not something I want to trouble you with.”
“It wouldn’t be trouble. I don’t mind,” I try.
“I mind,” he says. “Let’s keep them out of this, okay?”
I ask Will to stay over at the house, but he says he can’t tonight. He wants to call Annabel back.
I toss and I turn and eventually I fall asleep, only to wake with a gasp from a dream I don’t remember. It’s 2:08 a.m. I pull the small desk chair up to my bedroom window and stare at the golden square of light coming from Will’s cabin. I find it comforting, knowing that he’s there.
But I want him here, in my bed. I want him to talk to me. I’m afraid of how much I want where Will is concerned.
18
June 15, Ten Years Ago
I was hunched over Will’s sketchbook, my nose inches from the page, staring at the drawing. It must have been well past midnight. Will stood beside me, stretching.
For years I’d escaped notice. I sat in the back row of lecture halls. I partied, but not too hard. I had only a few close friends. I waited to make a dramatic hair transformation until after classes had ended. I dated someone whose boisterousness let me fade into the background.
I didn’t want attention.
Deep down, I suspected something was wrong with me—that I had unearthed a core of rot at seventeen, and I was worried if someone looked too closely, they’d see it, too. I diligently covered my mistakes with economics classes and good grades and shifts at Two Sugars and Sunday phone calls with Mom. I was never late to any of them. Aside from the occasional joint, I was the picture of responsibility. And when I felt the cold trickle of my future running down my neck, I put on my headphones and I went for a walk. I disappeared into the veins of the city.
But for some unfathomable reason, I let Will sit across from me and scrutinize. I let him see.
And, yes, I liked how he made me look—the mysterious curve of my mouth and the arch of my neck—but it was more than that. There was no question the person Will had seen was beautiful—he hadn’t found a rotten core.
“Can I have it?” I asked.
A small smile answered me first. “It’s all yours.”