Then Wilhelmina
Then WILHELMINA
A utumn hits Connecticut in all the ways it doesn’t in Los Angeles. It’s cold .
I’m wearing a short-sleeved dress, a summer dress, and even here in the cab it’s freezing. I hear myself tell the driver to take me to Yale. The word is bitter and ugly in my mouth.
The campus is enormous and busy. Cutting across it, trying to find the drama department, is like trying to merge across the freeway. My stomach is this turbulent because I’m nervous as fuck.
What am I going to say to him?
There’s a little coffee place beside the drama-school building. I duck inside. I’ve got my dad’s old ball cap on my head, and I pull it low, try not to meet anyone’s eyes.
Before I’m anything, I’m Marnie. And I don’t have time for that.
I order the biggest coffee they have and chance a glance around the shop. Students sit at small tables with their laptops and textbooks. Good, smart, normal people who chose college over cameras. I should want to be one of them. Why don’t I want to be one of them?
At the back of the shop is a girl on a date with a brown-haired boy who’s got his back to me. He’s glancing at his phone way too often. She’s watching him like he’s the North Star. Iclock her hand reaching across the table to touch something on his face. She laughs. And that’s when my heart plummets.
He straightens up and I’d know the bend of those shoulders, the rogue freckle on the back of his neck, the way his hair gets a little too long and curls around his ears, from another continent.
It’s Daxon .
My feet are quick, unembarrassed, charging ahead. But my heart is screaming. My breath is quick and uneven. I’m four feet from their table when I feel my lips part and my angry, broken voice tumble out. “Dax?”
He whips his head around and I watch his face fall like someone’s just poured ice down his back.
“Wil?” He stands up so fast his chair goes toppling backwards.
I didn’t think I could get to a lower place emotionally. But I feel myself riding an elevator down to the basement level of my soul. I turn around and I book it. This was the literal worst idea I’ve ever had in my entire life.
I’m speed-walking across campus, head down, not even cold anymore but with no idea where I’m going. When I get to a crosswalk, I stop and punch the button. Behind me, feet come jogging up.
“Wil. Hey. What’re you...? When did you...?”
I don’t answer him. I jam my fist into the crossing signal button seven more times. Come on . Cars whiz by. I’m trapped.
“Wil. Come on.”
“Don’t.” I turn my head and fix him with a deadly stare.
Dax shrugs out of his coat and holds it out to me. “Put this on.”
I turn away from him. “Get away from me, Daxon.”
The walk sign lights up in the coming darkness. I charge across the street, but I can feel him right at my heels.
“Wil, stop.”
“I said get away from me .”
His hand lands softly on my bare shoulder and I hate the way it’s healing me, even in this brief second. I shrug away from him.
“Wil, come on.” His fingers brush my arm, taking gentle hold. I yank it away.
“Who the hell was that?” I ask him. I can’t keep it in anymore.
“Who?”
“ Who? ” I glare at him. He’s not this thick. He was on a date . Four seconds after driving away and leaving me standing in the middle of the street.
“What are you doing here?” Daxon asks. His voice is soft, he’s still a little out of breath from chasing me across campus.
“What’s her name?” I say.
“Who?”
I roll my eyes. “Coffee girl.”
“Hannah something. From one of my classes. We got partnered up on an assignment. That’s all. Wil, what are you doing here?”
Like that sounds real. I roll my eyes and repeat his words back to him. “Hannah something . Sounds like you’re really all-in on this one. Casual college Daxon, casually dating college girls with no last name as soon as we break up.”
Dax’s face falls. He blinks at me.
I’ve seen that look there before. Not from something I’ve done or said, but from a late-night movie marathon with him. Lord of the Rings . It was towards the end, when I could barely keep my eyes open. This guy gets hit with an arrow in the chest but keeps fighting. And then he gets another arrow to the chest, and it’s like, there’s no way he’s gonna make it. But he keeps fighting. He takes out a couple of enemy warriors, and then you hear the villain’s bow creak, and the guy turns around and the last arrow takes him out.
Dax cried during that scene. Not a big boo-hoo cry. A soft, sweet kind of cry that he didn’t want me to see. He brushed away a couple tears and pretended to cough. He’s doing the same thing now.
I wonder if the words break up are his last arrow to the chest.
“We didn’t break up,” he says, voice wavering.
My lip starts shaking, I can’t help it. “You didn’t stop the car.”
“I—couldn’t.”
“Bull. You didn’t turn around.” I cross my arms tight against the cold. The evening wind is bitter as it cuts through my hair. “I ran for you and you didn’t stop.”
“We didn’t break up.” Daxon says this so quietly, I barely hear it.
“You left,” I say. “You left me. That’s a breakup.”
He swallows down what are clearly tears and pushes his coat at me again. “Put this on.”
“Dax...” I shake my head. Like, come on, what does he expect from me? To be okay? To be normal? For everything to be just as it was?
“It’s cold. Put it on. Please.”
I stand there, breathing in and out, our gazes held steadily together. I take the coat from him and slip it over my frozen shoulders. The warmth, the familiar smell of him. It’s enough to drug me. “Take me home,” I say. “Wherever that is for you now.”
Dax reaches his hand out to me and I fold my fingers into his.
Dax’s roommate is thankfully scarce, because when the door closes behind us, we reach for each other like it’s been eons apart. Then we order a midnight pizza.
We strip the comforter and pull around the desk chair. Tie the sheets to the headboard and to the chair back and sit inside our makeshift fort, together and whole.
“I’m gonna stay here,” I tell him at three in the morning.
“Of course you are,” says Dax. He’s braiding my hair, long down my back, from where I sit cross-legged in front of him.
“I’ll be like the ghost haunting the dorm. They’ll give me some kick-ass ghost name, too. Like the Shadow of Suite 120 . The legend, the myth—”
“The trespassing vandal.”
I turn around and wrinkle my nose at him. Daxon takes my face in one hand and kisses me.
“What are we going to do?” I ask.
Dax’s fingers pick up again at the bottom of my braid, twisting around and around. Loose and messy, the way only a boy would do it. He lets go and it instantly begins to unravel.
He presses a kiss to my bare shoulder. Slowly, I turn around to face him. His eyes are soft, tired, emotional. Dax glances towards the window for a moment, and when his eyes come back to me, the look there is shattered.
“I don’t want anyone else,” he says.
“Me either.”
“There’s no one else. For me. Ever.”
I climb into his lap. Wrapping my legs around his waist, I stretch my arms around his neck, and I lay my head down. “Ihave to go home,” I murmur.
“You have to go home,” Dax says.
“But not yet.”
“Not yet. Please.”