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“Yeah. I’m good, Brenda.”
Ella shivered against Will, her heart bursting with expectation. Was she actually “okay”? Or was this the start of a story that ended with her “going missing”? That said, most of her family had “gone missing,” one way or another. Nobody would miss her if she was gone.
Brenda and Stephanie each gave Ella a hug and then followed Chris out into the street. This left just Ella and Will in the shadows of the bar. More bar-dwellers hunkered in the corners and ordered additional beers. Ella’s feet itched to just walk the streets that she didn’t yet understand. She wanted to do it all alongside Will, this mysterious man who also seemed so familiar.
“Let’s get out of here,” Ella breathed.
Will and Ella bundled up in their autumn clothing. Ella wrapped her scarf around her neck and then adjusted her guitar over her shoulder. Meanwhile, Will banged his drumsticks against the cushion of the shoddy couch in a percussive tune that made Ella laugh. Her cheeks screamed with the pain of so much laughter. Since her father had left, she hadn’t done a whole lot of it.
That night, Will and Ella wandered the streets of Greenwich Village like ghosts. They watched the Friday night revelers, giggled at their slurred voices and drunken movements, and occasionally paused to lean against smooth red bricks of townhouses and gaze into one another’s eyes.
To Ella’s surprise, it didn’t take her long to explain the horrors of the previous year and a half of her life. The information just fell out of her, as though Will had deserved to know it all along. Will carried the news of her father’s prison sentence, her mother’s crippling depression, and her sisters’ and brother’s abandonment and laced his fingers through hers.
“When I saw you on stage tonight, I knew there was something to you. Something so unlike the other people who played,” he began. “There was so much emotion in each of your chords and so much heartache in your lyrics. I thought to myself, I want to know what that girl is actually thinking.”
Ella’s voice was lost in her throat. It was as though, with the admittance of her family’s situation, she’d run out of strength to say anything else.
Will’s eyes glistened, as though he was on the verge of tears. A tear of Ella’s own drifted down her cheek. It was a traitor. She didn’t want to cry in front of this man! She wanted to be exceedingly cool. She wanted to seem like a city girl— not the heartbroken islander who’d driven so far from home.
“Sorry. I haven’t ever talked about it to a stranger before,” Ella explained.
The corner of Will’s lips curved dangerously toward his ears. Gosh, he was handsome. It seemed almost illegal, like God shouldn’t have allowed so much goodness to exist in one person.
“Does that mean I’m still a stranger?” Will asked.
“I guess it depends on your definition of ‘stranger.’” Ella paused for a beat. “But I’d like to think you’re a little bit more than a stranger.”
“A little bit more than a stranger. That’s a great review,” Will teased.
Ella chortled. “Ask my friends. I don’t give out compliments easily.”
“Good,” Will returned, his smile falling. “Giving out too many compliments just cheapens compliments in the first place. If you said everything was great, how could I actually know what you were thinking?”
Ella had heard her father, Bernard Copperfield, say something similar at the dinner table once. Her gaze fell to the ground.
Recognizing the change in mood, Will stepped closer to her and placed a tender hand over her ear. Ella’s eyes returned to his. Across the street, an alarm began to blare. The sounds of the city were almost overwhelming, but they seemed to match the intensity of Ella’s emotions.
“Are you okay?” Will whispered.
Ella nodded. With his face so close to hers, she couldn’t imagine that anything else would go wrong for the rest of her life. Slowly, she lifted her chin so that his pillow-soft lips were mere inches from hers.
“I shouldn’t kiss you,” Ella rasped, still on the verge of tears.
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll never see you again.”
Will chuckled. “Why would you never see me again?”
“Because I want to too badly,” Ella confessed. “People don’t get what they want in life. Nothing ever works out the way we plan.”
She knew this better than most. She was a Copperfield, after all.
But then Will whispered, “If you don’t want to see me again, that’s one thing. But I’d be open to the idea if you let it happen.”
With that, Will closed the distance between them, his lips gently on hers. Ella closed her eyes and spun into the great abyss of wherever these feelings would lead her. Just then, she had to admit that she didn’t care just what came next. For the first time in a year and a half, she felt the immensity of freedom. It wasn’t half bad.
ChapterThree
