The End of Our Story

by Meg Haston

  “Bridge?” Wil appears where the hallway meets the kitchen and the breakfast room, wearing jeans and an old HINES T-shirt. His hair is still wet from the shower. His eyes are red and glassy. Something twists inside me.

  “Hey.” I lift the coffee tray in a little wave, and he takes it from me and sets it on the kitchen table. “Is this still—do you still need help?” I choose my words carefully. I don’t talk about our walk to the beach the other day or how Wil scrambled for the water faster than I’d ever seen him run. I don’t mention our silent walk home or how he’s avoided me at school for the last few days.

  “Only if you want.”

  “Of course. Of course,” I say stiffly.

  Henney slides her arm over Wil’s shoulder and squeezes hard. It feels like there are a million things being said between them, all in a foreign language I can’t decode. This is crazy, I want to tell them. I’ve slept in a tent in your backyard. I’ve puked up Halloween candy in your kitchen sink when Wilson couldn’t carry me all the way to the bathroom. It’s just me.

  “Anastasia’s,” Henney observes.

  “Actually, Mr. Hines once told me that he brought you these doughnuts on your first date.” My cheeks catch fire. Now that I’ve said it out loud, it seems all wrong, me bringing this box here. It’s a personal, intimate detail that belongs only to them. I might as well have started rifling through her underwear drawer.

  “We did have Anastasia’s on our first date.” Henney clears her throat. “Well. I’ve got to get ready for group. Good to see you, Bridget. Really.” She pulls Wil in close, murmurs something I can’t hear, something in their private grief code. His head dips and I think I hear, “I won’t,” but it could be something else entirely.

  “It’s really good to see you, too.” I dig my nails into the doughnut box, wishing I could fast-forward this and us. While I’m wishing, I wish I could rewind.

  Henney disappears into her bedroom.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” Wil says, taking a few steps toward me. The smell of his boy soap tilts me. “Sorry if that was weird. She’s still—it’s hard.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” I extend the doughnut box, but he motions for me to put the box on the table. “So what kind of group is your mom in?”

  “Huh?” Wil pops the plastic top off one of the coffee cups and empties all the sugar packets inside.

  “Group. She said she was going to group.”

  “It’s nothing.” He chugs half the cup and wipes toffee-colored film from his lips with the back of his hand. “This support group at the church where we had Dad’s service.”

  “Your mom has never really seemed like the therapy type to me,” I say carefully.

  “Yeah, well. It’s not therapy.” His eyebrows jump.

  “Okay.”

  “It’s just getting together with other people whose family members have died unexpectedly. It helps her to be around people who get what she’s going through.” Wil turns away, toward the den, leaving me with the accusation.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it, Wil.” I swallow.

  He shakes his head like he’s trying to erase the last few seconds from his brain. “I know. Sorry,” he says, without turning around. “You want to get started?”

  I grab a coffee and follow him into the wood-paneled den. A weak desk lamp is the only light. I drift for a while, around boxes of clothes and boots and tangles of electronic cords that lead to cell phones and a laptop and a defunct GPS. Against the wall, there are columns of taped boxes stacked as high as my chest. There are stacks of books on sailing and woodwork. There’s a caddy of soap and shampoo and there’s a blue razor with a slightly rusted blade. There is a single box of pictures, some upside down and backward, some with smudged dates and names on the back. There is a whole life here.

  “It’s weird, right?” Wil’s features are pinched. “I never thought he had much stuff until I tried to pack it all.”

  I nod but don’t look at Wil because he won’t want me to. I don’t say Wilson’s name. Instead, I busy my hands with the books piled on the floor, making the piles unnecessarily neat.

  “Hey. This is kind of cool.” I page through a coffee-table book about Atlantic Beach. There are pictures of the beachfront properties in the fifties and images of the old downtown. Its lines are almost exactly the same, but the font on the signs and the skirt lengths are different. And the bricks in the street aren’t imprinted with peoples’ names and the dates when their pets died or their kids graduated from high school. I look up. “I meant to tell you, I saw Kylie Mitchell’s brick downtown the other day.”

