Will
Chapter Seventeen
Sometimes it seemed like people spoke just to hear their own voice.
Elsie came to mind, but she was different. The things she had to say were usually interesting—or at the very least, they were absurd enough to make you think twice about what the hell she was actually saying.
But most people? Specifically in this town—it was like they were trying to fill every moment of the day with mindless chatter just for the sake of it.
It usually wasn’t until I climbed into my truck at the end of the day that I was able to take my first solid breath.
I closed my eyes, leaned my head back against the seat and exhaled, ready to finally go home—
Knock, knock, knock.
“Jesus,” I groaned, resenting the intrusion before I even opened my eyes.
“Will,” Ava’s muffled voice called, forcing my eyes open.
I rolled down the window to hear whatever errand it was that I knew would delay me from going home.
“Can you give me a ride to your parents’ house?” she asked. “I’d walk, but I don’t want to be late for babysitting.”
I exhaled, mentally preparing myself for the ordeal that stopping by my parents’ would turn into, no matter how briefly we intended to stay.
“Fine.” I nodded my head toward the passenger side.
“Fine?” she asked, testing me.
“Yes, Ava. Fine. I’ll drive you.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, a sarcastic edge to her voice. “I wouldn’t want to put you out or anything.”
“Get in the truck.”
“Fine,” she mocked, in what I imagined she thought was an imitation of my tone.
I shook my head and started the ignition.
There goes heading home.
“The kids are here,” I heard my mother holler before the front door was even open.
Knowing her, she’d probably been peeking out the window when she heard the truck pull up, and no doubt watched every step we took up the walkway.
Although we all lived within minutes of each other, every time we showed up at their doorstep, my parents met us with the enthusiasm as if we’d crossed state lines to get there.
It wasn’t like we had dinner every Friday night or anything.
“What, is it Friday?” My dad’s voice was audible at the first crack in the door.
“No, Jack, it’s Wednesday!” she called over her shoulder before turning to beam at us. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Is it Friday?” Dad shouted, and I pictured him sitting in his armchair in the living room, probably watching one of his crime shows.
“No, Jack, it’s Wednesday,” she yelled louder, and I wondered why the hell they were speaking at such a volume when there were only a few steps between the front door and the living room.
“Hi,” Ava said, finally able to get a word in.
“I didn’t make anything for dinner.” Mom’s face fell. “I wish I had known you were coming.”
“We’re not staying,” I told her quickly.
“Because I didn’t cook?”
“No, Mom. Not because you didn’t cook. Because we’re here for a minute to pick something up.”
“I’m actually babysitting tonight,” Ava explained. “And I figured I’d stop by and pick up a few of our old games to bring by.”
I’d already told Ava in the car that I doubt a modern six-year-old today would have any interest in the kind of stuff my parents had lying in the basement.
Sure, the Legos might hold up with today’s kids, but pretty much anything besides their tablets or video games were obsolete.
But I knew Ava, and she could never walk into somewhere empty handed. She wanted to feel like she was being useful, somehow.
I guess she and I could relate on that point. The difference was, while she wanted to be useful to people, I had to be. Otherwise, the guilt would eat away at me until helping became less of a kindness and more of an obligation forced upon me by my own mind.
Which is why I was standing here on my parents’ doorstep, instead of sitting on my couch with a Budweiser.
“Babysitting?” Even my mother was shocked. “Who?”
“Tessa’s son.” Ava bit her lip, no doubt frustrated at my mother’s reaction.
I don’t know why she viewed it as some type of moral failing. Not everyone got along with kids. It didn’t make her a bad person.
“Oh, he’s a handful, Ava.” My mother frowned. “Are you sure you’re up for that?”
“Yes,” Ava bit out. “But I have to be there soon. Would you mind if I ran downstairs fast?”
“Of course.” My mother held the door open wider. “You know our house is your house.”
Ava slid past her and down the stairs without another word, leaving me standing on the doorstep staring at Mom.
“Are you going over with her to help?”
“What? No. I’m just giving her a ride.”
“Will.”
“She’s a big girl, she can handle it.”
And if she can’t, then she shouldn’t have volunteered.
“Are you at least going to pick her up at the end of the night?” My mom stared me down the way she used to when I was a kid.
