“It just doesn’t feel right,”I had told him.“Something’s off.”
Then I went on to explain that it wasn’t even just that I was miserable without him. It went deeper than that, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. The guys were in agreement. While missing the shit out of Will definitely put me in a funk, there was more to the block than just that.
It was confirmed when we got back to the hotel, and we secluded ourselves in my room, and I took out my guitar and played the song I wrote for him. Will. My guy. Sunshine personified, even on the gloomy days.
God, that look on his face…
I’ll write him a song a day for the rest of our lives if it means getting to see that look on his face again.
But it was after playing it for Will that I realized what was off about it all.
It wasn’t thesongthat was the problem. It was sharing it with anyone other than Will that felt gross. Wrong.
“It’s easier,” I hear myself say as I return to the present, “to be sad.”
Will’s brow knits. “What do you mean?”
Gulping, I look up at him through my lashes. “People shit on happy things all the time.”
“They shit on sad things too,” he says slowly, eyeing me carefully.
“But it’s… easier…”
Understanding lights up his blue eyes, widening them.
Behind me, I hear Mason’s and my voices playing back through the speakers, isolated from any instrument. So perfectly harmonized, it sends a chill down my spine hearing it.
“You’re protective of it,” Will says quietly, nodding, as if confirming something to himself. “The happy stuff. The good stuff.”Us,I hear, even if he doesn’t say it out loud.
Pressing my lips together tightly, I simply nod back.
What Paul just said before, about pushing us out of our comfort zone… combined with what Will told me yesterday…
“You don’t just disappear when no one’s looking."
…It all finally clicked. The reason why this has been so hard.
I’m… fuck, I’mcomfortablebeing miserable. Not only that, but I’m comfortable talking about it too. Between therapy and meetings and just all the shit I’ve had to deal with over the last year—hell, my whole life—I’ve gotten used to baring all the ugly to the world, scars and flaws and all.
Because it served a purpose.
It felt meaningful.
What I’m not used to is sharing… this. The moments no one else gets to see. The moments where I am happy for literally no other reason than I get to turn to Will and ask him something as trivial as what he wants to eat for dinner tonight.
Moments, like now, where I reach for his hand like it’s nothing, and not because I’m choking on panic, chest blazing with the need to breathe.
“I don’t want anyone to ruin this,” I whisper, loosely tangling our fingers together where they rest over the back of the couch.
His other hand finds my chin, lifting my head until I’m eye-level with those deep ocean blues.
“No one can ruin this.”
“But they can try.”
He scowls. “So? Let ‘em. I dare them to.”
A quiet laugh slips through my lips. He makes it sound so easy.