Chapter Twenty
CHAPTER TWENTY
After the sun fades and Camila plugs in the twinkle lights that span the backyard, Brooks packs himself a to-go container of food and bids us farewell to put his son to bed. Leonie slips an icy glass of white sangria into my palm. I fish out a piece of apple and suck on it. Will and I have migrated to the line of people waiting for the buffet of garlic-inspired dishes. The music has been turned up in direct accordance with the rowdier, alcohol-bolstered voices. The coolness of the evening sends tiny shivers up my skin, and I can feel tightness from sun exposure in my cheeks every time I smile.
“Will you be eating meat this evening?” Will asks as we pick up paper plates and diverge to opposite sides of the long serving table.
“Not intentionally. Though that steak with chimichurri does look amazing.”
“Brooks’s shrimp.” Will picks up a pair of tongs and grabs a few, adding them to his plate.
“No poopy veins in sight,” I say.
“I’ll be the judge of that, aspiring vegetarian.”
“What if, for tonight, I was an aspiring pescatarian ?”
“That’s between you and your god.”
I shrug, grabbing a single shrimp. “Lack of self-control around meat. Add it to the list of the worst things about me.”
We move forward in the line, and Will says, “Just because I’m giving you my list doesn’t mean you have to give me yours.”
“It’s only fair.”
He sighs, exasperated. “Not everything has to be fair, Josie. Most things aren’t.”
“Spoken like a true Jordan Belfort apologist.”
Will glares, which makes me laugh. I grab a blueberry muffin I’m really hoping doesn’t contain garlic and top my plate with it.
Aside from Camila and David, who are at the chef table up front, the rest of my friends are seated already. I lead Will toward their table and introduce him to Leonie. She and Gio inspect him with friendly suspicion.
As soon as I sit down, Leonie says, “So, J, I hear you bought a two-thousand-dollar vacuum cleaner from a door-to-door salesperson last week.”
I glare at Gio. “I told you that in embarrassed confidence.”
Gio shrugs, smirking as she dips her chicken taco into a pool of salsa. “It was too funny not to share.”
I grip my halfway depleted sangria. The liquid is sloshing around in my belly. “She had eleven brothers and sisters, left home at seventeen and emancipated herself so she wouldn’t follow in her parents’ footsteps of addiction, and was saving up to buy a car so she didn’t have to take the bus. She was interested in getting a cosmetology education and—look, it was a really impressive vacuum cleaner.”
When my eyes cut to Will beside me, he looks delighted by this information. “Elaborate,” he says simply.
“It has one million functions. There’s an entire bag of attachments. It mops. It shampoos the carpet! She had these little cotton pads, where you could see the dirt getting sucked up. Did you know—” I pause, remembering the saleswoman’s pitch. “Did you know there are dust mites on our mattresses?! This vacuum has an attachment for mattresses!”
Gio and Leonie burst into a cackle of laughter. I don’t think they’re taking the issue of dust mites seriously enough, but at least Will isn’t laughing at me. He’s resting both of his elbows on the table, shoulders leaning in my direction. I feel the barest graze of hair on his forearm brushing against mine.
“Dust mites on mattresses are a legitimate concern,” I say. “I googled it.”
“I believe you,” he says.
“It’s worth the money, in my opinion,” I add.
“You led with the seventeen-year-old who needed a car,” Will says. “Which means you were always going to buy that two-thousand-dollar vacuum cleaner, even if it only vacuumed.”
After a lot of cajoling, I promise to send a picture of the vacuum with all its attachments to everyone once I get home. Leonie tops off my sangria. I eat my plate of food, including the single shrimp, and am duly informed by Josue when he swings by our table that there is actually chicken schmaltz in the rice, sorry about that. Will and I split the blueberry muffin (no traceable garlic). We drink a little more, talk about everything, about nothing.
“I need to get going,” Will says eventually. “One of my other clients found out I stayed in town and wants to go on an early bike ride tomorrow.”
“Where are you riding?” Gio asks.
“Decker Lake.”
“Great spot,” Leonie says, nodding her approval.
“I still owe you four more worst things about me,” Will whispers, right into my ear. Goose bumps form in that spot and expand everywhere.
“I’ll walk you out,” I whisper back.
