The End of Our Story

I spend my days doing other things, hoping that the answer will rise up to meet me like the tides rise to the sand. I spend hours at the hospital, combing Minna’s hair or stretched out on the ugly plastic chairs outside her room or in the coffee shop on the first floor, ordering Virginia and Elizabeth lattés they didn’t ask for. The nurses bend the rules for me. I stay long past visiting hours. Virginia doesn’t seem to mind. We wait. Sometimes together, mostly apart.

I hold Minna’s papery hand, and I tell her stories about Wil because Wil is my every thought. Wil stories are automatic. Countless blinks in a single minute. I tell Minna about the time Wil and I set up an Olympic course on the beach in the summer between fourth and fifth grades. There was a makeshift obstacle course, a one-on-one beach volleyball tournament, and medals made out of tinfoil. There were no ties, because in real life, there are no ties. We sang the national anthem and trilled on the high notes.

I cheated during the driftwood dash. Wil had won too many events in a row. So when he neared the last driftwood hurdle, I moved it. Just a little, with my toe. He fell and hit the sand hard, scraped his knee. I crouched next to him as we inspected the wound. There was sand in the cut. Salt water dripped from his hair. There wasn’t a single drop of blood.

It occurred to me then that maybe Wil Hines didn’t have blood in his veins like everyone else. Maybe he was made of Florida things: grains of bleached sand, sea foam, and salt. Wind and sun. Maybe he was made of the things he loved best.

But I don’t think that now. I don’t think we’re made of the things we love best, or the things we say or don’t when we think no one is listening, or the very worst things we do. I don’t think we are the things that happen to us, the circumstances beyond our control. I guess I don’t want to believe that I am drunken mistakes, an absentee father, or a terrible secret. I don’t want to believe that Wil and I are his terrible secret, either. That it could define us for the rest of our lives.

I am sitting at Minna’s bedside, reading her passages from a Pablo Neruda anthology someone left at the nurse’s station (“I want / to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees”) when Wil brings flowers into the room. Seeing him now is like seeing him for the first time in centuries, and I’m breathless. The flowers are a deep purple that only appears on the horizon for a second before nightfall. Wil is dressed in a collared shirt and nice pants, a belt and real shoes. He’s dressed for a life we don’t live. Something is happening. My body knows.

“How’s she doing?” He rests the flowers on her bedside, near a bunch of sagging balloons Mom and Micah brought yesterday. His brows are arched and his mouth is slightly open. His face is a constant question.

“She squeezed my hand this morning,” I tell him. My eyes get full just thinking about it. “I think she knew it was me.”

“That’s awesome.” He bends over my chair and kisses me sweetly, awkwardly on my cheekbone. His mouth, the way he rests his hands on my shoulders, the curve of his body when we sleep tucked into each other: all questions from his body to mine. Questions I haven’t answered.

I nod. “The doctors told Virginia that her vitals were strong and her brain activity looks good. So I think they’re hoping for a turnaround soon.”

Wil pulls a chair next to me and we watch Minna. We watch the electric-green lines that chart her heartbeat.

“Want to go on a walk?” he asks. “There’s a garden out back. You can almost see the water.”

I pull Minna’s covers around her and we take the elevator down. Outside, the air is heavy and hot, pressing me into the earth. We find the garden, a small bricked labyrinth of boxwoods and punch-colored angel-wing begonias and rain lilies. We sit on a polished teak bench with a gold plaque.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you, too.” I am suddenly aware of my heaviness, of the stale sour film coating my tongue and the grainy tired settled behind my eyes. “I’m so tired, Wil.”

“I know you are.” His voice ripples. “Because of me.”

I shake my head. Salt water leaks from the corners of my eyes.

“It wasn’t your fault. What happened to you that night . . . was outside of your control.” I know that more every second, feel sure of it. I lean over and my mouth finds his mouth. He is my only comfort and I choose him.

He pulls away, but we stay close. The tickle of his breath on my nose, the warmth of his near skin revives me.

“But I can’t decide for you.” The words escape without warning, and it’s not until they are there, between us, that I realize: They’re mine. “I can love you, and I do and I will. But I can’t decide what to do with this. I won’t make that decision for you. You have to—” My voice breaks. “That’s something you can control.”

He sucks all the air from the atmosphere, then exhales it.

“I know,” he says. “I can’t ask you to tell me what to do. And I can’t ask you to hold on to this . . . this shitty secret about me.” His face cracks.

“I would do it for you.” I press my hand against his cheek, and he leans into it. “That’s how much I love you.”

“My mom told me that she came to see you. Asked you not to say anything. It’s just not fair. I can’t ask that of you. I would never ask that of you.” Frantically, Wil kisses my cheeks, my nose, my mouth. His lips absorb my tears.

I fight for a breath as he reaches into his back pocket. Hands me a folded envelope. On it is a single name in his messy boy script.

Detective Porter.

“Wil.” The tears come faster now. “Wil.”

“It’s everything. All of it.” His hands are on me now, memorizing me, and mine do the same. I read his lines with the tips of my fingers like I may never read him again.

“You—” The what ifs swirl, a terrible tempest in my mind and body. “What if you’re arrested?” I can’t stand the thought of Wil without his workshop. Without the steady stroke of brushes or mallets in the dim light. Without the endless ocean. And I don’t even want to think about my own life without Wil. The mere suggestion is an impossibility.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He is pale.

“You can’t. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I can’t ask you to live with this, Bridge. It’s been hard enough just—” He gulps air. “It’s been hard enough, the past few days. You have to go to college. I won’t wreck that. I won’t let my dad wreck that.”

“Wait,” I beg. “Maybe you shouldn’t say anything. We know what happened. Maybe that’s enough. You could come to Miami with me.” I lean close and whisper it: “Come to Miami with me.”

He shakes his head slowly. “If I don’t say anything, I’m letting him run my life.” His eyes search the horizon for water. They are gorgeous shattered glass, bright with fear and will. “I won’t let him sink us like that, Bridge.”

“He won’t.” I grab his hands, curl mine around them. “He won’t.”

He watches me like he used to when we were kids on the sand, as if he might forget me if he looked away for a second. “I’ll—I’ll call you after. If I can.”

He pulls me in again, for a kiss that lasts forever. Then he brushes off his khaki pants.

“I have to go now,” he says.

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