“LEIGH,” I say into the phone. I’m a thousand shards, a useless broken pile on the sidewalk in front of Nina’s Diner. The sun is close, the air salty and thick even though it’s only April. “Leigh.”
Inside, Leonard waves.
“Oh, honey. I hear a blocked heart chakra.”
“He hates me.” My face is swollen and hot, but I can’t cry. Crying would feel too good. I pace the bricks, trying not to see KYLIE MITCHELL or DAN & NATALIA. I walk from Nina’s to the Surf Shop to Big Mike’s bar and back again. People pass with their coffee and dogs and kids and they know the kind of person I am, somehow. “We had a fight and it’s so obvious—he hates me, still.”
“He’s hurting,” she says simply, and I remember the millions of reasons I love her, all at the same time. She doesn’t ask what happened or what I said or what he said back. She doesn’t need the details. She knows they don’t matter.
“Yeah,” I whisper. I stop in front of Big Mike’s. Somebody posted a flyer for a Bob Marley cover band on the door. The neon beer signs on the window bleed red and blue. “I could really use a drink.”
“Nope,” she says. “We have other plans. Don’t move.”
I hang up and plant myself outside the door to the bar. If I really needed to, I could get inside in two seconds. It’s dark in there. I could probably order a beer and get away with it.
I ran into Wilson in this exact spot, a little more than a year ago. Not in the bar. Outside of it. The sky was bruised a deep purple. Wilson’s face looked cartoonish under the neon beer signs. I saw him before he saw me.
“Wilson?”
“Mackinac!” he said, but the word tripped over itself to get to me and it sounded all wrong and we both laughed. “What’re you doing here?” He squinted into the streetlight above us.
“Takeout from Nina’s. Mom’s working late.”
“Huh.” He bobbed his head. “You coming around anytime soon? Got a new client. Start the work next week.”
“I would, it’s just—” I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. It’s just that I ruined us? It’s just that booze makes me stupid? It’s just that I’m tired of Wil not wanting us back as much as I do? “How’s he doing?” I didn’t mean to ask.
Wilson exhaled and leaned against the door to the bar. “Studying for some test at . . . a friend’s place.”
The way he said it told me almost everything I needed to know. “Oh.”
“You know, Bridge, we’re not the things we do.” Wilson’s voice sounded heavy enough to sink him. “We’re not our mistakes. We’re more than that.”
“Tell that to your son.”
“Believe me.” He cleared his throat.
I waited for him to finish, but he didn’t. He looked too tired to say anything else, old under the dirty yellow pools of light.
“Well,” I said. “My order is probably getting cold. Where were you headed?”
“Nina’s, too.” He forced a smile. His skin was chalky, reminding me of one of Leigh’s pastel sketches. He looked like he could be erased with a single stroke. He followed me into the diner and waited with me at the counter while Leonard tossed extra ketchup into the plastic takeout bags. There weren’t any bags waiting for Wilson. I didn’t mention it.
“Oh, good. You’re not bombed yet.” Leigh is standing next to me, smelling like coconut oil and a little like the incense place around the corner. “Drink.” She hands me a Big Gulp Slurpee with a neon-pink straw.
I take a long sip.
“Here’s the plan.” She presses her hand into the small of my back and marches me toward Iz, who is idling lazily in the middle of the street. “We’re going to school.”
“On a Saturday? Leigh—”
“We’re going to school, and you’re gonna help me with the first step of my senior art project, which has to be done by Monday. Call it free therapy. And you’re gonna tell me what happened or you aren’t.” She jerks open Iz’s passenger side door. “After you, m’lady.”
“I guess you decided not to paint the overpass.” I settle in and Iz’s beaded seat cover pinches my thighs.
“Nah. You were right.” She leans in the doorway and glances over the top of her mirrored sunglasses. “Principal okayed the school project, and I decided I don’t want to end up in juvie yet.” She slams the door.
“Yet?” I pull down the visor. My warped reflection is pale and sweaty in the cracked mirror, a pathetic Picasso.
Leigh coaxes Iz toward school. Wil is in the all details of this town: in the palm tree he climbed on a dare in sixth grade, and in the beach access parking lot where his dad caught us making out sophomore year. I close my eyes, but he’s there, too. He’s everywhere but here.
“There’s something he’s not telling me.” I wipe a thin layer of sweat from my forehead with my open palm. Another layer surfaces.
“Any idea what it is?” She jumps right in. I like that I can start in the middle with Leigh and work my way out to the frayed edges.
I shake my head. “He just kept saying that there were things he wanted to talk to me about—big things—but he couldn’t.”
“Because you guys weren’t talking then?” she asks.
“I guess.”
“So that’s what he’s pissed about. Not the B-word.” She raps an offbeat rhythm on the steering wheel, then whips into the school parking lot at the last second, like it’s an afterthought. The lot is empty, except for a father running behind a daughter on a bike. Leigh runs Iz onto the curb in front of the school and kills the engine.
I roll my eyes. “You can say it. Buck.” I taste warm Slurpee syrup.
“I choose not to.” She gives Iz’s console a pat and tells me to grab whatever I can carry from the backseat. I lug a bucket and broom and a bunch of scrub brushes, and she brings dish soap and a paint roller and a couple of paint cans. “Courtyard.”
When we get there, I collapse onto one of the benches and Leigh sits next to me. She holds my hand, pressing her fingers between my fingers. A fat tear runs down my cheek and I miss her like hell even though she’s not gone yet. I look at the sky, at the shattered white cloud glass littering the blue.
“He asked me to stop, last year. He asked me to leave him alone, to stop apologizing. So I did,” I say, resting my head on Leigh’s bony shoulder.
“I remember.”
“And he’s so . . . angry, you know, that I did. When really, I thought I was doing what he wanted. I thought if I did what he was asking me to do, maybe it would give us a shot later on, you know? Because I’d listened and given him space.”
Leigh rests her head on my head. “Space blows.”
“And this time he asked me to go again, and I left again. But this time felt different.”
“How?”
“If I didn’t leave—” I stop, not sure how to finish the sentence. I don’t know what would have happened. He could have hurt himself, could have destroyed the wall or his dad’s treasures.