A heaviness falls over me as Will says his goodbyes, making a point to hug Camila and shake David’s hand. Though he isn’t necessarily a “charmer,” I’d still call him charming.
Charming on request, maybe.
By the time he meets me at the gate that leads to the front of the house, something in my gut has shifted.
“Did you have fun?” he asks.
“I did. Thank you for… making it fun,” I say.
I unlatch the gate. Will and I pass through. The click of the latch securing back in place pulls me into the moment. The scent of grass cooling in the night air. The hum of music blending with voices, the dull noise of crickets.
I’m expecting Will to head toward the street, but instead he keeps to the edge of the tall fence line until he makes it past the next corner. I follow him.
When I turn, he’s leaning one shoulder against the wood slats. I step toward him and lean my shoulder against the fence, too. A mere six inches separates our chests, which are breathing in and out, in and out. Coming close, then retracting in a steady pattern.
For a minute, neither of us says a word. We just stand there, letting our bodies hum in the dark quiet of each other’s presence. It feels like every molecule in my body is reaching toward him. Begging to touch him.
“Number two,” Will says. His voice unfurls along my neck, somehow massaging the muscles there I’d tensed. “I hate leftovers.”
This pulls me out of my trance. “I’m sorry. What? ”
“I hate leftovers,” he repeats. “I don’t like taking food home from restaurants, and if I’m cooking, I always try to make exactly the right amount of food for the number of people consuming it. Which is usually one.”
“You—” I pause, processing. “ Why do you hate leftovers?”
“They aren’t appealing to me,” he explains. “I hate thinking about food being cooked, cooled down, and then reheated.” Will shivers. “It just doesn’t seem hygienic, and on top of that, I was forced to eat a lot of leftovers as a kid because my mom cooked everything in bulk—don’t even get me started on freezer meals—and I just hate them. I would rather eat a banana and a piece of toasted bread with peanut butter for dinner than leftovers I took home from a gourmet restaurant the night before. Also, cooking is sacred to me—a very calming ritual—and reheating leftovers in the microwave has the exact opposite effect.”
I stare. “You realize some restaurants serve food that has been previously frozen?”
“Yes,” Will says, blanching. “I can almost always tell.”
“What about, like, preserved things?” I ask. “Like kimchi?”
“That’s fine,” Will says. “Though I’m pretty rigid about expiration dates.”
“Wow.” I rub a hand over my forehead. “Hating leftovers really is one of the… maybe not the worst, but certainly one of the most idiosyncratic things about you.”
He nods. “I’ve been told.”
“I survive off the Trader Joe’s frozen section.”
He smirks. “Well, there you have it. Our first sign of incompatibility.”
It’s a weak holdout, but better than nothing.
After a minute of processing I say, “I’m ready for number three.”
Will’s face grows solemn. “I snore. Terribly.”
I burst into laughter, which, had there not been a cicada or two nearby, might have been overheard by the party guests.
“I have allergies—dog hair being one of them, but also pollen and ragweed—and my snoring is worst in the spring and fall, but frankly, it’s tragic all year round. Plus, I’ve got a deviated septum.” Will presses a finger to one side of his nose, and I notice the tiniest curve there. “I’ve had multiple women leave, or ask me to leave, a one-night stand at three a.m. because they could not sleep over the sound of my snoring.”
My laughter simmers but doesn’t subside. “You woke up after sex with a stranger and were told to leave because of your snoring ?”
Will nods. “More than once.”
“When was the last time you had a girlfriend?”
“I dated someone when I was at NYU for about a year. She said she didn’t end it because of the snoring, but she complained about it often enough that I’m not totally sure I believe her.”
“What was the provided reason she dumped you?”
Dimples. “I didn’t drink enough. ”
“What?”
“She was a bit of a partier. I couldn’t keep up.”
“You were cramping her style.”
“Evidently.”
“I watched you drink tonight at a very normal rate.”
“Thank you,” Will says. “Back at you.”
“Okay. What’s the fourth worst thing about you?”
Will holds up a palm. “Hang on. These aren’t power rankings. They’re just the five worst, in no particular order. If you want to rank them later, that’s your call.”
“Deal.”
“Number four is: I love sports.”
