Page 101 of Nothing Like the Movies

“So Stu hung up on him, sat down to watch a ball game, and had a heart attack an hour later.”

Oh my God.My hand covered my mouth, and I swallowed, blinking back tears as I tried to imagine how anyone would handle the guilt of that.

“Oh God,” Clark said. “He thinks he killed his dad?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, shaking her head with tears in her eyes. “And when he came home for the funeral, I was dealing with my own PTSD, though I didn’t know it at the time. I’d completely checked out, but instead of going back to school, Wessy got two full-timejobs because I couldn’t work. He paid the mortgage and the rest of the bills every month, while also making sure Sarah got to school every day and had what she needed.”

Oh God, oh God, oh God.I stood and wiped at my cheeks, staring at the phone in the darkness. I started pacing around the Ted and Wally’s parking lot as I realized Mrs. Bennett hadn’t been melodramatic at all.

Itwasa triumph that he’d survived those hits.

“Enough, Mom,” Sarah said, sounding angry.

Dear God, how can this be true? How did I not know?

Why didn’t he tell me?

“Wes was the one who insisted I see a therapist, so he saved my life by being stubborn,” she said, coughing out a laugh while wiping her eyes. “Like, what kind of a teenager does all of that? He gave up everything he’d ever dreamed of—school, baseball, dating—to take care of us.”

“Don’t use this, okay, Clark?”

Clark swung the camera over to Sarah, and she looked upset. Her brown eyes, so much like Wes’s, were bright with unshed tears, and she shook her head. “I think it’d kill him for people to hear this.”

“I won’t,” I heard Clark say. “I’ll delete it all. But why wouldn’t he want people to know how selfless he was?”

She shrugged. “If he thinks he’s the one who caused it all, it probably doesn’t feel like selflessness, does it?”

“You okay?” he asked Sarah, and then the video ended.

I stood there, staring down at the phone, its silent screen jarringafter what I’d just watched. I looked around, at the dark downtown night, and it felt like everything hadchanged. People were still walking around, smells of delicious food swirling in the air, but it had become a different place.

It was now the setting for a heartbreaking plot twist.

How was it possible?My mind was racing through memories, comparing what I had with what I now knew. The silly, lighthearted Wes who’d FaceTimed me every night back then had been going throughthat?

And it was tough to decide what the worst part of the story was. Was it Wes thinking he was responsible for his dad’s death, that his harsh words hadliterallykilled his father, or Wes having the weight of the world resting on his eighteen-year-old shoulders?

“Liz.”

I gasped and turned around in time to see the door to the ice-cream shop closing behind Wes. He zipped his jacket and walked toward me. I wiped at my cheeks, but it was no use as I saw him watching me like he could see the mascara tracks.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowed together. “Clark was an asshole to—”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Wes?” I heard myself ask, my voice cracking.

“What?” He narrowed his eyes. “Tell you what?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about everything you were dealing with after your dad died?” I asked, abandoning any hope of keeping it together. I couldn’t hold back the tears as I imagined the wayhe must’ve felt, and I wantedso badlyto be able to go back in time and know the truth so I could help him. “Why didn’t you let me help you?”

His mouth opened like he was going to speak, but he didn’t. He closed his mouth and squinted, like he was trying to figure out what he was supposed to say.

“We talkedeveryday, Wes,” I said, grieving for him two years too late. My voice was thick when I said, “And you never said a word about any of it. You told me you were working a lot to save money for school. Were you seriously working two jobs to pay all of your family’s bills?”

“Someone had to do it; it wasn’t a big deal,” he said, looking uncomfortable.

“It wasn’t a big deal?” I asked, my voice a high-pitched squeal. “God, why wouldn’t you say something? I could’ve helped you.”

“How?” he asked, shrugging like he was embarrassed. “How could you have helped? You were a teenager away at college—what could you have done?”

---