Where There's a Will (Lost Boys, #1)

by Jessie Walker

For those who didn’t make it ’til morning.

“Just close your eyes and keep your mind wide open.” KATHERINE PATERSON, BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA

Grief was like a fever, she said. I just had to let it run its course. Sweat it out, just sweat it out, baby.

This town is built like a target; the bridge, its bullseye. And what constitutes downtown—Main Street—sits parallel to that bridge in near-perpetual shade.

Just give it time. It will get better.

It’s lonely, but...freeing. Loneliness is freeing. How fucking sad is that?

Win: stay. Lose: go.

Simple as fucking that. Let the universe call the shots. I’m done trying.

Easy. He makes it sound so easy, when it’s anything but.

“But savings don’t last forever, so I guess I’ll need to find work eventually. Depending on how long I stick around for...”

The image wars with the voice in my head, warning me to leave and never look back. Go, go, go. This was a mistake.

He’s here. I’m back in Shiloh. And Waylon. Is. Still. Fucking. Here.

Waylon McAllister might as well be a stranger to me now, but he wasn’t always. And some part of me still feels a sense of loyalty to that boy I’d once move fucking mountains for. The boy I took it upon myself to protect, only for my actions to shoot me point-blank in the ass.

Whoever said the road to hell is paved with good intentions has obviously never been to Pennsylvania. This shit I’ve been walking on is a land mine of potholes. Giant craters blindsiding me from every which way, causing irreparable damage.

“Need a lift, or do you wanna follow?”

“You’re not gonna take no for an answer, are you?”

remember Will?” My heart grinds to a stop. Lungs constricting. Will Foster. Will fucking Foster. What. The. Fuck.

against his thigh. “I’m a drug addict.” “Recovering!” With everything going on,

Are you like me? I imagine he’s really asking. Seeking. Do you know my pain? Do you see me?

“I get that. Not the whole...small town, hive mind thing, but...” I search his pained eyes. “Let’s just say I know what it’s like to feel like all your shit’s on display. Makes it really fucking hard to move on when no one else lets you forget it.” He winces and looks down. “Yeah.”

That defining moment where life, as you knew it, shattered. Severing your life into a Before and After.

Trust. He doesn’t trust me. Then again, why would he? Why should he? It hurts something fierce—more than I expected—but I can’t exactly blame him. I can’t be mad. I shouldn’t even be hurt. I let him down. I broke my promise. I ruined us. But here’s the kicker⁠— He ruined me first.

Maybe, just maybe, this is my chance to fix that.

Alas, five hours later, I find that I’m still no better equipped to handle this.

lap. Drama queen is right, I think as I scowl, slamming my notebook shut. I fold it up and tuck it into the back pocket of my jeans as I stand.

Red and green: her two favorite colors. Ironic really, given that she’s a Christmas Eve baby and, naturally, she hates Christmas. But my cousin’s nothing if not hopelessly contradictory.

“One of these days, this railing’s gonna give out when you do that,”

But if he didn’t come back here because of that, then why?

Sad. I look so goddamn sad all the time. And fuck that especially. I don’t want to be sad anymore.

Look at me. I know I have no right. I know I shouldn’t crave it. But something inside me—familiar and ancient—is whispering. It crescendos into a pulse in my ears that drowns everything else out but his voice, as the moment where his eyes will finally meet mine rushes toward me with the force and inevitability of a bullet.

Then into me.

But then, it’s over. He’s squeezing his eyes shut, and time’s speeding up, and I’m no longer the center of his fucking world. And it hurts. It hurts.

How does it fucking hurt this bad?

“Lost him to a sea of girls when we got off stage.”

Even as the world narrows down to just us. And it makes me wonder, Does he hear that voice too?

There’s an ocean of years separating us. Secrets and unspoken questions sluicing through the waves like grains of sand.

As if he’s been waiting and waiting and waiting for a break in the waves. A chance.

But like everything, it’s not lasting. Just a glimpse of a path not taken.

So it’s really going to be like that then.

There’s something about Will Foster that makes me want to throw his head in a blender. He’s grown to be quite full of himself—that’s for fucking sure.

But it’s more than that. More than the shame eating away at my heart for hurting him all those years ago, and more than old fears setting my nerves on fire. It’s something I can’t put a finger on.

All through our first two sets, I found myself wondering if he was here, watching from the shadows. It was pitiful. Frustrating. The anticipation alone nearly drove me to drive a drumstick into my eye. No. Not anticipation. Dread.

Let the record show: I didn’t intend to be a raging asshole. Let the record also show: It had nothing to do with his biceps.

It. Will. Fade.

Art is a lot like a parasite. An invasion of undeniable need to share your soul with the world. To try and make the world a little better than how you found it. It consumes you to the point of desperation. Begging you to just let it out; see me, hear me.

Why is he still staring? Why was he ever staring?

“You know, this whole territorial thing was a lot cuter when you were ten,”

Trapping me in that dizzying place between then and now, as I lose myself in the eyes of the first boy who ever broke my heart. The boy I’ve now spent far more time and energy than I ever planned to spend in a single night trying to figure the fuck out.

Time and time again, I’ve lost my footing. Grappled for some kind of handhold with hardly a moment to breathe in between. Breathe and just fucking feel anything other than the pressure to hold on. Anything other than the terrible numbness that has clung to me over these last seven-plus months like a second skin.

Doomed love and the unwillingness to let go.