The End of Our Story

by Meg Haston

  Wil catches me looking. “I can’t take it down.”

  I turn and slide my arms around his waist, kissing his collarbone, tracing his lines with my mouth. With every kiss, I remember him. Our lips find each other’s slowly. I kick off my sandals, and he lifts me onto the kitchen counter. His warm hand slides up my leg and over my thigh. He takes his time reading me with his lips and hands. He rediscovers the small bump on my wrist, never the same after I broke it falling off my bike in fifth grade. I close my eyes and trace the long scar on his middle finger. We know all the places where the other has been broken. We know the unspoken details no one else can hear.

  His mouth covers mine and a hot tear slips down my temple and follows my jawline. Kissing him, feeling his hands on me is like taking a first breath after years underwater: necessary, and almost painful. I have been desperate, aching for him.

  And then the door slams. Wil lunges for a knife from the butcher block. His face electrifies.

  “Wil! Don’t!” I shriek. I bolt upright and jump off the counter. My heels collide with the icy tile floor, sending aftershocks through me. My skin is damp, my heart electric.

  We are gulping air when Henney appears in the doorway between the hall and the kitchen. She’s bundled tight in work clothes: black scrubs under a pink pastel blazer. She looks different, now that I know what Wilson did to her. I don’t want her to look different, but she does. Smaller somehow.

  Henney clutches her chest. “What in the world?”

  Behind her, two cops clomp into the kitchen: a tall black woman with close-cropped hair and a pudgy white balding man. It takes me a second to recognize them. They were standing at the back of the church during Wilson’s funeral.

  “You doing okay, Wil?” The female detective gives me a brief nod.

  “Uh, sure, Detective Porter.” Wil’s fist curls next to mine. He slides the knife onto the counter, behind us. “What’s going on?”

  “Answer me, Wil,” Henney demands. “Why aren’t you in school?” She doesn’t look at me.

  “We just needed a break, Mom. I’m sorry.” Wil’s glance shudders between the two detectives, uncertain, like a moth caught between two searing bulbs.

  “Mrs. Hines, this is my fault,” I say, pushing the words past my cottony tongue. “Wil seemed stressed, and I thought—”

  “Wil.” Henney closes her eyes. “I can’t deal with this now, you understand?”

  “I know, Mom. I’m really sorry. This was stupid.” He looks at the balding detective. “Seriously, Detective Yancey. What are you guys doing here?”

  The balding detective hooks his fingers around his belt loops and hikes up his pants. “We have a little more information on the suspect’s history. Wanted to ask you about a few details, see if everything fits.”

  “No. No. He should be in school.” Henney turns to stand next to Wil. She holds on tight, like she’s about to fall. “I’m happy to answer your questions, but Wil should get back.”

  “Besides, we’ve gone through this already, right?” Wil says. “I’ve told you everything I know.”

  I wish he would talk to me.

  I can’t help it: The thought bobs to the surface before I can stop it. It’s a selfish thought, but it’s real. I wish he could tell me what happened that night. I want to be the person who lightens him, who carries his thoughts. He is so heavy with the weight of it all. But I wonder if he will ever let me share that weight. Wil has always been one to carry his burdens silently, without complaint. The kind of guy his dad used to call a man’s man. I blink and remember the morning I helped him pack his father’s things. I remember his pained expression, the cracks in the skin around his eyes like he might come unstitched if he spoke a single word about that night.

  Detective Porter is smiling at me. I look away.

  “This shouldn’t take long,” she says.

  “I don’t get it.” Wil’s voice is too loud for this room, for these people. “We’ve told you everything, and it’s like it’s not good enough or something.”

  “How do you mean, son?” Yancey cocks his head to one side.

  Wil cringes. “We shouldn’t have to talk about it over and over again. That’s fucked up, man.”

  “Wil,” Henney hisses.

  My breath catches in my throat.

  Detective Yancey is chuckling, muttering something about how he’s heard worse.

