Elsie #2
I couldn’t imagine, because I didn’t know what that was like. Family dinners. Gathering around the table at the same time every night. Talking about your day, your life to people who actually cared.
My parents were very much a fend for yourself and only let us know if you’re bleeding or dying type of family. Suffice to say, family dinners weren’t a typical occurrence in the Cameron household.
“Was Ava there?” I asked, wondering if that had been a source of the tension.
He snorted. “Always.”
“Wait,” I said, realizing the date, “don’t you usually go on Friday nights?”
“Aw,” he said, a pathetic attempt at a half-smile. “Keeping track of my schedule? I’m honored.”
“Shut up.” I rolled my eyes. “Why were you there tonight?”
He paused, exhaled through his nose, and then said, “It’s the anniversary of Matthew’s death. I guess they figured it might be easier to handle it if we were all together. Clearly, that wasn’t the case.”
I stared at him, noticing the tense set of his shoulders and the face that still seemed to be so young, despite the weight of everything he carried.
“I don’t know why I’m taking this too hard. It’s been a few years now, but it hasn’t seemed to make a difference.”
“He was important to you,” I said, sitting close enough to him that our knees touched.
“He was my best friend.”
“You’re lucky you had that,” I said. “But I’m sure that makes it that much harder. I don’t know what it’s like to love someone that much. Never mind losing them.”
“I guess that’s a blessing.”
I frowned. “How do you figure that?”
“If you never love anyone, then you don’t ever have to deal with losing them.”
“That’s an awful way to think about life, Will,” I scolded, thinking about the way he seemed to shut himself off from the world. “Don’t you dare even try to keep that up for the rest of your life. I won’t let you.”
He muttered something under his breath that sounded like, tell me about it, but I couldn’t be sure.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “And anyway, I didn’t say I was doing that. I just said it was easier.”
“Is Matthew the reason why you try to take care of everyone else all the time?”
Why you try to take care of me?
He stared at me, a mixture of shock and vulnerability that told me I was right on the money.
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling suddenly like I was overstepping. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
He paused, stared at me for a long moment, and then looked away.
“It was my fault.”
“What?” My breath caught.
“The day Matthew died. It was my fault.”
How had Matthew died? A car accident, Ava had said. Hadn’t she?
For a horrible second, I worried Will had been the one driving that day. It wouldn’t necessarily make him at fault, but being there to witness it up close, it would be too heavy a burden for anyone to carry.
“Were you there?” I asked carefully. “When it happened?”
“No,” he said, easing my fears with a single word.
“Then, how could it be your fault?”
“I told him that day, that day, that his tires were shot. I mean, completely bald. It’s a wonder he’d even let them get to that point at all.
” He let out a shaky breath. “I told him that he needed to change them. Get it taken care of before he got hurt. He told me he’d handle it, and I took him at his word.
And maybe it would’ve been fine if it hadn’t been raining that night. ”
I held my breath, knowing that while I may never have met Matthew, he’d been important to Will, and that alone made me grieve for his loss.
“I guess he hydroplaned, right off the road. And if I forced him to handle it right away—if I’d just changed the damn tires myself, it wouldn’t have happened.”
Suddenly, a flood of images came to my mind, of Will taking care of everyone and everything that needed to be done in this town. Even me, even though I was just a stranger.
He constantly worried that if he didn’t do something, it wouldn’t get done. And now I understood why.
“Will,” I shook my head, “that’s not your fault. That was an accident. A terrible accident. You can’t even know for sure if it was because of the tires or not. Please don’t blame yourself for something that you couldn’t control.”
He stared at me, his hazel eyes looking exhausted from more than just the events of tonight.
“I guess we’ll never know for sure,” he said, holding my gaze until the moment felt far more intimate than I could handle.
Get it together. I told myself.
Will didn’t need me swooning over him and his pretty eyes when he was clearly going through something. I needed to be here for him. As a friend.
“You can’t take care of everyone all the time, Will,” I told him, trying to make him understand. “I know you think you have to, but you don’t.”
“I don’t always want to,” he admitted, a hint of a laugh forming on his lips.
I leaned closer, whispering conspiratorially, “That includes trying to clean my gutters at eight o’clock at night.”
“That’s different,” he said, face inches from mine.
“How?”
“It’s you.”
“What does that mean?”
“I want to take care of you.”
I sucked in a breath, aware of our knees touching, aware of the heat I could feel from where his shoulder touched mine, aware that he was staring at my lips.
Oh God, am I letting this happen?
Will leaned in, and I leaned in.
Yes, I’m definitely letting this happen.
His face was inches from mine. Less than inches. He went straight for my mouth, about to press his lips to mine and—
“Meooowwwww.” Creamsicle let out a pitiful yelp as he scratched furiously at the screen door.
Both of us jerked apart, staring behind us where my cat stood on his hind legs, as if he thought he could reach the door handle through sheer will.
“I should go.” He stood up, looking nearly as breathless as me.
“Yeah, I should, too,” I said, unable to look him in the eyes.
Had I just taken advantage of his vulnerability? I hadn’t meant to. I couldn’t handle it if that were the case. Or had he been complicit, just looking for comfort in a girl he knew was a month away from leaving for good?
I couldn’t handle that either.
God, how was I ever going to look him in the eyes again?
“Goodnight, Will,” I said quickly, running inside before I could meltdown in front of him. “Breathe, Elsie, breathe,” I coached myself through the waves of panic threatening to pull me under. “Everything is fine. Nothing happened. No lines were crossed.”
Too wired to write, I sent the most recent pages I’d typed over to the printer so I could read over what I’d written to make sure everything was still somewhat coherent.
And figure out how the hell I’d written Ellie and Hugh into an almost kiss, and then ended up in that exact situation myself moments later.
I paced the kitchen, reading each page of the manuscript with analyzing eyes, trying to figure out where the story got sidetracked. But it wasn’t making sense; I needed the full picture.
I went back to the start, reading every single chapter over—the entirety of what I’d written in all the time I’d been here.
Ellie hating Hugh. Hugh hating Ellie. The reluctant friendship formed by the necessity of their circumstances. The accidental meetings that kept pushing them together. The banter, the conversations, and the late nights they seemed to keep sharing.
And when I got to the end, that last part I’d written, the kiss made perfect sense.
“Oh my God,” I gasped, clutching the papers to my chest in horror. “I wrote an enemies-to-lovers.”