I could feel, again, my fingers slipping on the strings. The squeal of the wrong chord. The hot rush of tears burning down my face as I ran off the stage. I blinked and shook my head, focusing again on the sound of the water tickling the banks, the light breeze through the pine trees, the crackle of the fire.
New York was a long way away.
“I just don’t love it anymore,” I said. “Not like I used to.”
“I don’t believe that.”
I looked up. “Why would you say that?”
The firelight shone off Will’s hair, turning the blond highlights on top a burnished bronze. His eyes, almost black in the night, were as deep, almost mournful, as ever. But the firelight danced in their depths.
“Because the second you took that guitar, your whole body lit up,” he replied. He picked up a stick and started poking at the logs. “It was like that,” he said as a thrill of embers flew up into the night air. “Sparks.”
Our eyes met across the fire as the sparks disappeared into the black, and for a moment, I couldn’t move. Will swallowed visibly, the movement causing the muscles in his neck to flex. It was easy sometimes to forget how handsome he really was. His beard covered most of his face, but the shadows cast from the fire still played up cheekbones and hinted at a jawline that looked like it belonged in a museum, not around a campfire. His eyes, I knew, were as green as the lake at twilight, but with gold flecks that looked exactly like the sparks he had just teased from the logs. I knew what his chest looked like without that fleece on—knew exactly how his sun-kissed skin pulled taut over the sleek, elegant lines of his torso, which looked particularly good when he had water dripping all over it.
But now I couldn’t help wondering what the rest of him looked like. If his lower half was as well built as the top.
Then our eyes met again. As if he could see my illicit thoughts reflected on my face, Will’s gaze reflected a different kind of fire—one I suddenly felt burning deeply within me as well. Slowly, his gaze dropped, pouring over my body with such intensity it was like he was actually touching me.
Sparks. Yeah.
He exhaled, and swallowed again.
“Play something,” he said, his voice slightly hoarse.
I cleared my throat, suddenly aware again that I was still holding my guitar. I looked down at it. Once I knew this shape like I knew my own body. Now it was like holding a stranger. And somehow, I didn’t think that was just because of how long it had been since I had played.
“What—what do you want to hear?”
“Um…” Will’s voice sounded strained. “Just—just play something. Now. Please.”
I opened my mouth to remark just how odd it was that he was saying please—I honestly wasn’t sure I had heard Will say anything nice to anyone since I had met him. But before I could reply, we were interrupted.
“Margaret can play just about anything,” Mama said as she stepped back into the clearing. She handed Will a beer and kept the other for herself.
Will accepted the mug with a brief nod, although something told me that the cheap beer Mama had poured into the frigid glass wasn’t quite up to Will’s standards. Based on his home, the tea he had served me, I already knew that he had a quiet preference for the finer things in life.
“Do you ever…?” he asked me.
I shook my head.
“Maggie doesn’t drink,” Mama confirmed. “Not like I haven’t tried to get her to lighten up for years. But you can’t move a mountain, I should say.”
I looked down at the strings, strummed them lightly, and cringed. Well, I wasn’t going to be playing a damn thing with that tuning.
“What’s your favorite music, William?” Mama asked as she retook her seat, and I proceeded to tune the guitar.
Will shrugged.
“When Margaret was little, I didn’t need a record player or a stereo. I’d put on the radio, and she would listen. Ten minutes later, she could play the song.” She looked at me. “What’d they call it, honey? You have perfect pinch?”
Will chuckled into his glass, and I rolled my eyes. “Pitch, Mama. Perfect pitch.”
“Pitch,” Mama told Will. “Name any song. My baby can play it for you.” She took another long sip of her beer, as if that covered everything.
Will looked at me curiously. “Really?”
I shrugged and focused on tuning the last string. “Yeah. Pretty much.”
I didn’t say that having perfect pitch had been as much of a hindrance as it had been a blessing. My dependence on my ear was the reason I didn’t know how to read music, and so had failed just about every music class I’d taken at NYU. I had dreams of coming out of college a classically trained guitarist. So much for dreams.