  “I’m serious!” Wil shakes off Henney’s hand. “Every time you come over, every time we have to tell the story again, it—it messes with your head. I—my mom can’t sleep, she has nightmares.” His skin is the color of fog. I watch the grays pulse, move, like there’s a wind inside him that won’t be still.

  “I should go,” I say. “I should get back.” My words are a whisper in the middle of a hurricane.

  “We’re trying to find him, Wil.” Detective Porter says evenly. “You have my word on that.”

  “Try harder. Try someplace else. Leave us alone. We’re done.” He storms out of the kitchen. Henney follows, calling after him, and the kitchen door slams. I’m left alone in this old gray kitchen with two cops and the Wilson ghosts.

  Detective Yancey clears his throat. “We’ll give them a second.”

  “Um, I’m Bridget,” I tell the detectives. “Bridge.” I prop my hands on the counter behind me, but they slide off. I can hear Henney and Wil in the side yard, muffled sadness and anger. I swallow the lump in my throat.

  “You two go to the same school?” Porter asks. She gives me a reassuring smile.

  “We grew up together,” I whisper.

  “So you know the family pretty well.” Yancey’s voice is talking-about-the-weather light, but something in me knows better.

  I don’t know what Wil has told them about who Wilson was and what he did. I don’t know if cops go after the killers of violent men the same way. I don’t even know if they should. “Yeah. It’s been hard for them.” I’m dizzy, unsteady on my feet. My skin is hot and damp where Wil’s lips were. I don’t want to cry in front of these cops. But it’s too much, all of it, and I can’t stop the silent tears.

  “Sure, sure,” says Yancey. “This is tough.” He gives Porter the same look Micah gives me when Mom cries in front of us: helplessness mixed with discomfort.

  “I should get back to school.” I sniff, wiping my eyes with my T-shirt. I glance through the kitchen door window. In the yard, Wil is holding his mother in a way that makes my bones ache for them. I want the cops to leave them in peace. Maybe peace is what they need, more than justice or a trial or casseroles.

  “I’d be happy to drive you,” Detective Porter offers.

  “No! No. I’ll walk. Thanks.” I slip past the cops and hurry down the hall. I can feel the detectives’ eyes on me as I push through the front door and start across the lawn, my stride longer than usual. When I hit Atlantic, I run. Away from the sick, sour death air that has invaded that house and snuck into my lungs. Away from the nagging feeling deep in my gut that peace, real, deep, still-water peace, is something Wil may never find again.

  BRIDGE

  Spring, Senior Year

  I slow to a walk on Atlantic, my skull pulsing with the beginnings of a migraine. Every step is harder. There is an invisible string between Wil and me, and that string is pulling me back to him, back to that house. I hate that I left him there with the cops and the ghosts and the grief he can’t share with me, or won’t.

  “Smile, sweetheart,” yells a man in a chicken suit on the other side of the street, spinning a LUNCH SPECIALS sign, even though it’s only 10:45. “It can’t be all that bad.” The sky is gray, the kind of day that looks cold until you step into it. The storefronts and cracked sidewalks and neon signs sag under a cloudy sky.

  “You have no idea, asshole,” I yell back, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.

  My phone dings yet again, and this time I reach into my backpack and check it. Leigh has sent a zillion texts—all of them containing the phrase where the hell?—but nothing from W
il. I stuff my phone in my back pocket. I don’t want to think about Leigh. Free-spirited, dowhateverthefuckmakesyouhappy, art school Leigh. She should understand Wil and me better than anybody. She’s watched me love him for years.

  I turn for home without stopping by school for my truck. I want to stretch out on the couch in the dark and wait for Wil to call. I want a beer. The thing about me, the awful, secret thing about me is this: In the first three years of high school, I didn’t drink to look cool. I didn’t force down watery beer because everyone else was doing it. I did it because I loved the after. I loved the warmth, how heavy and loose it made me. Alcohol undid me. Sometimes I miss being undone.

