Go Your Own Way (17 page)

“God, would you leave me alone!” Will’s voice was hoarse. He reached up to turn the door handle, but Lennox leaned back against the door, arms crossed. Just another bad decision in a long list since this morning. He couldn’t help Will with this, no matter what had happened to his own parents. Helping required existing and he couldn’t exist in old memories the way his father had. Acknowledging any of that would only drag him down into the same hollow descent in which his father had trapped himself.

Will tried to shove Lennox away from the door, but he barely budged.

“Move.”

“No. I—Osborne—
fuck
.”

Lennox couldn’t explain why he didn’t move. He could let Will knock him aside, pretend he’d never chased him here and forget the hollowness looking out of Will’s eyes. Will’s eyes always fired to life when they caught sight of him, but they hadn’t today. Seeing them was like falling into a chasm. Will tried to shove him out of the way again. This time, Lennox pinned his arms to his sides.

“Let me go!” A sob punctuated Will’s words. He slumped out of Lennox’s grip and plopped down at a desk.

Lennox almost left. Tears glossed over Will’s eyes, hiding the pale green and shaking up memories Lennox didn’t care to retrieve. His father’s eyes had looked like that once. Only hours after they’d returned from the hospital the night his mother died. Cracked like glass and wild, as if he’d reached the last edge of sanity before the bottles had started sprouting out of his mouth. Lennox hadn’t been big enough—strong enough—to hold him down. He couldn’t make him listen to anything he asked or said. At eight, he hadn’t yet captured the words.

For a week, he’d stumbled around the house with his baby sister, not knowing how to change her diapers or what to feed her or how to tell her different cries apart. All his dad had done was drink and cry. Then he’d dug out his mom’s little red book of phone numbers and called Grandma. Their grandparents had stepped up. Someone needed to.

“It’s not like you care,” Will bellowed. He was on his feet again, wiping his eyes and plowing into Lennox. Will’s fists hit Lennox’s chest, but Lennox stayed in front of the door. “You
don’t
care. Not about me or him or anyone but your stupid dick! Let go!”

“No!” Lennox caught his hands and held on, despite the twist­ing and pulling and tears. His dad had never bothered to fight, to keep himself afloat long enough to give any of them a chance.

“Get off!”

“You think I don’t know how this feels?” Lennox was shout­ing now, but his words seemed to strengthen Will’s struggle. A memory trickled in, a hazy brush of his dad’s face—thin, unshaven and devastated where it rested on the arm of the couch. But Will was still full of life. Still a vortex of rage and strength and fire. His eyes were the way his father’s had been and Lennox couldn’t let that go. He couldn’t let Will drift off as so much else had.

“Bullshit,” Will spat. He shouldered past Lennox and opened the door. “Your dad isn’t in a hospital dying.”

“My dad never made it to a hospital.”

It slipped out like water through his fingers, but Will didn’t laugh. He didn’t open the door either. Lennox swallowed and took a few steps toward the teacher’s desk beside them.

“I was fifteen then. Eight when my mom passed.”

Lennox sat on the desk, expecting the door to squeak open and for Will’s footsteps to carry him away. This wasn’t something to share with anyone who hadn’t been there, let alone this boy who had already seen too much of Lennox’s life. He toed a scuff on the floor and waited for something to crash, for a thunderous crunch to splinter the floor all around him now that he’d spoken of them.

“They’re—both of them are—”

Lennox swallowed. “Dead, yeah.”

Will hugged himself around the middle, but Lennox saw no hint of disbelief in his gaze. “My mom died when I was three. I don’t even remember her.”

“You’re lucky,” Lennox said. He cleared his throat and stood, but Will blocked his path to the door now.

“I’m lucky I can’t remember my own mother?” The disbelief Lennox had waited for slipped into Will’s tone. “I
wish
I could.”

“Do you? Really? Because you’re lucky you don’t, that you can’t even remember wanting her nearby. It’s—”

“Easier?”

“Kinder.” Lennox tried to inch past him, but Will stopped him again. “Enough chat then. Move.”

“No, you’re—I’m sorry about your parents.”

“Don’t be,” Lennox told him. He tried to step to the left and Will followed. “I’m the one who should be—well…” He cleared his throat and mumbled, “Sorry.”