  “Poor orange Kylie.” Wil’s voice lightens a little.

  “Hey, remember DAN & NATALIA 4EVER?” I turn around and try again.

  “Who could forget Atlantic Beach’s very own computer software billionaire and his Russian mail-order bride? Although you’d think he’d be rich enough to spell forever the right way. Buy another brick, dude.” He shoves his hands in his back pockets and cocks his head to one side, and for a second, he is the Wil I have always known.

  “Dan, you cheap, wife-ordering bastard.” I laugh loud enough that I snort, which makes Wil smile his lopsided grin. Without trying, I remember the way he used to smile in the split second before we would kiss. As if the two of us knew a joke no one in the world knew. The first time we slept together, he laughed as he was slipping my T-shirt over my head. Later he told me he’d laughed at the thought I can’t believe my best friend might actually sleep with me, which made me feel a little better.

  I miss him and it hurts to be this close to him and not closer.

  “What would your brick say?” Wil asks.

  I tilt my head. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, like, if you had a brick. And it could say whatever you wanted about your life so far and the kind of person you are. What would it say?” His face is suddenly blank, like it is when he’s on the water, watching a storm on the horizon line or sawing a teak board; getting it just right.

  I cross my ankles and sink to the floor. “My brick?” I ask, sipping my coffee to buy time. It’s lukewarm and bitter. “Bridget Christine Hawking. Florida transplant. Unapologetic redhead. Excellent at mandated community service and pissing off my younger sibling and—”

  “The real you, damn it,” he snaps.

  I suck a few drops of coffee into my lungs and double over, coughing. After I catch my breath, Wil rakes his hands through his hair and says, “Sorry, Bridge. It’s just that I’ve been thinking about this a lot since my dad died.”

  “Yeah. Okay,” I sputter. “Sure.”

  “You could list the facts about him, all the things people think of when they hear his name, and it wouldn’t tell you a damn thing about the real Wilson Hines.” His fingers curl around the edge of the couch cushion.

  “Okay, not facts.” I wish I knew what he meant about the real Wilson Hines. I wish I could ask. “So what would yours say? About the real Wil Hines?”

  His head drops back, collides with the couch frame and makes a thud. “I’m nothing,” he says. His eyes flutter closed, shutting me out. “I’m the guy whose dad is dead.”

  “That’s not true,” I protest.

  “Hell it isn’t,” he says to the ceiling. “Tell me who I am now that he’s gone.”

  I want to tell him that he is everything. That he has always been everything to me, and Wilson’s death won’t change that. “Wil,” I say carefully. “You’re more than that.”

  He shakes his head slowly. “You have no idea what that night did to me. Who I am now.”

  I tilt my head back, blink at the ceiling. It cuts me, every time he says something like that. “Have you talked to anybody about it? It might help, talking about what happened that night.” I close my eyes. “You could talk to me. I’m here.”

  “Hasn’t felt like it.” Wil’s voice cuts from across the room, and my eyes snap open again.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, it hasn’t felt like you’v
e been here.” Wil’s features swim on the other side of the room. “Felt like you left me. Quit on us.”

  “I quit trying to get back together because you asked me to, Wil. That’s not fair.” I stand up.

  The door to the bedrooms opens, and I swipe my eyes with my T-shirt as Henney comes into the den, her lipstick the brightest shade in the room, her keys jangling. She’s wearing skinny jeans and a kind of dressy top and her hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail. She looks pretty, which is a thought I’ve never had before. She bends down to kiss Wil and then she’s gone again, leaving us alone in this sad, angry room.

  “You know, I’m here now,” I say pointedly, picking up a pile of Wilson’s old T-shirts on the floor next to the couch. I take my time smoothing the wrinkles. Making sure the sleeves are even.

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “I’m here now,” I say again, louder this time. “You say I haven’t been there for you and that’s fair, but I’m here now, so you don’t have that excuse anymore. And you still won’t talk to me, and you won’t—God, Wil, would you at least open your eyes?”

