This Summer #3
I roll over, glaring up at Will.
“Then why? Why can’t we date?”
Will looks like I’ve slapped him. Floundering, he shakes his head, blinking rapidly.
“Wake up, Will,” I spit. “We’re together all the time. You and my mom text. And nobody, nobody knows me like you—”
“Because you’re my friend,” Will hisses, face red. “Friends with benefits, that’s what you said, Alex. Meaningless fun.”
I feel pierced clean through.
“Has this been meaningless to you, Will?” I whisper. He sighs, wiping both palms down his face.
“That’s not what I meant,” he mutters.
“I just don’t understand,” I say, “why you’re okay doing all these other things but not okay with me being your girlfriend.”
“What I don’t understand is why you’d want to ruin a good thing?” Will says. “Things are great as they are; why change anything?”
“Because they’re not great,” I say.
“What?” Will frowns. I close my eyes.
“This year has been torture.”
Will rakes a hand through his hair. “I just…I thought you liked what we were doing,” he says quietly.
“I do,” I say. “That’s the problem.” He looks even more bewildered as I sit up, clutching the sheets to my chest. “I love everything we’re doing. But it’s not enough. There’s an invisible line you won’t cross. It makes no sense. We’re already best friends—”
“Exactly,” Will says. “Exactly.” He shoots me a fierce look. “This is why I never wanted to do this in the first place, Alex. Because what are the options here? We start dating. Inevitably we break up. And then I lose my best friend. And I don’t want that. I don’t wanna lose you.”
“Why inevitably? You assume we will, but—what if we don’t?”
Will squirms uncomfortably, not meeting my eyes. And then I realize—
“You don’t want that, either, do you?” I whisper.
Will shoots me a defensive look. “You wouldn’t understand,” he says.
“When you graduate, you get to go write poems and drink wine with all your MFA professors.” He licks his lips, looking haunted.
“I’ve got one year left before all my freedom’s gone.
When I graduate, I get to look forward to a life like my father’s.
Decades of cubicles, eight hours of vacation accrued every thirty days.
Married, kids, suit and tie, the same shit over and over for the rest of my—” Will cuts himself off and pulls at the roots of his hair with both hands.
“If we date, I either lose you forever or get the chains clapped on at the age of twenty-one.”
“The chains?” I wheeze, pressing a hand to my chest, my eyes overflowing. Will looks stricken.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says.
“How else could you mean it, Will?” I say softly, dizzy from the hurt. Will shakes his head.
“Alex, I do care about you. Of course I do. So much. But you get it, right? Like, it’s complicated, you know?”
“Actually, it’s pretty simple for me.” I squeeze my eyes shut.
“I love you, Will. I want to climb in your lap while you check your emails in the morning. I want to have my first Manhattan with you while I’m in Manhattan for the first time.
I think about you getting old and your perfect Dopey from Snow White ears getting fuzzy with hair, and—and, god help me, I want to be the one to help you trim it.
Yeah, if we broke up, it would ruin me. But you’re worth the risk, Will, because I love you.
I would love you even if you lost all your hair, your teeth, your arms, your toes.
” I hunch over, keep my eyes closed. “Maybe we wouldn’t break up.
And wouldn’t that be wonderful? Wouldn’t it? ”
The silence is screaming.
It takes all the guts I have, but I open my eyes. Will’s staring at me, and he looks obliterated.
And so, so sorry.
“Oh,” I say, feeling my chest cave in. “So you don’t…” I wave weakly between us. “You don’t feel…” That’s as far as I make it. If I keep going, I’m gonna lose it.
Will’s eyes are swimming. “It’s not—like I said, it’s just not so simple,” he says in a strangled voice.
God, I wish I wasn’t naked. I lift my chin. “Do you think,” I say, “that you can turn around?”
“Alex.”
“I’d like to dress, please.”
“Alex, you know I care about you—”
“I think—I think I’m gonna go.”
“Of course I care about you, too, it’s just in a—”
I hold up a trembling hand, and Will’s voice dies. “Please,” I say, the word fracturing. “Please. Just let me leave, Will.” I can’t look at him anymore. Will looks like he wants to say something else but dutifully turns his back to me.
I stumble into my clothes, fighting down my sobs. I’m hollow. If I were to fall right now, I’d shatter like an empty snow globe.
“All right,” I say when I’m dressed. “Bye.”
“Alex,” Will pleads when he turns back around. “It’s three in the morning. Don’t go.”
“Turns out my worst decisions happen at three a.m. Trying to avoid more fallout.” I look into Will’s eyes one last time. “Please don’t call or text me, Will. I’ll reach out when I’m ready.”
“Alex…” Will crawls to the end of the bed, shaking his head, and it breaks me. The sobs that spill out of me are rib-cracking in their violence.
