Never Let It Go(4)

MARIA WAS at the counter again when Will found himself in the coffee shop at close to eleven on Monday night, too restless to stay in the apartment and too unmoored to go somewhere he didn’t already know.

“Late for you,” Maria said, already reaching for a mug as Will crossed the room. A young couple was curled together on one of the big soft couches, and a tired-looking woman with a baby carriage sat in the window, but the place was empty apart from them. “Maybe tea tonight?”

Will leaned against the counter for a moment and then gave up and struggled onto one of the high stools. His broken arm ached with the kind of dull, gnawing pain that made him want to smash it against the nearest solid object, just to feel something different, and he wanted, more than anything else, for Isaac and Ade to be there. They hadn’t even spoken in over a week, just exchanged a couple of text messages while the unit was packing up, ready to head home.

“Buy you something as well?”

Maria frowned slightly, head tipped to one side, and when she said, “Sure, okay,” she sounded uncertain, instead of her typical confident self.

It took Will a second, which was a damn sure sign he needed sleep. “No, hey, not—I meant as a friend. Customer, whatever. Not to hit on you.”

Maria still looked worried, and Will had to admit, he probably wasn’t coming across all that well, turning up late and out of routine and offering to buy her a coffee. “You don’t have to believe me, obviously, but I’m gay. I live with—I’m in a relationship. And I don’t hit on people in coffee shops anyway. Not late at night, I mean. Or any time, really. Um.”

“Okay.” Maria held both hands up, palms out, but she was laughing a little as she did it. “Definitely tea for you. And me, thanks.”

Will gave her a smile that he hoped didn’t look as forced as it felt and made himself shut up. Babbling at people was definitely a one-step-away-from-crazy thing for him.

The mug that Maria put in front of him smelled sweet and sort of spicy. “Chai tea,” Maria offered. “My girlfriend swears by it for… pretty much everything, actually.”

Will mouthed girlfriend to himself, and when Maria smiled at him, it was much easier to smile naturally back this time.

“You want to talk?” Maria asked. “I know it’s traditionally bartenders, but I can fake it with the best of ’em.”

“I—” Will did want to talk, desperately, and Maria felt like a weirdly safe person to do it with. He just didn’t have a clue where to start. Or how to tell her about Isaac and Ade without telling her he was in a relationship with two other people. “Homecoming’s tomorrow, and I haven’t—we’ve been apart for a long time. Longer than ever since we met.”

“You worried it’s going to be weird?”

Will was worried about a lot of things, but that wasn’t anywhere on the list. “Just—feels like it should be easier, knowing there’s only a day to wait.”

Maria reached over and rubbed a quick circle against Will’s good arm. “Trust me. This is always the part that sucks.” She glanced, there and gone again, at the injuries that were still obvious. Will had told her he’d been sent home from the army as a result of them. “There’s something about knowing it’s about to happen that makes all the crazy stuff go even crazier.”

Will breathed in the steam from his tea, nodding absently. He wanted to tell her, I just want them home again. I just want them safe so we can be together again, but there was no way to say it without either telling her he had two partners or lying that he only had one, and he couldn’t make himself do either.

Maria patted his arm again. “It’ll be okay,” she said.





WILL KNEW what time the unit was landing, and he’d done enough homecomings to take a reasonable guess at how long it would be before they could get a moment to turn their phones on and make contact. He added an extra hour to the estimate, just so he could tell himself not to start panicking too early, but even with all that, he still found himself staring at his cell, trying to will it to ring through the power of his mind, a good two hours before he could reasonably expect a call.

When the phone did ring, forty-five minutes after Will had begun staring at it, he startled so badly that he knocked the phone off the couch and had to fumble for it, ignoring the way his ribs protested at the movement. He didn’t even bother checking the Caller ID, just hit Accept Call and shoved the phone up to his face. “Hello?”

His voice was shaking. His stomach cramped in a ball of anxiety, and his skin prickled with cold.