The Conditions of Will

by Jessa Hastings

The idea that it ends—that it all ends—that everything you spend your life doing and building toward one day amounts to actually nothing the second you take your last breath.

“I’m weathered.” He sounds tired. “Just not in ways you can see with your eyes.”

“You’ve got Catherine on your arm already, you don’t need a Georgia—” “I don’t know.” He shrugs, holding my gaze. “I could need a Georgia.” “Trust me.” I lift my eyebrows. “You don’t. They’re not worth it.” “I’m pretty sure they are,”

I don’t have a lot of positive memories of my parents. Dad telling Mom and Maryanne to leave me alone is one of the few.

Other feelings too, like this buzzy electricity. And it’s there, all thick in the air, us trying to learn about the other. It feels like we’re cramming for an exam, studying like maniacs the night before a test on a subject we’ve half-listened to all year. The content isn’t unfamiliar when you read it; it’s like you’ve read it before. Sam feels like I’ve read him before, but I haven’t.

I don’t know if there’s a PR team in heaven, but can you even imagine the crisis management team they’d need these days? What with people like these idiot girls with bright eyes and dull hearts, not a hair out of place but hearts in the wrong one. Girls like them who bat their eyes as they pick and choose from the Bible to create a world they’re comfortable to exist in.

“I never feel see-through and I never feel readable. I never feel like that, but with you I do.”

I don’t even realize that we’ve stopped driving until Oliver gets out of the car and slams the door super extra loud and glares at me, arms folded, pouting like crazy through the window. He’s twenty-six. I just want to remind you that he’s twenty-six.

“You didn’t really know me,” I tell my dad. “You didn’t even try. And now you’re dead, so I can’t know you either.”

There are a lot of kinds of love in the world, and not all of them make sense all of the time.

Silence with him is silence. Silence with him is five fifteen in the morning before the sun’s up and it’s still dark but the birds are singing. He’s the heavy quilt you pull over your head when it’s too cold and too early to wake up. He’s the song no parent ever loved me enough to sing. He’s the way water runs and bubbles over stones in a stream. He’s a quiet mind.

“Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?” I stare up at the big arch, which is my favorite part, I think. “Even though it’s broken?” “Yep,” he says quietly, and he’s looking just at me.

He gives me a long look, then kisses me again. It’s not rushy or urgent. It’s not a bookend kiss, he’s not signing off, he doesn’t say goodbye—he just kisses me, hands in my hair, soft and melty, and then he slips out of my room. His kisses are commas.

“I haven’t felt anything for anyone for nine years.” Sam swallows. “I was clean…of everything I was addicted to. I was clean—and then I met you.”

“I’m not addicted to you, I’m in love with you,” he says matter-of-factly. “I don’t need you, I want you. And I want you because I know you.”