Page 85 of Wish Lists and Road Trips

I kept going over and over my choices with Brit. Had she really been the one to leave me? Or had I taken the out just like she said? She’d struck first at what we had, and it had fucking hurt like nothing else, but I’d hardly put up a fight to keep it. I’d sulked off and nursed my wounds. And I’d felt so damn sorry for myself.

But then I’d reached out and she ignored me.

Willow was still staring at me. “Talk to me, Nick.”

For once my jaw felt loose, like maybe I could get some of this out. Alex loved Willow, and as fucked up as it was, she was the strongest one of us all right now. Maybe talking to her would be a little bit like talking to him.

“I met someone,” I said. “On the trip.” I ran my hands over my face like I could erase the weakness I knew was there. “I met someone and then I lost someone and I just . . . I guess I’m not dealing with it well.”

And I’ve never met anyone like Brit before, and I’m afraid she was some cosmic gift to me from Alex and I lost her.

I knew that wasn’t true. I knew Brit was her own person who’d found herself sitting across from me on that dock through her own actions, and everything that happened afterward was because the two of us chose it. I also knew that no one could make Brit do anything, cosmically or otherwise. But Christ, if there was anything in this world that even remotely resembled destiny, I couldn’t help but believe she was it.

If Willow was shocked by my story, she tempered it well. She reached across the table and squeezed my wrist. “You know, Alex used to tell me that out of everyone, he was most worried about you.” She laughed. “I thought,Nick?He’s a rock. He’s the glue holding everyone else together—but that’s the thing, I think. Everyone else—your parents, Alex—they already knew they were broken, so when the pieces started to come apart, they were expecting it. You haven’t had a single moment to let yourself fall apart, to grieve. I know it’s scary, that part of it. Like you’re drowning, looking for something solid to grab on to. And in your case, everyone else is grabbing on to you.”

I looked away. What she was saying was the truest description of my life right now, but God, did it make me feel like an asshole. Everyone else was grabbing on to me because they needed me and I’d made a promise to be there. When I was born healthy, that was the deal. We all knew it. It was unspoken like most everything, but we all knew it.

My mom once told me how hard it was for them to decide to have another child after Alex’s diagnosis, how scared she’d been, and that I was a miracle. I always felt like she was telling me they had me as some sort of backup. A promise that they wouldn’t be left childless. And now they were adrift and they were calling on that promise. How could I admit that every cell in my body wanted to push them all off of me and swim as far away from this as I could?

“This girl,” Willow said. “Where is she now?”

“Boston.”

“Mmm.”

I almost smiled. “What? What’s ‘mmm’?”

She sipped her wine. “It’s not the other end of the world.”

“It is when you have this many fucking commitments, Will.”

I knew how this went. I’d been here before. And this wasn’t Janessa getting pissed when I had to bail on brunch because my mom was having a day. Or Katy, the girl I’d dated freshman year in college, deciding she wanted to be with someone who laughed more and didn’t take life so seriously. Brit was the best thing I’d ever found and I couldn’t even keep her happy for a week.

Willow held a hand up at my tone. “I get it, Nick. But the thing with commitments is you can only use the information you have around you to make them. When those circumstances change, the people who love you will understand.”

“There’s a lot of people to ask to understand.”

“Who?”

I looked up at her and her eyes flew wide. “Me? You feel like you need to be here forme? Well, cross that off your list, buddy. I won’t be the reason you’re unhappy. Alex would haunt me. So give me another.”

“Fine. My mom.”

She leaned back in her chair, eyeing me. “That’s valid. Your mom is sick in a different way than Alex, but it’s still a sickness and I don’t think anyone would wonder why you felt like you needed to be there for her. But let’s just say that didn’t entail a twenty-four-seven vigil. Let’s just say you had someone who would be willing to share that load with you.”

Was she offering herself? I guess I’d always just assumed when Alex died, Willow would take the first exit off of that hellish highway. Sure, she’d visit and still be a friend, but to take responsibility? “You don’t need to take that on.”

“Your mother has been part mine for twenty years, Nick. She gave me Alex. I love your family and I’m not going anywhere. So give me another reason.”

I blew out a heavy breath. “The company,” I said. “You know, while I was gone, I actually thought what if I just don’t go back?”

Willow’s head tilted. “But you love the family business, Nick. Your mom showed me pictures of you as a kid drawing the company logo on your toy trucks with a Sharpie. You’ve been wearing Callaway and Sons T-shirts since you could dress yourself.”

She gestured to my chest to prove her point and I absently touched the navy blue logo. “It just feels different ever since . . .”

I ran a hand through my hair, hesitating to admit this to another person. Telling Brit had been hard enough. “The day Alex died, we fought about it.”

She nodded like she knew this even though there was no way she could. She was working when we got the call from the hospital. He’d gone alone to the mountain after I’d turned him down.

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