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.
"I said no to Matthew because I care." Quick and easy. It was something to keep him wondering as I formulated a way to keep what I was truly feeling hidden.
"Care about?"
His fingers started playing with the strings on his dark blue pajama pants that I'd barely gotten him to wear, but for some reason I wished they would have been in my hair.
"I care about..." I sighed. This was one of the hardest things to talk about, especially for someone like me. "I care about the way you smile, the way the laugh with all of you, the way the sun kisses your skin when I can't, the way you appreciate things when you think no one is looking, the way you care about me, and the way you are. I...care because you make it very difficult not to."
There was a silence. This was the first time I'd ever said any of this out loud. Even Dr. Newman had never gotten to hear the things I'd just told him. These words had kept me up at night, kept me from smoking, and kept me from digging into things I didn't want to anymore. What I felt for Will made me feel insanely together.
"I make it difficult not to care?"
There was an intensity in his stare that I couldn't break. It was oddly warm and yet, it was still careful as he looked me over once more. His hands stopped playing with the straights of his pants to get mine to stop picking at the skin around my fingernails. I had to focus completely on him now and the bruises that marred his skin.
"Will, you have no idea what you do to me, and I don't think I have a complete grasp on it either." It shocked me that I told him with an unrestricted sort of honesty. I could tell by the way his eyes light up he was more than happy with what he'd just heard.
"Is it a good thing?"
I giggled softly. He cared so much about me, and he wasn't letting his walls come up in the least bit. It calmed me enough to let mine fall as well which made my heart stutter.
I wasn't using him anymore. At least, not in the same way I had been. He wasn't a distraction from the closed door right down the hall from me, nor was he distracting me from my missing brother or mother. No, he was making me look at it and acknowledge that these were things in my life I couldn't change. Will was doing a far better job than Dr. Newman in that field.
"It probably is," I shrugged with a small smile.
The thing about this whole thing was I couldn't pass this off as nothing.
"Can I ask another question?"
"You're just full of those, aren't you?"
"Yeah, but can I ask another?"
Maybe the pain reliever was kicking in finally. I hoped it was kicking in because watching him wince almost every time he moved was too much for me to handle. I couldn't even begin to grasp how he felt, especially now hours after the adrenaline had worn off. William had to be hurting.
"What's stopping you?" I asked with a small smile to let him know it was okay.
"Rather, what's stopping you from having everything you want right now?"
There was a way out of this. It had to be simpler than telling him I was being lavishly selfish in the ways I held him close and didn't let him go. Maybe a joke. Maybe a harsh smirk followed by something cleverly heart-breaking, but not enough to slow him down from his constant pursuit of me that I had come to enjoy. But, I couldn't. I couldn't lie to him about any of it.
"The truth is...I have a bad habit of hurting people and getting hurt. I don't want you to be another fire burned town on my way through."
It was simple and honest. I wouldn't be able to take it back, but the way Will was looking at me made me realize I couldn't take it back or rather I didn't want to. His dark eyes were on fire in a way that made my bones sizzle.
My dad had once told me that it was easy to tell if a girl liked a guy because you could see it in the way she smiled. A guy, however, showed his affection in a different way, in a way that proved the statement "The eyes are the windows to the soul." My mother and him at that time showed me every waking moment whenever they were together or referring to each other my father was right. Damn, he was right.
"What would you do if you weren't afraid?" His hand came over and rested on mine that were picking at my fingernails.
I had to focus on him. On the way his cool hands relaxed me. On the way his lips were pulled tight as he realized he didn't want to say that. On the way his brow was furrowed when he thought about how he couldn't take it back. And, more so than anything, I was focused on the way his eyes never left mine and held a determination in them that caused the fire I had seen there before to grow.
"The last person I loved died, Will," I whispered.
We both knew that I was well on my way to falling for this guy who sacrificed the way he felt for the people around him. The guy that smiled for short time spans because he didn't want anyone to see the dimple on the left side of his mouth. The guy that laughed with his whole body even if it wasn't that funny at all.
Damn, he loved laughing.
"You're the most wonderful thing I've ever come across," he told me.
His hand moved up to caress my cheek. Softly. Lightly. Almost like being touched by a feather.
"I can't."
"Why choose me? Why choose me over Matthew?"
"Because I care so much that I know I'm going to hurt you or hurt myself. And I can't care about Matthew in the same way because I don't want to. Fuck, Will, I like you way too much to choose someone else."
I wanted to hit myself. I wanted to throw myself out of the window. I wanted to not be here right now.
But, Will gave me this half-smile, and I couldn't stop myself from intertwining his fingers with mine the same way he just had not too long ago. It was going to be okay, for some reason. I knew it wouldn't not be okay.
"What are you doing this Friday?"
He hadn't pressed me to keep on this path of actual destruction as I blared out how I felt about him. I was grateful but curious. It was only natural.
"Probably not much of anything. Why?"
"We'll talk about it tomorrow. I'm tired." And true to his word, he yawned.
I smiled slightly before moving into his side. We jostled around trying to get the blankets out from under us, and I ended up having to cover his mouth before he laughed too hard and loud. His laugh vibrated all of him as he kept trying to get the blankets. Once he finally had, he rolled down the bed fluently to bury his face in my stomach just for his time to laugh.
I liked his laugh. It was like wind chimes on a breezy day and kids playing in the street. There was happiness in his tone that felt more than genuine. It was like happiness itself was exuding out of him through his insanely loud laughter, and I found myself smiling.
"Wait...go change." His laugh was gone and he was up on an elbow to look upwards at me.
"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" I asked.
His fingers danced up my thigh that had become bare from all our moving around. Maybe there was something wrong with wearing the dress to bed, especially if it made anything easier for him when he was still in pain.
"Don't," I mumbled, getting up from the bed.
"What's wrong?"
"You're hurt. Don't play innocent with me, Will."
Carefree. It'd been a short while since I'd seen him truly act carefree, and it was a lovely change to sinister, serious Will if that was such a thing. He was a breath of fresh air in my efforts to mourn and move on. I could see more and more every day why Hazel kept him around and a secret from me.
"Second drawer down are t-shirts and below that is shorts," he told me with a grin as he laid down.
I went off to change quickly knowing his clothes wouldn't fit. The shorts sagged low even with being tightened completely and the t-shirt would hit me mid-thigh, but I didn't mind. His clothes smelled like him and a mix of some sort of spring scented detergent. I liked the way he smelled like honey, mint, and some weird mix of evergreen and rain. It was nice and was still stuck to my sheets from all the times he'd been over, but I was here for the first time since our rendezvous started.
"Is my closet nice?"
I couldn't help but smile and shake my head before opening the door and walking towards him. The jokes were hidden in his eyes, but he didn't say any of them. Instead, he opened his arms and pulled the blankets back so I could join him in bed. Then he held me when I knew I should have been holding him.
"Does it hurt?" I whispered.
"A lot," he mumbled against my neck.
"Can I do something?"
"Go to sleep."