“‘Gimme Shelter,’” Will said. “Try that one.”
Immediately I strummed the opening chords to the Rolling Stones’ famous tune.
Will’s eyes brightened considerably. “Wow. Okay, then. How about ‘The Boxer’?”
I rolled my eyes. “Seriously.” My fingers tickled the strings faster than I could think out the complicated opening pattern to Simon and Garfunkel’s hit. “Come on, now. Challenge me.”
Will smirked. “How about ‘Stairway to Heaven’?”
“Sure, I know that. Me and every other eighth grade boy on the planet.” I laughed while I teased out the famous opening pattern to the Led Zeppelin classic, but stopped a few bars in. “Satisfied? Someone’s a classic rock junkie, I see.”
“Just means he has good taste,” Mama cut in with a nod to Will.
Will just nodded in agreement. “The classics never go out of style.”
“Play one of yours, Margaret,” Mama urged with her glass. “For me.”
I froze. “I don’t know, Mama. I haven’t practiced in so long…”
“I’d like to hear one,” Will said.
The open curiosity in his face was something I hadn’t seen before. His voice was barely audible over the crackle of the fire, but his eyes were what really stilled me. Gone was the cold, harsh man who kept showing up on our dock like a wet stray dog. Gone were the guarded looks. The suspicion. The not-so-hidden anger. The hurt.
Now I only saw a face that was warm. Open. Hopeful.
And as much as it scared me, in that second, I knew. I knew I’d play anything he wanted, in front of anyone, if he would look at me like that again.
I gulped. “Um, okay. I guess…sure.”
And so, for the first time since I had run off that stage and fled New York in both terror and shame, I picked out the melody of the song I had written once, long ago, as a way to voice those emotions that couldn’t speak aloud by themselves.
It was a song about loneliness. A song about being saved. A song about staying with someone long after you should, and how it broke you to do it.
The last note hung in the air for what seemed like eons, and when I finished, even the fire seemed silent. I exhaled, enjoying for a moment the elation that always came when I played my own music, my own heart. There was a space that opened up where nothing else existed but those notes, those resonances. The sound of my voice, the unity of my fingers on the strings or the keys. Just me. Just music. Nothing else mattered.
I opened my eyes and looked to Mama and Will, hoping to see at least a bit of that same contentment on their faces, the same that I felt at the end.
“Oh, honey,” Mama said as she wiped a tear from her eye. “You always do this to me when you play, sweetheart. Beautiful, just beautiful. Wasn’t it beautiful, William?”
I looked to Will, ready for his more taciturn answer, but hoping for maybe a little more than usual. Music always made me open up more too. Maybe it would do the same for him.
But he said nothing. His face had shuttered, and the frown line over his brow had reappeared. His mouth was slightly open while he looked at me, an expression that quickly morphed into a glare.
“Will?” I ventured, my voice small. I tried to be light, to mask the way his reaction hurt. Why it
should hurt so much, I didn’t care to explore. “Will, what’s wrong?”
He stood up in a sudden hurry.
“Thank you for the beer, Ms. Sharp,” he said stiffly to my mother. “I should be going.”
“William,” she protested. “Sit back down and finish your drink. Don’t be a rude guest to Maggie.”
But the look on his face said he would rather do anything but that. He glanced between us, his eyes wide. Panicked.
“Will,” I protested. “What’s—”
“I have to go,” he said, and before either of us could respond, practically ran out of the clearing. Mama and I listened to the sound of his steps tromping up the deck, and watched him a few moments later as he made his way up the rest of the stairs.
“Well,” Mama said as she sat back into her chair. She shook her head and took another long drink of beer. “I don’t know what crawled up his bum, but I think tomorrow you’d best find out.”
I frowned. “What? Why?”