“For what?” It wasn’t naïveté that resonated in Will’s voice. The sharpness in his words made Lennox uncomfortable. Will shouldn’t be able to call him out on a wimpy apology for how he’d treated Will at his room, especially when that apology was masked by their current conversation.

“Because… god, do I really have to say it? Isn’t it enough that I am?”

Will’s hand caught his arm and kept him from stomping past. “Yeah, you do, because I need to hear it.”

They stared at each other. Lennox imagined him turning and walking off, out of his life and away, all of these lost secrets for­ever. But when he blinked, Will was still there. If Will left, maybe the unpleasant pull in his chest would go with him. Lennox could ignore everything that kept happening that he didn’t want to think about: the questions, his answers, the people he had no reason to talk about anymore and the guilt that kept cresting all over him when Will looked at him as if he expected something—
someone
—nobody else ever had.

“I’m sorry f-for at my place. How I treated—I w-wasn’t trying to—sorry.”

He trailed off, hoping that was enough. But Will only stood there, still expectant and patient. It was almost as if he knew if he lingered long enough, Lennox would get this apology right.

“I wasn’t, like, using you—well, I was, I guess, but I just—
shit.
” Lennox swallowed a mouthful of air and gazed at the ceiling. He tried to ignore the little flicker of a smile on Will’s face and the pulse in his belly that had nothing to do with arousal. “I want to keep you—keep you close? I just like kissing you, all right? Jeez.”

Lennox faked right and managed to duck under Will’s arm for the door. But when he grabbed the doorknob, Will’s hand closed over his.

“Thank you for saying that.”

“Does this mean you’re signing off on that blow job? The offer always stands, just like my dick.”

“No,” he replied, but laughter was in Will’s voice again. “Not even in your dreams, McAvoy.”

“We do a lot more than blow jobs in my dreams, babe. I bet we do a lot more in yours, too.”

Together, they opened the door, but before Lennox could fol­low Will out, Will slammed it in his face. Lennox laughed and opened it again. Will was already at the corner, but he paused long enough to give Lennox a smirk—a reminder. Will was a challenge, but offered the potential for a greater experience, too. A spark that could grow as big as a firework, hanging in the sky for one fleeting moment.

A week passed without any change in Will’s dad’s condition. Monday after school, Will headed back to the hospital and took his spot in the corner of his father’s room. He and Karen had set up a little lounge area in the far corner. It was only a few worn armchairs she’d found around the hospital and a little table for Will to do his homework on, but it made it easier to pretend this was their living room. That his dad hadn’t been lying under a jumble of tubes for a week without moving so much as an eyelash.

“Will?” Aaron Saunders poked his bushy blond head in. “Care for some company?”

“We got you a Slurpee.” Roxanne pushed past Aaron and flounced into the room. “How—oh. H-hi, Mr. Osborne.”

“He can’t hear you,” Will told her. He accepted the huge cup and took a sip. Cherry. His favorite. Roxanne might be annoying, but she did have a good memory. “Thanks.”

“I stopped by your house and let Oyster out,” Aaron added as Roxanne sat beside Will and hugged him from behind. “Had to wipe up the floor ‘cause he knocked over his water bowl.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure.” Aaron glanced over at the hospital bed as Roxanne nudged her bony chin into Will’s shoulder. “Does he really need all of those tubes? Looks like an overcharged power strip.”

Will shrugged. “Karen said they’ll take a few off soon, once they’re sure his heart’s stabilized completely. He can breathe on his own, but with the coma… The longer he stays under, the less likely it is that… ”

Will couldn’t finish. Aaron kicked him under the table and gave him a sympathetic nod. He didn’t say anything more about Will’s dad, and Will was glad.

“Oh, are you doing the calc work?” Roxanne pulled Will’s open book toward her. “I haven’t started. Have you, Aaron?”

“And give myself a headache before dinner? Are you nuts?”

Roxanne elbowed him in the ribs. Aaron sighed and took off his backpack. “But I guess it’s now or never. The three of us can figure it out. Right, Will?”

Will nodded. They were here to keep him company, under one guise or another, and he was grateful for that. With­out Len­nox nearby, his distractions had been reduced to breaking his pencils and searching the hospital for a sharpener. Unfor­tunately, the nearest nurse’s station had one, so that hadn’t lasted long.

“Okay.” Will tore out his page of miscalculations from yester­day. “I’m awful at this. Just a warning.”

