Seven Plus One: Chapter Five: The Sleepover

I pull up in front of Willow’s house at half past eight. A few of the rooms are lit on the first story, but the second story is completely dark; Willow’s father is probably working downstairs in the living room rather than upstairs in his study.

I shut the engine off after it has been running for a minute, and I look up at Willow’s house. It has two stories, and for all the money his parents have, the house Willow shares with his father is very standard. There’s nothing special about it; it’s just your usual two-story brick house with single-frame windows and a sloping roof. There is a garden out front, but it’s not very big—a few neatly-trimmed shrubs, and some flowering plants in between that have their buds closed for the night. I think they’re gardenias, and possibly some lilies. The walkway that leads from the cement driveway to the front door is made of old stone. There’s a light on by the door, bathing the small porch in a warm golden glow.

I look over at Willow. “You okay?” I ask him quietly.

He shrugs a little, one shoulder lifting and falling. “Fine.” He says it so quietly that I barely hear him.

Frowning, I reach over and settle a firm grip on his left hand, squeezing it gently. “Willow,” I say, my voice urgent and demanding. He looks over at me, eyes unreadable in the dark, and I hate how limp his hand is in mine.

He struggles for words for a minute, then swallows hard and looks away with an anguished frown. “You always know when I’m lying,” he whispers.

“Of course I do,” I tell him softly, rubbing my thumb over his knuckles easily. “You’re my best friend, Willow, and I love you. If that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t know you so well.” He takes a deep breath, tugging his hand out of mine to catch a tear before I can see it, and exhales shakily; I give him a small smile. “Come on. I’ll go in with you to fend off your dad.”

He laughs a little and gets out of the car; after I’ve gotten out and locked it, we head up to the house.

Willow’s father looks up at us when the door shuts and we come into the living room. He’s still dressed in his work clothes—dark gray slacks and an untucked white button-down, but only socks on his feet—and his glasses are slipping down his nose a little from hours of bending over the laptop resting on the coffee table. His short blond hair is tousled, probably from a nap, and his jade eyes are narrow with weariness. He does not look surprised to see me standing next to Willow.

“Mateo, welcome home,” he greets, and even though he sounds tired his voice is warm. “You were out late. Spending time with Evaleigh again, I see.”

“Yeah,” Willow answers, throwing me a quick smile before he looks back at his father. “I, ah, went there after school.”

“He was helping me with some Spanish grammar,” I add, when Willow’s father raises his eyebrows.

“I see.” Mr. Nicolas—I call him that because “Mr. Willow” just sounds too weird—looks from me to Willow. “You left your backpack there?”

“Heh, oh.” Willow automatically glances behind him, as though the missing backpack will be there, and then turns back around. “Yeah, come to think of it; I guess I did. But I was going to stay the night at Jazz’s house, so…”

Mr. Nicolas nods. “I’m surprised you didn’t call me earlier,” he says calmly, doing something with the laptop. Then he looks up at me, adjusting his glasses. “I trust your parents are all right with this?” he asks.

“Er, yeah.” The question makes perfect sense—Willow’s family is close friends with my family, and has been since we met in tenth grade. Of course Mr. Nicolas is going to check to make sure it’s all right. Still, the question makes me cringe a little inwardly. “Well, I mean, my dad hasn’t gotten home from the hospital yet, but Mom is fine with it, and I’m sure he’ll say it’s okay. He likes having Willow around.”

“Hmm.” Mr. Nicolas looks back at the laptop, his fingers scattering across the keyboard. “In that case, it’s all right with me.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Willow breathes, already heading for the stairs. I follow him quickly. Mr. Nicolas is a great guy—very nice and very patient—but he’s also very serious, and I can’t stay in a room alone with him for the ten minutes it will take Willow to get his things together.

Willow packs lightly and quickly, and we trudge back downstairs. We get all the way to the front door before his father calls Willow back. Then we both turn expectantly. I glance at my best friend hurriedly before forcing my gaze to his dad; there is tension in the lines of Willow’s body, and if I keep watching him his father will know something is wrong.

As it turns out, it doesn’t even matter whether I keep my eyes off of Willow or stare at him like a cat, because his father picks up on something anyway. I don’t know what he sees, but I would be willing to bet it’s the tension. Willow’s shoulders have been tight since we first stepped into the house. Mr. Nicolas was just too distracted earlier to notice.

Now, he gives Willow a good once-over and frowns faintly, seeming concerned. “Are you all right, Mateo?” he asks gently.

Willow turns away immediately, and he’s probably given himself away by how jerky his movements are when he opens the door, but he doesn’t stop moving. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Dad,” is all he says, as he heads out the door.