“She’ll be fine, Mom. She’s a five-minute walk from Tessa’s house.”
“But it’ll be dark!” She gasped in horror. “It’s not safe for a woman to walk alone at night.”
“It’s Colbridge.”
“William Hughes, I swear—”
“All set,” Ava said, coming up the stairs with arms filled with Jenga and Monopoly and that horrifying Furby she used to play with.
I fought the urge to shudder when I remembered the demonic noises it used to make while I slept.
“You have fun tonight, honey,” my mom said, an uneasy edge to her voice that I was sure Ava took note of. “And you call if you need anything.”
“I’ll be fine,” Ava assured, waving me off when I tried to take some of the stuff from her arms. “Thank you!”
“Watch out for her,” my mother mouthed to me.
I rolled my eyes and turned to follow Ava to the truck.
Even though Ava was only my sister through marriage, my mother had treated her as part of the family for as long as I could remember.
And for most of my life, it had been fine. Normal. She wasn’t really my sister, but she might as well have been for all the time she spent by our side growing up.
Me, her, and Matthew—we did everything together, and I guess I figured we always would.
Matthew dying altered our lives in a way that couldn’t be undone, but that wasn’t what changed the dynamic between us.
Ava had done that herself five years ago, and try as I could to get past it, I wasn’t a good enough man yet to move on from what had happened.
Maybe I never would be.
But for my mother’s sake—and for Matthew’s, I did what I could for her. I was cordial with her while running the café together. I helped her when I could. I sat beside her every damn Friday night to appease my parents, who still didn’t have a clue in hell that anything was wrong between us at all.
And if sometimes Ava still looked at me like she was heartbroken over the way things were between us now, well then, I just pretended I didn’t notice.
We drove in silence for a few minutes, and because I knew the girl so well, I could feel the tension radiating off her in waves, filling the cab of the truck unbearably.
Ava had offered to walk to Tessa’s house, but it was on my way home anyway and I didn’t see why she would even offer when she knew she’d be lugging a load of crap through the streets with her if she did.
The only reason she wanted to was because she was pissed none of us thought she could handle a night alone with a feral kid, but I wasn’t going to let her stubbornness make her life harder.
I pulled up to Tessa Brooks’s house, ready for the detour of the evening to finally be over, but Ava made no move to leave.
“Well, call me if you need anything,” I told her, hoping she wouldn’t.
“Are we okay, Will?” she asked, hand hovering over the door handle.
“Why wouldn’t we be?”
I knew it was a shitty response, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to go home. I didn’t have the time or energy to dissect the breakdown of our relationship.
“Things feel different lately.”
“Literally nothing has changed between us,” I told her truthfully. Everything was the same as it had been for the last five years—since the day she married my brother.
“Ever since Elsie showed up—”
“Why do you keep bringing her up?” I turned sharply. “And while we’re at it, why have you been such a dick to her lately?”
Her brows pulled together.
“You’ve been acting different ever since she got here. You’ve changed—”
“I didn’t change, Ava.” I shut her down. “Things changed, and you know exactly the reason why. Unless the memory of your wedding day has suddenly evaded you somehow—”
“Please,” she clenched her eyes shut, “don’t bring that up.”
“I didn’t bring it up. You did by opening up this conversation.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly into the darkness of the car. “It’s just hard for me, the way things are. We used to be friends, Will.”
“Yeah,” I scoffed, “well, that changed a hell of a long time before Elsie got here.”
She winced, and for half a second I felt sorry for saying it.
“Look, Ava.” I blew out a breath. “Everything is as fine as it’ll ever be, okay? We might not ever get to where we used to be, but that’s just how life goes sometimes. Okay?”
She stared out the window, up to the house where a lamp lit up the window.
“Okay,” she said finally, opening the door. “Thanks for the ride.”
I heaved a sigh, watching her walk to the door with the board games and toys in her arms. It hurt because sometimes I still saw her as that seven-year-old girl I once knew.
I hated the way things were, just as much as she did, but I didn’t know how we could rewrite the past. We could only go forward from where we were at.
I cursed under my breath, shaking my head at myself for getting involved in this night at all.
I should’ve let her walk.
Because sometimes helping didn’t help at all.
Sometimes, it only made things worse.