Wes was in love with me? The world around me spins, and I’m forced to sit. I plop down at the picnic table with a heavy thud and look back at Wes. I can’t process. There’s just no way. He stares back at me helplessly. I look away first and try to take a few slow, deep breaths through my nose because I feel as if I’m about to hyperventilate or vomit. Or both.
Wes sits across the table from me and drops his backpack down between us. Before I can even register what’s happening, he pulls my old Hello Kitty jewelry box out of his bag and pushes it across the table to me. “Open it.”
I’m suddenly terrified to see what’s in it, but I have to look. My curiosity has been killing me since I learned of its existence. Unclipping the small rusted latch, I carefully open the dirt-stained lid and let out a startled cry of surprise.
When we were nine, I convinced myself I was going to marry both of them. I made a lemonade stand in my front yard to earn some money, then used my handful of hard-earned quarters to buy a couple of those cheap little rings from the gumball machines in the grocery store. I bought one for myself, too, and declared us all engaged when I gave the boys theirs. The rings were cheap gold, girly metal bands with big jeweled hearts on them that turned our fingers all green, but Wes and Spencer proudly wore those rings all summer.
All three of those rings are in the jewelry box—mine tucked safely in the little padded ring slot and Wes’s and Spencer’s both in the plastic bubbles they originally came in. The only other thing in the box is a piece of paper rolled up like a scroll and held together with one of my old hair ribbons.
Tears prick my eyes as I pull my ring out and slide it on the tip of my pinkie finger. “I thought I’d lost this.”
“It was in the jewelry box when we took it,” Wes mutters. “That’s what gave us the idea to add ours to it.”
When I look up, he’s staring hard at the picnic table and rubbing his flaming neck.
“You said you guys buried this when you were eleven?” I ask.
His gaze slides to the time capsule, still refusing to look at me. “Yeah.”
“I gave these to you when we were nine. You both still had your rings?”
“Of course we did.” Wes shrugs. “We were two boys hopelessly in love with the same girl.”
Wes plucks his ring from the box with a sigh and pops the top off the plastic bubble. “Read the contract.”
“Contract?”
Wes doesn’t explain, so I pull out the scroll and untie the old ribbon. Written in sloppy eleven-year-old boy handwriting is a signed and dated contract stating that because they were both in love with me and couldn’t decide who should get to be my boyfriend, for the sake of their friendship, neither of them would ever ask me out. It even said on pain of death at the bottom.
It was so ridiculous and so dorky and so…them, that I bark out a laugh and have to swallow back a wave of emotion. Once I’m sure my voice will come out steady, I say, “What are these smudges by your names? Were you guys eating Ding Dongs when you wrote this?”
Wes looks at the contract, and the side of his mouth curves up into an almost-smile. “That’s blood.”
I’m equal parts appalled and amused. “You signed it in blood?”
Wes finally meets my eyes. “We were eleven.”
“What’d you do? Stab yourselves with safety scissors?”
Wes looks away again, but he grins at the grass. “We each picked a scab.”
“Oh, gross!” I drop the bloody-scab paper with a horrified laugh.
Wes chuckles, but his amusement is short-lived. “You remember that night at Trisha’s party?” His voice takes on an empty quality, and his gaze slips out of focus. “When we were thirteen, and we played spin the bottle?”
Did I remember it? Of course I remembered that night. That was my first kiss and the night that I finally made a choice between Wes and Spencer. That night changed my life.
“When Trisha said we all had to play, Spencer and I told each other that just for that night, if your bottle landed on us, or ours landed on you, that it was okay, just that once. We said that, just in this one instance, we both had the green light.”
I flinch at the term. Was that what Spencer meant the other night? That since he was dead, Wes now had the green light to make a move on me?
“When it was your turn…”
“My bottle landed on Spencer,” I finish.
Wes puts his ring back in the jewelry box and looks me straight in the eye. “Your bottle landed on Spencer, and your face lit up like I’d never seen it do.”
My chest caves in. I’d been so relieved to get Spencer, because I’d almost had to kiss Jake. But I would have been just as happy kissing Wes.
“You floated on air for the whole next week,” Wes says sadly. “When you asked him to be your boyfriend, he said no at first, because of our pact. But you were so devastated by his refusal that I caved. I told him he had to say yes. I gave him the green light.”
For a minute, I’m stunned speechless. “You told him to be my boyfriend?”
All these years I thought Wes had hated me for asking Spencer out. I thought he blamed me, and yet it had been his insistence.
