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He didn’t sneak off. He freaking floated though. It didn’t even bother him to ride in the deathtrap down to campus. Heath parked outside the Commerce building and stole a quick kiss over the console. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Sorry?” Will asked, ducking under the strap of his bag. “What are you talking about?”
“Last night—”
“What?” He dropped his hand away from the door handle. The happy bubble he’d been in all morning popped, and it left his ears ringing. Surely he couldn’t have heard right? Heath wasn’t regretting that they’d—
Another kiss landing on his lips stopped the thought. “You’re jumping to the wrong conclusion, Will. I can see it on your face.”
“What would be the right conclusion then?”
“I’m sorry for not trying harder to respect the one and a half week thing.”
“That’s what you’re sorry about?”
Heath frowned and reset his cap. “Well, partially. At least enough to make it up to you by promising to abstain the rest of the week and a half.”
Ha, funny one, Heath. “Bit late now, isn’t it?”
“Never too late.”
He shook his head. It hadn’t just been Heath there last night, breaking the rules, it’d been him—and he’d wanted it. “Let’s just admit it. We could never hold out that long—turns out that little deal was just another lie.”
“Well I don’t want any more lies between us. I want to do this. I want us to do this.”
Will opened his door and swung one leg out.
Heath added, “I bet we can hold out.”
“We’ll break.” And he really wasn’t upset about the fact. He sorta wanted to shout to the world: Bring it on.
“We’ll see.”
* * *
He pulled down the blinds in the office to stop the glare on his screen. Like every time he did it, he knocked one of Candice’s paints off the sill. Thankfully they were all tightly shut.
He’d just settled the yellow back into place when Eric strode in with a coffee and a muffin. “Whadda ya doing?” he said with a mouth full of said muffin. “You snooping? Find anything?”
Will looked down at himself behind Candice’s desk. Oh, yeah, he could see how Eric thought that’s what he was up to.
Actually, it wasn’t a half bad idea.
“Not yet, I haven’t. Man the lookout, I’ll pry.”
He leafed through Candice’s books loose papers for anything remotely to do with painting. Nothing. He tried her bottom drawer and gulped. A folder labeled Canvas was the only thing in there. “Jackpot,” he said, and Eric scurried over.
“What is it?”
He opened the manila folder, and—“Oh. Dammit!” With a laugh he chucked it on top of the desk. Eric picked it up and read aloud:
“‘You thought I’d keep the answers to the canvas mystery in my desk? In a folder labeled canvas? Suckers. I’m not that much of an idiot.’ Huh.” Eric grinned and sipped his coffee, his muffin long demolished. “Hey, did you check out the names on the back side?”
Will rounded the desk where Eric had perched himself and peered at the paper. “‘John T. – confessed. Barry – confessed. Sig – caught red-handed.’” Fishing for a pen, Will took the paper. “Reckon we should add ourselves to the humiliation. Seems only fair.” He scrawled their names: Will and Eric are suckers too.
He stashed the folder back into her drawer and went back to work, which of course first involved checking his Facebook account. He’d barely settled into some real, actual, honest work, when Sig and Candice came in. Candice with a hot blue cast around her arm, Sig in his wizarding robe, worrying the top of his staff with his thumb.
“So,” Candice said, answering them before either he or Eric had a chance to ask, “that was definitely the last time I slap someone. I fractured a carpal bone in my wrist. Same place as last time.” She looked at Sig, and Will bet anything she was thinking of how they met. Candice motioned the cast. “When you’re ready, feel free to sign your love. Until then, I am going to silently fume that my thesis will now never get done.”
She took a step toward her desk and froze, eyes on her canvas. For a second, Will thought she’d taken one look at the thing and it had told her exactly what he and Eric had been up to, but then she bit her lip and uttered a quiet curse. “Well that’s going to be a little problem. Sig?”
“Yeah?” Sig said, leaning back on his desk chair, rolling the staff over the chair’s arms like a rolling pin.
“My arms in a cast.”
“I was there when they put it on you, honey.”
Candice’s face lit at the endearment, but Will could tell she was doing her darnedest to school it. “I mean, I can’t paint well with this.”
No one was going to say she couldn’t paint that well with it off either.
“You can’t paint so great with it off, either.”
Except Sig, apparently.
But he said with a disarming smile, and Candice only half-heartedly scowled back at him. “What I meant was I have a deadline.”
The unveiling. He and Eric perked up, leaning none too subtly toward Candice as if that would help figure things out any. They really were suckers.
“I might need—I mean, if you had some time—if it wouldn’t be a problem—”
“Yes,” Sig said. “I’ll help you.”
Candice gave a baffled nod. Then after a pause, added, “It doesn’t mean I’ll tell you what it’s for.”
“I know.”
“And you’re just okay with that? You’d help me anyway?”
“You know I’ll never give up trying to charm the answer out of you; you wouldn’t respect me if I did. But I respect you enough not to blackmail you into telling me. Besides”—He winked at her—“where’s the fun in that?”
Forcing himself not to analyze that little exchange—because, come on, he’d got it wrong before, he probably would again—he opened his email and deleted the junk. Two mails were left: one from his sister and one from Karl.
For the first time he didn’t feel the pain he usually did seeing his ex’s name.
He clicked the mail open. Still nothing. He read through the usual pleasantries and a request for Will’s address. He wrote a simple reply back, giving him what would be his new address for the next couple of months.
When he’d finished, he sat back with a satisfied smile. He hadn’t sucked in his breath and held it; there’d been no tingling hope, either. Just a contentedness, and the clarity that came with crossing the line from his past to what was his present: he was happy being here. Right where he was.
In a room full of lovable freaks.
And starting something with a guy who made him feel like he was among the stars when he was around him; who made him feel that high and that lucky.
Yeah. He was happy. At the end of the world, things were starting to look up.