  It’s silent when I step inside. I flop onto the couch and pick at the cushion seams, where the gray ikat pattern doesn’t quite line up. Mom and I reupholstered the sofa with extra fabric from the resort’s most recent makeover, and it’s obvious to anyone who’s looking closely. I reach for the remote and let daytime television dull the uneasiness that needles me. I go for three minutes without checking my phone, then four. Micah comes home too early, and he doesn’t ask, and I don’t, either. He dives onto the couch next to me with a box of sugar cereal and tilts it in my direction.

  “Sick day in quotes?” he says over a mouthful of dried marshmallows.

  “Sort of,” I say. I pick out a green clover and crack it between my teeth.

  “I heard you and Wil made out in the hall today.”

  “False.”

  “Just telling you what I heard.” He shrugs. “Dude. Don’t hog the pinks.” He chucks a pillow into my lap and lets his head drop. “Sugar crash.”

  My eyes burn as I watch the tough boy lines in his face wriggle down deep, out of view. I want to stroke his hair, its sunset colors, the way I did when we were kids and he couldn’t sleep. I miss him being this close.

  “Quit being psycho,” he tells the television.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re watching me sleep, like Mom. That is creepy. Quit.” His lips part slightly.

  “Sorry.” I touch the end of a single lock of his hair with my ring finger. “You want to order some food?”

  “Pizza. Pineapple and ham. And orange soda.” His eyes snap open at the mention of food.

  “I feel as if it’s my duty as an older sister to inform you that that meal will take at least six to ten years off your life.”

  “If you don’t want it, maybe I’ll call Emilie.” He sits up and shoots a devlish boy grin my way.

  “Gross. I’ll call.” I sigh. “But for the record, I don’t appreciate blackmail.” I reach for my cell. The screen is blank. Please. Wil. I think. Please.

  Nothing.

  I scroll through my contacts, highlight Wil’s name.

  “Oh my God, Bridge!” Micah sighs. “Just call him already, okay? I’ll order the damn pizza.” He launches off the couch and thumps up the stairs in bare feet.

  “And breadsticks!” I yell.

  I’m staring at Wil’s name when there’s a knock at the door.

  “Hi.” He’s standing on the porch, all formal, straight lines.

  “Hey! Hey.” I fall into his chest, and he slides his arms around me. “I’ve been worried about you. I’ve been—I hope everything’s okay.”

  “It’s been a long afternoon,” he murmurs into my hair. “You smell good. I missed your shampoo.”

  “Get a room!” Micah yells from my bedroom window.

  Wil coughs.

  “Come on in,” I say. “Micah and I were doing some family bonding.” I grab his hand and pull him inside.

  “I actually came by to see if you wanted to go out.” He grins when he sees the empty sugar cereal box on its side on the coffee table. “Busy afternoon around here?”

  “Important things have been accomplished on this couch.” I wait for him to tell me about Porter and Yancey, to say the word Mom. But he just gives me a quick, soft kiss.

  “So Micah and I were just about to have dinner.” I scour his ocean eyes for clues. “You in the mood for pizza?”

  “Actually I’m kind of family-timed out,” Micah announces from the top of the banister. “I could use a little alone time. Hey, dude.” He gives Wil a wave and disappears again.

  Wil says, “Looks like you’re free.”

  We go outside and sit in the truck. Wil leaves the keys in his lap and stares straight ahead, his mouth the tiniest bit open. I wait, because I know him. Everything in his own time. I close my eyes and I remember what it was like to be in this truck and think sunburn was the worst of it.

  “I’m sorry you were there this morning.” Wil’s voice is like cracked leather: soft in some places (sorry and you), hardened in others (there). “I know it was weird for you. I should’ve taken you back to school first. I should’ve gotten you out of there.”

  “Wil. You don’t have to explain.”

  “I know they’re just doing their jobs,” he says it like he’s trying to convince someone. “But they don’t have to live with my mom the other twenty-three hours every day.” He swallows. “Not that I mind—”

  “I know you love your mom, Wil.”

  “Right. Right. And I really don’t mind being there for her when she’s having a hard time. Like with the nightmares and stuff. But every time the cops show up, I know it’ll start all over for her. It’s like the first night after it happened, all over again.”

  He makes a noise I don’t understand. In my lap, the phone buzzes. Leigh. I silence it.