He holds a serious face for about three seconds before the corner of his mouth kicks up, and I start laughing again.
“No!” I cry.
“Yes,” he responds, the word defiant. “I put that in the list of worst things the minute you mentioned it earlier. But the truth is, Josephine, I love Texas football, and I also root for the Nashville Preds. The NFL, I couldn’t care less about. But I’m really into college football and professional hockey.”
Part of me thinks that’s adorable—and anyway, who am I to judge his interests when I don’t want to be judged for mine?—but the whole point of this exercise is for me not to find anything Will tells me endearing. I expel a sigh, curling in on myself.
“Aside from the cheating thing you mentioned in the guest room, I’d argue these are more quirks than bad traits,” I say.
“Well, I saved the best for last.”
“You mean the worst for last.”
Will scratches at his arm. Despite the warm smile on his face, barely visible even from this close, I sense the shift in his composure. Up until now we’ve been mostly joking, but whatever Will is about to tell me has more weight. His smile drops a fraction at a time—until it’s gone, washed away by night. Somehow, it makes the stark color of his eyes intensify as they hold mine.
“Right before I left my previous job,” he whispers, “I was responsible for ending a marriage. So, on top of my parents’ marriage, which I also ended—” He winces. “That’s two now. My responsibility, both of them. And I didn’t do it gently or kindly the second time. I was thoughtless about it. Selfish. I broke someone’s heart.”
He pauses, gulps. “The point is, I have a habit of ruining things. Marriages. Friendships. Even business partnerships. I’m the common denominator. The person that causes your relationship to break. I try to do the right thing. I’ve always, always tried. I’ve never set out to hurt people. But I do anyway, every time. And I’m terrified, Josie, that somehow, some way, I will break something that matters to you again. ”
This, I realize, is Will Grant’s most shame-filled self-realization.
His lowest opinion of himself.
He broke Amber’s relationship with Zoe.
Zoe’s friendship with me.
Zoe’s opinion of her father.
Their father’s marriage with their mother.
And this other marriage, too—whoever that couple once was—which Will claims to have ruined in a way that inflicted obvious pain.
I could tell him other people’s relationships ending isn’t Will’s fault—but that’s not really his issue, anyway. It’s how things end. The role Will plays in it. His regret, his remorse, his self-loathing over his involvement. If he hadn’t kissed me on the beach, would Zoe and I have stayed close? If he hadn’t kept his father’s secret all year, would his mother have suffered less heartache? If he hadn’t dated Amber, would Zoe have never put distance between them?
More than anything, I want to pull Will into my arms, promise him he isn’t a villain.
In the very next blink, I do exactly what I want.
“You are not a bad person for telling your mother the truth,” I whisper against his neck. Will’s arms circle my waist, and he pulls me closer. “You are also not a bad person for keeping it from her because your father asked that of you. It’s not your fault Zoe and I stopped talking. She and I shoulder that blame in equal measure. And I don’t need context on what happened with that other marriage to know you feel remorse for your hand in how it ended.”
Will’s lips ghost along the crown of my head. One of his hands tangles in my hair. His other squeezes my hip, and I feel moldable.
“What if I was okay with being your collateral damage?” he whispers.
My breath hitches. “What?”
“What if you took from me what you wanted and left the rest? I can take it.” His voice is deep in his throat, breath warm on my skin. “Use me. Please. It would be an honor. I can exist for you only in moments like this one. I can be scarce when you need me not to exist.”
I don’t miss the way he changed the conversation away from his insecurities, but my brain is too foggy to switch back. “That’s not going to work,” I say, my spine arching.
“Why not?” He sounds frustrated.
“Because I don’t do anything halfway.”
Will rumbles out a laugh and presses one kiss to my temple before his arm loosens and he steps back. I inhale ragged breaths as we look at each other.
“No,” he agrees. “You don’t.”
He looks past me, steadying his own breath.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the words wholly insufficient.
“Don’t be, Josephine. You owe me nothing.”
“I owe it to you not to cross my own boundaries. Which I keep doing.”
He looks back at me. “I don’t exactly mind when you cross them.”
Silence swallows our want.
“Thank you for agreeing to my deal,” Will says, his voice husky and low. He shoots me one last loaded gaze and vanishes into the dark.