“I’m glad you kept it,” I say.
I look to him, watching his profile as he chews at the inside of his cheek, his eyes focused on the road and his nostrils flaring with his breath. Eventually he nods.
“Me, too,” he says.
Will turns onto the country road that leads to the lake. It’s about fifteen minutes from this point, and I spend the first few listening to the rumble of the tires on the beat-up roadway, cattle grates buzzing the rubber every couple miles.
“What made you pick nursing?” Will asks, breaking the comfortable background noise. I shift and sit up tall in my seat.
“I’m good at taking care of people…I think,” I say, closing one eye and looking at him. He laughs and meets my gaze.
“I’ll agree with that statement, Maddy. Yes…you are in fact good at taking care of people,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say, bringing my hands into my lap, twisting them. “I don’t know, I guess it’s the only thing that I felt was a good fit for my skills. I don’t want to run the Swim Club. I watched my dad struggle with the books for too many years, always just barely eking by. And my mom’s into this whole local government thing, which…gah…sounds so awful to me.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he says. I pinch my brow and face him, twisting in my seat as he glances to me a few times. “I mean, yeah…the politics part is pretty gross, but your mom seems to genuinely want to improve things and enact change. It’s kinda noble, really.”
“So is beating your head against a wall,” I laugh out.
Will’s forehead furrows and his mouth hangs open before he laughs hard.
“Beating your head against a wall is never noble,” he says. “That’s just stupid.”
I shrug.
“Seems a lot like local politics to me,” I say.
Will laughs again, smiling at the winding roadway disappearing into the thick cluster of trees ahead.
“Yeah, well, it’s better than delivering newspapers in Michigan in the thick of winter,” he says.
My tongue pushes into the corner of my mouth and I bite it as I watch him and wait for him to elaborate. He eventually glances my way and shrugs.
“I needed a job with benefits, and there aren’t a lot of people hiring a marketing guy—a few credit hours shy of a bachelors—with an extreme DUI record that made most of the papers in the Midwest, thanks to the footnote about a potential recreational drug problem.
I know my eyes widen, but I try to keep my reaction in check. Will still turns away, though. I wait for him to say more, and when he doesn’t, I ask.
“Was it true?”
His mouth falls into a tight, straight line, and his eyes scan the roadway, moving from mirror to mirror before pausing to look at me at a four-way stop, our last turn before the lake. Will sighs and slides his hands to the center of the steering wheel, leaning back into his seat and letting his head roll to the right, peering at me.
“Some of it,” he says.
I wince, and he reaches over and brushes his arm against mine.
“I said some,” he repeats. I hold his gaze and take a deep breath. “My drinking got dangerous. And I tried some things, maybe ended up hanging out with some people I shouldn’t have. I’m not the first wannabe athlete to be caught smoking pot, though. And the other things…I tried, but only once or twice. Nothing felt as good as Jack Daniels.”
“Until the tree,” I say.
He nods and lifts his eyebrows high before swinging his body forward again to turn the car toward Peterson Lake.
“You are an athlete, Will,” I say, just as the water begins to come into view. His forehead wrinkles and he glances toward me. “You said wannabe, but I just wanted to make sure you knew that you were different. You actually are.”
He chuckles bashfully, slowing the car as we clear the thick trees.
“Thanks, Maddy. But I’m nothing, yet,” he says.
We both exit the car and walk toward the water’s edge, thick layers of leaves caked along the shoreline. The rope is tied around the tree’s trunk, and my eyes follow the length up high to the thick branch several feet above the surface. The sight of it makes me smile, and when I turn around to share this moment with Will, I find him making the same face.
“It’s exactly the same,” he says, kicking his shoes from his feet.
I smirk, and kick mine away too, pulling my arms through my shirt and tossing it to the ground quickly, catching Will’s attention.
His head cocks in suspicion as I unbutton my shorts and slide them down my legs, stepping out of them cautiously, gaining a few feet on him before he gets what I’m doing and tosses his shirt to the ground.
“Last one there…” I shout through laughter, running barefoot along the water’s edge, up the dirt hill, Will close behind me.
“You are not going to be the first to swing from that tree, Woodsen. You don’t even do it right!” he teases.