All We Can Do Is Wait(30)

Perhaps sensing Alexa’s unsteadiness, Scott took a few steps toward her, gave her a sympathetic sigh.

“All this and still nothing. I mean—not nothing,” he caught himself, looking off at one of the weeping families.

Was it good news, or bad? Were they crying from joy and relief—this big couple and their little wild-haired beanpole of a kid—or had some other child been crushed to death and they’d just found out? “This is so confusing . . .” Alexa heard herself muttering, feeling stupid the second she said it.

Scott reached out a hand, sort of swiped at her shoulder, a clumsy offer of comfort, but still appreciated.

“Yeah. It is. It really fucking is.” He laughed, the swear surprising him maybe, and ran his hands through his hair, which looked a little unwashed.

Alexa looked at Scott, his broad nose and dimpled chin, and she couldn’t help finding him attractive, droopy and worried as he looked just then. A sharp pang of guilt stabbed through her. How dare she be thinking about a boy right now, let alone a boy who was waiting to hear if his girlfriend, whom he really seemed to really love, was alive or dead?

Scott, maybe oblivious to Alexa’s staring, maybe not, took another step toward her, so they were standing shoulder to shoulder, watching the hospital roil in front of them. Scott nudged her with his elbow and nodded at Jason, who was looking into the middle distance, expression blank and eyes unblinking.

“So, uh, what’s his deal, your brother?”

Alexa laughed, a dark little sound that she didn’t like. “If I knew what Jason’s deal was, my life would be a lot easier right now. In general, it would be easier.”

“Is he stoned or something?”

“I don’t know. I asked, he said no.”

“Is that, like, a problem for him?”

A sudden flood of tears filled Alexa’s eyes. She was so tired of talking about her brother, of worrying about her brother, of trying to build the world around his anger and sullenness. She was tired of all of it. Especially now, when she considered the possibility that it might just be the two of them from here on out.

Would Jason ever do the same for her, try to shape his life around her, around her whims, her needs, her moodiness and self-absorption? No, probably not. Certainly not when he found out that she was the reason her parents were on the bridge. He’d blame her. It would finally be the excuse he needed to disappear from her life altogether. He’d finish school, maybe, and then he’d be gone. And Alexa would be stuck wishing he’d come back, maybe even begging him to come back to her, for the rest of her sad, guilty life.

“A lot of things are a problem for Jason,” she said, wiping her eyes and taking a deep breath to calm herself, to tamp down her emotions so she could focus.

“Sucks,” Scott said. “I mean, it’s so selfish. To be like that.”

Alexa flinched, recoiled a little from Scott. “I mean, you don’t know my brother,” she snapped.

Scott’s face paled a shade. “No, no, I know, of course not, I’m sorry, of course not.”

“It’s just . . .” Alexa trailed off. She turned to look at her brother, skinny and floppy haired, looking half like a kid, half like someone about to be a man, and she felt a longing for him, or for some old version of him, him on the Cape. She saw a flash of her brother, sitting on the porch, framed by purple sky, arms wrapped around his knees, laughing at something she or Kyle had said. He was still in there somewhere, that Jason. He had to be.

“It was my fault,” she said quietly. To Scott, to herself. It was the first time she’d said it out loud. “My parents. Today. It was my fault.”

Scott started to speak, probably to say something about how of course it wasn’t her fault, but before he could, Alexa turned and walked away, finding a chair to sit in, crumpling up, feeling entirely alone, wanting to disappear into whatever hole the bridge had left, the one that had swallowed up her whole future in one hungry gulp. She wanted to dive in and chase after it, even if all it led to was blackness and nothing.





Chapter Seven


    Jason



THE FIRST TIME he kissed Kyle, Jason had felt like he was both lifting off the earth and sinking into it. It happened quickly and slowly, unexpected and yet like all of life, or at least all those first early days of the summer, had been leading toward it.

Maybe it had been there, this inevitability, since they first met. Jason had gone to pick his sister up at Grey’s, since Linda didn’t like Alexa riding her bike home alone at night, and Alexa hadn’t yet started getting rides from her coworkers. Jason got there early, or Alexa was running late, he couldn’t remember which. What he remembered is that he’d been standing by the car, fiddling on his phone, when he heard a soft and friendly “Hey.”

Jason looked up from his phone and there was a boy about his age, tall and willowy, with a fount of loose curls. Jason had been attracted to guys before, of course, usually from a distance, but this was something different. He was immediately, intensely drawn to this boy, whoever he was. “Uh, hey” was all he could stammer back.

“You’re the brother? Jason?” the boy asked, giving him a sideways smile.

“Um. Yes. Yeah. Jason. Hey. Who . . .”

“I’m Kyle,” the boy said, extending his hand for Jason to shake. Insanely, Jason had a quick mental flash of him kissing Kyle’s hand like they did in olden days. But he instead gave it a perhaps overly enthusiastic shake and burbled out something about how it was nice to meet him.