“No,” he said, with finality but without force. At first I thought it was because he didn’t mean it, but after I knew his habits a little better, I realized it was because Will said what he meant and didn’t care if people believed him or not. When he dropped me off at home, just before he drove away, he rolled down the window and said, “Happy Halloween.” His voice bordered on mocking, but he had chosen to prolong our conversation, and I decided that had to count for something.
“Watch out for the tricks,” I said, trying to wink at him and succeeding only in kind of squeezing my eyes shut emphatically.
“It’s the treats you really have to watch out for,” he said, and drove away with the window down, like maybe he was hoping to hear more from me. Or maybe he’d just liked the fresh air.
After that, all I’d wanted was for Will to like me. Well, and to be around him all the time. I had always second-guessed myself, always been a little uncertain. I’d been raised to be polite to people and not to make waves. So Will’s straightforwardness, even if it was a bit abrasive, was intoxicating. The notion that you didn’t actually have to say what people wanted to hear just to make them feel comfortable—that it was a choice—felt thrilling and transgressive, and I’d become fascinated by watching Will move through the world and interact with people in that way. He wasn’t unkind exactly. He just refused to follow what I’d always thought were ironclad rules of social engagement but which, it turned out, were as easily brushed aside as cobweb.
I couldn’t believe it had been two years. By comparison, last Halloween didn’t even bear thinking about. I’d wandered around Holiday after getting home from a long day of classes, wishing that Daniel and Rex still lived there, wishing that Will were with me, wishing… wishing for there to be something that made the day stand out from any of the others.
Now I asked Will, “What did you end up doing tonight?” He’d declined my invitation to come to the parade with us.
“Oh, you know, not much,” he said casually, which I was learning was Will code for “I hooked up with someone.” Which, of course, I knew he did. But somehow knowing it happened, and knowing it had just happened, weren’t quite the same, and pain lanced through me at the thought of Will with someone else.
I didn’t press him about it, though. I’d made that mistake a few weeks before when I’d shown up to hang out one night, and he was clearly in a bad mood. Even though I took some small pleasure in hearing him complain about what an idiot the guy he’d hooked up with had been, it hadn’t outweighed the knowledge that Will would rather mess around with some random guy than try being in a relationship with me. When I’d said as much, Will had fixed me with a pained expression and said, “You’re not like those fuckheads.”
A million questions had buzzed to the surface with that comment. Like, if they were fuckheads, why did he sleep with them? (Well, fine, that one I could figure out on my own.) Or, if I weren’t like them, then wasn’t that a good thing? Didn’t it bode well for our chances?
But before I could start reeling off my questions, Will had patted the couch next to him and rolled his eyes. “I’d rather hang out with you, anyway,” he’d said, flicking the TV on. And my breath had caught in my throat so I couldn’t have said anything if I’d wanted to.
“So, did you dress up for the parade?” Will asked.
“Yeah, I went as Dream from The Sandman. It was pretty awesome.” I had borrowed Charles’ long black coat and moussed my hair into a gravity-defying mop. No one had known who I was, though, or they’d asked “Are you that dude from The Cure?” To be fair, the hair was rather Robert Smith-esque.
“Ah. Feeling tragic, are we?”
I was, now, kind of.
“What would you do if I was?” I had been going for a flirtatious tone, but it ended up sounding like a genuine question.
“Well, I suppose I’d have to distract you from the utter tragedy of your young life.”
That was totally an opening for some kind of racy comment about precisely how he might distract me, but I flubbed it by thinking too hard for something sexy to say, and gave up.
“Midterms are getting so stressful,” I said, allowing the legitimate exhaustion I’d been fighting to infuse my voice. “Everyone’s totally crazed and everything’s loud and I can’t concentrate. I have a gazillion things to do, especially this project for my physics class that I really want to do well on.” Will was basically a workaholic, so I figured he’d respond well to that.