“You haven’t paid attention all week,” Roxanne said. “I did and I still can’t do it right.”

“He hasn’t been good at math since long division,” Aaron added. “Remember how outraged he was when they started add­ing letters?”

“Letters in math is insane, all right?” Will said. “And then ima­ginary numbers! Like, who are they kidding?”

Aaron and Roxanne laughed. This wasn’t as pleasant as the distractions Lennox might offer, but it also wouldn’t end with him hurting any more than he was already. For half an hour, they tried to figure out how to work the problems. It didn’t take Will long to give up again, and for once, Roxanne didn’t seem keen on working either. She kept staring at the heart monitor and tapping her pencil in time with it. Aaron hadn’t written down a single thing since they’d begun.

“So what’s new with you and Lennox?” Aaron asked.

Will flipped his book open and scribbled out the first problem again. “So, I’ve got about three pages of calculations for this, and another twenty in the trash can and I’m
still
wrong. Did either of you get anything close to the answers in the back?”

Roxanne tutted and chewed on the end of her pencil. Aaron flipped Will’s book closed on his fingers.

“Come on. It’s not a hard question,” Aaron said.

“And I don’t know what you mean.”

“He’s been all over you, dude.” Aaron shifted in his seat and glanced at Will’s dad. He was still unconscious, but just his pre­sence made this conversation uncomfortable. “Everyone’s talking about it. And Natasha kept going on and on about you,” Aaron paused and dropped his voice after another glance at Will’s dad, “
having hickeys
.”

“I saw them during our newspaper meeting!” Roxanne added, not bothering to keep her voice down. She jabbed at her throat a good five inches from where Will’s hickey had been. “Right here! This big, ugly, blotchy mark. It looked as if a woodpecker dive-bombed your Adam’s apple.”

While Aaron’s eyes kept darting to the hospital bed, Roxanne did nothing to keep Will’s dad out of their conversation. Unlike Aaron, she didn’t seem to think discussion of Will’s apparent love life would be the catalyst to wake his dad.

“It did not,” Will hissed, but that only confirmed what Aaron had suspected.

“So—so it’s true?” Aaron faltered. “You two are—he doesn’t really seem like the boyfriend type. And you’ve always said—”

“Jealous, Saunders? You’re looking as pouty as a toddler with­out his lollipop. Unless you’d rather suck on this.”

Will gestured to his jeans and Aaron kicked him under the table. “Careful! You’re starting to sound like Lennox. But seri­ously, are you two a thing? He’s sort of—”

“Awful? In a cute way.” Roxanne curled her legs under her. “Is his hair oily? I love the color. All of those reds and golds and browns, but I’ve always heard that bl—”

“Stop right there.” Will shook his head and she wilted a little. “Doesn’t matter. Hair is hair.”

“Well?” Aaron flicked his pencil across the table at Will and it rolled onto the floor. “You two knocking dicks yet?”

Will flushed, but didn’t shake his head. “We aren’t—he isn’t my boyfriend.”

“But you’ve done
something
, right?” Roxanne pressed, looking excited. “You haven’t been making out with a vacuum cleaner, have you? Wouldn’t that hurt?”

“How should I know?”

“Just don’t get, like—prostate cancer or, like, I don’t know, chlamydia—”

“Since when do people get cancer from having sex?” Will stared from one face to the other in disbelief. “Look, nothing’s going on, and if there was I know how to protect against STDs.”

“But you like him,” Roxanne said. “You’re happier when he’s around you. Even if you’re super-annoyed, too.”

Will tried to judge how sincere those words were. Since Tues­day, he’d thought about Lennox a lot. While he was here at the hospital or trying to fall asleep in one of his dad’s faded shirts, Lennox sprang into his mind. Lennox was like the pep­permint candies his dad had always given him after a nasty fall off his bike. He wasn’t a Band-Aid and he couldn’t heal Ben or the ache in his chest. But Lennox was a comfort Will couldn’t explain away.

Lennox had been through worse than this—had actually lost both parents. Sure, he’d come out of it a pierced, cruel-tongued nightmare, but he’d survived. If Lennox could, Will could, too.

