The extra series 1, p.24
The Extra Series, #1, page 24
Probably not. I’m just reminding him of Sarah.
“Um, no. I didn’t. He was there waiting for Anna-Marie, who he was sleeping with at the time—”
“Of course,” Will says.
He has reason to hate Ryan, so I ignore this slight on Anna-Marie. Although, she did in fact sleep with Ryan Lansing, so I’m not sure exactly what I would say in her defense. “And he looked like a total wreck, so I asked him what was wrong. And he was telling me about this woman he was in love with, and I advised him to stop sleeping around and just be with her. I had no idea he was talking about Sarah, I swear. If I had known . . .” I trail off, because suddenly I’m not actually certain what I would have done had I known back then.
Certainly not outed them in front of not only Will, but the entire cast and crew of Passion Medical.
“Ryan Lansing in love,” he says, shaking his head. Then he looks up at me, with a sad smile. “It’s not your fault, Gabby. At all. Sarah and I weren’t working, I’d already told you that. I’ve known it for a while. We both have. I mean, look at this place. It’s in my name, but the only thing that’s actually mine here is my computer.”
And the assorted dirty laundry spread over the low back of the uncomfortable looking armchair, I’d guess. “I did think this place doesn’t really strike me as . . . you.”
He nods, taking another bite. “I convinced myself I liked it, but god, I hate that couch. And the stupid minimalist artwork. Sean was right. She tried to make me into something I wasn’t.”
“Yeah,” I say, around my own bite. “Sean didn’t seem too fond of her.”
He looks up then, and frowns. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned him. Just because he might have been right in this instance doesn’t make him not a total dick.”
“Well, even total dicks have their moments.”
“Like Ryan Lansing?” He mutters this into a spoonful of whipped cream.
I remember the sympathy I’d felt for HD when he was confessing his hopeless love.
“Whatever,” Will answers himself. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t think she even really wants him. I think she just . . . doesn’t want me.”
His pain cuts me even more deeply than I’d imagined. One of his hands, the one closest to me, is resting on the table and I grab it without thinking. It’s warm and just rough enough. The hairs on my arm stand on end, and his eyes lock onto mine, and they are so, so green and deep.
I clear my throat, turning the awkward hand grab into an undoubtedly even more awkward grandmotherly hand pat. “I’m sorry she hurt you,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Yeah, it sucks that she did that,” Will says. “But that’s not what bothers me.”
“Really?” I ask. “What is it, then?”
Will looks me in the eye, as if he’s deciding how much he wants to share. I look away. “You don’t have to—” I say, at the same time he says, “I’m actually not—”
We both stop and stare down at the ice cream.
“I’m actually not sad that it’s over,” Will says.
This surprises me, and I hold my spoon awkwardly over the ice cream. “Because it wasn’t working?”
“Because she wasn’t the only one who’d moved on,” Will says.
My chest constricts, and I can’t breathe. I want so badly for him to mean that he wants me, though I’m not even sure he could possibly know what he wants after all of that.
“I’m angry with Sarah for what she did,” Will says. “But I don’t exactly feel like I have the moral high ground.”
“You weren’t cheating on her.” It comes out more like a question than I intend it to, and my stomach drops as I imagine all the things he might be about to confess: an affair with June, or one of the women in the writer’s room, or maybe even another extra.
Right, Gabby. Because it would have to be someone on set. As if Will isn’t allowed to have a life outside of the people I know.
Will shakes his head, and now he’s looking up somewhere near the crown molding by the ceiling. “Sarah blamed you, you know.”
My mouth falls open. “Me? But we didn’t—”
“Before I found out about her and—well, before. She said she and I weren’t working as well anymore. That we didn’t talk like we used to. And she blamed it on how I feel about you.”
I freeze. I know where I want this to go, but my heart is too timid to hope for it.
“She wasn’t totally right,” he said, and his green eyes lock on mine. “But she wasn’t totally wrong, either.”
I’m pretty sure my heartbeat can be heard over the infomercial now. “What do you mean?” I manage to ask.
“I like you, Gabby. I always have. I liked you back at the bookstore, and when I saw you again, I . . . I really like you. Way more than a man engaged to someone else should. It didn’t cause the problems between Sarah and I, those were definitely already there, but it—well, it did make me start to question things.”
I gape. New Gabby who saves lives of geriatric soap stars should probably be able to take a little confession of Will’s feelings for her in stride, but apparently she’s decided to take a backseat with some popcorn and watch this like she would a scene on Passion Medical.
I can’t make words form around my shock and relief and, well, trepidation. Which is probably good, because I have no idea what to say.
I’m in love with Will. I know I am. And of all the things I don’t want to mess up, a possible relationship with him is at the top.
“I feel like I should tell you I feel the same about you,” I say finally. “But I guess I already yelled that at you.”