“I had to. You were so sad, Bay. I couldn’t stand it. And I knew Spencer wanted it more than anything. He said no out of loyalty to me, but I knew how much it had killed him. He’d been so shocked that you chose him. He was already figuring out that he was a geek by then and that you and I weren’t. He couldn’t believe that you’d chosen him. I couldn’t stand in the way of my two best friends’ happiness.”
This is all just so…mind-blowing. Of course the story exactly fits the Wes I grew up with and loved. I have no problem believing that he would be so selfless. I just don’t understand the rest of it. I close my eyes as I try to make sense of the following years of pain he caused me. “Then what happened?” I whisper.
Wes closes the jewelry box with a sigh. “I thought I could handle it, but I was wrong.”
I suck in a breath, finally understanding. And as I think about it, it all makes so much sense. Every glare, every time he blew me off or snapped in anger. It all takes on a new meaning now. And I feel terrible. “Wes…”
Wes jumps up from the table and begins pacing back and forth between the picnic table and the nearby tree. “You guys were so in love, Bailey. For years.” The accusation comes out with force, but there’s no anger fueling it. “I couldn’t stand it. I avoided you because I hated seeing you together, and I couldn’t hide it. I was jealous and bitter and miserable. I knew you thought I hated you. I wanted to explain it to you, but Spencer didn’t want me to tell you. He said it would hurt you. I got so angry. I understood why he said no, but I knew you didn’t get it. And I wanted you to know that I didn’t hate you.”
“Wes…I’m so sorry. I honestly had no idea. Spencer was wrong to ask you not to tell me. I wish I’d known.”
Wes continues as if I hadn’t spoken. He’s lost in his own head now, bombarding himself with painful memories. “I started to resent him. I even started to hate him after a while.”
I hop to my feet with a gasp and try to stop Wes’s manic pacing. “You don’t mean that.”
He comes to a stop and meets my eyes. His are filled with shame. “I do mean it.” He looks away again and takes a deep breath. “I was messed up, Bailey. I’d been depressed for months. My parents were in the middle of a nasty divorce, and then my mom got sick, and that night I got so drunk. I hadn’t planned to kill myself, but I’d heard Jake bragging about shooting his dad’s gun, and the next thing I knew it was in my hand and I was ready to end everything.”
I don’t know when I started crying, but my sniffle catches Wes’s attention. He turns to me and cups my face in his hands. His expression melts, and his voice turns soft. “And then you were there,” he says reverently. “Like a guardian angel. Taking care of me even though I’d treated you so horribly for so long. You told me how much you cared about me and how devastated you’d be if anything ever happened to me, and I…I couldn’t help myself. I kissed you.”
My eyes fall shut as I replay that kiss in my mind. I can still see the look of adoration that was on his face when he leaned forward and claimed my lips. I can still feel the desperation and the passion he’d thrown into it. I can still taste the hunger of it. I’d chalked it up to too much alcohol and relief that I’d stopped him from ending his life. I’d never once considered he might have wanted that kiss. Not in the way I’d wanted it.
Wes lets go of my face and steps back. “I meant it as a good-bye kiss,” he whispers. “I was really going to do it.” His voice sounds hollow, and his eyes look haunted. “But when I kissed you, you didn’t push me away.”
It’s my turn to look away in shame. He’s absolutely right about that. I didn’t push him away. I did the opposite. I fell into that kiss as if I’d been waiting for it my entire life.
When I completely turn my back on Wes, he takes my hand and tugs me gently back around to face him. “I was so sure you hated me,” he says. “Why wouldn’t you? I deserved to be hated. I thought you were only saying all that stuff about caring for me and not wanting me to hurt myself so that I wouldn’t kill myself. Because helping me even if you hated me was the right thing to do, and that’s the kind of person you are. But when I kissed you, you kissed me back.”
His voice sounds as if he’s still awed by my desire, even a year after the fact. He stares at me with a sense of wonder and steps so close I can feel heat coming from him. His breath wisps along my cheek, and his gaze falls to my lips. I gulp loudly and have to pry my tongue away from the roof of my dry mouth.
“You kissed me like you meant it,” he says softly, “and it gave me hope. It was a stupid, selfish hope, but I couldn’t go through with suicide if there was a chance that you wanted me. If my death was really going to hurt you like you said it would, then I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t cause you that pain. I’d already hurt you enough.”
