He finds himself turning to a dish he used to make a lot in college, which involves, essentially, boiling pasta in one pot and cooking together olive oil, white beans, garlic, red pepper flakes, and a can of tuna fish in another. It’s not anything he cooks from a recipe—now, as then, it’s a meal of convenience more than one designed to impress. As Will works through the motions of the opening steps, he thinks that it’s a pretty good summary of his general cooking philosophy: Will is a functional cook, and that’s all he’s trying to be. He does his best to save what brilliance and creativity he possesses for the lab; at the stove, he’s satisfied if it’s tasty, and, broadly speaking, not too terrible for him.
Will’s so wrapped up in getting things going that he half forgets Casey’s there, and only just doesn’t jump when Casey says, “I was with Todd, actually.”
It takes Will a second to process that Casey is picking up a conversational thread Will thought he abandoned several minutes ago; then it takes him another second for the content of the sentence to sink in. When it does: “Oh. How, uh. How did that go?”
“Oh, you know,” Casey says, and Will cocks his head, surprised to hear an edge of bleak despair in his tone. “He wanted to talk about how he’s having nightmares, which is fair. I would be having nightmares, too, if I were him. I am havingnightmaresabouthim, about what would have happened, so I get it. It’s not that Imind,right, talking to this traumatized teenage kid about what happened to him, God knows I’ve done it before, I don’t mind! It’s just that everyone in this town, all of them, for months and months, have been so polite, and so awkward, and so distant. ‘Hey, Casey!’ and ‘Hiya, Casey!’ but never anything more. And now, all of a sudden, it’s so urgent for all of them to talk to me, and ask my help with this thing, or that thing, or the other thing, and while I’m there, can I help with this issue they’ve been meaning to ask me about, but it’s been soawkward, and oh there’sanotherproblem, and meanwhile it’s not as though there isn’t always something that needs doinghereand I—” Casey cuts himself off, his chest heaving, and Will raises his eyebrows down into his pan as he stirs. When Casey speaks again, his voice is tightly controlled. “I feel. As though it might be nice. For things to…stop. For a minute or two. That’s all.”
Will stares at Casey, whose head is still in his hands, who is not looking at Will. Will stares at Casey and tries, for an upsettingly long moment, to place the sharp sense of confusion within him, the abrupt but utter sense that he, Will, is at sea. What’s so confusing about that statement? Why should it make him feel unmoored, lost? Casey is obviously feeling exhausted, worn thin, overtaxed, and it’s perfectly normal that he should be. After all, it’s a natural disaster they’re living through right now, and, surely, they’re all feeling worn and overtaxed…
A wave of realization washes over Will; it’s almost nauseating in intensity, and he turns back to the nearly finished dinner, draining the pasta and combining the ingredients essentially on autopilot. Casey might be feeling worn and exhausted, pushed to the brink by these strange circumstances, but Will is not. Will is feeling—good. Really good. The best, maybe, he has felt in… It couldn’t be years, could it? Could that possibly be right?
He tips the pasta into two bowls as he tries to disprove this theory within himself, carding through memories for a comparable sense of fulfillment and calm and coming up worryingly blank. When was it, the last time he felt like this? God, has Willeverfelt like this? And what does it mean, if he hasn’t? If this is the first and only time?
Throwing a handful of Parmesan on top of each bowl, Will sets one down in front of Casey as he walks back to his own vacated chair, too distracted by this disquieting moment of realization to be self-conscious. “Here, eat. Nothing ever feels as grim after pasta.”
Will sits down, too, and sets his own food on the table, and then looks up to see Casey staring at him over his steaming bowl like a trapped animal. Will stares back at him, guilt and confusion and a horrible certainty raising the hairs on his neck, climbing like bile up the back of his throat. He focuses, dizzily, on the way the light from the overhead lamp catches in the soft green of Casey’s eyes and thinks he doesn’t know what he wants at all, and maybe he’s never known.
“Thank you,” Casey says, like he really means it, like he can’t believe Will’s done this simple thing for him. And God, hell, maybe Willdoesknow what he wants, but he would prefer, actually, if he didn’t.
