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8 P.M., FRIDAY, JAN. 14, 2022, Goose Hollow apartments — Will was so fucking angry he could hardly breathe.
He couldn’t remember ever being angry like this. Blair was being fucking ridiculous. He liked saying — well at least thinking — fucking. He didn’t normally do either one.
He swept the dishes off the table, and they shattered. Damn that felt good, he thought. And when Blair yelled at him, he looked around for something else to throw. That damned vase would work. He saw Blair leaving — how dare she leave him! — and he threw the vase at the door. It shattered too.
He grinned.
It actually made his head feel better. It had seemed like the pain was getting worse. Wasn’t it supposed to get better? He found his pills and took one. Took a second one.
You weren’t supposed to admit something hurt. Toughen up, his dad would tell him. ‘Toughen up’ when he pinched his finger in the car door when he was 6 years old and on the way to school for the first day.
‘Toughen up,’ when his brother threw a baseball and hit him deliberately, and then laughed at him. It had hurt!
Toughen up,’ when they went bird hunting and he fell in the stream and got soaking wet. He’d wanted to go back to the car. ‘Toughen up.’ He had to hunt the rest of the day in wet clothes.
“Toughen up,” he muttered out loud in the empty apartment. Well he was tough now, wasn’t he?
Will wandered through the apartment. He couldn’t believe Blair had walked out like that. He went into their study. Saw the EWN Avengers poster on the wall above her desk. Yeah, of course, she’d have that. That’s what she wanted, what all the women wanted. He got up on her desk and took the scissors and jabbed at Ryan’s face. Ryan was supposed to be his friend, not Blair’s. He was supposed to support him, not ask Blair to run for EIC!
Ryan knew what he was planning to do. And he asked Blair to run for EIC anyway? What kind of friend was that?
“Two-faced bastard,” he muttered. He stabbed at Ryan’s face until it was gone. He laughed. So there, Mister Hotshot with all the women. He wondered if Ryan had ever slept with Blair. Probably.
No, Blair hadn’t been around before Teresa came back, had she? A saner voice in his head said. He frowned. He didn’t think so, but you never knew with Ryan. He probably knew her from Honors before then. Did Blair compare Will to Ryan and laugh at him secretly?
He threw her books around. That felt good too. He laughed.
He never allowed himself to get angry when he was a kid. He’d get angry or frustrated, and his voice would shake or he’d get tears in his eyes.
His Dad and brothers would jeer at him. “Look at Will, crying like a little girl,” they’d say. ‘Toughen up.’
Amity. It was a small town south of Portland, too far really to be called a commuter town. Most people he knew worked in McMinnville, 10 minutes away, like his Dad did. His Dad was an electrician. The pay was good, and there was always work, he said. That’s what kind of work a man did. Not shit with books and writing.
His brothers were like his Dad. Big guys who played football and were good at. Will? He was always the last one chosen for any game in PE. He hated it, but he was clumsy, awkward.
He got good grades. Excellent grades, although he started hiding them from his father in the sixth grade. His father thought getting good grades was for sissies. Sissies like Will.
“Need to make a man out of you,” he’d say. “Don’t be such a little girl.”
Well he wasn’t a little girl tonight was he? He was angry. And he wasn’t crying. His voice wasn’t shaking.
Where was Blair? he wondered. Shouldn’t she be home by now? Where did she go? He couldn’t remember.
She had left him! Fuck. Left him because she’d rather be EIC than marry him.
He saw the rug on the floor — Blair’s precious rug, he thought. He picked it up and tore at it. That was almost as nice a sound as the plates! He laughed. He tore it some more.
His Dad was allowed to get angry. His Dad would rant and rave, and his Mom would placate him, soothe him. She made sure to have his dinner ready. She didn’t yell back. She didn’t get up and sleep on the couch like Blair did. No.
He bet Blair’s mother didn’t treat her father like that either.
Why did Blair think she got to treat him like that?
He deserved more respect than that!
He saw Blair’s quilt and he attacked that next. She needed to learn. He was the man of the house. Not some pussy-whipped asshole like Ryan.
Fucker.
That’s what his Dad called men like Ryan, pussy-whipped.
Be a man, he’d tell Will and his brothers.
Will’s head hurt. He took another pill.
He went into the kitchen to look at the clock. It was 11 p.m. The newscast would be done, why wasn’t Blair home? He didn’t feel good. Weren’t women supposed to take care of their men when they were sick?
His Dad didn’t get sick very often. But when he did, his mother made him soup.
His mother didn’t run off and leave his father alone when he was sick.
His mother stayed home. She cooked and cleaned and took care of her men, she’d say with a laugh.
Wait, what was he saying? Did he want Blair to be like this mother? He frowned.
He loved his family. He did. But he didn’t like them very much. Especially these last few years when they started agreeing with Trump on everything. They refused to get vaccinated. His Dad said he was a wimp because he did. They had a Stop the Steal sign in their yard when he’d gone home last — months after the election even!
And even before Trump. Will didn’t fit in, and he knew it. He sighed. He wanted to. He thought about Blair’s family. He would fit in with them. Mr. Williams would be a good role model, not like his own Dad. His Dad hung out at a local bar, and he drank too much some times. And he’d get in fights in the parking lot.
His mother would go get him and tease him about getting too old for that.
His Dad would laugh. “A man who can’t fight for what he believes in is no man at all,” he’d say.
Will didn’t fight. Why? He knew he’d lose. He was the runt of the family, his brothers said.
It made him angry again. He saw the rocking chair. Blair’s rocking chair. Sometimes he held her in it, wrapped in that quilt. Well, that wouldn’t happen again.
He used a book — a World Literature textbook — and pounded at the chair. The arm came off. He grinned and kept pounding at it. See? He wasn’t a runt.
He was always a good boy, his mother said. Such a good boy. He didn’t want to be a good boy. His father rolled his eyes when he’d hear his wife say that.
He knew he was awkward. Geeky. He knew that’s what the newsroom said. Oh they thought he was smart, a good reporter. But they laughed at him too. Laughed at his clothes. Well it wasn’t like he had money to go buy new clothes! These were what he had, damn it.
Fuckers.
Blair had money for clothes. Lots and lots of clothes.
He roamed the apartment, opened the closet door and saw all of Blair’s clothes. Where was she? He thought. She left!
He pulled clothes off their hangers and threw them on the floor. And then he opened his pants and pissed on them.
He laughed. Well, now she didn’t have so many, he thought gleefully.
Where was she?
He got his jacket. He needed to go find her. She must be at EWN still? He looked at the clock. It was after midnight. Who was she with? Was she fucking someone else in the Crow’s Nest? Who?
He sent that fucker Ryan Matthews a text. Ryan wanted Blair. He knew it. Well he couldn’t have her, the fucker.
He went out the door.