All We Can Do Is Wait

by Richard Lawson

  Jason didn’t know why she was asking this, if it was some test or if she was genuinely curious. The only thing he could do now, though, was tell her the truth.

  “Everything, I guess. He was smart. And weird. And funny. And really . . . himself, you know? I liked that. A lot. I guess I was more myself when I was with him. Which is corny. But it’s true. He made me feel like me, you know? And he made me do things I was scared to do. But that were still, like, me, I think. He felt like . . . the future.”

  “He felt like the future . . .” Alexa repeated. “Yeah. He did. He did.”

  “Plus,” Jason added, trying something out, “he was really cute.”

  Alexa barked, a yelping laugh. “Sorry. That’s just . . . weird. I’ve never heard you say that about anyone.”

  “Well, he was.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jason sighed. “I miss him, Alexa. I really, really miss him.”

  “Me too,” Alexa said, blinking back tears. “Me too.”

  Without thinking, Jason reached out and put his arms around his sister, hugging her tight while she cried, and he cried. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” he whispered, apologizing for everything, for all of it. For lying, for running away from her, for Kyle, for their parents, wherever they were. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  As Jason hugged his sister, he heard an airplane passing overhead, looked up and saw the lights on its wings blinking as it descended toward Logan. Watching it pass, he was filled suddenly with a happy memory, from the summer of Kyle.

  A night in July when the three of them had gone down to the beach with some sparklers left over from Theo and Linda’s big Fourth party. They smoked a joint and lit the sparklers and ran around on the beach like idiots, Alexa laughing so hard she said she was going to pass out. Nothing had been particularly funny, but still, Alexa was laughing. Thinking about that night now, after so much had happened, Jason thought he finally knew why.

  Alexa was laughing because it was ridiculous, wasn’t it? To be as happy and lucky and dumb as the three of them were that night, young and together, awash in limitless summer. To be tearing around clutching little sparklers, under a vault of billions of stars. It was silly to not feel small, to not feel afraid, to miss the big and frightening world for a beach. But they had. That night, at least, those many perfect nights together, they had. And that was why Alexa was laughing. Because what else could anyone have done just then but laugh? What else could you ever do?

  Jason closed his eyes and saw Kyle, wading into the water, heard himself and Alexa yelling, “Come back! Come back!” the light of Kyle’s sparkler dimming as it burned out. But Kyle kept splashing off into the water, the two of them watching him go, feet stuck in the cool sand.

  Alexa had hooked her arm around her brother’s and rested her head on his shoulder, the wind making her hair dance. She gave Jason’s arm a little squeeze and then said, “Let’s go,” and made a break for the water, Jason chasing after her, both of them running to find their friend. Kyle out ahead of them, just past where they could see. Kyle waiting, gone but not lost, out there somewhere in the night.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Alexa

  IT FELT GOOD, and strange, to hug her brother. Just as it felt good, and strange, to hear him talk about Kyle, some glimpse into a life they had had together that she knew nothing about. She thought it would make her feel sad, or at least left out, to hear Jason talk about Kyle like that, but it didn’t, not really.

  It gave the past year some much-needed clarity, it lent some new shape to the brief summer when everything had seemed to click into place. Part of her wished she’d known then that Kyle and her brother were falling in love, were in love. But she also thought, standing there with her brother outside the hospital, that maybe it would have changed things. Even though the summer had ended so terribly, what had come before was the happiest she’d ever been, just as it was. And she didn’t want to change that for anything.

  Alexa pulled away from her brother, who gave her an awkward smile.

  “Do we hug now? Is that a thing we do?”

  “That can be a one-time thing if you want,” Alexa said, sniffling and shivering. “It’s cold. We should go back inside.” She gave one last look to the glowing apartments, not knowing when she’d be outside next, and then headed back in, into the familiar and sallow waiting room, all the nurses looking haggard and frayed, though probably not more than she and Jason did. Jason had bags under his eyes, and his hair was in tangles. Though, Alexa supposed, that wasn’t exactly anything new.

