Then Wilhelmina
Then WILHELMINA
“D on’t go to Yale.”
“What?”
“Just... stay. With me.”
“The movers are coming at eight to get my stuff. I gotta get back.”
Sitting in Daxon’s car, cool beach air fogging the dawn-lit windows, I don’t know what to say to that. So I don’t say anything. Dax drives, I watch the world blur by.
My fingers pick at the shredded ends of my shorts. Pulling the threads out of the fabric altogether. I don’t stop until I have a tiny fistful, and that’s when I realize I can’t fight the pressure in my throat, behind my eyes, for much longer.
Daxon is leaving. It’s happening right now, in front of my eyes, as the minutes tick by. And I don’t know if he’s really all that sorry.
And I don’t know if I can breathe without him.
He pulls up in front of my house and I sit there, frozen, staring at my legs.
“I’ll call you when my plane lands,” he tells me. He won’t look my way.
I bite down on my tongue until I can’t stand the pain any longer and finally turn to him.
“Stay.”
“Wil...” Daxon shuts his eyes.
“Stay.”
“I can’t.”
I try to swallow down the thick, painful lump in my throat but it’s impenetrable. “You can,” I say. “You can. I need you.”
“This is important to me,” he says. “I really want to do this.”
The tears continue, silent and constant. And I don’t do anything to stop them. Even my nose has started running, and I don’t care. My fingers yank back the lock on the car door and I push it open, slamming it behind me.
“Wil!” Dax is up and out in seconds, jogging up the drive. “Wait. I need you to understand.”
But I don’t want to fucking understand . I want to rewind the years and go back to twelve, back to that first audition room, back to the sweetness of his round, friendly face. I want to do it all over again, over and over, on an endless loop.
I whip around and stop. “Well, I don’t understand,” I say.
“This is my dream. I want to be a real, professional, trained actor. I wanna win an Oscar! Yale can get me there.” His face is earnest. His eyes are fragile. That’s what guts me.
“What I don’t understand is how you’re so okay with leaving me behind.” My entire face is stiff, my nostrils flaring, my lips in a tight line. I could breathe fire if I tried.
“I don’t want to,” Dax says. Actually, he kind of shouts it. And I see in his eyes that he’s broken. His chest rises and falls as we stand there, six feet apart, shattering. “I love you, Wil. I don’t want to leave you. But if I want to grow at all, I have to.”
It’s the I love you that injects lethal venom directly into my heart. My eyes narrow. I’ve never heard my own blood pounding in my ears as loudly as it is now. “No you fucking don’t,” I yell at him. “If you leave, no you don’t.”
Dax stares down at his shoes. “I gotta go,” he says when he looks up at me. “I love you.”
“I hate you for leaving.”
My voice carries across the quiet, dewy lawns of my neighbors. It fractures the early-morning songs of doves nesting nearby. Wings take to the sky. My shoulders heave. Daxon looks anywhere but at me, pausing to take in the house we spent so many evenings wasting time in—nights we could have become something a lot sooner.
“Bye, Wil,” he says, and he goes.
I march myself to the front door. Daxon’s car roars to life and begins to pull away from the curb. The regret is instant. Iturn around. His car is just starting to slip out of sight.
I run.
I run full-out, all screaming adrenaline, like if I stop, I’ll die.
Like a dog, I chase his car up to the stop sign, crying out, “Wait! I’m sorry! Come back!” But Dax doesn’t wait, and he doesn’t come back. He signals his right turn, and goes.
“Daxon!” My voice breaks and I stop running, slump over and pant.
No .
It never occurred to me that he would go .
And the last thing he heard me say, before he got in that car and drove out of my life, was that I hated him.
My feet carry me back to my door. But it opens before I can turn the knob, and Katrina stands there in a robe with coffee in her hand.
“You look like shit,” she observes. “Want some coffee?”
What I want is to knock the mug out of her hand. But instead, I push past her. “I can get it myself,” I grunt and walk to the kitchen. There’s one chicken mug left, but someone’s pushed it all the way to the back of the cabinet and I have to stand on my tiptoes, fishing for it.
“I thought one of those was missing,” Katrina says. She settles at the bar, slipping onto one of the stools. “They’re ugly as sin. Your daddy’s so lucky to have someone with taste moving in. Leave it out when you’re done and I’ll pack it up.”
I don’t answer her. Mostly because I’m afraid that if I open my mouth I’ll throw up on the kitchen rug.
“So, kiddo, what’s next?” she asks, flipping through a newspaper.
Kiddo . It’s one thing to go right ahead and slip into the open parking space my mom left when she died, but it’s another to expect me to be happy about it. Or, like, want to engage with it at all.
I add milk to my coffee and stay standing, six feet from her, my back pressed against the counter. It’s not far enough, in my opinion. “What do you mean?”
“Magicworks must have something planned for you now that you’re done with your little show. They take care of their stars, don’t they?”
She knows that isn’t true. Fuck her for saying it.
“I’m going to bed,” I say and walk out.
The sound of fingernails drumming against my bedroom door wakes me, an entire day later.
“Hey, girly,” says Katrina. She snaps her gum, poking her pointed face in through a crack in the door Jack Nicholson–style. “Mani-pedis. Let’s go.”
I’m face-down in bed, but I won’t get up for her. The inch I raise my head off the pillow is all she’s going to get. “No, thanks,” I say.
The door opens all the way, slamming loudly into the doorstop. Katrina swears, then gives a high, hooting laugh, apologizing to nobody. She’s got car keys in her hand and they jangle annoyingly against her hip. “Let’s go, let’s go. Imade us an appointment. We can get your eyebrows waxed while we’re there.”
Slowly, I unravel myself from the sheets and turn over, coming to sit in the middle of the mattress. I blink at her. “What time is it?”
“Twelve thirty,” she says. “I don’t know how the hell you sleep like you do. I’ve got an internal alarm clock that goes off every morning at six.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere. You go. Have fun.”
“Oh no, you’re going. Your dad wants us to spend a little quality time together. Come on. Up, up, up.”
To shut her up, I go. I get hair ripped off my face while Katrina literally never stops talking. I climb into a spa chair and pick a spot on the opposite wall to stare at, drifting away into my own head.
I chased him up the fucking street.
Like a Labrador. And he didn’t turn around.
Dax called last night from the Connecticut airport to tell me he landed, but I couldn’t find it in me to answer. He ended his voicemail with I love you , and I can’t delete it. I’m gutted by it; I’m thrilled by it.
And I have to keep reminding myself that he’s gone. He left. That this might be the last time I’ll ever hear him say it.
“Where’s your little friend? Jason? Jackson?” Katrina chews her gum at me from the neighboring spa chair. My eyes sink to the bubbling tub of water where my feet soak. It’s hot water, I know it is, but I don’t feel it. It’s like I can’t feel anything.
“Gone,” I grunt.
“Boo,” says Katrina. “He was cute.”
“He’s an asshole,” I say, but I don’t mean it.
Without spending any time thinking it through, I stand up suddenly and step out of the gurgling water. The kind older woman just sitting down to do my pedicure asks if I’m okay, but I can’t answer her. I can’t open my mouth, or a hard racking sob will come falling out, and I’m not ready for it yet.
I leave wet bare footprints across the floor of the salon, Katrina calling my name as I run outside and keep running. On the corner, I pull my phone from my shorts pocket and buy a plane ticket to Connecticut in about four and a half minutes. Middle seat. Leaves tomorrow.
It’s not going to be over like this. I won’t let it.