I can’t handle the intensity pouring off him right now. I can’t breathe, and I can’t clear my head enough to think straight. I can smell his aftershave. I can tell his breathing is labored. I’m certain his heart is pounding as fast as mine. I want him to close the distance between our mouths, but I’m also too overwhelmed by everything he’s telling me, and my emotions are spiraling out of control again.
Instead of kissing him, I step back, breaking our connection, putting some much-needed space between us. “I meant everything I said that night,” I admit. “It would have killed me to lose you that way.”
With the moment between us disrupted, Wes’s eyes suddenly cloud over with a storm of self-loathing. “Instead, you lost Spencer. Because of me. You saved my life, and I turned around and got Spencer killed.”
I suck in a breath. He sounds so devastated, so broken, that for once I want to take the blame. I want to be responsible for Spencer’s death if it will remove the burden from Wes’s shoulders. “No, that was me.” Passion creeps into my voice as I lay my argument at his feet. “You said I kissed you like I meant it. I did mean it, Wes. That’s the worst part. You may have kissed me first, but I betrayed him. When he walked in and found us kissing, he didn’t see his best friend making a mistake because he was too drunk to think straight. He saw his best friend and his girlfriend sharing something special. And one of us wasn’t drunk at all.” My vision blurs and my voice breaks. “You weren’t in control of your actions that night, Wes, but I was. I broke his heart. I cheated.”
“No.” Wes shakes his head emphatically. “He knew it was me. He knew you never would have kissed me on your own.”
“That didn’t matter. I talked to him right after he walked out. I apologized, but I didn’t lie to him. I told him that I hadn’t meant for it to happen, but that when you did it, I couldn’t stop you because I’d always loved you both.”
Wes’s eyes pop open so wide that I flinch. Did he really not know I had feelings for him? Shyness overcomes me, but I force myself to keep going. Now that we’re having this confessional, I can’t stop until I’ve said everything. I need to make peace with this. I need the closure.
“I promised Spencer that I’d made my choice and I’d never regretted it, but I got caught up in the moment with you because a part of me had never stopped loving you, too. He was so upset, Wes. Devastated. I thought he was going to break up with me. That’s why he got drunk. That’s why he wouldn’t listen to me when he drove away. That’s why he died. Because I broke his heart.”
“You weren’t the only one,” Wes mutters.
I glance his way just in time to watch him collapse onto the picnic bench in a defeated heap. “He came to talk to me before he got drunk,” he explains, that hatred of himself back in his voice. “Before I could apologize—or not, as I had no intention of saying I was sorry about that kiss—he sat me down and told me it was okay. He said he didn’t blame us and that he wasn’t even mad.”
“He what?” I blink several times in disbelief. How could Spencer not have blamed us, not have hated us for what we’d done?
Wes rolls his eyes. “You know how he was. He knew how much I struggled with your relationship, and he knew how sad you were over losing my friendship. He said he knew we both loved him and that we hadn’t hurt him on purpose, and that as long as it never happened again, he’d forgive us.”
Wes scoffs with so much scorn I rear back in surprise.
“It was such a typical Spencer response,” he says. “So understanding and loyal and…perfect. Like he was.”
I agree that that was exactly how Spencer was, and hearing Wes explain Spencer’s response, I’m not surprised he would be able to forgive us so easily. Spencer was that kind of person. The best kind. Perfect, like Wes said. But I don’t understand Wes’s bitterness.
He reads the question in my eyes and sighs. “His response pissed me off. I was drunk, and I’d been harboring a lot of anger for a long time. When I made a move on his girlfriend and he turned around acting like freaking Jesus, I lost it.”
“I don’t understand. Why would that make you so angry?”
“Because I wanted him to get mad. I needed him to. I was looking for a fight. After that kiss, I knew I couldn’t stand by and watch the two of you together anymore. I told him I was done being his friend and to have a nice life. I told him I hated him because he had everything I wanted—his family, his girlfriend. He was the golden child with the perfect life, while mine was falling apart. His parents doted on him. My dad barely knew I existed. He’d cheated on my mom. They were in the middle of a nasty divorce when she got diagnosed. The jerk decided not to leave us because it would be cheaper than getting divorced, since he’d have to pay her medical bills either way, and she was going to die soon anyway.”
My mouth falls open. Mr. Delaney hadn’t been around a lot when we played together as kids—the guy worked even more than my dad—but he’d always seemed like a nice enough guy. I couldn’t imagine him being so heartless. But from the disgust in Wes’s voice, I don’t doubt it’s true.