  When they walked into the waiting room, it was almost empty. She figured Morgan and Scott had left. There wasn’t really any reason for them to still be at the hospital. But then she saw Scott’s jacket, crumpled on a chair, and heard someone’s throat clearing behind her. She turned, and there was Scott, eyeing Jason warily, looking pale and guilty, his eyes round and dewy. He was like a pitiful cartoon, or one of those big-eyes paintings her aunt Ginny loved so much.

  “Hey,” Scott said. “Any word?”

  Alexa shook her head. “Nope.” She paused, not knowing if she even wanted to talk to him. “Where are Aimee’s parents?”

  “Uh . . . I don’t know, actually. I mean, they went back there, and I haven’t seen them since. But I was, like, not here for a little bit.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “To throw up.”

  “I’m so sorry about Aimee. Before, I shouldn’t have—”

  “It’s O.K. I get it. I . . .” Scott shot a quick glance at Jason, looked back at Alexa. “You want to, uh, go talk somewhere?”

  Jason threw up his hands. “I’m actually going to go find Morgan, if she’s still around. See if she’s O.K. So, it’s all yours,” he said, gesturing to the waiting room. He turned and walked off.

  “I just want to say again that I’m sorry,” Scott started once they were alone. “I shouldn’t have lied. I guess, just, in my head, or something, it wasn’t a lie, you know? We were together for a long time, so I just thought . . .”

  “It’s O.K., Scott. Really. It doesn’t matter now. You love her. I get why you came. I would have done the same thing.”

  Scott’s shoulders dropped, suddenly less tense. “Thanks. I mean, thanks for saying that.”

  “So what will you do now?”

  He shrugged, frowned. “I don’t know. Go home, I guess. My parents are probably freaking out. They know where I am, but . . . I should go home. They really liked Aimee.”

  Alexa nodded sadly. “Yeah.”

  Scott burst into tears. He put his hands over his eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just . . . I missed her so much, for so long, and now . . . Now I have to miss her forever. And I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do.”

  Alexa reached out and gave him a tight hug, Scott falling into her arms while he sobbed. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do,” he repeated.

  “It’s O.K., Scott, it’s O.K. It’s O.K.”

  He hugged her until his body stopped shaking with sobs. He pulled away, looking very young, very lost. “I can’t believe any of this happened.”

  “I don’t think anyone can.”

  “What am I going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Alexa said. And that was true.

  “You know,” Scott said, sniffling, “a while ago, when I was feeling sad about Aimee, a friend told me that I just had to, like, be in the present and deal with things and, y’know, cross bridges when I got to them.” He realized immediately what he’d just said. “Jesus,” he whimpered, the tears coming again.

  “Your friend was right, though,” Alexa said.

  “But how do we know when it’s going to feel better?” Scott asked, pleadingly. “Will it ever feel better?”

  Alexa shrugged sadly. She wished she knew for sure. “It has to eventually, right? The longer we
keep living, the more time passes. I think it has to get easier at some point. For now, I guess all we can do is wait.”

  “You’re right.” Scott sighed. He shifted, gave Alexa another doleful look. “I wish we could have met, like, some other time, y’know? In some other life or something.”

  Alexa knew what he meant, or thought she did. She wished none of this had happened too. That the alternate dimension was out there somewhere, that she could just slip into it, where everything was better and easier. Where, sure, maybe she’d meet Scott, or some version of Scott, and things would be different. But that place felt even further away than it had in the chapel.

  And the more she thought about it, the more she realized she didn’t want to go searching for that other place. She wanted to stay where she was, as shitty and awful as it was just then. And she certainly didn’t want to follow Scott into some what-if fantasy.

  She smiled at Scott, did a little what can you do? with her hands. She took a step toward him, gave him another hug. He hugged her back, grateful for the comfort. “I’m so sorry about Aimee,” Alexa said. Scott had lost someone today, someone very important to him. That was something big. Something Alexa knew too much about. “You’ll be O.K.,” she whispered—to him, to herself. “You’ll be O.K.”

