“I’m trying.” I slide the pile of T-shirts off the couch and I sit next to him. I reach for his arm. His skin is slick, clammy. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on. Tell me what happened that night. I swear, once you get it off your chest—”
“Why would I talk to you?” Wil says quietly. He pulls away and scrambles off the couch. Pushes through the maze of Wilsons’s things to get to the other side of the room. He leans against the wall, desperate to get as far away from me as possible. “It’s too late, Bridge. I needed you then. I needed to talk to you. I needed to tell you some real shit, Bridge, shit I couldn’t tell anybody else, and you were too drunk to hear it.” His bright green eyes are mirrors.
“Wil,” I whisper. “I know. I’m sorry. How many times can I tell you I’m sorry?” I claw at the couch. “Tell me now. Please.”
“I can’t.” In the dim light, I see silvery trails branching down Wil’s cheeks. I want to hold him, pull him into me, keep him there next to my heart for as long as it takes for him to forgive me. I’ll wait with him forever. I need him, and I know he needs me. “It’s too late.”
“Stop. Stop saying that. Please.”
“It’s true, though. It’s too late for you to show up and talk about being there for me. You think I need you to be there now more than ever, but you don’t get to pick when to show up!”
“I’m not—”
“The fuck you’re not! You’re here because my dad is dead, right? You’re here because of him! Not because of me.” His chest is caving, rising. “I wanted you to be there for me, Bridge. When I needed you. And you bailed and there’s nothing you can do to change that.” He spins around and slams his fist into the wall. I cringe at the crunch of bone.
“Fuck!” he yells. Adrenaline lights me on fire. “Fuck!”
“Wil!” I scream. “Stop it! Stop!”
“Get out, Bridge. Get out,” he tells the wall.
I lift my hands in surrender. “You’re right. You’re right, okay?” I push myself off the couch and watch him crumple into the wall. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ll go. Just—stop. Please.” I take shallow breaths as I back out of the den and run down the hall toward the gold-edged clouds. I can’t believe I’m leaving him again. Running, just like I’ve done before. But everything about him is telling me . . . he wants me gone. And everything in me believes him.
WIL
Summer, Junior Year
I was starting to believe that he had come back. My dad, my real dad, the guy who used to make things with his hands instead of destroying people with them. The original simple kind of man. He bought so many goddamned flowers that I think the Publix flower fridge was running on empty for almost a week. And he touched my mother, but in a good way. In a way that makes a person groan, “Get a room, guys,” and look away, even though he’s secretly happy. In a way that makes it all right for a person’s new possibly girlfriend to come over to the house once in a while.
I was starting to believe things were going back to normal. But six nights ago something happened. It was small, it was nothing, but I knew immediately: It was something. They started arguing, slowly at first. Mom was pissed at Dad for leaving the garbage cans on the curb overnight, saying it made us look like white trash. Dad heard her say words that never left her mouth—that he was white trash and she was sorry she ever married him. Their voices got louder and louder and made my insides shake and the water glasses in the cabinet rattle, so I went to the workshop.
He left.
He didn’t hit her. He peeled out of the driveway in his truck.
And I thought, That’s pretty good, actually. At least he didn’t do it again.
He didn’t come home for four hours. At the four-hour mark, a guy named Pete from a bar called Big Mike’s called Mom to come and get him. He was too drunk to stay and too drunk to leave. I pretended to be asleep when they got home, even though he made the air inside the house smell like a rich kid’s high-school party. The next morning at breakfast, the only thing my mother said was, “If you boys want cereal, you’ll have to get it yourself. I’m late for work.”
They didn’t fight for a few days in a row after that. But he went to Big Mike’s every night anyway, because that was something he did now. The house smelled like stale booze when he got home. It is exhausting to stay awake and listen for violence, and one night I must have fallen asleep because at breakfast the next morning there was another bruise. She tried to cover it with makeup and curly hair and pancakes, but I could see. I could see her and could see that the dad I wanted wasn’t coming back.
I want to tell Bridge. I keep hoping she’ll try, just one more time, even though I told her to stop. Another note or text or voice mail. All I need is one more. So far, nothing.
Tonight, I’m in the shop cleaning Dad’s tools, pretending there’s work to be done. Sometimes, just to get out of the house, I’ll bring a magazine out here. Or if I’m really desperate, I’ll bring one of the poetry books Ana keeps shoving in my backpack. Apparently, I only think I hate poetry.
I’m winding one of the extension cords in a coil that’s tighter than it needs to be when I hear her.
“Hey. Your mom said you’d be in here.”
Ana is standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame in cutoffs and a white T-shirt and a lacy white bra that looks good against her tanned skin.
“Hey.” I smooth my T-shirt and run my hands through my hair like that’s going to fix anything.
“Hey. What’s going on?” I’m not sure if I’m supposed to hug Ana or kiss her. Ana and I have hung out a bunch of times since the night we got drunk, but I don’t know what we are yet.
She shrugs and looks down at the floor and kind of smiles. Ana has this way of making you feel like she’s got a secret, and you’re dying to know it.
“Just thought I’d come by,” she says. “There’s a party later. We should go.”
“You hate high-school parties.” I rest the coiled cord on the table. “Or is this some kind of practice for a blowout senior year?”
“Actually, yeah.” She laughs and walks toward me, almost in slow motion. She gets really close, touching me without touching me. I never knew the smell of suntan lotion could turn me on. “Next year, I’m getting crazy. I’m calling senior year the Year of Woooo!” She scrunches her nose and cheers with an invisible glass. “I’ve always been an overachiever, so I figured I’d get started early.”
“You’re kind of cute when you woooo,” I tell her. I guide her over to the worktable and press her back into it.
“You think so?” she says, draping her arms around my neck.
“I do.” My voice is low.
“Take me to this party, then.” Her eyelashes brush my neck.
“Where’s it at?”
“Okay. Don’t freak out, but it’s at Buck Travers’s place.”
It takes all the willpower in the universe not to put a hole through the worktable.
“That’s not funny,” I snap, and back away.
“Hear me out.”
“I’m not going anywhere that asshole’s going to be.”
“Wil.”