“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. I am.”
His smile was less shaky now. I returned it, and bumped our knees together. “So … you kissed me.”
“Yeah.”
“In public.”
“Yeah.”
“We weren’t even together, though.”
“I’m sorry,” Will said. “I’m an asshole. I wasn’t even thinking straight. It’s just, I was high off winning the game, and you came, and it just made me realize that you had my back, and also I don’t think I knew how badly I wanted you there until you were. I’ve been meaning to ask if we could try again, but I didn’t know how to when I couldn’t promise anything. I wasn’t ready yet, and I didn’t want to drag you down with me while I figured myself out.”
“I shouldn’t have said that. You weren’t dragging me down because you needed to take your time.”
“No, but I wasn’t in a place where I could give you what you needed.”
I nodded. “So what changed?”
“I don’t know. A few things. Like, my dad being suspicious enough to ask me to keep the door open, but not demanding I tell him what was going on or steer clear of you. And also, Lara coming out, and Matt still wanting to be with her even if she likes girls, too. It made me feel a little braver, I guess. I was still scared, but I was tired of being scared. The not-knowing was getting worse than the thought of just jumping in and dealing with whatever happened.”
“And now the hard part’s over,” I said. “Your parents know, and your best friends know. And they still love you.”
“Yeah. I really think they do.”
I took a deep breath. “And so do I.”
This, I was pretty sure, was finally an appropriate time to say that. And Will didn’t reel away from me, or panic, or scramble to respond. Instead, he grabbed my hand and tilted his head back so he was looking at the ceiling. It seemed like he was trying to force his tears to slip back down their ducts. “I don’t deserve it.”
“But I do anyway.”
He let out his breath like every bit of tension in his body seeped out with it. “I love you, too. I think I always did. I was just scared of what saying that might mean.”
“And now you’re not?”
“Not even a bit, Ollie.”
After everything. Meeting by chance, and falling too fast, and breaking up, and falling again, and pushing him away. All of it. This was the first time anything to do with us felt calm and rational. There was no impulsivity in this moment, or thrill of being discovered, or the passion and lust of discovering someone. It was just us. Two people who weren’t strangers anymore, and who were now well versed on all the things that could stop them from working out, and who’d maybe figured out a way to fit together anyway.
Apparently tired of waiting for us, the rest of the group made their way back over to the table as one.
“All right, well, they didn’t look too angry,” Matt said, waving at the door with one hand.
“Nah, not angry,” Will said offhandedly, the affectionate tone of his voice gone right out the door. Some things never changed. “They’re chill.”
He kept hold of my hand under the table, though. So. That’d changed.
“Oh, sweet. And, uh,” Matt said, turning to me with a flourish. “Hi, Ollie.”
“Hi, Matt.”
“I cannot believe this has been going on since summer, summer, and no one thought to loop me in,” Matt said, obviously joking. “That is a bad start. We have bad blood now, Ollie, I’m sorry. You’d better do a fine job getting on my good side from now on. Everyone knows the best friend gets to call the shots in a relationship.”
“Who died and made you his best friend?” Darnell asked, bouncing his head to one side in disbelief. “But for real, why didn’t we know?”
Will shrugged, self-conscious.
No. Nope. Not good enough. “When was he supposed to tell you guys?” I asked. “When you were making jokes about who wants to marry me? Or when you were throwing shade at him for grabbing my arm at the dance? Or, maybe when you were laughing about us being boyfriends if he mentioned something about me at lunch?”
Darnell’s mouth went into an O shape, but Matt looked affronted. “Ah, hell, man, we were just joking,” he said to me. He looked to Will for backup, but Will wouldn’t meet his eye. “Wait, Will, we weren’t being serious. We didn’t think you were actually … like …”
“But I was,” Will said. “I’m bi, I think. Just like Lara.”
“I’m sorry. We seriously didn’t know.”
“Yes, well, maybe from now on we can cut the gay joke crap as a blanket rule,” Lara said in a cutting tone. “How about it?”
“You’ve got it,” Darnell said, and Niamh squeezed his arm.
“So,” Juliette said. “Are we going to that party now, or what?”
We all looked at Will. He flushed red, and shrugged. He didn’t seem capable of much else right now. “I dunno. People might be weirded out about before.”
“Hell no, you have to go, you won us the game,” Matt said. “If I’m going with a goddamn concussion, you’re going.”
“Is it the same thing, though?” I asked, and Lara choked back a laugh.
“But what if …” Will trailed off.
“You’ve got us with you,” Darnell said.
“Yeah. Like they’d even try that shit,” Matt added.
“Besides,” Lara jumped in, grinning over at Juliette as she did. “Even if they did. We can scream louder.”
“So, when are you telling Will?” Mom asked. She sat in the living room, clutching a steaming cup of black coffee, along with Uncle Roy and Dad, both of whom had beers in front of them instead of coffee. I was running in and out of the living room, packing my car with blankets, folding chairs, and a cooler filled with soda. I didn’t know if everyone wanted Coke, or Diet Coke, or root beer, or Dr Pepper, or Mountain Dew, so screw it, I was taking all of it.
“Tonight. I told you it was tonight.” I grunted under the weight of the cooler as I shuffled it through the propped-open front door to load into my trunk. I kicked something unidentified, and I peeked around. A marble. “Crista, I told you to pick up your marbles, people can slip on those things!”
“Oops! Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
“You should be,” I said under my breath, fighting a grin as she abandoned her iPad and scooped up the stray marble. What kind of new-age kid played with marbles these days, anyway? Wasn’t that a little vintage?
Not that I was going to hold it too hard against her. It was only pretty recently that she’d started poking her head out of her turtle shell again. A laughing, noisy Crista, tormenting Dylan and running around the house experimenting with new toy setups was far preferable to the quiet, nonchalant kid she’d turned into after Aunt Linda passed away. It wasn’t that she didn’t miss her mom anymore, of course. She still brought her up. All the time, in fact. It was just that she’d adjusted to the idea that life would keep on going without her mom, and she’d finally decided to catch back up with it.