TWELVE
Will spends the next several days in a panic.
It’s not, of course, the correct panic. A smart person—asaneperson—would be panicking about being stuck in Glenriver for another week as the emergency bridge repair drags on, trapped without access to essentially any of his worldly possessions. Or, if not that, perhaps they would be panicking about Bartholomew at work, who responded to Will’s phone call informing him of the delay with something like a witch’s cackle; that would be a good reason to panic. They could panic about their phone burning from ignoring so many calls, as between Selma and Catherine Rose, Will’s is surely nearly at its limit. Will could, if he wanted to be reasonable about it, panic about the sale of the farm falling through, although given the ever-increasing volume of Catherine Rose’s phone calls, he doubts he could convince himself to worry it might.
Regardless: He’s not panicking about any of those good, reasonable, rational things. No; instead he is panicking about stupid Casey, and his stupideyesandfaceandhandsand what, exactly, is sowrongwith Will, that he could have spent so many days in this house with him andnot realized. God, it’s soembarrassing he could throw himself off the top of one of the apple trees. This would only be a dramatic gesture, because Robertson Family Farms has always favored dwarf varietals, which Will knows full well only grow about ten feet tall for maximum apple-pickability, butstill.
It’s just that Casey’s unacceptably hot, and the situation has gotten out of hand. Or, well, no, it’s notjustthat he’s horrifically hot, WillknowsCasey’s hot, has had a firm, unyielding grip on that little detail from the very instant they met. It’s that he’s… Being around him is soeasy, even when it’s messy, or stupid, or horrible, or so frustrating that it makes Will want to tear all his hair out. That doesn’t any make sense—how can something be easy but make him want to tear all his hair out?—but that doesn’t stop it being true. It’s almost like…
When Will was a child, the earliest years of his life he can remember, there had been this dog on the farm, Bear. He hadn’t been the Robertsons’ pet—that had been made very clear to Will from the first, that this was a working barn animal, like the cows and the pigs, not his friend. But Will had befriended him, anyway, sneaking pieces of chicken into his pocket at dinner and hurrying outside on short little legs to toss them, one by one, to the drooling dog. Bear was some kind of mutt, border collie somewhere in the mix, at least if Will’s memories are anything to go by. He was a serious creature, not much for affection. But he liked Will, and as Will got older and was able to wander further and further from the farm, sometimes Bear would come with him, following him curiously, leading him back home if he got lost. Some of Will’s best childhood memories are of afternoons in the woods with Bear, who was always calm and patient and never yelled at him. Even if Will was stomping around after a fight, or running through the woods crying, Bear would trot steadily after him, reliably centered in his own canine headspace, not bothered at all. It had always given Will this weird sense of peace, knowing there was someone alive, even if theywere only a dog, with whom he could justbe. Whose opinion of him wasn’t hinged upon how pleased they were with him that day.
Anyway, being around Casey is like that. It’s really starting to give Will some trouble.
Like—the other night, Sunday night. Will was in a bad mood; he’d decided, somewhere around midday, that he’d like to try to access the stuff in his old bedroom, and spent some time attempting to clear out the junk. The attempt had been fruitless, frustrating, and emotionally excoriating, and he’d stormed downstairs around four in the afternoon streaked with grime, wild-eyed, and brimming with a vibrating, unhinged energy.
When he’d walked past the living room, Casey had raised an eyebrow and said, “Uh, hey. You look weird.”
“Do I look weird?” Will had said, hearing the manic edge in it and not caring very much. “Ha ha! Perhaps I do. Do you know how people usually look, though, when they’ve found a box of…um, I’m going to go with ‘intimacy aids,’ in their parents’ house? In their own former bedroom, no less? Because listen, I mean, maybe this is normal?—”
“Oh,God,” Casey said, laughing on it. “Bill—eurgh. I don’t want to think aboutthat, I have to say.”
“Youdon’t want to think about it?” Will said, sinking down to perch on the arm of the cushy wing chair near the door. “How do you think I feel? I suppose there’s no chance you’re going to tell me they’re yours and free me from a lifetime of horror?”
