Then Daxon
Then DAXON
I met someone.
This is not the plot twist I was expecting. And holy shit, it has the worst timing, literally, ever.
I know those three words are like a giant foot stomping on the secret clubhouse Wil and her dad have built, just the two of them. And it’s weird to me that Bob doesn’t see that.
“Who?” says Wil. I can tell by the sound of her voice, low and curt, that she’s holding back a shout. I stare at my fork.
Bob Chase is the kind of talent that comes along every six lifetimes. A stand-up comedy veteran turned TV actor, he’s probably the most famous person I’ve ever met. Or, let me rephrase that: the most famous person I’ve ever cared about meeting. A chunk of the stuff I do—well, did , I guess—on Marnie is mostly a really sorry impression of him. It takes a lot of self-restraint and willpower not to fall to my knees and kiss his ring on a daily basis.
He’s great, but subtlety is not his game.
“She’s an actress. You probably know her,” says Bob. He smiles at Wil, but the look on her face makes that smile disappear.
“Who,” she says.
“Katrina Tyson-Taylor.”
“Oh,” I say, recognizing the name. “She’s funny.”
“Yep,” Bob says. Wil glares between us and I go back to looking pointedly at the fork. “We’ve had a few dates. Couple dinners. I want you to meet her, Wil.”
“Excuse me,” Wil says. She jerks her chair back and the legs screech across the hardwood. Bob and I listen to the sound of her quickly disappearing footsteps as they climb the stairs to her room.
Above our heads, Wil’s door slams.
“I got it,” I tell him and fold my napkin.
I knock at Wil’s closed door.
“Yeah?”
I shuffle in and shut the door gently behind me. Wil is fetal on the bed and I sink myself down onto the corner of the mattress. “You good?”
“Everything’s ending,” Wil says.
I want to hold out my hand for her, or maybe just take hers in mine and stay like that a while. Anything to keep my stomach from flinging itself out of my mouth, because she’s right. It is. But not every part. “Not everything,” I say.
Wil lifts her head and squints at me. “You were at that table, right? Just now? And tonight, on set? Everything is ending.”
I twist a tassel from the blanket draped along the edge of her bed around my finger, staring down at the comforter. Iknow that everything includes the life Wil’s shared with her dad up until now, just the two of them, recovering from the years before I knew her when her mom passed away.
Unsurprisingly, that’s something that’s really stuck around for her, even years later. The pain of losing her mom.
Two Christmases ago, Wil and I climbed onto the roof of my dads’ place and shared a cigarette, coughing and choking in the freezing night air. She was wearing red lipstick and missing her mother the way she always does on the holidays. We smoked that thing down to the filter, me gagging, and when Wil went to chuck it off the roof, I stopped her and tucked it into my pocket, saying we shouldn’t litter.
It’s inside my bedside-table drawer still, rolling loose.
I should tell her how I feel. How I’ve always felt.
There isn’t a day, or hour, or minute I can pinpoint my feelings for Wil back to. No one glance, no single smile—it was everything, slowly, over time, better and better as the years rolled on, that helped me realize it.
I lift my eyes to hers. But immediately, I have to look away, across the room, anywhere but into the turbulent water of her stare.
When I’ve forced my eyes back to hers, I swallow. Wil’s teeth catch her bottom lip. The only sound is our breathing, soft and steady in the quiet, but I’m sure that my nervous heart slamming around my rib cage is making enough noise for her to hear.
This feels like my one chance. Right at the brink of a huge change, before everything we’ve ever known ends.
“Wil, I wanna tell you something.”
“What?”
Bob opens the door, pulling it wide. “Wil, let’s talk about this. With the door open, please.” He casts me a faux-accusatory look.
“Oh my god, like anything’s gonna happen,” Wil snaps automatically. “It’s Daxon .”
I clench my jaw so tightly, I can feel a muscle begin to twitch there. My moment’s gone. “I’ll get going,” I say.
“No, stay,” Wil says.
I shake my head. Really, I’m convinced that if I stay, the anxiety of what I was about to let slip will unhinge its jaw and eat me whole like an anaconda. “Uh, no, that’s okay. I’ll text you.”
“Night, Daxon,” says Bob as I disappear through the door. I can hear them plainly as I take the stairs.
“You’re pissed,” Bob says to Wil.
“Duh,” she says.
“I don’t want you to be pissed. I thought maybe you’d be... I don’t know, happy for me?”
“You picked, like, the worst time ever to tell me this news, you know that, right?”
“Kid, shows get canceled. Happens all the time. First thing tomorrow, I’ll call Sherrie, we’ll get some auditions lined up. On to the next.”
“I don’t want auditions; I want my show. I want everything to stay the same.”
“Wil.”
“No,” she chokes out.
My throat constricts. I reach the bottom of the staircase and cross the foyer to the front door, my hand on the knob. Outside, it’s warm and dark, stars coming alive, the moon rising. Wind in the trees.
Ever since a growth spurt last summer, my legs are finally useful, and they stride long and quickly across the driveway towards my car. I can’t believe I almost told her.
“Dax!”
I stop and turn towards the sound of her voice. Wil is running out the front door, jogging towards me. The look on her face could snap me in two. “You okay?”
She’s panting, searching my eyes as she stops in front of me, closer than usual. So close I can feel the heat from her skin radiating. “No,” says Wil. “I don’t want this to end. I don’t want us to end.”
I let my eyes trace hers, stopping at her lips, then back up and around again. My stomach is on a hamster wheel, running for its life. I’m transfixed, and completely helpless to do anything about it, like she’s just waved her hand in front of my face Obi-Wan-style and said you will fall so hard for me you won’t know which way is up .
“We won’t,” I say. I swallow. “Wil, I—”
But she beats me there. Before I can say it, Wil closes the gap between us, pulling herself onto her tiptoes to kiss me, sweet and lingering in the moonlight. My arms fold carefully around her, at first, like she’s something breakable, and then firm and sure and wanting, tight. Her hips brush mine. Our stomachs press together and I’m melting here, holding fast to her. We’re walking the thinnest line at the edge of uncertainty, burning, ready to fall.