  He does, and the softness that was there has vanished beneath the surface.

  “I’m trying.” I slide the pile of T-shirts off the couch and I sit next to him. I reach for his arm. His skin is slick, clammy. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on. Tell me what happened that night. I swear, once you get it off your chest—”

  “Why would I talk to you?” Wil says quietly. He pulls away and scrambles off the couch. Pushes through the maze of Wilsons’s things to get to the other side of the room. He leans against the wall, desperate to get as far away from me as possible. “It’s too late, Bridge. I needed you then. I needed to talk to you. I needed to tell you some real shit, Bridge, shit I couldn’t tell anybody else, and you were too drunk to hear it.” His bright green eyes are mirrors.

  “Wil,” I whisper. “I know. I’m sorry. How many times can I tell you I’m sorry?” I claw at the couch. “Tell me now. Please.”

  “I can’t.” In the dim light, I see silvery trails branching down Wil’s cheeks. I want to hold him, pull him into me, keep him there next to my heart for as long as it takes for him to forgive me. I’ll wait with him forever. I need him, and I know he needs me. “It’s too late.”

  “Stop. Stop saying that. Please.”

  “It’s true, though. It’s too late for you to show up and talk about being there for me. You think I need you to be there now more than ever, but you don’t get to pick when to show up!”

  “I’m not—”

  “The fuck you’re not! You’re here because my dad is dead, right? You’re here because of him! Not because of me.” His chest is caving, rising. “I wanted you to be there for me, Bridge. When I needed you. And you bailed and there’s nothing you can do to change that.” He spins around and slams his fist into the wall. I cringe at the crunch of bone.

  “Fuck!” he yells. Adrenaline lights me on fire. “Fuck!”

  “Wil!” I scream. “Stop it! Stop!”

  “Get out, Bridge. Get out,” he tells the wall.

  I lift my hands in surrender. “You’re right. You’re right, okay?” I push myself off the couch and watch him crumple into the wall. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ll go. Just—stop. Please.” I take shallow breaths as I back out of the den and run down the hall toward the gold-edged clouds. I can’t believe I’m leaving him again. Running, just like I’ve done before. But everything about him is telling me . . . he wants me gone. And everything in me believes him.

  WIL

  Summer, Junior Year

  I was starting to believe that he had come back. My dad, my real dad, the guy who used to make things with his hands instead of destroying people with them. The original simple kind of man. He bought so many goddamned flowers that I think the Publix flower fridge was running on empty for almost a week. And he touched my mother, but in a good way. In a way that makes a person groan, “Get a room, guys,” and look away, even though he’s secretly happy. In a way that makes it all right for a person’s new possibly girlfriend to come over to the house once in a while.

  I was starting to believe things were going back to normal. But six nights ago something happened. It was small, it was nothing, but I knew immediately: It was something. They started arguing, slowly at first. Mom was pissed at Dad for leaving the garbage cans on the curb overnight, saying it made us look like white trash. Dad heard her say words that never left her mouth—that he was white trash and she was sorry she ever married him. Their voices got louder and louder and made my insides shake and the water glasses in the cabinet rattle, so I went to the workshop.

  He left.

  He didn’t hit her. He peeled out of the driveway in his truck.

  And I thought, That’s pretty good, actually. At least he didn’t do it again.

  He didn’t come home for four hours. At the four-hour mark, a guy named Pete from a bar called Big Mike’s called Mom to come and get him. He was too drunk to stay and too drunk to leave. I pretended to be asleep when they got home, even though he made the air inside the house smell like a rich kid’s high-school party. The next morning at breakfast, the only thing my mother said was, “If you boys want cereal, you’ll have to get it yourself. I’m late for work.”

  They didn’t fight for a few days in a row after that. But he went to Big Mike’s every night anyway, because that was something he did now. The house smelled like stale booze when he got home. It is exhausting to stay awake and listen for violence, and one night I must have fallen asleep because at breakfast the next morning there was another bruise. She tried to cover it with makeup and curly hair and pancakes, but I could see. I could see her and could see that the dad I wanted wasn’t coming back.

