Ulysses Paradox (a Will Lenney fanfiction.)

chapter twenty-two

The days passed quietly, Ruby found a new apartment at the beginning of April. Her friends from high school invited her out for drinks and sometimes she would come, other times she would stay at home. She continued going back to the coffee shop to work, her clients were kind when she lied and said a family emergency had come up and she was working from California now.

Audre and Taj kept tabs on her, and offered to come visit during the summer, and she said she'd think about it. They didn't ask what happened. No one had, except Will, but he didn't talk to Ruby at all anymore. After their phone call, she hadn't heard from him at all. He continued uploading videos on his Youtube channel, and Ruby wondered if he had forgotten about her already. His eyes never lost their sparkling excitement when he was filming.

Some nights when Ruby missed Will, she would go back and look at the picture Alex had taken of them that day in his apartment, Will's arm around her in a friendly way. She missed the way he was quick to touch her, to hold her when they were alone. Now, in her new apartment back in the city she grew up in, London felt like a dream. The life she'd lived from the time she was eighteen was slipping away from her and now she went to the grocery store with her mother and wore jeans more days than not.

April felt like a cruel reminder that a new month was dawning and leaving Will further in the past. He sat on his couch and watched the days pass in shadows on his wall, playing out like a puppet show, silhouettes of the future he'd begun to hope for, one where she was still here.

He cried in front of his friends when they came over to drink. They'd pat him on the back and tell him things would get easier, but April felt like defeat. There was nothing left for him here. He'd burned every bridge.

James, his best friend, was real and active and came over to help him film videos and continue going through the motions of his life. Filming videos was the only time he could smile, it was an easy façade, a work attitude. Will wondered if she watched any of his videos. He hoped she did, it was nice to imagine she missed him the same way, if she would know this hollow loneliness.

Alex and George were close by, and when they came over they would order take out and watch a show and they didn't make him talk. They'd give him real, full hugs before they left, every time, and they told him to take care of himself. He would say thank you and then he'd lay on his back on the couch and he let the aching fill his body until he fell asleep.

She had borrowed a shirt once, when everything was okay, and Will had found it laying in his armoire one afternoon and he would clutch at the fabric and sob into it when he didn't know if he was able to feel anything anymore. It was pathetic.

James let himself in without asking now, and it woke Will up from where he'd fallen asleep on the couch. He sat down on the coffee table so he was by Will's head.

"I spoke with Audre and Taj today." He said. Will sat up, this is the first he'd heard of her friends since she left. "They said she's doing alright."

Will asked if they'd said anything else.

"They told me she was living with her parents when she got back, and now she's got her own place."

That sounded real. Permanent.

"Have you heard from her?"

Will hadn't heard from her since the phone call when she told him everything. He'd been sitting on the couch, he was still hopeful that they could work things out, he'd thought she was staying with a friend here in London, perhaps. Then she told him that Jake had come to her apartment and she was back in California and everything he'd been thinking about before crumbled because she was worlds away.

Even now, when he thought about it his stomach curled. She hadn't given him much detail about what had happened and his imagination ran rampant throughout the day, considering all the worst-case scenarios where she hadn't gotten the chance to call him weeks later. He told this to James, whose eyes widened when he mentioned Jake's visit.

"Is she alright?" He asked. Will shrugged, helpless. She had moved back to California, thousands of miles away. Did that seem alright?

James sat on the couch for a while longer, glancing at Will often and picking at his fingers. He let out a few sighs in quick succession, and finally opened his mouth.

"I got her address." He said. Will sat up. "Audre gave it to me the other day."

He produced a piece of notebook paper and handed it over. Will read it, and it was for a town in California that he'd never heard of. She had never told him about where she grew up.

"Honestly I didn't want to give it to you, I don't know that this is the best idea for anyone." He paused, and deeply considered his next words. "I can't make decisions for you. All I'm saying is you shouldn't make any rushed decisions."

James left after that, having done what he came for.

The piece of paper with her address sat on Will's bedside table and he watched the clouds roll through the sky from under his quilt. He had work to do today, but the grey that settled over London lulled him into the early afternoon seamlessly.

When he finally got up, he made a cup of tea. Earl Grey. She told him once that she liked the way his hands moved. She had reached over and brushed her fingers over the tendons on the back of his hand. It was as if she'd left a ghost in London, and now that he was alone in his kitchen he could see her outline moving through the room, filling it with warmth and life.

Will smoked a cigarette on the balcony and let the ashes float down onto the sidewalk below. He entertained the thought of tipping himself over the edge. He wondered what it felt like to die. Falling off the balcony wouldn't hurt, but hitting the ground was the part you were supposed to worry about. Anyway, he didn't want to die, he just wanted to get rid of the way she'd torn apart his insides and left his body to rot with heartache, expecting him to carry on in a new life without her.

Tonight, he laid in bed and remembered what it was like to see her for the first time. He'd never seen a person in such a singular way. In his memories she was not just a woman. She was a ray of light, pure and beautiful. Art that encapsulated the highest level of self-preservation and nuance. She had been untouchable, unreachable. Will knew he should feel grateful even just for the opportunity he'd gotten to bring her into his mundane, useless orbit. Still, he burned.