The End of Our Story

I don’t mean to laugh. Of course! It would be rude for a girl to show up here during dinner! Maybe you should put her in her place, Dad.

“Oh.” Ana’s eyes get big. “Not a good time? I just—we said we’d get together to study. Seven-thirty, right? Your house?”

“Study?” My brain isn’t working. The last few days I’ve been swimming through the school day, underwater and against the current. I forgot that Ana had asked if she could come over and study.

“Marine bio? The test tomorrow?”

My dad’s footsteps make the whole universe shake. When he gets to the door, he clamps his hand over my shoulder like a vise. My insides crumple. We can’t stay here. She can’t watch us pretend.

“Hey there. Can we help you? Wil’s in the middle of supper right now.”

“This is Ana, Dad.” I mouth Sorry. “We have to study for science. And I’m done eating, so—” I duck outside of Dad’s force field (it was easier than I thought it would be; I should have tried it sooner). I can feel his eyes on me, but what’s he going to do? Hit me right here in front of a pretty girl in the middle of family time? “I’ll be back later. We’re going to her house.”

“Are you sure?” Ana’s eyes dart from Dad to me and back to Dad again.

“I’m sure,” I tell her. “Tell Mom dinner was good,” I toss over my shoulder as I head for Ana’s Jetta.

“Um, bye, Mr. Hines,” Ana says too brightly. She’s a nice girl, and she must have nice parents who taught her to use her manners even in the most awkward of social situations.

“Sorry for inviting myself over,” I say under my breath with an embarrassed laugh.

“No problem.” She presses a button on her keys, and the door clicks open.

“Rough night, huh?” she teases once we’re speeding down Atlantic. She’s got the sunroof open and the wind sends her hair whipping around.

“I had a fight with my dad. Needed to get out of there.”

She studies me. “You look sad, Wil Hines.”

“Eyes on the road, Ana Acevedo.”

She laughs a little and we’re quiet for a second, damp evening wind flowing through the car and me all at once. When we stop at the third streetlight, I look over. Ana’s hair is big and twisted around her face, and her cheeks are flushed.

“My parents are out with friends,” she says, and this time she does keep her eyes on the road. “They’ll be out late, so you can stay as long as you want.” Her cheeks flush deeper. Ana is so good. I should save her. Leap out of the car at the last minute and put as much distance between us as possible.

Instead, I say, “Okay.”

Walking into Ana’s condominium in jeans and a T-shirt feels like walking into a fancy restaurant where the guy at the front podium has to pull you aside and offer you some other man’s tie because what kind of an animal eats steak tieless? That’s never actually happened to me. I saw it in a movie once. But that’s exactly how I feel now: tieless in a steakhouse.

“This is really nice,” I say. It’s the best I can do, because I’m concentrating hard on trying not to knock over the huge oriental vase on the stand next to the door.

“Thanks.” Ana tosses her purse on the nearest beige sofa.

The condo is one enormous room with windowed walls that would show me the ocean if it wasn’t so dark. It’s lit like a museum. There are three or four beige couches, identical, at different angles all over the place. Clustered around them are beige chairs and wooden side tables, and beneath these are woven rugs that are the same color and feel like straw under my feet. There’s a hallway at the far end that probably leads to more beige.

I wonder what Ana is doing in public school.

She walks into the kitchen. I sit on a smooth wooden barstool. My phone vibrates in my pocket. I shut it off without looking.

“So, do you need a drink or something?” she asks. She dips below the counter and emerges with a frosted bottle and a couple of short glasses. Vodka, I think. I’m surprised that she can just do that, reach into a cabinet and produce booze. We don’t even have any in the house.

“But you don’t drink, right?” I say. I stare at the grayish veins in the marble countertop, feeling my face get hot. Maybe I shouldn’t have noticed.

“You don’t drink, either.” Ana fills our glasses to the brim. She’s clumsy with the bottle, and the booze sloshes over the side of the glass. It makes me like her, the way she’s never done this before. “But you look like you could use one tonight.”

I don’t argue.

She raises her glass. “To Agnatha.”

“Huh?” I lift mine, too, because what the hell? Maybe this is exactly what I need. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to be someone else for a while. Somewhere else. This feels like the kind of house where the worst thing that happens is running out of organic coffee in the morning.

“Agnatha. Jawless fish.” She laughs. “Have you even read the chapter?”

“You got me.” The vodka is cold and crisp and tastes good, which I didn’t expect. We take another shot each and she tells me to grab the bottle. We’re going to the balcony.

On the balcony, we stretch out on lounge chairs that probably cost more than the good inside furniture at home and stare into the dark, taking turns sipping from the bottle. The cool air chills my skin and the vodka warms me on the inside. I can hear the waves, and it’s not long before my heart beats with them.

“You and your dad gonna be okay?” she asks. She pulls her knees to her chest and rests her chin on them. She looks sweet, like a girl who really wants to know.

“Ah.” I take another swig and it gets stuck halfway between my mouth and my heart. For a second I consider telling her everything, because it’s too heavy and Bridge isn’t here anymore to help me carry my weight. “I don’t know. He’s just been kind of an asshole lately.”

She nods. “My dad can be a jerk, too, sometimes. Especially about college. He’s got me lined up for all these college tours I don’t really want to go on, when I keep telling him Notre Dame is my number one choice.”

I feel the pinch of disappointment, even though it isn’t her fault that she doesn’t get it. No one on earth should understand what this feels like, this miles-deep blackness.

“Notre Dame sounds good.” I lift the bottle again and the night in front of me gets swirly—dark blue spinning just out of my reach. I wonder if this is how Bridge sees things when she’s drunk. I stand up and bend over the balcony, dizzy and loose. I’ll say it: I’m homesick for Bridge. She would get how confusing this is, how I hate my dad and want him back at the same time, just like she does. She’d get how lost I feel; how I don’t really belong on a high-rise balcony with a good girl and a bottle of vodka. Ana Acevedo, Wil? Really? she’d say. I wouldn’t know what to tell her. I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going or who I am. That’s what she and my father have done to me. Without my dad, without Bridge, I am aimless. Tethered to no one. At the mercy of the currents, and too tired to swim.





BRIDGE


Spring, Senior Year

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