Will winces. “I deserved that. All of it and more.” He digs his spoon back into the ice cream, and I try to find my footing after that emotional whiplash. He says he has feelings for me, and my heart is definitely doing a little jig to celebrate that. But he’s back to not meeting my eyes, and our hands are still inches apart on the table, even though I said it back. So if he likes me and I like him, then—
“I just keep thinking about what a mess I’ve made of things,” Will says. “I wasn’t happy with Sarah, haven’t been for a long time. We stopped talking a long time ago, way before I met you again. If I was so miserable, I should have ended it. Instead, I decided to be a coward and have an emotional affair. That doesn’t make me much better than she is, does it?”
My heart freezes. Is that what the problem is? Yes, he has feelings for me, but now I’m the girl he cheated with? This is another version of that girl that I never wanted to be. “It wasn’t an emotional affair,” I say. “Just having feelings isn’t the same thing.”
Will looks dubious. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. All I did was hang around the entrance and the craft services table when I knew you’d be arriving or leaving or finishing a scene. Asked you out to coffee, went out of my way to be around you even though I knew my feelings were wrong, and then lied to Sarah about it all.”
I take a deep breath. When he puts it that way, it does sound worse. But not as bad as he’s making it out to be. “You also set me up with your brother.”
Will scoffs. “Yeah, that was a great plan. I decide to find you a boyfriend so that I can get over you, and pick my own brother, just so you’ll still be close. I’ve clearly been writing too many soaps.”
My voice catches. “That’s why you did that?”
Will nods miserably. “I’m sorry I made that comment about you needing direction. Really, I was talking about myself. Everything I’ve been for the last two years has been what Sarah wanted me to be. I’m honestly not sure who I am at this point, besides someone who might have leapt into an affair if things hadn’t blown up in my face first.”
I shake my head. “That would never have happened.”
Will meets my eyes again. “I know,” he says. “Because you wouldn’t have let it. But I’m the one who was engaged.”
I’m not sure what to say to that. I mean, I want to think I wouldn’t have welcomed advances from Will, knowing full well he was engaged. And I’m pretty sure that my hyperactive sense of guilt would have kept me from actually sleeping with him. But I probably would have let him kiss me. At least once, before I realized I was making a huge mistake.
Will must not know what to say either, because he’s quiet long enough that I pretend to be incredibly intrigued by the remnants of the Breakup Tub. We’ve actually managed to plow through it with remarkable speed. He pulls his hand back down from the table, and I do the same with my own.
Our knees, though, are still touching that tiny bit. I should move mine, I should. But I can’t bring myself to do so. Even though I’m clearly not helping things. I want to be the friend who lets him talk, the one who is there for him without ulterior motives. Not the girl who reminds him of his own personal failings. “So, um, I bet it’s been tough being at work after all that.” I decide not to mention that I know about Sarah having been fired.
He shrugs. “It would be. I quit. I haven’t been back since I left that day.”
I grimace. “So now you have to find a new job on top of everything else?”
Will rolls his eyes. “Please. I do not get sympathy from you for being unemployed after what I did to you. How are you doing? Do you know what you’re going to do now?”
Despite the emotional roller coaster of the last few moments, or most likely because of it, I can’t help but smile. He looks back at me, startled, which is probably fair, because with the way my whole body is buzzing from emotional overload, my smile probably looks a little crazed.
“I’m sorry,” I say, fighting the giggle that threatens to burst out of me. “I’m—no, it’s not funny, not really. It’s just . . . Well, I don’t know if you remember this, but that first day we saw each other on the set, you asked what I wanted to do with my life. And I—it made me think. I mean, it made me embarrassed that I was a twenty-three-year-old with absolutely no idea what I wanted.”
He cringes. “That was a truly ridiculous question for me to ask, given how little I’ve ever had figured out.”
I smile at him. “Maybe. But I’m glad you did. Because . . . I think I’m just now starting to figure some things out for myself. That I might want to take my old people saving powers and go professional, for one. Nursing school,” I clarify at his confused expression. “And maybe my life will end up somewhere different entirely, but I’m really excited about it. And that’s enough for now.”
Will actually looks impressed. “Good for you,” he says. “I bet you’ll be great at that.”
“I’m afraid to hope for that much. I’m just aiming not to quit instantly the moment I find out that I suck.”
Will shakes his head. “You’re too hard—”
“—on myself,” I say. “I know. You’re one to talk.”
Will rolls his eyes again, but he does smile faintly, which is an improvement. “What about your brother?” he asks. “How is he doing?”
I smile, happy he remembered. Again. Now that I think about it, Will has always remembered the things I tell him, even when I told him years ago. “Better,” I say. “Still in rehab. Doing well, according to my mother. Though now my older sister is maybe getting divorced, so who the hell knows about my family.”
Will looks pained. “God, the last thing you need is me dragging you through my shit.”
“No,” I say. “No, I’m glad to be here.”
He looks like he very much doubts this, and to avoid wading through the tangled conversation in which he inevitably tells me he’ll never see me as anything but a mistake, I turn the subject back to him. “What about you?” I ask. “What are you going to do?” And then it hits me. “Your novel! You’re going to finish it, aren’t you?”
A slow, shy smile spreads across his face, but he shakes his head, and the smile slips. “I don’t know. I mean, yeah, I’ve spent the last few days making some notes and . . .” he gestures with his spoon towards the piles of papers in the living room. “It’s dumb, right? It’ll never sell. I know I need to get another real job, but it’s been taking my mind off of things.”