“See you, Mr. Nicolas,” I call behind me hurriedly, as I follow on his heels. The door closes firmly behind us and we start down the stone path. Neither of us says anything until we are in the car and a whole block away.

The first thing that Willow does is exhale. His breath comes out in an uncontrolled shudder, and his fingers tug the tie from his hair and then busy themselves putting it back into a ponytail.

“He’s just concerned about you, Willow,” I murmur from my side of the car.

Willow takes a minute to respond. “I know,” he finally answers, and relaxes, boneless, against the seat. I glance over at him and see his eyes flutter closed. “Shit,” he breathes, reaching up to rub his eyes.

“What?” I ask, mildly alarmed.

“Nothing.” He sighs after a minute though, crossing his arm over his middle. “He definitely knows something’s up now, I completely gave it away back there.”

I shift a bit in my seat, slowing down for a red light. “Yeah,” I admit quietly. “We almost made it, too. Is he going to call you about it or anything?”

Willow shakes his head. “No. He’ll wait until I get back home to interrogate me. He prefers face-to-face chats; he can get more information out of the situation if he can read whomever he’s talking with. It’s a business thing, and I kind of hate it.” He hides a yawn behind one hand. “God, I’m tired. Do you mind if I try to get some more sleep on the way back?”

“Not at all,” I reply, making a turn. “I’ll wake you when we get home.”

We’re twenty minutes away from my house, but I don’t say anything. Sleep is how Willow deals with hard days and heavy emotion. He was hit with both, today, and the combination tends to drain him. When I first met him, he hadn’t discovered this particular method of dealing, and so if something bad happened he was just a wreck, all over the place. It made me panic the first few times, because he scared the hell out of me. After a while, I started noticing that he would crash hard after a long day, so I suggested that maybe he just try to sleep it off before it got so bad. Sometimes he can’t—his thoughts keep him awake, or he can’t get the emotion to quiet down—but usually it eventually works. It’s better for his health, too.

When I pull up to the house, I can see the silhouette of my father’s black Mercedes sitting in the driveway. Oh, man. I hope he’s tired, because I don’t feel up to arguing the merits of having a boy sleep in my room tonight.

I shut off the car and shake Willow awake, and maybe my motions are a bit rougher than usual but I am a little concerned. I was sort of hoping that Dad would have another late night where he was delayed by a last-minute admittance, even if it’s harder on him in the long run. My luck is never that good, though.

Willow comes awake with a little groan, blinking at me blearily; he must have been getting in deep to be so out of it. He sleeps more than anyone else I’ve ever met. “Hmmh?”

“We’re here,” I tell him quietly.

Willow looks at me and says nothing, making a “muh” noise as he opens his door and climbs out of the car. Biting my lip, I yank the keys from the ignition and go after him, making it in time to catch up to him as he stops just beyond the steps leading up to the door. “Willow?” I venture cautiously.

He takes a deep breath. His eyes are fixed straight ahead, and that’s when I realize that there is a square of light over us and the front door is wide open. When I look toward the house, I see my father’s six-foot figure in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed and his head tilted slightly. His short brown hair is still fixed neatly, kept away from his piercing hazel eyes. Those eyes, which can reflect any of three different colors depending on the light, are narrowed at me. He’s still wearing his (clean) hospital scrubs.

Shiiiiiiit.

“Um. Hi, Dad?” I give him a careful smile. He isn’t moved.

“Evaleigh,” he says, and his voice is steady and calm. He doesn’t sound upset in the least, but there’s a quiet, firm note in his voice that tells me he is. Not to mention that look on his face. “Come inside. You too, Willow.”

Willow and I both swallow hard. We share a look, then start forward.

As we’re passing my father, he latches onto Willow with a hand on his shoulder; Willow stops immediately, looking uneasy.

“Go help your mother set the table, Evaleigh,” my father mutters, and I realize as I start moving again that I stopped a second after Willow did.

In the dining room, my mom smiles at me, which at least makes me feel a little better. As I’m taking the forks and spoons from her, I hear the front door close, and then murmured voices. I set everything on the table carefully and quietly, but it’s still no use; I can’t hear anything that’s being said. So much for eavesdropping.

But a minute later Willow and my father come into the dining room, and they don’t really look like they’ve been fighting, and certainly not like Willow is being forced to leave. I can live with that, for now. I’ll interrogate Willow later.

“Sit down, sit down,” my mother urges with a smile, bringing in all three dishes at once: chicken, rice, and peas. She worked as a waitress at some point or other in her life, I swear.