  “Thanks,” Scott said. He hugged her for another second and then let go, wiping his eyes with his palms. “Thanks.”

  “If you need anything . . .” Alexa started to say, but Scott shook his head.

  “No, I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.” He smiled at her. Alexa turned around and grabbed his coat from the chair and handed it to him.

  “Thanks,” Scott said again. “Thank you.” He hesitated for a second. Then waved. “Well. I’m gonna go. Bye, Alexa.”

  She waved back. “Bye, Scott.”

  “Your parents are gonna be O.K.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  Scott turned to leave, got halfway toward the door, then turned back to Alexa. “Oh, and tell your brother bye for me.”

  “I will.”

  And then Scott was gone, walking through the sliding doors as he pulled on his coat. Alexa was all but alone in the waiting room then, feeling a swell of sadness rise up in her. She looked at her phone. It was ten thirty. Nine hours since the accident, almost ten. She’d know something soon, she was convinced. Either way.

  She got out her phone, opened Twitter, and scrolled through. She stopped when she saw a picture of Aimee. The Globe had tweeted out a story: “Eighteen-Year-Old Killed in Tobin Collapse Was Promising Drama Student.” Alexa considered clicking on it, but thought better of it and put her phone back in her pocket.

  She thought about Kyle’s headline, from two days after he died: “Bourne Teenager Dead in Drunk Driving Accident.”

  It said nothing about who he was, about what—or whom—he’d loved, about where he had wanted to go in life. Alexa’s parents, if they died, would have long obituaries. At least her mother would. But Kyle had just gotten the standard paragraph write-up, with information about the memorial service at the Elsings’ and the private family service in Bourne, plus one follow-up article about the police cracking down on holiday weekend DUIs and underage drinking. She worried that was all Kyle would be remembered as, as time went on. That kid who died one summer. A sad cautionary tale whose name would slowly fade.

  Alexa worried that the older she got and the more places her life took her, she’d forget about Kyle, a boy she knew once, when she was very young, who had died when he was very young too. The thought of that made her want to stay rooted in place forever, to preserve Kyle in her mind.

  Kyle had helped open up the whole experience of that now faraway summer—guiding Alexa toward a heady sense of independence, a sense of being removed from the cloistered and ordered and intense life she lived back in Boston. It made her feel like she was growing up, evolving at an almost dizzying pace. But a good kind of dizzying. Roller coaster dizzying.

  She felt it when she talked to Kyle, she felt it when her brother would join them in hanging out. And she felt it when she was with the other kids from Grey’s.

  Laurie was cool and easygoing and a little wild. On a few nights throughout the summer, Laurie invited people back to the place she shared with her cousin, Jacqui. Alexa had been too nervous to go the first time, shyly lying that she had to be home for a family thing. But the next time Laurie had a party, a week or so after the Fourth of July, Alexa felt emboldened enough by her new self that she agreed to go. Kyle had a closing shift that night, so he said he’d see her there after, meaning Alexa would have to go alone. Which scared her, but some new part of her knew that she could do it.

  She got a ride with Davey and Courtney, a short drive to the little bungalow that Laurie and Jacqui had rented for the summer, a rundown kind of a thing on Governor Prence Road, already a half dozen cars parked outside. There was a fuzzy thump of music coming from the house, and Alexa found herself wondering how soon it would be before the neighbors complained. But she tried to push that anxious, scolding thought out of her head as she entered the house, immediately greeted by a billow of weed smell and a shrieking Laurie, who said, “Oh my God, you caaaaaame!”

  Pretty much everyone there was from work. Amelia was even there, perking up when she saw Alexa, maybe thinking she had brought Jason with her. Maybe Alexa should have, but it hadn’t occurred to her, in all the rush of excitement of even deciding to go, to invite him. Her manager Nate gave her a wave from across the living room, looking a little sheepish to be at a party with his younger employees, but also glazed and happy from beer and, probably, more.

  “You wanna draaaank?” Laurie yelled in her scratchy, robust Laurie way.

  “Sure,” Alexa said. “Whatever you got.”