“Please, Will,” I beg. “If you can’t love me, leave me alone.”
Will hangs his head.
I slip out of his apartment without a backward glance and sprint headlong into the night.
This Summer
Everyone’s schedule is impossible, so the only night we can have a graduation dinner is the night before I fly across the country to start my writer’s residency.
We’ve reserved the entire rooftop patio, and Mom will not stop FaceTiming our relatives to show them the twinkling Atlanta skyline. Helena, a friend from my senior thesis class, brings me another champagne.
“I just caught your dad hugging a male model,” Helena says. “Like a long, lingering hug.”
“Male model?” I laugh. “How drunk are you, Heli?”
“Shut up, they’re coming!”
My dad is beaming as he strides up.
“I’ve gotta check on your mom, but before I do—look what the cat dragged in,” he says.
“Oh,” I breathe when I see who’s stepped out from behind Dad’s tall, broad frame. “Hey, Will.”
“Oh,” Helena gasps. “You’re Will.”
“That would be me,” Will says sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. “I think my line is, ‘Hope you’ve only heard good things,’ but…” He winces. “At least all press is good press, right?”
Helena scrunches her nose. “Weeell—”
“You’ve got to go check on that thing, don’t you, Heli?” I say through a clenched smile.
“What thing—”
“Thank you so much, Heli, you’re the best, bye.”
She snorts, rolling her eyes with a smile before sauntering off.
“Sorry about that,” I say. Will nods thoughtfully at Helena’s retreating back.
“I like her.”
“Yeah, she’s an angel. Except when it’s one hour until the deadline and she’s had five energy drinks.
Then she’s basically Nosferatu.” We both laugh, but it’s stilted and short.
Glass and silverware clink softly in the background, the murmur of conversation a gentle accompaniment to the live soft jazz from the far corner.
Will’s hair is neater. Tousled, but in a sculpted way. Long on top, short on the sides.
“New hair,” the champagne has me blurting.
“What?”
I finish my champagne before replying. “Your hair,” I say, setting the empty flute on a nearby table. “It’s good. God forbid you cover up those ears of yours.” Will’s eyes light up with quiet amusement, and we lapse into silence.
“Oh!” I say suddenly, lunging desperately at a remembered tidbit. “I heard that you got a job!”
“Yeah,” Will says, nodding, polite and professional. “Pretty good gig.”
“Um, one of the top consulting firms in the world? More like the gig.” Will smiles with practiced humility.
“I got lucky.” Will makes a sudden excited noise. “But you! Your dad just told me—full scholarship to a writer’s residency? Like that—that blows my stupid job out of the water.”
“Oh, please.” My headshake is rigid; my humility is not as elegant as Will’s. “I got lucky, too.”
“Absolutely not,” Will spits, a touch vehement, and it’s a pleasant departure from the Will Gray Inc.
thing he’s been doing so far. “I didn’t just go to your poetry readings because we’re friends.
I loved them.” He pauses. “I miss them.” Will lifts his eyes to mine, and his smile’s a little sad. “You’re my favorite poet ever.”
I swallow several times, but my throat still feels thick.
“Stop,” I say. “That’s far, far too kind.”
“It’s not, though. It’s not.” Will shoves his hands in his pockets. “I should have said that before.”
“Oh,” I say.
The quality of this silence is different. Bluer.
Will clears his throat. “You know,” he says, “it’s nice how clear the weather’s—”
“I hate this,” I say suddenly.
“Me too,” Will immediately agrees. He sounds relieved. The look he gives me now is warm and familiar. The brick wall I’ve built in my chest cracks.
“You end up getting that tattoo on your birthday?” I ask. Will takes a moment to adjust his cuff links.
“No,” he finally says. He looks up at me. “But looks like you did.” He taps the tiny dragonfly on my wrist. “Not our T. rex, though.” He’s quiet a moment. “Why the dragonfly?”
I pull out of Will’s reach, rubbing his touch from my arm.
I blink hard at the ground. “Dragonflies have managed to survive for three hundred million years. Their wings are see-through, and a toddler could crush them, but they’re resilient.
” I stare at my tattoo. “It’s a reminder that I am, too.
” I meet Will’s soft eyes, and my wall fractures further.
“You’d know all this if you’d read my chapbook. ”
Something ripples over Will’s face. “Alex…”
I shake my head. “Never mind.” I swallow hard and flail to change the subject. “So, do you think you’ll be happy in New York City?”
The question seems to catch him off guard. Will tilts his head, searching my gaze. “Sure,” he says eventually. “Why not?”
“Just sure? You’re gonna be living the sexy hotshot life of a consultant—”
“I’ve missed you,” he says.
I freeze. I’m suddenly having to swallow down anger. I scramble to plug up the leaks, sealing the cracks to the wall in my chest as I steady my breath.