But he came over anyway, approaching me with long, confident strides. “Hey,” I said when he got closer. “That was amazing, I—”
He cut my sentence in half by grabbing me by the shoulders and kissing me.
I let out a squeak of astonishment. This was the exact last thing I could’ve expected to happen at that moment. Well, maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe the last thing I expected would’ve been the grand entrance of the Great, Ethereal Being, floating in on a cloud and playing the accordion while a group of warehouse aliens performed an interpretive dance to the tune. But in the realm of things that were actually possible, Will throwing his arms around me and kissing me hard on the mouth in front of everyone who mattered ranked approximately number one million, five hundred and fifty-two thousand, three hundred and seven. Point five.
He broke away, and didn’t even check to see who was looking. He just locked his eyes on me. “I love you,” he said.
There were no words. I couldn’t think of a possible way to reply to this. I just stood in dumb shock. Then I looked around on Will’s behalf. About half of the basketball team had paused in their tracks, staring at us with open mouths. For them, this was probably less expected than synchronized dancing warehouse aliens, I guessed. In the stands, Juliette was beaming down at us. And Will’s parents, who’d gotten about halfway down the stairs to congratulate him, were simply standing and watching with blank expressions.
I turned back to Will who, it seemed, was purposely not looking behind him to check on people’s reactions. “Why aren’t you at your gig?” he asked.
Why had the world suddenly tipped upside down? What, exactly, was going on? “Uh, I skipped sound check. It starts in fifteen minutes.”
“Did you drive here?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on.” He grabbed my wrist, and now it was him who was dragging me. This time, toward the side door. Dizzy with shock, and suddenly surged by an adrenaline rush, I broke into a run with him, as we pushed through the door and broke into the cold evening air to sprint across the parking lot to my car.
22
I could barely focus during the gig. Throughout the whole performance, I fixed my attention on the table at the back of the room where Will sat. For the first couple of songs, he sat with his shoulders hunched over, making himself small. All I wanted to do was throw my bass on the ground and run across the room to hug him and tell him everything was going to be fine, but I couldn’t.
Then, during song number three, Darnell, Matt, and the girls burst through the front doors of the Lost and Found in a group. Will watched them through dull eyes as they filed into his booth. I was desperate to know what they were saying, but heartened by the fact that the girls were there. I couldn’t imagine Matt giving him a hard time without Lara tearing him a new one, and there was no way Darnell would say anything that might upset Niamh.
But still.
The worst part was later in the set, when Will’s parents entered, pulling their coats tightly around them. As soon as the rest of the group saw them enter they scattered to stand against the far wall, giving the family some privacy. I wondered if Will had told them where he was, or if they’d figured it out.
I wondered if they were mad.
Sayid and Emerson definitely noticed how distracted I was, because they kept looking at me with pointed expressions. I just gave them a smile and shook my head. Don’t worry. I’ll explain later.
They were probably the last few kids left in school who hadn’t yet heard about what’d happened at the game.
Finally, we played our last song. The place cheered for us—including Will’s parents—and the band started packing up. I began rolling up an aux cord as Sayid checked his phone. His eyes went wide, then he looked straight at me. It wasn’t hard to figure out what he’d seen.
“Hey, Ollie,” he said, shoving his phone back in his pocket. “If you need to go and speak to Will about something, don’t worry about the rest of the equipment. We’ve got this.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, buddy, go.”
So, my head spinning with tension, I went.
I dragged my feet, waiting for Will to make eye contact with me and indicate if it was a good idea for me to come sit. He gave me a nod, so I swallowed, sent a quick prayer to whatever the hell might be listening in, and sat at the booth next to him.
Mr. and Mrs. Tavares both smiled at me, which was the biggest relief ever. Even if the smiles were a little tighter than usual.
“You did a great job up there, Ollie,” Mrs. Tavares said. “You have a real talent.”
“Thank you,” I said. My voice came out as a thin sort of squeak.
An awkward silence fell over the table. I don’t think Will’s parents knew what to say. And I definitely didn’t know what to say. Did I ask if everything was okay? Apologize for kissing their son? Bring up Will’s amazing shot at the end of the basketball game that now felt like it’d happened sometime the year before?
“Are you kids going to be out for a while?” Mr. Tavares asked.
Out as in, out of the closet, or out as in, out celebrating?
“Yeah—the rest of the team is partying at Reese’s house. I think Matt and Darnell want to swing by,” said Will.
Okay, yup, out celebrating. Glad I didn’t reply with “I’m planning on being out permanently,” then.
His parents nodded, and Mrs. Tavares looked to me. “Would you make sure Will gets home safely after?” she asked.
Unless I was very much mistaken, that sounded like something a parent might say to her child’s boyfriend. “Yeah, yeah, of course I will.”
“Thank you. We’re going to head home,” Mrs. Tavares said, scooting out of the chair. “We still haven’t had dinner. But, Will?”
He jumped.
“Remember what we told you.”
As they walked out of the building, their heads bowed together so they could speak in low voices, I turned to Will. “What did they tell you?”
His eyes were glassy, and he drew in a ragged, shaky breath. “That they both love me.”
Oh.
Oh, thank God.
Juliette was waving to catch my attention across the room, to see if their group could come back over. I held up my pointer finger. “And what did Matt and Darnell say?”
Another deep breath. “More or less the same thing?”
“That’s great. So why don’t you seem okay? Aren’t you happy?”
“I just, uh, I’m just waiting for something bad to happen.”
All the adrenaline and excitement from earlier seemed to have trickled out of him. His eyes were puffy, and his shoulders tense, his hands curled up into fists in his lap.
Under the table, where no one in the room could see, I grabbed his hand. “Nothing bad’s going to happen. That’s it. You’re through the bad part.”
“But what if my parents were just pretending to be okay because they’re in public? You saw them; they weren’t exactly jumping up and down with joy.”
“They said they love you. They asked me to bring you home. Do you think they would’ve done that if they didn’t want us to be around each other?”
He grabbed a napkin off the table and squirreled it away into his lap so he could pick at the edges. “No. I guess not.”