Page 18 of Atlas

We don’t make it to the second floor. Willa spins around after flicking on the light in the back, where she’s set up the display of furniture to look like a kitchen and living room, paintings, ceiling lights, and lamps included.

She wears a haunted, desperate expression, her eyes so unnaturally dark that a chill clenches my midsection. She’s so intense that she almost looks like a stranger. “We could hook up without anyone knowing. It could be just for us until we can break the news to Bullet and Lynette gently. They’ve mixed business with pleasure ever since the start. She’s the club’s lawyer and they’re together. I don’t see why we couldn’t be.”

I choke on my saliva and cough roughly. “Because that’s a good way to blow a friendship all to hell,” I wheeze.

You know what’s not choking? What’s not having a hard time about any of this? My fucking dick. It’s rock hard and probably quite visible through my worn jeans.

“I think it makes for a solid foundation to be friends before you become lovers.” Willa starts pacing along a woven rug, around a coffee table, between two couches and three chairs. It sounds complicated, because it is. She cuts a deft path, but it’s clear she needs to be moving. “It doesn’t always have to end in disaster. Or end at all.”

“What are you saying?”

She stops, snapping her flashing eyes back to my face. I feel like It’s like getting shoved into a floodlight so powerful that it’s flaying the skin from my body. “Do you want the honest answer or some bullshit?”

“The honest answer.”

“That if I don’t get you naked and your cock inside my mouth in the next few minutes, I might die.”

I don’t need to pass out for a second time today, but I swear it just about happens. “H-how long?” Right. Because that’s the appropriate response to that statement.

“I don’t know. Maybe two minutes.”

I throw my hand out against the back of the nearest couch so I don’t fall over. “No, how long have you felt that way?”

“I don’t know.” She winces, dropping her eyes. She’s suddenly shyer than I’ve ever seen her. “Months.” She doesn’t study the floor for long. She summons some of her classic Willa courage. “I thought I could wait. Be friends for as long as you needed. But… then today you scared the shit out of me. What if something happened and I never got to tell you that I’m here, wanting you?”

“Wanting or more than that?”Wantisn’t nearly as dangerous as the other stuff that my family pressed on. Willa said hook up. Not fall in love. But then she also said that it didn’t have to end, which sounds a lot like feelings.

Feelings scare the shit out of me. Feelings are hard and messy and complicated. You can think you’re in love with someone and then it turns out that maybe you weren’t at all, and when you trusted in something for years only to be disillusioned, how do you get back up and put faith in your gut again?

“You’re scaring the hell out of me,” I admit.

I’m not a coward who can’t talk. I’ve done plenty of talking to this woman over this past year. I just never realized that all this time she was falling for me. She hid it so well.

About as good as I’m hiding from myself and everyone else.

“I scare you or the idea of us being more than friends scares you?”

Fuck, Willagetsme.

“I’m afraid of the idea of getting it all wrong again.” I have to clench the couch with both hands.

Willa’s eyes stop that intense burning, and she gives me the saddest, softest, sweetest smile. I’ve never thought more about closing these few feet between us and tasting them than I am now. All while protesting.

Because life makes perfect sense. Fucking never.

“You don’t have to get it right for it to have still meant something. There are different kinds of love. Different kinds of people. Each experience is unique.” Willa doesn’t give manyphysical tells of when she’s nervous, but she rubs her index finger along her thumb blatantly, like she’s searching for a hangnail. I think I’m ready for whatever she’s going to say, but I’m not. “Just because I’ve never said this before and because I might never be brave enough to do it again, I think that the way Jodie left was all wrong. How she blamed it on you and made you feel like you were broken. You’re so- so… not broken, Atlas! She implied that there’s something wrong, somethinglessabout you, and that’s so untrue. When you told me, I didn’t know what to say, and then I felt that it wasn’t right to say it, but if she was here now, I’d smack her.Hard. I’d tell her how much I hate her for hurting you. For wounding you and making you think you weren’t enough. But I’d thank her too. Because she could have had everything and she threw it away.” She thumps a fist over her chest so hard it echoes in here. “I’m good at uncovering discarded treasures. I see them. I want them. I cherish them.”

Holy god, this is aboutso much morethan hooking up.

There are definitely feelings involved, and deep ones. Ones that haven’t just cropped up out of nowhere. People think Willa is impulsive, but that’s only because she keeps her thoughts and dreams close to her chest. Only when she’s sure, will she give voice to them.

She’s sure.

She’s fighting for me.

I don’t know where I’m at, but Willa does. She’s dropped her guard and let me into a secret place where I’ve never been allowed. It’s so much softer than her normally boisterous self. Like in her head, it’s not always chaos and noise and high energy. In her head is safety and warmth. She translates it intowords for me, spinning a dream of what we could have if only I was brave enough to face my fears.

And Lynette.

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