Chapter Thirteen
WILL
Eleven months ago
Will: Where are you right now?
Shannon: What? Your spy satellite isn’t working?
Will: The word you’re looking for is drone, and no, it is not tracking you
Will: Not yet
Will: Where are you?
Shannon: A town council meeting outside of Boston that is testing my patience for humanity because they’ve been debating the local ordinance relative to shrub trimming for 90 minutes and they won’t get to my proposal to update the structure of a property until midnight because they have to approve every time someone changes a light bulb around here.
Shannon: Why do you need to know?
Will: Because I’d like to have a chat with your pussy and I don’t want anyone else to hear you come
Shannon: Am I supposed to be down for that?
Will: Here’s what I want.
Will: I want your panties in my hand. Without me even asking for them.
Will: And I want your skirt around your waist
Will: And I want to inhale that sweet scent
Will: And I want to lick you until you can’t speak
Will: I love the way you taste.
Shannon: What part of “at a town council meeting” did you misunderstand?
Shannon: I’m surrounded by people and I have to stay here until they get to my proposal, and you’re waxing poetic about the ladybits
Shannon: I don’t call you while you’re blowing up oil pipelines, do I?
Will: All right fine. Call me when you get home.
Will: But for the record, I’m usually preventing the oil pipelines from being blown up.
*
Will: I want to talk about the holidays
Shannon: Awesome.
Will: Why won’t you consider it?
Shannon: You’re extrapolating quite a bit from a one-word response
Will: Yeah, I am. I can hear text sarcasm from 3000 miles away
Will: What’s wrong, peanut?
Shannon: Nothing
Will: Save us both the time and energy of wading through the bullshit and tell me.
Shannon: I’ve fucked things up with Sam
Will: What happened?
Shannon: I’ve handled the whole thing wrong. Everything. I’ve taken a lot of shit for coddling him over the years, and I should have kept doing it. Never should have backed away or gotten into this fight about his issues and his strange girlfriend or any of it. I should have snuggled him up and doubled down on the coddling.
Will: Ok, so move on. If you want to do things differently, go ahead.
Shannon: Yeah, unfortunately, Sam’s busy being furious at me and he interprets everything I do as manipulative or malicious or whatever, and he’s not having it
Will: I know what you should do
Will: COME TO MEXICO
Shannon: omfg would you stop it?
Shannon: Allow me to be abundantly clear: I am not going to Mexico with you. I have articulated my reasons and I’m finished with this topic.
Will: Your reasons are shit
Shannon: They’re still my reasons and I’m serious about being finished. I’m not talking about this anymore.
Will: And here’s why your reasons are shit
Will: You’re in a war of hearts and minds with Sam. You need to let the insurgency run itself into the ground. Let it blow up, burn down, and when there’s nothing left to lose, you can get in there and fix things
Shannon: I can’t let Sam blow up or burn down
Will: At the minimum, you need some distance from that shit.
Will: Matt and Lo will be in Mexico, so you’ll have family. Also: Judy will love you.
Shannon: Don’t you think Judy will require some kind of explanation as to why I’m joining the Halsted Family Festivities?
Will: Let me deal with Judy
Shannon: And you’re going to deal with Lauren, too?
Will: Stop obsessing about that. Come to Mexico. Stay with me. There’s nothing more to be said.
*
Will: Care to explain why you aren’t answering your phone?
*
Will: Here’s the situation. I’ve called you 6 times and left 5 voicemails. That means it’s time for you to call me back.
*
Will: Just talked to Tom. He confirmed you’re alive.
Will: He’s a treasure, btw. Gave me your entire schedule for the week.
*
Will: Peanut. talk to me.