Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
Theo
W illow cried in my arms in the dining room for close to an hour. I didn’t pressure her to talk or have her try to explain where all of her emotions were coming from. I let her fall apart, and I held her until she was ready to pull away.
“Oh, gosh. I’m sorry,” she muttered as she finally released me. I idiotically missed her touch the moment she took it away. Her eyes fell to the table, and she placed her hands on top of her head. “Oh no. Your forty-incher. It’s probably ruined.”
“It doesn’t matter. Not a big deal.”
“It is a big deal. I know how much you wanted that and how unique of a fish it was to catch.”
I waved it off. “Nah. Catching a forty-incher is a normal event for me,” I lied. “It probably wouldn’t have even tasted good anyway.”
She frowned.
I hated her frown.
I much more preferred if she went back to her smiling self again. Something about seeing her sad made my chest ache. I wanted to know more, though. I wanted to know what made her crack. I wanted to know the demons she’d worked so hard to keep hidden from everyone. I wanted to know the shadows of her soul that kept her mind imprisoned.
Why did I want to know her so much?
Why did I want to be near her?
I didn’t know what to say. I could tell she was self-conscious of her breakdown, yet that was the last thing I wanted her to feel. I knew what it was like to fall apart. I just did it in the privacy of my own space when no one was looking.
“That was really embarrassing.” She lightly laughed, wiping at her swollen eyes.
“It’s all right.”
She tossed her hands in the air and shook her head. “No, it’s not. I’m humiliated, and you probably think I’m a silly woman for breaking like that.”
“I don’t.”
“Well, I do,” she said, tapping her chest. “I feel like I’m broken. Most people love their birthdays.”
“I think they’re overrated.”
She chuckled. “Well, of course you do, Mr. Grump.”
I smiled.
She smiled back.
That felt right.
“I don’t even know what to do right now, though. Dinner’s ruined, and I totally messed up your apology, which I do accept, by the way. But now, I’m standing here like an idiot without a clue how to move forward.”
“Well…” I sighed as I slid my hands into my pockets. I raised an eyebrow. “Might I suggest fishing?”
We sat on the boat, not talking for a while, with our lines cast out into the water. It was a quieter night. I hadn’t caught anything. Willow hadn’t either, but that seemed her norm. I’d actually never met a person who went so long without having one single bite.
“You were right, you know,” Willow said. “About me not being as happy as I pretend to be.”
I grimaced. “I didn’t want to be right about that.”
“Yeah…but you were.” She took a deep breath. “My mother died during childbirth. I was born the day she took her last breath, and I think that did a number on me.”
So that was why she hated her birthday.
I placed my rod down and walked over toward her. I sat beside her and kept my eyes locked with hers. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” She shook her head.
“Okay.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. But I think I need to.”
“I’m listening if you’re talking.”
She placed her rod down and put her hands on her lap. “I hate traveling so much. I hate moving from city to city, meeting person after person, and trying to feel as connected to humanity as possible. But when I do it, I smile like I’m happy.”
“You don’t have to keep moving around.”
“Yes,” she disagreed, “I do. Because if I go home to Honey Creek, the place I want to be the most, I’m reminded daily of the mistakes I’ve made and the people who lost their loved ones because of me.”
“Willow…what happened with your mother wasn’t your fault.”
“Logically, I hear you. But mentally? Emotionally?” She placed her hand over her chest. “I blame myself daily. On top of that, there was the accident with my best friend…” She shook her head. “My former best friend, Anna.”
“What happened with Anna?”
She fiddled with her hands. “When we were eighteen, I was in a dark place. It was my birthday week, and I was in my head too much. I missed my mom,” she choked out, “but I tried to cover it up by being a free spirit. On my birthday, I was the life of the party at a random get-together with a ton of kids my age. Anna went with me and danced all night. She loved to dance. I know I love to dance, but Anna loved to dance way more…” Her silent moments felt so loud. I wondered if she’d ever spoken about these scars out loud or if they solely lived in the darkest parts of her memories. “Anna didn’t want to go to the party, but she’d known me since I was five years old. She knew I wasn’t okay with it being my birthday week. So she came. She danced and partied because she couldn’t stand the idea of me being secretly sad on my birthday around others who couldn’t see through my fake happiness. She saw me like you did, and it was my least favorite trait of hers. I was so good at pretending to be happy that it was scary when others could quietly see the sad.”
“What happened to Anna? Why are you no longer friends?”
