A Boy in the Hand is Worth Two in the Head

Chapter 21

Will and I had scanned our pick again, me choosing which ones we would cull from the list, him pretending like he was the brains of this mission. He wasn’t fooling anyone, the girl with the clipboard that was watching him exclusively. I wanted to hit that girl in the face, or in the very least, yell to her to keep her hands, and eyes, off. Will hadn’t noticed though, so I wasn’t too stressed. If I was starkly honest, I wasn’t even stressed about what Will had told me, about Mr. Doherty. I knew what was going to happen now, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I’d given up hoping that Mr. Doherty would choose me instead of Will, because really, why would he do that? And now that it was pretty much confirmed that one of us would have to go? There was no way I would be staying.

Beside me, Will threw himself over the paddock fence, on his way over to the girl. I stayed, adding mentally, until I realised where he was going, and scurried after him, almost falling over the fence as badly as Matt had.

She was chewing lightly on the end of her pencil as Will pointed over to me. I rushed up to them, slightly out of breath, just as Will was telling her I usually seemed more coordinated. I frowned at him as he laughed at his own joke, and the girl joined in. I smiled pointedly at her, before showing which ones we wanted to cancel.

After a few minutes, Will had signed off, and with our receipt, we were free to go. One quick battle later, and I’d convinced Will that we really did need to go and see Crazy, Stupid, Love, just for the Ryan Gosling action. I don’t think he was too thrilled with the idea, but his condition was that I actually agreed to us going to the beach at some point. For any other actor, I would have been the homebody, watching movies on the couch while I told Will to go to the beach himself. For Ryan Gosling though? I figured I’d find a way to only go in as deep as my ankles. And if I was honest, the thought of Will, swimming, most likely shirtless was too good to pass up, no matter my terror of water.

However, as I hadn’t anticipated anything swimming related, I hadn’t brought my bathers with me. Will had decided he’d just find shorts somewhere, which I thought was completely unfair, gender-wise. Why couldn’t girls just swim in their underwear? I had voiced that thought, and Will had told me I could if I wanted to, with his little smirk, but I’d walked off on him before I’d had the chance to blush.

An afternoon, a movie with a beautiful boy – both in, and with – and a quick shopping trip later, in which Will had found a snow globe of Easton somehow, we were back at the house. Will was in an absolute frenzy, even though we weren’t leaving for two hours, at least. We’d have to drive about half an hour for my favourite place. Nothing even resembled anything close to this that Will had been to, I was pretty sure. He was going to flip out. This was why it worried me so much that he was having a panic attack just finding something to wear.

“I look like a twat.” His voice made me jump. I hadn’t realised that he’d come back into the room. I almost snorted, because he was right.

He pulled a face, and disappeared back into his bag of magic tricks, groaning in anxiousness. He let out one final groan of despair before falling back onto the mattress, his eyes shut.

“Geez, I thought I was supposed to be the one making the big deal about what I was going to wear,” I said, making my way over to his bag. I couldn’t believe how much he’d gotten in there. “What on earth were you packing for? A fortnight?” Will sat up slowly, his face the picture of despair. I searched until I found a shirt, and told him I’d be back in a moment.

By the time I’d raided Michael’s wardrobe, with worried amused glances from Mum, Will was just buttoning up the shirt I’d picked out.

I held up the tie I’d found, and Will just stared at me. “And you thought I looked like a twat before,” he sighed, taking it from me.