“Because,” she said as she set her beer on the ground. Her speech was slowing, a sure sign that soon, she’d be asleep. “That’s what friends do, Maggie.”
“Mama, I really don’t think he wants that.”
“That’s what friends do,” she repeated as her head lolled to the side.
“Mama, come on,” I said, rising from the chair and pulling her up. If she passed out here, she’d be impossible to move until morning, and I’d end up sleeping on the grass to make sure she didn’t accidentally stumble into the lake.
After I helped her to bed and put away my guitar, I stood for a moment on the top deck, looking out at the lake. Across the calm waters, a light flashed through the trees—a car arriving, maybe, or a porch light turning on and off. And I knew my mother was right. I needed to be there. Now.
16
Thirty minutes later, I’d looped halfway around the lake, driven past Will’s driveway at least four times trying to find the mostly hidden entrance in the dark, and was finally parking my car right behind his orange truck. The porch light of his house, a few yards down the hill, was actually on. I took it as a good sign.
Without pretense, I marched up the moss-covered walkway and banged on the door.
“Will,” I called out. “Baker. Seriously, I know you’re in there. And unless you’d like your neighbors to figure out there is actually someone living here, you better open up before I start shouting.”
At first there was nothing but the lapping of lake water and the occasional call of an owl. But I wasn’t about to be deterred.
“Seriously, Will.” I raised my voice. “I know you’re awake. And since my mother’s passed out on the couch, I’ve got nothing but time. I can do this all damn night.”
I raised my fist to pound again, but a few thumps sounded from inside. I backed away, waiting. I felt strange, a little reckless, almost like I was drunk or high on something. My heart was beating inordinately fast like I had run all the way here instead of sitting in my car. Adrenaline, a small voice told me. That’s adrenaline.
Then the door opened, and my heart stopped. Will stood there in nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs that showed off way more than they covered up, doing absolutely nothing to hide the acres of flat, muscular expanse that rippled over his chest, his abs, cutting in two diagonal lines below the waistband of his shorts. Sure, I’d seen it before, but not this close. Not this late at night. Not this…furious.
When I managed to drag my eyes back up, his expression was positively feral. His hair drifted around his shoulders in a glorious wavy mane, framing a face that could only be described as leonine. His eyes sparked.
“What. The fuck. Are you doing here?” he growled.
I almost flinched. Almost. But then I didn’t. Because this was Will, and though there was still a lot I didn’t know about him, I did know that gruff facade masked a much softer interior. He couldn’t fake that with me anymore. Not now. Not ever.
So I shoved by him into the room, ignoring the pine and fresh water scent that called to me as I passed. He was still so warm, even at well past midnight, when the chill of the night air sweeping down the mountains took over the summer heat and cooled everything off.
“Get dressed, Baker,” I said as I turned around, my arms crossed. “We need to talk.”
“It’s almost one o’clock in the morning, Maggie.”
Maggie? I wanted to ask. Since when do you call me Maggie?
I shook my head. “You weren’t asleep. In fact, I’d bet a hundred bucks you rarely sleep through the night. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Will’s fists opened and closed for a few moments, and he worried his jaw, pulling a little on his beard as he scowled. Then he sighed and rolled his eyes.
“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?” he said, though he was already moving toward the stairs. “Wait here.”
Five minutes later, he re-emerged still pulling on a gray t-shirt over a pair of black sweatpants, giving me one last glimpse of tantalizing abdominals before covering them with cotton. He had tied his hair back up, revealing strong cheekbones and a muscled neck. I was tempted to tell him to put it back down. It was easier to be mad at him when he looked more like Sasquatch than a model.
“What do you want, Lil?” Will crossed his arms, causing his biceps to stretch the sleeves in a very distracting way.
I cleared my throat. “I want to know why you ran off. Why you keep running off.”
Will wrapped a hand around his neck and looked away. “What does it matter?”
“Should I just ignore it?” I asked. “You kissed me, Baker. Twice. And after this last time, I’m pretty sure you were planning to do more, but instead you asked me to serenade you before you left me high and dry. So what gives?”