  “O.K., I’m gonna make you this rum thing, it’s really good, I promise, and it’s strong.”

  And indeed it was strong. Laurie reappeared from the little back kitchen a minute or two later with a red Solo cup, full to the top. Alexa took a sip and it burned, but not in a bad way.

  “Oh my God, cheeeers!” Laurie said, sloshing her cup into Alexa’s and wrapping an arm around her. “This is fun. We’re gonna have fun.”

  Laurie was right. After downing about one and a half of Laurie’s rum concoctions, Alexa felt loose, expansive. Like she was in love with everyone at Grey’s, in love with everyone that summer. She found herself at one point sitting on the big, enveloping living room couch, talking to Davey—kind, dopey Davey—about his plans for the navy: where he hoped to sail to, what he hoped to see.

  “You know, I think it’s really cool,” Alexa said, realizing she might be a little slurry but figuring everyone else probably was too. “That you’re just, like, doing your own thing. You know? You’re just gonna go out into the world and figure it out.”

  Davey shrugged. “I mean, I’d probably rather be partying at college, but, y’know, money.”

  Alexa nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Money. Ugh.”

  Davey smiled. “Easy to hate it when you have it!”

  Alexa laughed. “Yeah, I guess so. Sorry. I must sound like such a brat all the time.”

  Davey gave her a little bump with his shoulder. “Nah. Everyone here likes you.”

  Alexa wanted to hug him. “Oh, good! That makes me happy. I love everyone. This is, like, the best summer of my life. It’s crazy to think that life could be like this all the time, you know? Just working and hanging out and not, like, always trying to get toward something bigger and better.” She caught herself. “Not that you’re, like, not trying to better your lives or whatever. I just mean . . .”

  Davey smiled, nodded. “I know what you mean. It’s a fun job. Summer jobs are fun.”

  Alexa rested her head on his shoulder. “I hope you’ll be safe, in the navy.”

  “Not a lot of naval battles happening these days.”

  “That’s true,” Alex
a said, suddenly feeling the room begin to spin, just a little. “Hey, I’m gonna go outside, get some fresh air. You wanna come?”

  “Nah,” Davey said, eying Laurie’s cousin, Jacqui, sitting across the room. “I’m gonna stay inside.”

  Alexa said O.K. and gave Davey a quick kiss on the check, then stood up and wobbled out to the scraggly little backyard, where some kids were smoking, Courtney Price telling some story that had everyone in stitches.

  “Hey, Alexa,” Courtney said evenly, but not in an unfriendly way.

  “Hey, guys,” Alexa said, feeling a little less spinny now that she was outside, but suddenly nervous about an interaction with scary Courtney and these other kids, who didn’t work at Grey’s and seemed a little older, Nate’s age maybe.

  “I was just telling them about Kyle and that bitchy lady last week.”

  “Oh God, the one with the declined credit card?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What a nightmare. But Kyle handled it so well. He shut her down!”

  Courtney laughed. “Shut. Her. Down.”

  The other kids all seemed to grow bored with hearing a story about somewhere they didn’t work, for a second time, so they drifted off, making their way back inside to get more drinks. Which left Alexa and Courtney alone in the yard together.

  “Kyle’s great . . .” Alexa said, mostly just trying to fill the silence.

  “Yeah,” Courtney agreed. “I really hope he actually comes to New York with me.”

  Alexa was surprised. “I thought he was for sure gonna go?”

  “I don’t know,” Courtney said, running a hand through her long, silky hair. “Kyle likes to talk big, but it’s tough, with his mom. I think it would be hard to leave her behind.”

  Alexa had gotten vague intimations, from Kyle and others, that Kyle’s mom was not always well, maybe a drug thing, maybe a mental illness thing, maybe both. She nodded. “Yeah. I bet that would be hard.”

  “You’re lucky,” Courtney said, turning to face Alexa.

  Alexa was taken aback. Courtney Price, cool and gorgeous and New York–bound Courtney Price, was telling Alexa that she was lucky? “What do you mean?” was all she could muster in response.