We all sit down; surprisingly, nobody asks Willow about what he’s doing here or how his day was. My own “how was your day?” answer consists of a single word: “Fine.”

The rest of dinner is pretty much silent. We’re very quiet when dinner comes around, because even though it’s one of the only times we’ll get to see each other in the day, we prefer eating over talking, and Dad never likes to talk about his job anyway.

Later that night, Willow and I find ourselves in my room upstairs. Willow is stretched across my bed, still in his jeans and t-shirt but with his feet in socks. His eyes are shut, and one arm is pulled over them as if to shield him from the overhead light in my room.

I stand by the door for a few seconds, and then I cross the room. When I flop down on the bed next to him, he bounces up a little, and he opens his eyes to look at me.

“Sooo,” I begin, drawing the word out a little as I look back at him.

He raises his eyebrows, looking a little wary for some reason. “So?”

“My father. And you.”

“Yep.” He closes his eyes again, relaxing. What did he think I was going to do, ask him if he had been sacrificing any firstborn lately?

“What happened?”

“We talked.”

“About what?”

“Me. Being here.”

“Uh…” I pause. I’m not sure if that is Me being here, or Me, and being here. “Okaaaay…so what did he say?”

Willow turns his gaze away from me as he tilts his head back again, pressing his nose into the crook of his arm. He’s taken his hair down again, and it scatters across the bedspread like silk ribbons. “He asked me if I was all right, same as my father did. Apparently, Dad called here as we were on the way. The difference is, your father knows how to go about asking subtly and with finesse—comes with the job description, I suppose.”

“No it doesn’t,” I clarify immediately. “Being a doctor means you have to ask very direct and invasive questions. ‘What are you taking, what have you been doing, why have you been doing it, how did that get there?’ He’s just got times where people are stubborn so he has to find another way to ask the question.”

“Whatever,” Willow mutters. “The point is, he got an answer out of me. So your parents know what’s up. I asked him not to tell my Dad, and he agreed for now; he’s going to talk to your mom. He told me I could stay, no problem.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. That hadn’t been what the closed-off look on his face had said. For a second, I debate about whether or not to let my friend know I told my mother before my dad did. Then I decide against it. “He trusts you,” I tell Willow.

“I know,” he murmurs. For a minute, there is silence, and then he raises his head. “Can we please go to sleep now? It’s been a long day.”

I agree, so we go about getting ready. At the end of it all, Willow is in plaid purple flannel pants and a clean white wife beater, and I am in loose white exercise capris and a butter-yellow camisole. Willow is tangled in a mess of extra blankets and pillows on the floor; I am sleeping in the twin bed with Cadet curled up at my feet. Willow may have slept in my bed earlier, but that was when I didn’t need sleep, dang it.

The lights have been out for a while, but I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about what happened earlier this afternoon. How Lucas was so cold, and how really he and Willow are both sharing a little of the blame even if Lucas has more of it. How when Willow called me, he sounded so devastated. How when he cried, all I could do was to hold him and tell him that it was going to be all right, and fight the urge to get up and chase Lucas down and demand to know how anyone could willingly hurt someone so beautiful.

I turn over, lingering on that thought, and look down at my best friend. “Hey, Willow?” I call softly.

He shifts a little, tugging the covers further up, but does not turn to face me. “Mmh?” he mumbles, clearly half-asleep.

“What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done?”

Willow stops dead, his hand tightening on the covers. The silence extends for so long that I wonder if maybe he has just ignored me and gone back to sleep, but then he turns over and looks me square in the eyes.

“Good night, Evaleigh.”

The shock this answer sends through me makes me cold. Willow’s answer is firm, unyielding; I won’t get anything else out of him on the subject, I know.

And he called me Evaleigh. He used my first name.

I turn to face the wall without a word, trying to keep my breathing light so Willow doesn’t know how he hurt me. I bury my face in the pillow, but it’s not enough to stop the tears.

Many people to thank this time; I’m so pleased! Thanks to CLocKRabBiT for the review, and Renlianne for adding me to her favorite authors list. Also thanks to WayCrazierThanYou for reviewing and adding this story (and me) to every list possible on FictionPress…that never happens, especially not four chapters in, so I could hardly believe it at first! Thanks a lot. In addition, I have to give thanks to kimono3kitty for being my lovely official beta (you’re fantastic), and thanks to boltfromtheblue101 for her multiple reviews, for adding me and this story to her alerts, and for so much constructive crit. (Ironically, I am the one doing beta work for her! She came along and was amazing in pointing out the little things that I don’t think of, or that I miss.)

Thanks to all; I’m so glad you’re enjoying this! If you’ve reviewed and I haven’t gotten back to you, please let me know. :)