“I don’t think it’s dumb at all! Will, it’s fantastic!”
He raises an eyebrow at me, though he looks bemused. “My impending poverty?”
I make a face at him. “Now you’re being dumb. No, I mean . . .” I twirl my own spoon around in my fingers before setting it down on the nearly empty foam container. “Look, I’ve spent my whole life looking for something that would make me as happy as you are when you talk about your book. It doesn’t matter if it sells, not really, or if you have to get another job until it does. You have something you care about, something you love to do, something that excites you—”
I flush, realizing how much I’m probably overreaching. I have no right to tell him what he needs to be doing with his life, with his dreams. But he’s leaning in towards me and his knee is isn’t just brushing mine anymore, it’s pressed up against mine, and as my breath catches, I can smell the pine-scented cologne (deodorant, maybe?) mixed with the slight funk of a shirt that’s been worn for a day too many. And chocolate.
It should be a repulsive mix, but on him, with his face mere inches away and those green eyes locked on me, it is intoxicating. My heart is doing cartwheels or maybe it’s my stomach. All I can see is his eyes and then his lips.
And maybe that’s all he can see on me too, because he leans in even closer and I follow, and before I can determine whether kissing under the influence of despair and Breakup Tub is really a good idea, his lips are pressed against mine, and his hand is in the hair at the back of my neck, and I taste chocolate and caramel and sunlight and oh my god Will is kissing me and—
And then he pulls away, sitting back against his chair. “I’m so sorry,” he says, looking slightly dazed, his eyes trailing back to the Breakup Tub. His hands no longer in my hair, or on me at all. Even his knee isn’t touching mine anymore. “I shouldn’t have—”
“No, no, it’s all . . .” My mind doesn’t seem to be able to form coherent thoughts. I am still lost in that incredible, perfect kiss and now his regret, all tangling together into a pit in my stomach. “Good,” I finish weakly. I sit further back into my chair, too. We’re still not terribly far apart, but it feels like miles now.
He didn’t want to kiss me. But why not? He’s already admitted he has feelings for me. He’s known for an embarrassingly long amount of time that I have feelings for him.
“I just keep thinking,” Will says, in a tone that says he hates himself for this, his shoulders slumped, “that if I’m the kind of person who would rather be miserable in a relationship, who’d rather cheat and self-destruct than just take the risk and get out and figure out how to put my life back together on my own, well. . . I’m about ten seconds out of that relationship and if that’s who I am, then what’s going to keep me from turning around and doing that exact same damn thing?”
My blood rushes in my ears. Of course. I’m like Ryan was for Sarah. He doesn’t want me; he just didn’t want her. And now even worse, I’ll always remind him of these doubts about himself. I’ll always be the girl he might have cheated with.
This is far, far worse than being friendzoned.
“I should be going,” I say, even though part of my brain is screaming at me to stay and see if another bout of making out will make it all better. Screaming that I’d much rather be a rebound than leave it like this.
But the other part, the part that is embarrassed and heartbroken and not sure I can take any more rejection—that part’s louder. And probably way more rational.
He clears his throat. “Yeah, no, that’s fine.” His chair scrapes against the tile as he stands and brings the Styrofoam container and spoons to the counter by the sink—which is really not cleaning up so much as moving things from one cluttered surface to another, but I can respect the effort.
Even as I’m dying inside, because Will kissed me and now I’m leaving because of New Gabby and her desire to not continually muck up my life by making stupid, regrettable decisions. Stupid New Gabby.
I give him what I hope is a normal smile, but feels too tremulous. Then I turn to head to the door. I can say goodbye to him as I’m walking out, and then it won’t be really like saying goodbye to him, right? He won’t see how much I hate this, how much it hurts me.
I make it to the door, my hand on the doorknob, when Will says “Gabby, wait.”
My relieved sigh comes out louder than I’d like. Fortunately, the sound is drowned out by a chipper infomercial hawking a blender than can apparently mash zucchini and golf balls with equal ease.
I wait for him to tell me he’s changed his mind. That he’s scared, but he wants this, and he’s far more scared of watching me walk out the door and then losing me forever. I turn and see Will standing in the living room by the coffee table, not near enough to make me believe he’s going to grab me for another kiss. Which is probably a good thing.
Right?
“It wasn’t because of the microwave fire,” he blurts out.
Of all the things I’d been hoping he’d say, this wasn’t it.
“Back at the bookstore,” he says, and I hope he doesn’t think I’ve suffered so many microwave-related job losses I need that clarification. “The wiring in that break room was a lawsuit waiting to happen. I set fire to the coffee machine like a month before you started.”
I blink, unsure what to say or feel.
“The district manager told me I had to fire someone, for cost reasons,” he continues. He jams his hands into his jeans pockets, and stares down at the floor. “It was either you or Margaret, and, you know, she was a single mom and I just couldn’t—”
“It’s okay,” I say. The last thing he needs right now is to feel guilty about a management decision he made two years ago, and one that was clearly the right call. “I’m sorry I even brought it up. That was petty of me.”
