“Yeah, well Will Hollister’s in love with you,” she says.
I jerk my head to face her, glowering, which only makes her laugh harder, spilling more crumbs on her chest. The only way to escape her barrage is to dive under water, so I go in cold, and my muscles pay for it for several strokes. Eventually, my body warms up and my movement becomes steady. No matter how fast I swim, though, I can’t seem to outpace my friend’s words. They invade my head, probably because a part of me was starting to let the same thoughts unravel.
Is Will Hollister in love with me? Has he always been? And, more importantly, why do I hope so?
Will
When I was little, maybe five or six, I would spend hours over the summer watching my Uncle Duncan work in his shop. Mom and Dad always shipped us up to Michigan for two weeks near the end of July. Two boys, two years apart, our brawls could get taxing when we were home all summer. They had a break when I was in school, even when Evan was still too young, but summers dragged. My mom would begin to use the time-out chairs more and more often, and pretty soon, we’d find ourselves on the train headed up to Grosse Pointe.
Evan always spent his time playing with the neighbor kids, or making cookies and shopping with our Aunt Maggie. All I wanted to do was help my uncle, though. He had a special stool he’d made just for me, a little higher than normal, and it allowed me to lay on my hands with my head low to the table so my eyes could watch him maneuver tiny gears into place, setting them in motion with the smallest sparks.
“You remember what I used to tell you?” he says, jarring me from my trance. I’m no longer the young boy who could barely reach the table, but I am the man whose legs are too long to fit at the same small desk as my only remaining relative, and I still love to watch him work.
“You said if only the heart could be fixed like this,” I say. “I always thought it was weird,” I chuckle. “When I was a kid it made me think that you were Frankenstein. I used to tell Evan you kept bodies in the basement.”
My uncle shakes with silent laughter.
“You always were a little shit,” he says.
My eyes focus on the end of his tweezers, the tiny clip held open by his steady hands as he slowly lowers it to the table, dropping the pin in place just as he frees the gears from their hold with his other hand. The task seems impossible, and success seems futile, yet I hold my breath to listen with him as the tiny machine begins to work.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
“Best goddamned sound in the world,” my uncle says, his muscles relaxing as he pulls his glasses from his face and switches off the headlamp he’d been wearing on his head.
I shift my eyes from the watch to my uncle.
“Can I?” I ask, wanting to see it up close.
“Yep. Just don’t turn it over. If those suckers fall out, you’re going to have a crime scene to clean up,” he laughs.
“Got it,” I breathe out a laugh. Careful, I take the watch into my hands, pulling it close, my eyes transfixed on how every tiny piece plays a part.
“You still sticking with that plan of yours?” he asks.
“Not sure what you mean,” I say, my attention on the tiny grooves where one wheel meets the other, the shine of the metal, new parts helping old.
“That one where you think you don’t deserve anything, and where that girl I hear swimming out there doesn’t deserve the truth?”
I look up fast, and my uncle grabs my hands, closing my palm and easing it toward him.
“Don’t drop my masterpiece just because you can’t handle my frankness,” he says, prying my fingers open slowly and taking the watch back into his own palm.
“Sorry,” I say in a quick breath. I blink a few times, still a little stunned from his statement and unsure how to respond. I pinch my brow and move my eyes to his. “I don’t think she deserves the hurt. This has nothing to do with lies and truths. What does it matter now that Evan’s gone? The least I can give her is a happy memory.”
“You really think that’s what’s best for her, do ya?” he says, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his neck.
I think about all of the possibilities, her finding out, me telling her, Evan getting the chance to tell her. No matter how I play it out, Maddy thinking she was Evan’s one and only is always the best…for her.
“Yeah…I do,” I say.
I watch my uncle work for a few more minutes, but the urge wins over, and soon I’m tugging my shirt over my head as I stand and tossing it on top of my pile of clothes on my way to the bathroom. My favorite suit is dry, so I slip it on, grab a towel from the stack Maddy’s mom left for me and head back through the door before I have a chance to change my mind.
“Suddenly have the urge to swim, do you?” my uncle chuckles.