Chapter 22
July
Four and a half weeks until Opening Night
A few days go by without seeing Will, and I’m surprised: I feel it.
I think I miss him. I keep hoping I’ll run into him.
The stagehands are starting to think I’m interested in carpentry because I keep strolling by the set build, hoping to find him there.
I keep thinking about Nick’s party, Nick’s inexcusable behavior, but more importantly, how kind Will was.
How gentle and tender and good he was to me.
How that is all he has been since I’ve known him, even in high school.
It’s not just me; it’s how he is to everyone.
Nick has been on good behavior, but his motives are always right under the surface.
I don’t even have Will’s number. I could ask Theo, but it would thrill him too much, and anyway, I’m not even sure what I need it for. Just . . . contact. Access. I have a day off rehearsal while my dad focuses on the mechanicals’ scenes, so I drive out to the cidery.
The main sign says Closed when I arrive.
I pause in the driveway, unsure if I should proceed.
My plan was to casually cruise by to purchase some cider.
It never occurred to me that he might be closed.
I idle there a moment but am interrupted by a cloud of dust coming toward me: Will’s truck with a canoe strapped to the top.
He slams on the brakes when he sees me. He looks confused.
“Hey!” I call out. “Sorry, I, uh . . .” He gets out of the truck and stares at me. “I was going to buy some, um, cider?”
“Sorry, I’m closed.” He gestures to the sign. He seems different today, more guarded. I was hoping he’d be happier to see me. “I’d open up for you, but I’m just heading out . . .”
“Yeah! Yes, of course, no worries, it was just, I was just passing by and . . .” I’m rambling.
“I’m glad to see you,” he says. He gives a tiny smile, but there’s something blank behind it.
“You are? Okay, good, I’m sorry to be weird, just showing up, I just . . .”
“You just needed some cider.” His smile grows a bit.
“I did,” I say, gaining ground. “Like, really badly.”
“Here I was hoping you had just come to see me.”
“Oh! I mean, it’s great you’re here, but you’re going, so, I mean, I . . . I can fill my, uh, cider needs elsewhere.”
“You’ll never get it as good as mine.” He smiles, and my insides liquefy. “Sorry,” he says. “The joke was right there.”
“Totally,” I say. “Anyway, I won’t keep you. You clearly have some seafaring adventure to deal with.” I glance at the canoe.
“I was just going for a paddle.”
“I figured.” There is a small pause. “Okay, well, let me just turn my car around, and I’ll be on my . . .”
“Do you wanna come?” The words tumble out as if in spite of himself.
I glance again at the canoe, then at him. I can’t figure out his face, some strange blend of hope and sadness. “I don’t know how to do . . . canoe.”
“Oh, I can show you. Easy.”
My plan for a cute casual drive-by is so long gone. I’m flustered. But I have waited for days to see him, and now I’m being offered an exclusive audience. “Yeah. Okay.”
I move my car and hop in his truck. I’m suddenly shy. His energy is strange. He’s not super chatty to begin with, but today he is oddly silent. He turns on some music, a sad, quiet acoustic song, and we drive.
We arrive at another little lake outside of town, at an empty boat launch on a long, narrow stretch of water.
Will tosses me a couple of paddles and a backpack, releasing the canoe straps and hoisting the canoe onto his shoulders and over his head effortlessly.
It’s the most attractive thing I think I’ve ever seen.
He leads us to the water and swings the canoe down.
“Wow,” I say, impressed. He shrugs, but I can tell he’s pleased.
“Okay, hop in,” he says, pushing the canoe halfway into the water. I make my way around and sit in the middle, facing him.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“I don’t know, this is my first canoe.”
He shakes his head. “No way did you grow up here.”
“I was inside a dark theater, learning Shakespeare. I didn’t have time for paddling around in little boats.” He throws his head back, a laugh bursting out of him, and it feels like a victory.
“Oh my God,” he says. “Okay. Go to the front. Face the front.”
Once I have awkwardly shuffled forward and Will is in, and we have pushed off from shore, everything awkward becomes smooth. The lake is silent. It’s lovely.
“Grab your paddle.”
“Oh, no, that’s okay!” I call back. “Thank you, I’m fine. You go ahead.”
“This isn’t a Central Park rowboat,” he says.
“Okay, so?”
“So pick up your paddle, Belmont.” I sigh and do as I’m told. “One hand on top, one halfway down.” I slap the water uselessly. “We’re not icing a cake; you need to pull the water.”
“You’re very bossy.” I hear him grumble behind me. I try to pull the water like he said, but my paddle keeps going sideways. “I’m no good at this.” I huff. “I don’t know why people like this.”
“It’s usually very relaxing,” Will says.
“It’s hard.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes life is hard, Miranda.” His voice is clipped. “Fine, you know what, just throw the paddle behind you. I’ll paddle.” He starts working harder. He has already given up on me. He’s annoyed. I don’t blame him.
“No,” I say, a little stung. “I’ll do it.” He doesn’t reply. I start again, making a better effort.
“Move your hand down the shaft. Grip it harder.” In a lighter moment, I would flirt here, but I just nod and adjust my grip. “Good, now try to keep it close to the canoe, plunge it deeper.” Jesus, he’s killing me. “Yeah, that’s better. That’s good.”
We get enough of a rhythm going that it starts to feel purposeful.