“After the party, I insisted on driving home. I was drunk and stupid, but she wouldn’t let me. She didn’t drink, so she took my keys. She probably saved my life that night, thinking about it. But as she was driving us home, I accidentally distracted her by spilling a whole water bottle across her lap. As she went to somewhat dry herself off, another car slammed into us. The people driving the other truck were at the same party as we were—but they didn’t have a good friend who took their keys. Anna, um…” This time, Willow covered her mouth. I waited patiently. “She was paralyzed from the waist down. I walked away with a few bruises. The two in the other car, Eric and Carter, didn’t make it. After the accident, Anna’s mother came up to me and privately told me I should leave Honey Creek. That I was a cruel reminder to the families of Eric and Carter for what happened. And that I’d be a daily reminder to Anna about how I took her life away from her. So that’s why I keep traveling. Because I don’t really have a place to call home anymore.”
“Holy shit, Willow. I’m so sorry.”
I couldn’t imagine what that kind of incident could do to a person’s psyche.
“I never spoke to Anna again. Her mother never forgave me, and I can’t blame her. I never forgave myself either,” Willow said.
“It was an accident.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “but two people lost their lives that night because of me, and one lost the idea of what she thought her life would become.”
I shook my head. “The other truck was drunk driving. You didn’t cause the accident.”
“But if I wasn’t there…if I didn’t go to the party in the first place, if I had left earlier when Anna asked to go…” Tears rolled down her cheeks, and with every tear that fell, my cold, frozen heart began to defrost. And then, it began to break for the girl who carried so much blame in her chest. “And I killed my mom, and I, I…” She sobbed again, and I held her. I wanted to repeatedly tell her that none of what happened was her fault. I wanted to explain to her that sometimes shitty things happened in life that were so far out of our control. I wanted to use logic to convince her that her deepest, darkest thoughts were falsities feeding her brain lies.
But that wasn’t what she needed at that very moment.
Sometimes people didn’t need logic. Sometimes they just needed to be held.
“Gosh, I don’t know what it is about you. Ever since you told me that you could see through my mask, I’ve felt super emotional and odd knowing that you could see the real me.”
A pocket of guilt hit my stomach. “I didn’t see you,” I confessed.
She looked up at me, confusion swirling in her eyes. “What?”
“I…didn’t actually know you were faking. I was just saying all types of bullshit to push you away.”
“But why?”
“Because, like I said earlier…you reminded me of someone I once knew.”
“Who?”
I lowered my head slightly, pulling away from her, unable to hold my eye contact. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to relive my own past hurt, but the way Willow was so open with her scars made me slightly want to do the same for her.
Besides, she deserved to know my truths, the same way she told me hers.
“Thalia,” I said. “Jensen’s mother.”
“How did I remind you of her?”
“She was just like you. She was a light in a dark world. She was…good. In many ways. In many shapes. In many styles. She was good for the most part.”
“And you think I’m good?”
“No, Willow. I know you’re good.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you think you’re not.”
She smiled, but it was a sad smile. The kind that broke my fucked-up heart.
I cleared my throat and stared out at the night’s sky. “Thalia was my best friend. My only friend. When I was young, most people bullied me. She didn’t. The first day I met her, she was so extremely kind to me, and I didn’t know why. I thought at first she was faking it to play a big prank on me down the line. People had done that before. But…she didn’t. She just…was good to me. She was good to everyone. And happy. So happy. She walked around as if the sun was always beaming. She didn’t even believe in bad people because she thought most of them weren’t bad on purpose. She was…good.”
“She was your clementine.”
I arched an eyebrow. “My what?”
“Your clementine. The type of person who is just filled with light and joy. That was Anna to me before I ruined her life.”
I didn’t reply. I wasn’t certain exactly if Thalia was my clementine or not, but the concept was intriguing.
“Willow?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t see your hurt before because I was too busy dealing with my own mess.”
“But you see me now?” she whispered, her voice low, her eyes packed with hope.
“Yes,” I said, “And I won’t stop seeing you from this point on.”
Her hands fell to her chest. “I’ve been so tired. All these years, so tired from putting on a front.”
“I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad about yourself, Willow,” I told her as I rested my arms on top of my kneecaps. “I was just trying to stay away from you.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want you to make me feel the same thing Thalia made me feel before.”
“And what’s that?”
I pushed out a tired smile, which fell almost instantly. “Hope.”
“Hope,” she echoed in a whispered voice. “Hope in what?”
“Humanity.”
She smiled, and my chest tightened from said smile. “You do know what this means, right, Theo?”
“What’s that?”
“We have to officially be friends now.”
I grimaced. “I haven’t had one of those in a long time.”
“That’s okay, friend,” she said as she patted my shoulder. “I’ll show you the ropes.”