Till All Hours

xi. evergreen and rain

chapter song : Fever // the Tragic Thrills

My dad called me to make sure I was okay that night. I told him I was fine and not to expect me home for dinner, despite what Will was hoping for. There was no questioning about where I was because he was used to it by now. It didn't upset me, not really, but I knew most parents wouldn't be this way with their children. It only served me right when Will gave me a strange look that didn't settle in my stomach well.

"Who was that?" he asked, wincing as he moved to the edge of the bed.

"My dad," I told him as if hoping he'd let it go.

He did. His face held a selective look of uncertainty, but he didn't do anything to expand on the subject. Instead, he moved back onto the bed so his back was resting against the pillows and patted the open space beside him. I crawled across the bed to curl in beside him. It was weird to me that he knew when I needed to be held as opposed to when he did. Will was more guarded than I was when it came to the emotions he showed everyone which said a lot more about him than it did me.

"Are you staying here?" He didn't look at me but rather the closed door to his closet with a poster of what seemed like the blue prints to the empire state building.

"I can go if you want me to," I mumbled.

I didn't want to leave, especially after the day he had faced. There was a feeling of responsibility I faced whenever I was around him, whenever I saw the bags under his eyes that were now masked by bruises, and whenever he held me. I didn't think this feeling would happen for some time, but it had and I wasn't upset by it. If anything, I was upset by the fact that I had warned him and he didn't listen. He didn't listen for reasons I couldn't simply understand.

"You're fine," he told me before kissing the top of my head.

The silence filled the room and settling in between us like a barrier we were both touching but unwilling to break through. It felt abnormal to be uncomfortable around William. He had always been the person I ran to whenever I was uneasy and he made his best effort to help me.

"Tell me what you're thinking about," I whispered as I threw my leg over one of his.

That seemed to break the wall between us. His hand ran over the bare skin of my arm slowly to either calm himself or me, and then his fingers intertwined with mine that had been running over the bare, bruised skin of his chest. This was a first. We'd never held hand before in the time we'd been like this, so close and together.

"I'm thinking about you." There was a conviction in his tone the made me squeeze his hand tightly. Will didn't squeeze back.

"What about me?"

"It's been a month and a half of you nonstop, and I still don't even halfway understand you."

"That's a given."

A giggle and an exhalation of air.

"No, no...Hayley, I don't get you. You said no to Matthew. You say no to me. You say no to everyone."

The humor was gone. This was bitter and left a harsh taste in my mouth that caused me to slip my hand out of his. My body slipped away from his until I was sitting, crossed-legged, with my gaze on him. Will's dark eyes wondered slowly from my hands that were angrily picking at each other to my lips which were rolled into my mouth in anxiousness to my eyes that watched his every move with distress clearly settled in them.

"Why?"

There it was. The question that I even asked myself on the days when things didn't settle in my stomach in the same way they normally did. It made me queasy thinking I'd been the one and only thing to ever truly upset myself.