  “And it never stops,” Wil continues. The veins in his neck are shadowy lines beneath his skin, like petrified wood. “If we’re not talking to the cops, we’re trying to make sense of the shitty records my dad kept for the business, or I’m doing the math on the mortgage. I know it hasn’t been that long since—but it just feels like it’ll never be over, and I need it to be over, Bridge. I need it to be over.” His chin drops to his chest.

  I put a hand on his knee as he murmurs the phrase again and again. I wish I could end it for him, just like he wishes he could end it for his mom. Maybe that’s the worst part of tragedy: realizing how small we are. Wanting to end another person’s pain and being completely powerless to do it.

  “My mom thinks we shouldn’t be dating right now,” he blurts. He sucks in a quick breath, like he’s surprised himself.

  A lump bobs in my throat. “What?”

  “No. It’s not—she likes you. She just thinks that we have too much going on right now for me to be dating.” He scrunches his face muscles like shiiiit.

  Dating. The word makes us smaller than we are.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything.” He reaches for me. Pushes my hair out of my face. “God, that was so stupid.” He shakes his head.

  “No. I guess that makes sense, why she would feel that way.” My heart beats nonono. “I get it.”

  “Hey.” He leans in, nudges his forehead against mine. “I told her she was crazy. I told her that you’re the only thing that makes sense right now. Just because she doesn’t know what it’s like to have something good—”

  “Tell me you didn’t say that,” I say, relieved.

  “I didn’t say that.” He presses his lips against mine, hard. “But you are, Bridge. You’re everything good in my life. You know that, right?” He searches my face.

  I answer him with another kiss.

  “Good.” His face breaks into a smile, and we settle back into our seats. He pulls away from the curb but curls his hand around mine and leaves it there.

  “Where do you want to go?” I squeeze his hand.

  “Wherever you want,” he says. “Just don’t want to go anywhere that reminds me of Dad. That okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. What about Nina’s? We could get dessert.”

  He shakes his head. “My dad and I had kind of a hard conversation in there once. Right before.”

  “Got it. No Nina’s. So you probably don’t want to do an after-dinner beach walk, then. Or take out the canoe?”

  “Ahh.” He looks
pained. “Sorry.”

  “Wil, it’s okay.” I don’t want to say it, and I don’t have to. There is no escaping your father. Wilson is everywhere. Wil won’t ever outrun him.

  I get an idea. “If you want, I know a place down Atlantic you’ve never been. Has pretty good tea and cookies, actually.”

  “Tea and cookies?” He looks at me with a crooked smile. “Sign me up.”

  We pull into the Sandy Shores entrance during the commercial break between Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, which buys us ninety seconds of focused, productive Rita. When Rita sees me with a boy, she stage-winks at me, as if he’s not sitting between us. Then something clicks and I watch her recognize Wil. She bows her head when she presses the button to let us in.

  “One of these days, I could have plans, you know,” Minna says when she opens the door. She’s Joni Mitchell cool in bare feet, loose hair, and a caftan that Leigh would pay too much for at Vintage Vixens.

  “We took a shot in the dark,” I say. “Wil, this is my friend Minna.”

  “Oh.” Wil can’t hide his surprise. “Ah, hi. I’m Wil.”

  Minna bobs her head. “Hello, William.” I say a silent thank you that she doesn’t talk too loud or with a lilt to her voice or tilt to her head, the way everyone does around Wil these days.

  “It’s short for Wilson, actually.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She shakes her head and waves us inside. “Anyone up for Dirty Scrabble?”

  Wil elbows me. “We are most definitely up for Dirty Scrabble.”

  “Minna. I don’t think this is appropriate,” I tell her once we’re seated in the living room with the Scrabble board, lavender tea, and the tin of caramel popcorn I gave her for her birthday.

  “Dirty Scrabble is always inappropriate, Bridget. That’s the point.”

  “So, how do you guys know each other?” Wil wrestles with the popcorn tin.

  Minna puckers her lips at her tiles. “We met during Bridget’s juvenile delinquent phase.”