Paul flashed a humorless smile, lifting his middle finger to the sky. It snapped back the instant he saw me looking at him. “Sorry,” he mouthed, looking down.
“Mature,” I chided, attempting to encourage William from his freeze-framed form. “You’re the one that called him, remember?”
“Let’s hope that’s the last mistake I make tonight,” Paul replied, his tone full of implications, but I was too consumed trying to pull William from his trance to decipher the meaning behind his words.
“I’m gonna hit the sack now to make sure it is.” He pushed off his thighs to rise, eyeing William. “Hasn’t anyone told you chivalry’s dead, man? Chics don’t dig that whole opening doors, getting down on one knee thing.”
“Good night, Paul.” I made the warning in my voice so obvious even a jock-rock (my term for jocks with rocks for brains) would hear it.
Without another word, he jogged up the stairs, hollering over his shoulder, “See ya, Bryn.”
I exhaled, two male problems attended to, one more to go.
I wasn’t sure how much, if any, of my past I was willing to divulge to William. I’d only told my account of that night once, to the police who were the first on the scene, and hadn’t whispered a word about it since. Not even when counselors, distant relatives from Texas I saw once every few years, or my professors back home, encouraged me to talk about it—let the pain ooze from the wound before sealing it up, not to let it fester. But I’d been a fester-er my whole life, how could everyone just expect me to change and bawl my eyes through a box of tissues every week at some support group?
William rose and I felt him studying me, trying to work out a problem in his head that was unsolvable, inconclusive . . . the null set.
“What happened?” he said finally, his voice so tight it seemed it might snap.
I sniffed, looking anywhere but in his eyes. “I was shot.”
He nodded twice before rolling his head into a shake. “With the location on your body, a centimeter to the right or left and it would have killed you instantly.”
I’d never looked at it that way—that I was lucky I’d made it. I chose to focus on the bad luck of being shot and having everything taken from me that night. “Lucky me, right?”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “It’s like something—some force—wanted you to survive. To make it to this moment.”
There was a serious lightness to his statement, so I replied in turn, “So I could be here with you, right now?”
A slow grin rose. “Something like that. At least that’s what I like to think.”
“Again,” I said, trying to look through him like he had so many times with me. “Lucky me.”
He held my stare like it was the most natural gesture between near strangers, with the practice of a staring contest champion. I felt my eyes puckering with dryness before I blinked, forfeiting the win to the master.
“I’ll take you to your room,” he said, resting his hand over the small of my back gently, as if I was too fragile to touch with any kind of urgency.
Up the staircase that seemed taller, down the hall that seemed longer, coming to a stop in front of the door that seemed more empty. Mine was easy to identify; it was the only door void of glittered construction paper cut-out names and corkboards splattered with photos.
I cupped my hand around the doorknob, stalling, still undecided. In the end, my soul made the decision for me.
“It was six months ago,” I said, sounding stronger than I thought I could breeching the topic.
He braced his hand against the wall, sucking in a long breath.
I twisted the door opened, the light of my room dosing us in 100 watt incandescent light. I always kept at least one light on now, the dark and I didn’t get along anymore. “I want to show you something.”
My legs fought the journey to my desk, my arms fighting even harder as I whooshed the bottom drawer open. I didn’t have to turn my head to know he’d followed me in, I could feel him—like the spring morning sun on my face. I dug under several pre-law course books when that dream had still been alive, finding what I was searching for at the very bottom. The metal of the drawer had cooled the thin paper. I fought back a choke, I wasn’t going to chicken out now.
Pulling out the cut-out newspaper article, I flung my arm behind me, not able to look at it. Once had been enough for one lifetime.
William took it, his contemplation saturating the air like a heavy night fog. I stayed crouched where I was, unable to look.
“Three Shot, Two Die, One Still at Large in Dawson Family Tragedy,” he whispered, reciting the title of the article that had turned into a highly publicized case. Despite the overabundance of violence out there, it still seems to turn a lot of heads when a respectable attorney and his wife are murdered in cold blood, while their Ivy-league daughter narrowly escaped her own death on her nineteenth birthday.
I closed my eyes, focusing on inhaling . . . 1,2,3,4,5 . . . exhaling . . . 1,2,3,4,5.
He didn’t read anymore aloud thankfully, although I’d already teleported myself back in time to that night and was sprawled on the asphalt drenched in blood and rain, shivering and alone.
He glanced down at me, his eyes filled with the rawness of someone who had experienced the kind of loss I had, although how could he truly understand my sorrow? William couldn’t know what it felt like to lose his entire family and know he was the one responsible for it.