“Have I ever given you evidence to say otherwise?” His forehead wrinkled with dismay and concern.
“No,” I quickly assured. “It’s just…time makes this stuff awkward.”
Wilson took a deep breath. “You know, when you were little, we were really close.”
I blinked, trying to recall a time when he didn’t keep to himself on his side of the car while we drove to a new city. What I remembered of younger Wilson was a quiet, moody teenager who didn’t like tagalongs and didn’t enjoy anything that combined “family” and “time.”
“You would want to watch the same movie repeatedly.Cars.” He smiled, remembering.
“That movie with the talking race car?” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a cartoon, let alone obsessed over one.
“That one,” he confirmed. “You wouldn’t let any of us change the DVD on the road trip. And you’d ask me to recite the lines with you. You knew every single one by heart, so anytime I messed up, you got annoyed and begged me to rewind the scene.”
“I sound like incredible company.”
“The best.” Wilson’s smile made my throat tighten. “What happened to your Braves cap, by the way?”
I frowned. “Braves?”
“You always used to wear it whenever we drove. Said it was your pilot’s hat,” he explained.
I laughed. “Really?”
“You went on your first plane at…” Wilson closed one eye, trying to remember. “Four? And you met the pilot. You immediately asked for his hat, and he said he couldn’t give it to you because it was how he flew so well, and if he had it, he’d get everywhere he needed to go safely. You wanted all of us to have one after that. So we’d all be safe.”
A memory filtered back into my brain. A fuzzy image of me clinging to a cap. “I remember what happened to it.”
Wilson perked up, excited for a story.
“I gave it away to my first boyfriend.” As I spoke, I sounded so far away. Back in the tenth grade with braces and pants that were in a constant flood. “He’d been afraid to learn how to drive. I gave it to him before his driving exam. He kept it and wore it to a party where he cheated on me with this girl who took a ton of AP classes. And then he tried to give it back. It was tainted after that. Luck for someone else. I donated it.”
Wilson’s expression fell.
“Sorry,” I said quickly. “That kinda sucked as a story to tell when we’re trying to recall the good parts of being young.”
“It most definitely sucked,” Wilson agreed. “And now, I’m retroactively upset and ready to beat up the guy that hurt my sister like that.”
“Dad gave him a stern talking-to.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” Wilson scoffed. “Was it with the glasses that had that mushroom neck chain? The ones that made him look bug-eyed.”
I burst out laughing. “Yes. Oh my god, I forgot about those.”
“How gentle was his voice?”
“It was like he was talking to a newborn,” I said, still laughing. “Neither of them could get angry enough to really dig into people.”
“Tell me about it. I fucking hated that about them,” he mumbled the last part.
My laughter died down. “Same…Sometimes I just wish they’d scream. At each other. Me. You know, I stole some erasers from my homeroom once?—”
“What did you want with erasers?”
“It was more the act, not the material, that was the point,” I said. He still looked confused, but I continued. “They didn’t even punish me. They just asked, ‘are you going to do it again?’”
“And what did you say?”
“‘I don’t think so.’”