Casey snorted. “Nah, man, I don’t keep anything in that junk pit; I tried cleaning it out once and Bill about bit my head off, so. I’ve left it alone ever since.” Shaking his head, still laughing on it a little, he added, “Listen—want to watch the back half of this movie with me? Think about something else?”
“What is it?” Will asked, a little interested in spite of his horrified mood, and had brightened somewhat when herealized it was one of his own favorite Mel Brooks films. And then he’d just…watched the movie with Casey, both of them seeming to enjoy the rare chance to do nothing, laughing together and smiling at one another occasionally before looking away. Whatwasthat? What was Will supposed to do with that? All his previous boyfriends—not that Casey is Will’s boyfriend, or anything like his boyfriend, or even remotely interested in filling the position,obviously—but still, the people Will has dated in the past have been pretty clear about not enjoying Will in his less-than-centered moments. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the message that has always been made clear is that Will, in less-than-optimal mental condition, is less-than-optimal company.
But Casey isn’t like that. He’s just not. Will’s come to realize over the last few days, turning the whole thing over and over in his mind, that Casey wasn’t that way even when they were fighting with one another, that very first day. He hadn’t dismissed Will, or ignored him, or called him impossible, or acted like he wasn’t worth the trouble of taking seriously. He’d been mad at Will, sure, and said some less-than-great things, okay, but he’dfought,at least. He’d done his best to say his piece, and what’s more, he’d respected Will enough to engage with him, from that very first minute. Is that what it is—why Will can’t stop thinking about it?
Whatever the reason, it’s getting worse. On Wednesday morning, Casey laughs at a shirt Will’s wearing, says, “God, I haven’t seen that in forever, I can’t even remember why I stopped wearing it now,” which is when it finally clicks for Will that he has beenwalking around in Casey’s old clothesfor the better part of a week and a half. This is so upsetting to him that he does, at long last, find himself digging through Bill’s closet for any alternative options, and he pulls on and buttons up a green-and-blue tartan flannel without much hope before stepping over to the mirror, expecting to see it dwarf him.
Instead, surprised, Will sees… Well, it’s no Bill Robertson staring back at him, certainly, but. The shirt fits. It sits flat and unbunched over his shoulders, across his chest, as though it was cut for him. It was, actually, always a little tight on Bill, back in the old days. Will remembers realizing as a teenager that Bill must have bought them that way on purpose, and finding it a little amusing. But it fits him, the overall silhouette slightly slimmer than the one Bill cut in his prime, perhaps, but not by enough to really matter. He meets his own eyes in the mirror, taking in his high cheekbones and dark hair, his father’s nose, eyebrows, and long, rectangular face over his mother’s thinner lips and weaker chin. Then, feeling better about it than he would have guessed, he walks downstairs still wearing the flannel, feeling like maybe, after all, there was some glimmer of the family potential in him all along.
Of course, then Casey smirks when he sees Will, and says heknewBill’s shirts would fit him, and Will experiences what’s surely the least heterosexual series of emotions and impulses to ever occur inside of said shirt, so. Maybe not.
All in all, it’s not the worst way Will’s spent a few days; in fact, even factoring in the number of hours he spends absolutely panicking to himself, it might be one of the better weeks Will’s ever passed. Which is probably why the bottom drops out of his stomach when Casey comes home on Thursday night and says, “Good news—they’re finally got a repair date set for the bridge. Guys on the crew said Saturday for sure; they’re covering the overtime themselves out of pocket, because they feel bad they’ve had everyone trapped so long.”
“Oh,” Will says, trying to sound calm and casual and not like the very thought fills his veins with ice water. “Well. That’s, I mean. That’s great, right? Everyone can get out of town—or into town, I guess, if we’re talking about the folks on the other side of the river. And I can, uh, get out of your hair.” As if summoned by the specter of her impending access to him, Will’s phonebegins to buzz in his pocket with what he’s sure is today’s tenth phone call from Catherine Rose. Even a text begging natural disaster amnesty hadn’t deterred her; the woman is like a hyena.