“I don’t know, okay?” Will sighed and retrieved Aaron’s pencil from the floor. “He’s such an—”

An asshole.
How many more times was he going to think that? Lennox deserved the title, had gone out of his way to earn it, but Will found himself hesitating. He liked Lennox and he wasn’t ashamed of it anymore. A dim hope had blossomed on one simple, awkward, badly worded apology that told Will that Lennox did care. Despite his crudity and the forceful way he kissed, Lennox did care about him. He was willing to apologize, to share a part of his life with Will, no matter how tiny that effort might seem. That scared Will as much as it seemed to terrify Len­nox. For the first time, Will let himself breathe, let himself want to be around him; to touch him, kiss him and have his arms tight around his chest again.

“We’d be really happy if you had someone,” Aaron said. “ Nata­sha too. So would your dad and Karen.”

They all looked over at Will’s dad and his jungle of tubes.

“I do like him,” Will confessed. “But I can’t stand him, too. It’s… complicated. I don’t want to just date for a few weeks. I don’t—I want something that’s real.”

“Why can’t a short relationship be real?” Roxanne asked. “I mean, Romeo and Juliet—”

“Were two insane, dopey teenagers whose infatuation killed a half a dozen people,” Will said. “I want maturity. Commitment. Someone to talk to about everything.”

“Sounds like a therapist to me,” Aaron said. He checked his phone and packed his books away. “I’ve got to get home for dinner. Be careful around him.”

“Text us if you need us. Or if your dad wakes up, okay?” Rox­anne put her books away and followed Aaron out.

For a few minutes, Will sat alone and listened to the blip of his dad’s heart monitor. His ideal boyfriend wasn’t a shrink. That wasn’t the type of relationship he wanted. Aaron was just being stupid. No, Will wanted trust, commitment, a real depth to a relationship. Not some flighty two-week fling with a handful of make-out sessions. Lennox, however, didn’t seem to have any interest in romance or commitment. His sole interest was blow jobs.

The door opened. Karen came in, still in her scrubs and with her lunch bag in hand.

“Anything?” She already knew the answer. If anything had changed, she would have known seconds after he alerted the nurses on his dad’s floor.

“No.” Will packed his books away and stood up. “I’m starving. Can we get tacos?”

“Sure.” Karen paused to kiss her husband’s forehead before they left.

Will stayed away from the bed. He couldn’t stand all of the tubes, didn’t want to be near them. Ben looked as though a plastic spider had created a tubular cocoon around him.

“I saw Aaron and Roxanne leaving.”

“They came to distract me. Actually, it was more like playing Twenty Questions about Lennox,” Will told her.

“Friends tend to be like that when you like someone,” Karen said as they shut the door to Ben’s room.

Will slowed his usual pace for Karen’s smaller stride. It was easier to think of Lennox with the door on his dad’s room shut behind them. “It’s okay to like someone, isn’t it? Even i-if Dad doesn’t like him.”

“You can’t help that you like Lennox,” Karen reminded him.

“His parents are dead,” Will said. “He told me last week. He gets it.”

Karen squeezed his shoulders in a one-armed hug as they entered the elevator. “Your dad is going to pull through this. And even if—you’ve got me. I know it’s not the same as your dad or your mom, but—”

“It is. You’re more of a mom than—I loved her, I did, but—” Will bit his lip. If his dad had heard that, it would have broken his heart. “I don’t mean that—I don’t remember anything about her, you know? You’re the one who’s been here. You’re as good as she would have been, that’s all.”

“It’s okay to talk to your dad about her,” Karen said instead of thanking him. “I know he talks about her a lot, but I think a lot of that is for you. He has all their memories. Years and years of them, but he wants you to have them, too. That’s why he tells you those stories so often. He wants you to have a piece of her the only way you can.”

“I always feel guilty when he talks about her,” Will admitted. “Like I’m letting him down because I can’t even remember what she looks like without a picture in front of me.”

“You could never let him down, sweetie. Come on.” Karen stepped off the elevator and Will followed. “Let’s get you your tacos and cuddle up with Oyster. I’m sure he’s been pining all afternoon. Then get a good night’s sleep. You’ve still got a test tomorrow.”

“How do you always know that?” Will groaned as she reached over and mussed up his hair.

“Every year I sneak into your room after the first day of class and photocopy all of your syllabi.” Karen laughed at the look on his face. “Your dad has copies, too.”

“You’re awful. Feed me.”

“Race me to the car then.”

Will took off at a sprint, leaving Karen well behind.