“Spencer was a freaking nerd,” Wes continues. “He should have been picked on, but instead he was dating the most popular girl in school, so everyone loved him. I scored both touchdowns at the homecoming game that night and stopped the other team from taking the lead when I caught that interception. But he kicked one field goal, and he was the hero. He got straight A’s without having to study. I worked my butt off and got B’s just because my teachers thought I was a problem child. The only thing I ever had over Spencer was my looks, and the one girl I wanted never cared about that.”
“Wait, Wes. You can’t just—”
“No.” Wes holds up a hand to stop me. “Look, I know it was wrong. I know I was just crazy jealous and taking my anger and frustration from my personal problems out on Spencer. I get it now, but at the time, I was just so messed up. I told him I hated him. I told him I kissed you because I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to hate me the way I hated him because I was sick of feeling guilty. That’s why he got drunk that night. It wasn’t you. You did the right thing not driving, and you tried to stop him from getting in the car. I saw you try to stop him. He pushed you to the ground. I could have stopped him. I was much bigger than him. I could have pulled him out of the car and taken his keys. I let him drive off because you guys had fought, and I wanted to be there for you.” He scoffs in disgust again and shakes his head. “He was my best friend, and I wanted to try and take his girlfriend.”
When he finally falls silent, I’m nauseated from his confession. I don’t know how to feel about it. I’m angry, but I also feel so bad for him. I hate him and I pity him and I love him all at the same time. And then there’s Spencer. This conversation has brought that night back to the very front of my brain. It’s ripped open the scars, and I feel like I’m breaking all over again.
“Why were you so cruel to me, then?” I ask, though I’m not sure I can hear any more explanations. “After he died…it was like you blamed me. You’d always hated me, but after that, when you looked at me…there was new loathing that couldn’t be faked. If you wanted me so badly, why did you hate me so much after he died? I was broken. I could have used a friend who understood what I was going through.”
Wes clenches his jaw and glares so hard at the ground I assume I’ve hit too raw a nerve, and he’s not going to answer. But then he shakes his head and says, “I couldn’t stand to be around you. I held you while the paramedics worked on him that night, and when he died right in front of us, you shattered in my arms. I felt you break. I blamed myself for his accident and for everything you were going through.” He closes his eyes and cringes as if in pain. “And, even worse, I couldn’t stand to look at you because every time I did I felt relieved.”
“What?” I blanch.
Wes’s shoulders slump, and he kicks the ground with his shoe. “I hated that he was gone, and I’d have given anything to have him back—to go back in time and redo that entire night—but at the same time I felt like I’d been given a lucky break.” He looks at me, eyes filled with regret and shame. “He was out of the way now, and I could finally have a chance with you.”
My stomach rolls and I stumble backward, as if the shock of his twisted confession has literally knocked me over. I really am going to be sick. He can’t mean that. He can’t possibly think that I would have—
“I hated myself for even thinking those thoughts,” Wes whispers. “I never would have acted on them. I cut myself out of your life completely after that because I wouldn’t let myself have you. I didn’t deserve you. And I couldn’t kill myself after that, either. Death was too good for me. Living was my punishment. Spencer—the greatest guy that ever existed—was dead because of me, and I wanted to move in on his girl after he died. I was a total jerk—am a total jerk—because even now, admitting all of this, I still want you. I want you to tell me that I’m forgiven and that I have a chance with you. I want that so badly I’m going out of my mind.”
I go pale again and start to tremble when he looks at me with sad eyes void of any hope. “I love you, Bay.” He blows out a heavy breath and lifts his hands as if he’s completely lost. “I always have. Since the day you moved here. And you choosing Spencer and loving him so much when you could have dated anyone only made me love you even more. I have a hard time being around you because I don’t trust myself not to kiss you again. And I don’t deserve to kiss you. I don’t deserve to be in your life at all. I ruined all three of our lives that night. I deserve to suffer for it.”
I can’t take anymore. Can’t listen to another word. This is too much to deal with. It’s too much to think about, much less try and make sense of. Panic claws up my throat, and a flood of tears bursts from my eyes. When I break into sobs, I whirl around and run for my car. Wes doesn’t come after me. He doesn’t even call out to me. When I speed away from the hospital a few minutes later, a blubbering, hysterical mess, Wes is still sitting at that picnic table, staring at the ground as if he wishes it would swallow him up and put him out of his misery.