  I want to tell Bridge. I keep hoping she’ll try, just one more time, even though I told her to stop. Another note or text or voice mail. All I need is one more. So far, nothing.

  Tonight, I’m in the shop cleaning Dad’s tools, pretending there’s work to be done. Sometimes, just to get out of the house, I’ll bring a magazine out here. Or if I’m really desperate, I’ll bring one of the poetry books Ana keeps shoving in my backpack. Apparently, I only think I hate poetry.

  I’m winding one of the extension cords in a coil that’s tighter than it needs to be when I hear her.

  “Hey. Your mom said you’d be in here.”

  Ana is standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame in cutoffs and a white T-shirt and a lacy white bra that looks good against her tanned skin.

  “Hey.” I smooth my T-shirt and run my hands through my hair like that’s going to fix anything.

  “Hey. What’s going on?” I’m not sure if I’m supposed to hug Ana or kiss her. Ana and I have hung out a bunch of times since the night we got drunk, but I don’t know what we are yet.

  She shrugs and looks down at the floor and kind of smiles. Ana has this way of making you feel like she’s got a secret, and you’re dying to know it.

  “Just thought I’d come by,” she says. “There’s a party later. We should go.”

  “You hate high-school parties.” I rest the coiled cord on the table. “Or is this some kind of practice for a blowout senior year?”

  “Actually, yeah.” She laughs and walks toward me, almost in slow motion. She gets really close, touching me without touching me. I never knew the smell of suntan lotion could turn me on. “Next year, I’m getting crazy. I’m calling senior year the Year of Woooo!” She scrunches her nose and cheers with an invisible glass. “I’ve always been an overachiever, so I figured I’d get started early.”

  “You’re kind of cute when you woooo,” I tell her. I guide her over to the worktable and press her back into it.

  “You think so?” she says, draping her arms around my neck.

  “I do.” My voice is low.

  “Take me to this party, then.” Her eyelashes brush my neck.

  “Where’s it at?”

  “Okay. Don’t freak out, but
it’s at Buck Travers’s place.”

  It takes all the willpower in the universe not to put a hole through the worktable.

  “That’s not funny,” I snap, and back away.

  “Hear me out.”

  “I’m not going anywhere that asshole’s going to be.”

  “Wil.”

  “What are you, crazy?”

  “Wil!” Her voice bounces from the ceiling beams, louder than I’ve ever heard it. “Don’t you want to show that asshole that you’ve moved on? Don’t you want to show—everybody?”

  All of a sudden, I’m woozy, a strange combination of pissed and sad and still a little turned on, and I don’t know what to do with any of it.

  “I don’t really care about . . . other people,” I say.

  Ana’s eyes don’t believe me.

  “You have to live your life,” she says. “We can’t decide not to go out just because we might run into Buck or—”

  “Here. Come here.” I reach for her and pull her into my chest. Breathe her in. “You really want to go?”

  “I’m just saying,” she murmurs.

  I close my eyes and I see Christmas lights hanging from the shop’s rafters. I open my eyes, but it doesn’t matter. Bridge lives in everything: in this concrete floor, in the bricks downtown, in our booth at Nina’s Diner, in the waves. There’s no way to erase her. The only thing I can do is let her fade.

  “We’ll go,” I say into Ana’s hair. “We’ll have fun.”

  We take Dad’s truck and I tell Ana that she looks good in a pickup. She tells me she loves how retro the truck is, which makes me smile because my asshole dad bought it new.

  “Do you know how to get there?” she asks, propping her bare feet on the dash just like Bridge used to do.

  “Not this house. Give me directions?” Growing up, Buck lived down the street from me. One morning, in the summer between eighth and ninth grade, Buck’s mom got bitten by a plastic surgeon’s German shepherd. Now the Travers family lives in one of the rich gated communities off Atlantic. It’s hard to tell the houses apart, so you have to go by the cars in the driveway. Travers drives this year’s F-450, probably the most expensive truck a lawsuit can buy.