Will wasn't allowed to eat the night before going into the operating theater, so Jules and I watched a movie while Will had an early night, ready for the five a.m. taxi ride to the hospital.
My dinner went down as easily as strips of newspaper and tasted the same. I was so restless during the movie that Jules fluttered around me with concern. "He's gonna be just fine tomorrow, Zeph."
"I know." I summoned all my willpower to snap out of it, enough that Jules eventually calmed down, and was about to head home.
But at the last moment my body decided to give up and confess everything, my fucking tearducts working in overdrive. Breathing like Meena had taught me didn't do a fucking thing, and my eyes brimmed with tears. Jules, who'd been half-way out the door, settled back on the sofa.
Just do it, Zeph. Cry if you wanna.
Hot tears fell, Jules comforting me with such loud reassurances that I thought that Will would wake up and come back into the room.
"Shh, Jules. Will's asleep," I rasped in between tearful breaths.
"He's gonna be fine," she said for the millionth time, trying to draw me into her arms, but my skin was burning with prickly heat, like I was fully baked. The room felt close and humid, and I suddenly wanted to be on the beach with freezing zephyrs blowing on me.
I covered my face with my palms. "It's not just that, Jules. I...I've done something really bad."
"Really bad?" Jules pulled my hands away from my face. "Something to Will?"
"Yeah...I..." I couldn't even say the words. Fretting endlessly over Will's surgery had truly wrecked my mind, making me see weird shit, and feel weird shit. "I shouldn't feel like this about him."
"You're...attracted to him?"
I looked up at her in silent confession. It sounded so wrong out loud. "Yeah."
"Hey, Zeph," she giggled, slinging an arm around me. "That was kinda obvious."
"How?"
"The way you ran outta Lavanderia crying when Selena teased you about him?" She gave me a fond smile. "You haven't done anything bad, Zeph. I'd be more surprised if you didn't feel attracted to him. Will's like...crazy handsome."
"I didn't realize he was, Jules. But today, suddenly it just all..."
Jules's brows pinched in thought. "You've known him for months and didn't realize that he's crazy handsome?"
I could understand Jules's disbelief. I cared about Will so much, but I hadn't really taken in what he looked like. Over the seven weeks that I'd known him, Will had just looked like every other generic humanoid, with a beard floating around other nondescript features. If I'd been aware of his looks, I'd have been driven to utter distraction in his wake over the past weeks.
How could I have lived with him for so long without noticing him? Without feeling anything? No desire, no longing, no...total abandon, around him. Wasn't that my thing? I lived for chasing hot guys like him, for chasing not-so-hot guys for that matter. At least, I used to.
"I never thought about that kinda stuff with Will. He was just...Will. But today on the beach, he was laughing, and..."
Jules was silent for long moments, but then cleared her throat, and spoke in a soothing voice as if she had it all worked out, and everything was gonna be just fine. "You've been spending a lot of time together since Mozhgan died. Nobody can blame you for getting a little...infatuated."
Yes. Infatuation. That was it. A dumb crush. A stupid infatuation because I was so grateful for what Will had done for me. But, why did it all burn so intensely if I was supposed to be dead inside?
Perhaps I'd been away from Sigma for long enough that I wasn't dead inside anymore. Maybe I wouldn't see all men as generic humanoid fleshbags anymore, but as men I wanted to chase. If I was going back to my old self, then it made perfect sense that I'd suddenly notice Will, the first unfortunate soul to be flattened under my reawakened desire as it steamrolled off the beach.
"You're right. It must be just a stupid crush. We do spend a lot of time together, and we've been through tough times recently."
It was a logical and reasonable conclusion. Stress and bereavement had made me feel things that weren't really there. I wasn't to blame. I just needed to spend less time with Will, and sit tight until my inconvenient infatuation blew over.
Lying to yourself again, Zeph?
"You'll get over it real soon, Zeph. You just have to keep your distance from him." Jules gave my hand an encouraging squeeze, as if keeping away from Will was gonna be anything other than total fucking torture for me.
The fact was that I was already away from Will. He'd been working late for almost two weeks and I'd barely seen him, which should have made my dumb infatuation wane, not rise to a teary fucking crescendo.
And it had been two weeks of boredom and listlessness without Will. Every evening all I'd done was bug Will for exerting himself too hard before his surgery, or I'd pretend to myself that was why I was doing it, when I was probably just mad at him for not being there.
Jules meant well, but she'd totally overestimated what I was capable of. It wasn't just an infatuation that I could shrug off in a few days. Since we'd arrived in Santa Elena, things had been different with Will. Sure, I'd viewed him as a generic beardy dude, but one whom I wanted to spend all my time with.
And it wasn't like we were talking deep and meaningful shit all that time. Will was so quiet that often we'd spend entire evenings in comfortable silence, Will throwing me an occasional little smile so that I knew that he was OK. All the hours and hours we'd spent together since we met had slipped by so easily and happily that way. Whenever we were with the neighbors or in McKays he'd hide himself in a corner or shy away from attention or scrutiny, but he'd never hidden any part of himself from me.
