Chapter 7 #3
He could call the real Selma, of course.
She’d be bound to have something helpful to say, once she finished ripping him a new one for going essentially radio silent on her.
But talking to Selma about something is always a double-edged sword, at least in Will’s experience; she would be helpful, certainly, but it would come at a price.
In getting the story out of Will, she’d get everything out of him, even the pieces of it he doesn’t want to look at, or isn’t ready to see.
He loves her, of course he loves her, but he can’t quite bear her just now.
Talking to her always shows him too much of himself.
Guiltily, he pulls out his phone, spends a few slow minutes searching and battling the patchy signal, and then orders Selma a box of chocolates described as, “A variety of lewd confections to delight both the sweetest of tooths and the dirtiest of minds.” He includes a card that says, “Made me think of you,” then types and deletes a longer message three times, and finally places the order.
With nothing else to do, he just waits and watches until the car is safely in the lot, and Casey’s pulled the truck back into the staff garage.
He walks out, as Will had feared, visibly whistling , and wiping his hands on the tails of his still-soaked white-and-green flannel work shirt, but his expression drops into a scowl when he sees Will huddled under the awning. Of course.
“What are you still doing out here?” Casey demands, crossing his arms over his chest. “I thought you were going to go in, or back to the house?—”
“I didn’t want to be…” Will says, trying and failing to suppress a visible shudder. “…rude, or whatever. Just go barging in.” He pauses, and adds, “I mean, uh. Again.”
“Common sense just doesn’t run in your family, huh?” Casey mutters. Giving Will’s soaked, shivering form a brief once-over and shaking his head, he adds, “Come on, then!” He wheels around and starts stalking towards the house.
Will follows him a few steps behind. His thoughts, he notices, have slowed down considerably; though normally guilty of thinking about seventeen things at once, he is currently down to one at a time.
They float past him lazily, in no hurry at all to make room for his next worry or idea or thing to say.
One of them is the thought that he should say something, but after some intense consideration, he dismisses it on merit of not knowing what .
So he follows Casey, feeling meek and foolish and extremely ridiculous, back across the field and through the copse of trees and up the stairs and across the porch of the house he, less than an hour ago, so emphatically ran away from.
As he steps through the threshold behind Casey, pulling the door closed behind him, he mutters, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Casey says, looking away, and sounding too uncomfortable to be saying it out of Midwestern politeness. “I wasn’t going to, like, leave you out there. You were…” He pauses, and swallows, before continuing. “You were blocking the road.”
“Right,” Will says, for some reason feeling a little scrape of disappointment he can’t quite place. “Traffic hazard. I get it.” He rubs his hands over his arms, willing the soaked fabric of his sweater to dry faster.
Casey gives him a doubtful look. “Sorry, but what are you doing, exactly?”
Will scowls at him. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m trying to speed up the drying process.”
“By method of rubbing?” Casey shakes his head; for a second, it almost looks like he’s trying not to smile. “That’s not a recommended approach in any of the survival books, you know.”
“Well, what other choice do I have?” Will snaps, nettled and cold and so uncertain of his footing here that he barely knows where to step at all, and so might as well be honest. “My clothes—these clothes, on my body—are the only clothes I’m wearing today!
The rest of the stuff I brought is in my suitcase, which is in my hotel, which is forty-five minutes away, and if there’s anything left from when I was a teenager, it’s trapped behind Junk Mountain.
” He pauses, and, considering, adds, “And, I mean, in fairness, it has been a long time; it probably wouldn’t fit me, anyway.
So I have to make do with what I’ve got. ”
“If only someone had invented a machine,” Casey says, in tones of mock thoughtfulness. “One that you could use to make wet clothes dry. Almost like a…hmm, what’s it called…dryer?”
Rolling his eyes and, crucially, not thinking before speaking, Will says, “I would love to put these in the dryer, Casey, really, I would, but the thing is, again , they are the only clothes I’ve currently got, so unless you want me walking around the house naked?—”
Will pauses. And freezes. And tries, in a second that drips slow and thick through his mind like so much molasses, to tell himself that Casey didn’t hear it, or that he can somehow turn back time a crucial few seconds and wind the words right back into his mouth.
But Casey’s cheeks flush, anyway, the flare of crimson surprising Will almost as much as the way his expression flickers, from annoyance to surprise to something Will’s not sure how to interpret, but can’t look away from.
Their eyes meet, and for a brief and beautiful instant, Will’s back in those first moments in the market, only yesterday somehow.
He’s looking up at this unexpected, unlikely man, and seeing in his cool green gaze a whole host of possibilities Will normally wouldn’t even allow himself to consider.
Will hates Casey, of course. Maybe he didn’t the moment they met, but from the next moment, and in every moment since, he’s been insufferable and impossible; Will can’t stand the man, no doubt.
But it’s occurring to him—he can’t, in fact, make it stop occurring to him—that liking and wanting are not necessarily the same.
That Will doesn’t have to like Casey at all to wish Casey would push him up against the doorframe, redirect all the grating, frustrating parts of his unfortunate personality into making him Will scream at him in a new, more productive way.
That what Will wants to do with his clothes is neither wear nor dry them, but let Casey pull them off him one by one, ripping them if that’s what it takes, as they stumble together towards the nearest couch or bed or rug.
That, in fact, the hungry look that has appeared in Casey’s eyes is all the more thrilling because they don’t like each other; because whatever happened between them wouldn’t have to be nice, or polite, or considered, or appropriate.
It’s not like anything has been between them so far, and in every other respect that’s been dreadful, but now it makes Will’s whole body thrum with a sort of nervous, anticipatory tension that reminds him, distantly, of riding a roller coaster.
Then Casey’s face shutters and, his voice suddenly remote, he says, “Yeah, probably for the best that you restrain yourself.”
Whatever strange feeling was swelling within Will like a balloon pops unceremoniously, leaving the confetti of his burgeoning hope strewn across his mind. Without another word, Casey crosses the hall, climbs the stairs, and disappears up to the second floor.
“Well, great,” Will mutters to himself. “That’s just great.
I’ll stay here in the hallway then, freezing slowly to death, don’t worry about old Will, nothing to see here—” A thud on the stairs cuts him off, and Will whips his head up just in time to see the source of the second thud hit the hardwood.
Curious, he approaches, and in spite of himself, knowing it’s idiotic and pointless and hardly worth it and setting himself up for embarrassment in any case, his stupid heart can’t help but beat a little faster in his stupid chest when he realizes what he’s looking at.
Casey has thrown down, from the second floor, a pair of sweatpants, a T-shirt, a sweatshirt, and a towel.