Hold My Breath(29)

“Wow,” he says, leaning into the back of the sofa and pulling the photo closer in both of his hands.

“We don’t have to, if you don’t want to. I just thought...I don’t know. I haven’t been there in a while, and my mom says they might tear that swing and tree down, and…”

“I’d love to go,” he says.

I look up into his waiting eyes, his expression serious.

“Yeah?” I ask.

Will’s eyes linger on me before falling back to the image of a better time—a simpler time. He nods.

“Yeah,” he says.

He looks back up and hands me the photo.

“Give me a minute to change. I’ll drive,” he says.

“I’ll meet you outside,” I say, leaving before he encourages me to wait here. This room is too small to be in with him right now. I need to learn how to survive the wide-open spaces in his presence first.

I wait for Will by his car. He finally steps through the front door, locking it behind him. He’s wearing light-blue swim trunks and a white T-shirt, nothing like the skin-tight suit he trains in every day. Somehow, I notice more of him like this, though. He runs his hand through his hair, pushing his gray State hat on before he unlocks his car and we both get in.

“It smells new in here,” I say, noticing how spotless everything is.

“I think they spray that smell in every rental. It’s not bad for the price, but I miss my Bronco,” he says.

I smile as I buckle up and Will pulls us out onto the roadway.

“You still have the Bronco,” I say, fondly.

He turns to me, his mouth rising on one side.

“Fucker barely runs, but I’ll never sell it,” he chuckles. I laugh with him.

Will bought that truck with the money he earned mowing lawns in Knox one summer. He had these big dreams of rebuilding the engine, fixing it up. By the time he graduated high school, he had only managed to buy the thing two new tires. His parents refused to let him drive it to State, calling it a deathtrap. It sat in their garage for years. Will must have kept it when the house sold, after…after they died.

“I’m glad you kept it,” I say.

I look to him, watching his profile as he chews at the inside of his cheek, his eyes focused on the road and his nostrils flaring with his breath. Eventually he nods.

“Me, too,” he says.

Will turns onto the country road that leads to the lake. It’s about fifteen minutes from this point, and I spend the first few listening to the rumble of the tires on the beat-up roadway, cattle grates buzzing the rubber every couple miles.

“What made you pick nursing?” Will asks, breaking the comfortable background noise. I shift and sit up tall in my seat.

“I’m good at taking care of people…I think,” I say, closing one eye and looking at him. He laughs and meets my gaze.

“I’ll agree with that statement, Maddy. Yes…you are in fact good at taking care of people,” he says.

“Thanks,” I say, bringing my hands into my lap, twisting them. “I don’t know, I guess it’s the only thing that I felt was a good fit for my skills. I don’t want to run the Swim Club. I watched my dad struggle with the books for too many years, always just barely eking by. And my mom’s into this whole local government thing, which…gah…sounds so awful to me.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says. I pinch my brow and face him, twisting in my seat as he glances to me a few times. “I mean, yeah…the politics part is pretty gross, but your mom seems to genuinely want to improve things and enact change. It’s kinda noble, really.”

“So is beating your head against a wall,” I laugh out.

Will’s forehead furrows and his mouth hangs open before he laughs hard.

“Beating your head against a wall is never noble,” he says. “That’s just stupid.”

I shrug.

“Seems a lot like local politics to me,” I say.

Will laughs again, smiling at the winding roadway disappearing into the thick cluster of trees ahead.

“Yeah, well, it’s better than delivering newspapers in Michigan in the thick of winter,” he says.

My tongue pushes into the corner of my mouth and I bite it as I watch him and wait for him to elaborate. He eventually glances my way and shrugs.

“I needed a job with benefits, and there aren’t a lot of people hiring a marketing guy—a few credit hours shy of a bachelors—with an extreme DUI record that made most of the papers in the Midwest, thanks to the footnote about a potential recreational drug problem.

I know my eyes widen, but I try to keep my reaction in check. Will still turns away, though. I wait for him to say more, and when he doesn’t, I ask.

“Was it true?”

His mouth falls into a tight, straight line, and his eyes scan the roadway, moving from mirror to mirror before pausing to look at me at a four-way stop, our last turn before the lake. Will sighs and slides his hands to the center of the steering wheel, leaning back into his seat and letting his head roll to the right, peering at me.

“Some of it,” he says.

I wince, and he reaches over and brushes his arm against mine.

“I said some,” he repeats. I hold his gaze and take a deep breath. “My drinking got dangerous. And I tried some things, maybe ended up hanging out with some people I shouldn’t have. I’m not the first wannabe athlete to be caught smoking pot, though. And the other things…I tried, but only once or twice. Nothing felt as good as Jack Daniels.”