I’m stronger than I realized, and once I get the feel of it, we move across the lake at a decent pace.
It’s warm but cloudy, giving the day a sort of hazy feeling.
We can hear kids at a cottage across the lake, but as we move into the narrower end of the lake, the cottages give way to huge cliffs on either side of us.
There is virtually no shoreline, just water and rock. It’s stark. It’s humbling.
Will sees me looking around. “This is a dangerous stretch of water,” he says. “There was this terrible tragedy years and years ago where a Boy Scout group got caught in a storm out here and had nowhere to land.”
“That’s terrifying. What happened?”
“Well, they all drowned,” he says.
“Oh. That’s awful.”
“Yeah.”
We don’t talk for a while. Something about the rhythm, the sound of the water, the way my arms burn in a good way all lulls me into a quiet I haven’t felt in a long time.
It’s active and passive. Meditative. It’s not the most picturesque day, and something is up with Will—I feel it coming off him in waves—but still, it feels good out here.
Finally, the narrow stretch opens up to a small bay, at the end of which is a rocky peninsula with a scattering of trees.
Will guides us in and pulls up alongside the edge of the rock.
We hop out, lifting the canoe onto the shore, and stagger onto the rocks, our legs like jelly after the paddle.
We sit on the warm rocks, and Will pulls out a couple of beer cans.
“No cider?” I ask. It’s surprisingly generic beer for a brewmaster. “I haven’t had one of these since high school.”
“Not today,” he says. He cracks his open and takes a long slug. He swallows hard. I open mine and take a sip. It tastes thin and metallic. I set it down on the rocks.
“This is nice,” I say, even though it isn’t, not really. The air feels heavy. Will feels heavy. The beer isn’t good, and I’m sitting on a patch of lichen in shorts and my legs itch.
“It’s our birthday,” Will says quietly.
“Oh my God!” I say. “Happy . . .” I look at him and catch his eye. Of course. Our birthday. I don’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry.” It feels so limp.
He sighs heavily and downs the rest of his beer. I hand him mine, which he takes gratefully. We sit in silence for a while before Will finally speaks.
“We started doing a birthday canoe trip when we were in high school. Just the two of us. We’d paddle out to an island somewhere and camp.
People always wanted to make a big deal out of our birthday.
Our parents were great, they did these big parties, but as we got older, we just wanted something for just us.
And it was just always the best time.” He stares out at the lake.
“This was my first paddle without him.” I glance over at him, surprised.
“The first few years, I just couldn’t bring myself to, you know? I just couldn’t do it alone.”
“And you got a terrible substitute,” I say. “I’m so sorry, Will.”
“No,” he turns to me, eyes wet. “I’m really glad you’re here. I was just sitting in my driveway with the canoe on the truck, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave. And then there you were.”
“Well,” I say softly, “I’m honored. Even though I suck.”
“You were actually doing pretty well toward the end there.”
“That’s generous.” I pick at the lichen on the rock. “Would you . . . could you tell me about Jonah?” I am so aware of him beside me, his shirt damp with sweat, his shoulders slumped, the stubble on his cheeks. I’m aware of the weight of him.
He thinks for a moment. “When you’re a twin, people love to categorize you, like, this is the nice one or the mean one or the smart one or whatever.
I think a lot of twins really want to be, like, individualized like that?
But in a lot of ways, we were really similar.
We liked the same stuff. We had the same values.
We had really similar goals. The cidery was his idea.
So, it wasn’t like we were polar opposites at all.
But he was the better one.” I open my mouth to interject.
“No, but he was. He had an edge on me; he was funnier and cooler and kinder. He was like this future version of myself, myself if I could just be a little better, walking around next to me.” He sighs.
“And he’s gone. And I’m just me. And I don’t have him there, two steps ahead of me, showing me how to be.
” He blinks rapidly and takes another deep swig of beer, and I know what he’s doing, he’s trying not to cry.
I gently pull his arm down. I take the beer and set it aside.
I take his hand. He looks at me surprised, then looks away, letting out a heartbreaking, ragged exhale, and the tears fall, silently running down his face and his neck onto his T-shirt.
We say nothing, just sit there facing out while he lets the wave of grief pass over him.
The clouds start to clear after a while, and the sun comes out.
Will stands, peels off his shirt and shoes, and goes to the water’s edge.
He looks around cautiously at the rocks before jumping into the water, surfacing, then swimming out.
I didn’t bring a swimsuit. I strip down to my bra and underwear, which thankfully are passable.
He catches me undressing out of the corner of his eye and turns away until I am in the water.
I swim out to him. He leans back, starfish limbs, and floats on his back, belly up.
I do the same. The sky has cleared, and the few clouds left drift past us.
Our hands bump in the water, and he clasps mine, and we float there for a long time, the sky above us, holding each other up.
After we have paddled back, after we have driven back, making light, easy chat about bands he likes, concerts we’ve been to, we pull up in his long driveway in front of my car. We get out, and he pulls me into a long hug.
“Thank you,” he says into my hair. “I’m glad you were there.”
I resist the urge to make another thin joke about my poor paddling skills. “Me too,” I say. “Happy birthday.” I lean up and kiss his cheek quickly, then turn away, waving as I jump into my car.
Oh, there is something there. But today isn’t the day to find out what.