“I always need my girl.” His voice is slurred but clear, telling me he’s coherent enough to understand the choices he’s making. I force myself into the room, sitting on the edge of the bed in front of him.
We stay in silence for a while. I hear Will breathing, and I try to focus on it instead of letting my mind slip back to the memory of Grant in that room.
“I saw you,” Will interrupts my thoughts. I meet his tortured eyes and let that confession float between us. “Why didn’t you just tell me it was him?” His voice is casual, nonchalant even, and it makes me feel insane. Like I blew this entire thing out of proportion. Assumed he cared more than he actually does, like I always do.
“Do you care?” I ask, looking directly at him, seeing that flicker of truth behind his eyes.
“Does it matter?” he challenges back. I bite the insideof my cheek, hard enough that I taste the copper tang of blood in my mouth.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” My voice is filled with the weight of resentment. The weight I’ve been carrying around with me unknowingly for years.
His eyes soften, filling with something indecipherable. “Of course I care, Gen.” It’s that voice that always gets me. The charisma he uses as a mask is gone—all that’s left is the vulnerability he’s only given to me, like a gift.
I feel the tears move back into my eyes, feel the air between us shift as he senses the seriousness of this conversation.
“I think I ruined it.” I let the tears fall as I stare out the window beside us, wishing the blackness of the night could consume me, let me fall into it and disappear completely. Will grabs my hand from my lap and squeezes it softly as he moves beside me, acknowledging that he knows I chose him. I let my gaze meet his, full of love and concern for me. The only love I’ve known to be unconditional. “He knows about Lily.” I watch as Will’s eyes shift, dropping my hand and turning to look out his window, and I feel pain course through every bone, the ghost of his hand on mine haunting me.
“Did you tell him?” He says it more to himself and I think for a moment that maybe his love wasn’t ever unconditional but a myriad of concessions I’ve had to make over several years, proving myself to him again and again.
“I did,” I tell him, clearly and without reservations. I know I’m not wrong for giving Grant my honesty. Allowing him to share in this part of me. Even if he didn’t end up wanting it. He squeezes his knees with his hands, not meeting my eyes. “I’m going to tell her, Will. It’s time.”
He gives me a sharp look.“It’s all a lie you know.” His voice breaks as he pushes his hands through his hair.
“What are you talking about?” I use the back of my hands to wipe my eyes, confused.
“Grant. He doesn’t want you,” he says, like the idea is funny to him. “It was a bet. We made it at the beginning of the season. I told the guys I wouldn’t play when scouts came if one of them could get you in their bed. He just wants to take me down a peg.” He crosses his arms, his jaw set and I feel the betrayal cut me like a knife.
“Right. Because the idea of being with me is just so horrible, you’d have to be bribed,” I sniff, roughly pushing the tears away.
“That’s not what I said Gen.”
“You didn’t have to say it, it’s obvious. It’s been obvious for the past ten fucking years, Will.” My voice elevates as we stand face to face. Anger and pain ripping apart whatever decorum was left between us.
“Is that what you think? That I didn’t want you?” His voice has an edge that makes me want to deny it. Makes me want to stuff the words back inside and never let them out. “I didn’t want toloseyou, Genny. I can’t.”
The sharpness melts away quickly and left there is a boy with an open wound, begging to heal. Part of me still wants to be the one to help him. Part of me probably always will. But I’ve had my hand on his heart for too long, applying pressure to keep the pain at bay and all it’s done is left both of us infected with the lies we’ve told. The secrets we’ve kept.
“It’s never been about not wanting you.”
We stare at each other for a long second, and his face inches closer to mine as he leans over the invisible barricade protecting us from all the choices we were never preparedto make. A few of his own tears meld into my own as he closes in and for a brief moment I let it happen. Let my eyes close and feel those little pieces of me that were stolen through my adolescence click back into place. His lips part and brush mine and it awakens something inside me. The wrongness of this moment, those tiny pieces of me that Will still holds on to nothing in comparison to the ones I left in that room with Grant.
“No.” It’s hushed but he feels the word against his lips as I gently push him back.
“Stop, Gen. Stop—” His hand’s tangled in the back of my hair, his forehead against mine and I can’t stop from choking on a sob.
“I can’t, Will.” I breathe into him and he pulls back, tortured and ruined. All of the pain rotting between us. The parts that once fit so well together now jaggedly severed.
“I can’t do this without you, Gen. I don’t want to. It’s always been me and you.”
“Ilovehim, Will.” The words seep into my marrow as I say it, as if it’s the first honest thing I’ve ever said. He flinches away from me, like it was the final bullet and it hit its mark.
“No,no. I know I fucked up. I hurt you and didn’t appreciate you. I know this is all my fault but I promise I’ll change. But Gen, you don’t love him. It’s us.” His panic rips through the space around us but there’s nothing he can say to offset the clarity I feel here with him. The knowledge that I should never have left that room. Never have left Grant.
“I don’t want this.” It’s barely a whisper through my tears as I gesture between our bodies and watch the words crush all that’s left of him.
“Gen, I love you…please.Please.” He grabs my arm as I stand to leave and I let the pain of that statement hit me, the words I’ve been waiting on for the past decade. “Youpromisedme, Genny. You promised you wouldn’t leave.”
“Why can’t you just let me go?” Tears cloud my vision as he stands, trembling hands gently grabbing my shoulders.
