I shrug. “I’ll probably just grab some takeout from Nina’s.” And sit on the couch and wonder what it all means and why Wil hasn’t called or texted or sent a carrier pigeon with a note explaining how he’s feeling about this and me.
The phone bleats and Mom lifts the receiver. “Front desk, this is Christine.” She lifts her eyebrows and twirls her finger, motioning for me to turn around. In the center of the lobby, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that matches his eyes, is Wil. Without warning, my body is warm and soft, made of melting wax. As awful as last night was, I want to hug him that way again.
“Hey,” I say carefully.
“Hey,” he says. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “We should talk.”
“Yeah. Okay.” For a boy I used to know inside out, he is unreadable. His eyes are cast down but his body is loose, relaxed. He takes a few steps and swats the bill of my hat. My body floods with relief.
“Come on,” he says. “I want to show you something.”
I follow him outside. Wilson’s truck is idling in the parking lot. A canoe rests in the bed, tailgate down. It’s long, sleek, made entirely of wood that changes to different shades of amber as the pink light moves.
“Whoa.” I push myself into the truck bed and run my hand over the curves of the wood. “Beautiful. Have you taken her out yet?”
“Nah. I just finished her.”
“You made this? Wil.”
He tosses his hair out of his eyes. “Would you, ah—you want to try her out?”
*
We don’t speak on the way to the beach. I watch the lines of his jaw pulse in an odd rhythm, watch his lips move slightly. He’s far away, someplace I may never be able to find. When we get to the beach access, we carry the canoe across the sand. It’s lighter than I expected. Wil rests the boat on one shoulder and two paddles on the other. There are almost no waves and the sun is slinking red beside us.
“One, two, three,” Wil says, and we ease the boat onto the wet sand. I kick off my flip-flops and roll my jeans up. I wade in up to mid-calf, tugging the boat with me as I go.
I jump in and Wil wades a little deeper before he jumps in, too. We’re quiet. I’ve done this enough to know that a boat meeting water for the first time is a sacred thing. Wil hands me a paddle and settles in behind me. I wish I could see his face. I imagine it instead. I make it soft, with no harsh lines. I pretend that he has nothing to worry about except a quiz in science or a mother who wants him to go to college more than he wants to go. We fall into rhythm, sliding across the water. It doesn’t take long for everything in me to sync with our strokes. My breath, my heartbeat. We head north.
Wil speaks first, with a voice like uneven pavement. “Do you . . . do you hate me?”
“What? Wil!” I know better than to turn around. “Of course not. How could you think that?”
“After what I told you about my dad. It’s embarrassing, Bridge.” He pauses. “That’s not even the word. It’s humiliating, the kind of person he was.”
“That has nothing to do with you,” I tell him. “That’s on him.”
“It has everything to do with me.” The canoe rockets forward. “I’m part of him. I have him in me. And I don’t want you to think—I fucking care what you think, Bridge.”
“Listen to me. It doesn’t mean anything about you.” The breeze carries my words back to him. “No matter what kind of person he was. You’re different. You aren’t your dad.”
“Really, though?” His laugh has an edge. He stabs the water with his paddle and spins us in a perfect circle. The beach and horizon replace each other. My stomach swoops.
“Really.”
“See, I’m not so sure. I’m part of him, or he’s part of me, or however that works.”
“But you’re not the things your father did,” I say fiercely.
“Maybe a man can’t separate who he is from what he does. Apparently, I’m the kind of guy who puts his fist through a wall, right? You saw that. Tell me I’m not just another angry Hines asshole.”
I swivel until we’re knee to knee. The color has drained from his face.
“No,” I say emphatically. “Hell no.” I take his hands in mine. They are damp. “I think you’re pissed because your dad wasn’t who you wanted him to be, and then he died.”
His face buckles, and he glances out at the water. No doubt he wishes he could slide beneath the surface, release the oceans behind his eyes. “What are the odds?” he asks me.
“What do you mean?”
“The mathematical odds of something like this happening to a person’s family.”
“You can’t think about it like that.” I squeeze his hands tighter. He’s shaking.
“There are billions of other people out there—billions, right?”
“Seven billion.”
“Seven billion other people out there, and this thing, this thing that has ruined my life forever, happened in my house. To me and not somebody else. How is that possible? I’m just this little speck in the universe. And I never wanted to be more than a speck. I just wanted to be happy, that’s it. Simple, right?” He shakes his head. Pulls away from me.
I remember a bulletin board in fifth grade. In sweeping glitter letters at the top, Mrs. Gilkey had written Fifth graders flying high! She’d stapled bunches of Tootsie Pops over construction paper baskets, and we were supposed to write about our dreams in our candy hot-air balloons. Where did we want to live one day? Who did we want to be? I think I said Someplace exotic and The woman who ends world hunger. Wil’s basket had two words.
Here. Me.
“Simple,” I echo.
“But I don’t get simple anymore. Not after this.” Wil shakes his head suddenly, violently, like he’s trying to fling the memory of that night from the folds of his brain.
“Look at me,” I tell him.
His eyes are bottomless worlds of green. They hold everything I’ve missed. Tell me. Tell me what happened that night. I wish I could unlock his skull. Draw out the memory parasite in thick coils. Remove it from his body. I’d make it mine, if it would just give him some relief.
“I’m sorry. I am so sorry.” My body is made of thousands of tiny magnets, opposing forces, propelling me into him and holding me back. “You don’t deserve this. I wish I could take it away. I wish—” My eyes fill.
His head drops.
There’s a heavy silence between us. I can’t hold this inside me for another second.
“I fucking miss you. I’ve missed you, Wil. I miss us.” Saying it out loud makes my insides firework: turquoise and gold and scarlet rocketing inside me.
He sort of collides with me, slides his arms around my waist and buries his face in my neck and makes a sobbing sound. My eyes are hot and wet. If there is a breath somewhere, a full, deep breath anywhere on earth, I can’t find it.