Will crossed his arms and stared fixedly at the gleaming wood floors. “Maybe I’m just an asshole, Maggie. Did you ever think of that?”
I scowled. “Stop calling me ‘Maggie’ like we just met and you haven’t practically eaten me alive twice now. That’s a cop-out, and you know it.”
Will shrugged. “Or it’s the truth. I tried being nice to you, but it didn’t work.”
His hands dropped to his waist, crossed again in front of his chest, grabbed at his hair, then went back to his hips, constantly moving like he didn’t know what to do with them. His gaze was equally erratic, moving all over the place, landing everywhere but me.
“Fuck this,” he muttered to himself. He grabbed some keys off a table by the door, and started out without even bothering to put on shoes. “I need to take care of something down by the dock,” he said. “You can see yourself out.”
“Will!” I called as I jogged down the steps after him. “Will, wait!”
“Go home, Maggie!” He waved a hand in the air, not even bothering to turn around.
“Will!”
Will’s shoulders tensed like they were bearing some unseen load, but he kept going down the long staircase toward the water.
“I thought we were having fun,” I called out as I followed, pushing errant branches of pine and alder out of my face. “I thought we were actually having a good time tonight. You picked me up. We went out for a show. Had a drink or two and danced, like normal people.”
Will whirled around, four steps from the bottom. “Is that what you think tonight was? A normal date with a normal guy? Should I have brought you flowers? Opened your door for you? Bought you a drink instead of clinging to your hand like a fucking psycho?”
“I—I didn’t say that,” I said, with less strength than I wanted. I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Will, I didn’t say anything like that!”
“I am not a normal guy, Lil. I’ll never be that guy. I haven’t been normal since I was seven years old, and now I’m more fucked up at my age than most people will ever be their entire lives. I’ll never, ever be fucking normal, so you can drop-kick that idea out of your pretty little head.”
He didn’t wait for me to reply, just turned and practically ran the res
t of the way down the hill, taking a sharp right into the trees. I followed, struggling to track him in the dim light.
“Stop following me, Lil,” he called over his shoulder as he strode to a small boathouse close to the dock. It was shrouded in trees, but he moved about the property like he’d done this many times in the dark.
“Stop running away,” I retorted as I ducked under a big pine tree branch, eventually coming to a stop behind him, just short of running into him.
Will pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and they jangled loudly as he struggled to unlock the door to the boathouse.
“You kissed me,” I stated to his back. “Twice. You kissed me. And then you showed up to take me to that show even though I never said you had to go. You asked me to dance. You cut in. And then you kissed me. Again.”
“And why do you think I did that?!” he exploded, smacking his hand hard against the door. “It’s not healthy, the way I feel about you! Every time I see you, I want to pick you up, take you away from this place, these people—anyone who says the things they say to you. I want you for myself and no one else because I’m a selfish bastard. Does that sound like something a good person would think?”
“You would never do that,” I said. “I know you, Will. You’re not like that.”
Will froze. He shoved his keys into his pocket, and his other hand braced the wall. His head fell.
“I’m not good for you,” he said in a voice I almost couldn’t hear, muffled as it was by his posture and the woods. “I don’t know why you haven’t run a mile away from me, Lily, but you should. I won’t come by the house anymore. I won’t help out or run or bike or swim with you. You walk away right now, and I’ll do the same. We’ll just leave each other alone.”
The muscles of the arm braced against the door shook visibly, even in the scattered moonlight. I stared for a moment, feeling more than ever as if Will were some kind of wild animal, desperate to be tamed, but terrified of being trapped. With a light, careful touch, I placed my hands on his arms, and when he didn’t move them—in fact, seemed to sag into my touch—I turned him around, guiding him in a circle so that he was leaning back against the door and watching me with wide, worried eyes.
Discreet: The Discreet Duet: Book I Page 15