"I don't think that I can keep away from him, Jules." The thought of weaning myself off Will hurt like thousands of tiny cuts to my heart. I didn't even wanna try. We'd come too far for that, given too much of ourselves. "I used to live with three other gay guys, and we were real close. They were my best friends in the world. But I never did stuff with them like I do with Will. The stuff we do is so...It isn't what friends are supposed to do."
"Like what?"
"Like sitting on the beach every night and listening to the ocean. And talking about music all the time. And cooking together. And sometimes we just spend hours in silence, and..." I grabbed at my hoodie, Will's hoodie, "...I wear all his clothes."
"That's all normal stuff that people do, Zeph. You and me have cooked together and sat on the beach, and I even bought you clothes."
"I know. But...it's all so easy with Will. It's been like that since I first met him, but I didn't notice because my head was messed up. But I realize it now. Since I've known him I always...cared about him way too much."
"Like...you worried about him?"
"No, not exactly. I mean...I did worry that I was too much trouble for him in the first days. But since he took me to see Mozhgan, the day after he rescued me, he's always been so...precious to me. I've always wanted to take care of him since then."
"Zeph, it sounds like you're in love with him."
I shook my head. It wasn't that. It couldn't be. "No, Jules. Isn't being in love supposed to make you feel happy? I don't wanna feel like this. It just hurts."
"It's normal to be scared that you might ruin your friendship by feeling something more. He probably feels the same about you."
I shook my head again. "No way, Jules. He doesn't. We're so different. He wouldn't ever..."
Wouldn't he, Zeph?
"I don't know," I breathed.
I scoured my stupid mind to recall my recent evenings with Will, searching for any hint that he felt something for me. But the brain-shelves reserved for Will chose that exact moment to shed their entire contents. My mind went blank. I couldn't remember anything.
Only a beautiful smile that always looked like it was just for me. And a rumbling laugh that always sounded like it was just for me.
"I was so jealous when you came, Zeph," Jules laughed, cringing into her cupped palms. "It was pretty stupid."
"Jealous of me? Why?"
"Of how quickly you and Will got close. He's never brought anyone to Santa Elena before, let alone a total stranger. We were expecting you to be some scared little bird, and for Will to be all awkward around you. But it was like he'd always known you. It was so unlike him. And it made me wonder if there was something going on between you two. Until I got to know you and realized that you two are just like that."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. You're so...into each other. Even if you don't notice it yourselves, you act like you're in love. It's enough for everyone. You're always looking out for him, and he looks at you sometimes like...like he can't believe his luck that he rescued you from your ex. And you two were so close when Mozhgan died, we all thought that you were in love but just...not saying it because you're gonna go back to Korea."
I put my head in my hands. "This has all gotten so messed up somehow, Jules." Maybe all the pressure from everyone assuming that we were together had affected me. Even Sabrina had thought that we were married.
But Jules was right; I was going back to Korea. I'd get over Will once I was back home. For the moment, Will needed me to help him recover from surgery.
"What are you gonna do?"
"I don't know. I need to take care of Will, change his bandages for a whole week. I gotta think about his recovery, not about all this stupid shit going on inside me. I need to be a friend to him. And when I'm back in Korea I can get over it."
"You're gonna meet someone perfect for you in Korea, I know it."
Jules left at midnight, both of us having convinced ourselves that I was stuck in an inconvenient and temporary crush that would right itself of its own accord, although both of us probably knew inside that it wasn't true. The most important thing was putting Will first while he recovered.
I didn't have it in me to tell Jules what I'd learned from Charlotte, about Lars Eriksen not having a PhD. Jules had chattered away to Will all through dinner about Lars's plans to move to Arenosa, his ideas for developing the FlowYoga portfolio, attracting shareholders, creating new marketing strategies. She'd been so animated when talking about Lars that I felt like such an asshole trying to snoop around. To Jules it would look so fucking petty to investigate Lars just because he looked a little like a criminal I'd slept with three years earlier.
Besides, I figured that not having a PhD made little difference to the sale of his businesses, and a PhD wasn't a requirement to be a yoga teacher or fitness instructor, or anything else in the fitness world, where it seemed more like bravado and business acumen were better qualifications than...actual qualifications.
As I drifted off to sleep, Jules's words kept echoing in my brain. You're gonna meet someone perfect for you in Korea. Proximity to Will was hurting me, so it seemed logical that getting home and forgetting all about him would take the pain away.
But I wasn't dead inside anymore; I was going back to being my old self. My old fickle self. Back to that tired routine of chasing men like I was going crazy for them, the thrill ebbing away when they were finally mine, spurring me onto the next conquest before anyone ever got to see beyond my game-face. Was that what I had to look forward to when I got back to Korea?
I shivered in my bed, Will's cozy childhood bed. Will was the only man who'd ever seen beyond my game-face. My mask had slipped away forever when he'd first laid eyes on me, at the top of the stairs in Seven, soot-streaked and trembling in a nylon dressing gown. Over the past weeks he'd seen every disgusting little bit of me, and had accepted it all with a shy smile.
Jules's words rattled on in my brain. You're gonna meet someone perfect for you in Korea. The very idea that I'd forget Will within seconds of laying my eyes on the next guy was absurd. Not only had I already found someone perfect, I'd been swimming in his ocean for weeks, and he in mine. I didn't know where I ended and where he began.