Morgan stared at him in surprise and asked, "You looked for me?"
Will just nodded, confused as to why Morgan would be so shocked at that. "I was the one who found you."
"Oh," Morgan breathed, brow pinching together apologetically. "Will, I'm so sorry."
"Sorry?" he asked bemused. That was the last thing he expected Morgan to say. "What on earth do you have to be sorry for?"
Morgan looked down at the blanket again, embarrassed; he pulled his hand free from Will's to toy idly with a loose thread. "I did it to prove to you I could make it on my own, to show you that I didn't need you. I was stupid, so so stupid."
His eyes filled with tears, a few leaking down his cheeks. Will didn't understand what was going on, where these tears were coming from, but Morgan was clearly upset. Something had happened in those two days he had been missing, something that he felt the need to apologize for. It broke Will's heart to see him like this, broken and battered and
apologizing
to Will for god's sake.
Will got up out the chair and perched on the edge of the bed, wrapping Morgan up in his arms. "Hey hey shhh, it's ok. You have nothing to be sorry for," he soothed, rubbing Morgan's back as he let a sob escape. They sat there for a few minutes, the only sounds coming from the many machines Morgan was hooked up to and the occasional hiccup as he struggled to breathe through his sorrow. When Morgan calmed down enough, Will released him but made no move to return to his seat, feeling more comfortable closer to Morgan. And Morgan it seemed, felt the same as he tugged gently on Will's arm, scooting over as much his injured body could handle to make room for him on the bed.
When they were both settled, arms and legs flush—just a couple of layers of bedding and blankets separating the latter—against each other, fingers entwined, Will came clean to Morgan. "I actually have no idea what you're talking about Morgs."
Morgan turned his head slightly, cocking an eyebrow at him. "Then how do you know I have nothing to be sorry for?"
"Have you looked at yourself?" Will gestured to Morgan's tightly bound and bruised body with his free hand.
Morgan looked down at himself, seeming to notice all the injuries and bandages that covered his slight frame for the first time. "Ah, that explains the pain."
Will looked at Morgan, alarmed. "Do you need me to get a nurse?"
"No, no I'm fine. Please don't leave me," he added, eyes pleading with Will.
Will gently grasped Morgan's chin, thumb tracing the edge of his jaw. "Morgan, I'm never leaving you again," he promised, hoping Morgan understood the sincerity and seriousness in his tone.
Morgan smiled sweetly at him, eyes betraying his relief at Will's words. And Will couldn't helped but lean forward and give him a gentle kiss.
"Now can you tell me what the hell happened to you?" Will asked as he leaned back, worry creeping back into his stomach.
"I uh," Morgan paused, looking down at the blanket again, embarrassment taking over his features. "It was stupid Will. I was stupid. I got offered this job delivering packages and I should have known better, I should have
known
. I mean he said he liked his employees to be people who knew the city and thought I could use some extra cash. It was so obvious but I was so angry still and desperate to prove that I could earn my own way, so I agreed. He even lent me a bike for the job." Morgan paused taking a deep settling breath before continuing, eyes remaining downcast. "But it went south pretty quick."
Will remained silent, prompting Morgan with just a squeeze of his hand.
Morgan huffed out a humorless laugh, brows furrowed. "Turns out the first package he needed me to deliver was full of drugs, and not enough going by what the man I delivered it to said."
"I'm assuming your," Will cleared his throat, "uh, current state of health is also evidence of this?"
"Uh, yeah," Morgan replied, ashamed. Will really wished he would stop feeling like that. "They said they needed to teach my employer a lesson then, uh, proceeded to beat the shit out of me and dump me in the canal."
Will steadied his breathing, forcing himself to not get too worked up in front of Morgan. Well, no more than he already had. After a few seconds he deemed himself able to ask, "Do you know how long you were out there?"
"N—no. I, uh, wasn't all that lucid for most of it to be honest." Will winced at the implication.
"I'm sorry," he apologized, noticing the pain in Morgan's eyes. Now it was his turn to feel ashamed. "I shouldn't be making you relive all that."
"It's alright, it's over now." He gave Will's hand a weak squeeze.
"Oh, you must be tired," Will remarked when Morgan yawned suddenly. "Sorry I have been keeping you awake with all this." He took in Morgan's slightly slumped posture and the slow blinking of his eyes. Will shifted in order to get off the bed and let Morgan rest.
But Morgan just tightened his grip on Will's hand, effectively stopping him. "No, please don't—don't leave."
His eyes bore pleadingly into Will's, tears beginning to collect there once more, enhancing their color.
Will nodded and settled back down next to Morgan, squeezing his hand in reassurance. "I already told you, I'm not going anywhere."
The promise quelled Morgan's anxiety but did nothing to help prevent the guilt that came spewing out once more in a string of apologies. "I'm sorry, Will. I'm sorry for everything I did, for pushing you away, for refusing your help. I know you were just doing what you thought was right."
Will gently cupped Morgan's face with both hands, stopping the apologies in their tracks. Morgan had nothing to apologize for. Absolutely nothing. Morgan couldn't help the way he was, couldn't help that he wanted to direct help towards others rather than himself. That he would rather make his own way than take freely from others. It was one of the things Will loved about him, even if it caused more problems than it solved.
Will looked into Morgan's tired eyes, a small smile playing across his lips as he said, "No, I did it because I love you, you idiot."
Morgan just smiled in return, his eyes dancing. "Yes, I am an idiot. I truly am."
"Mmmhmm," Will hummed. "Now get some sleep, you have a long recovery ahead of you and you'll want to be fully recovered by September."
"September?" Morgan asked, his sudden curiosity keeping him awake just that much longer despite the heavy drooping of his eyes. "What's happening in September?"
"I'm taking you to Princeton with me," Will announced with his usual smugness. "I'm sure I can manage to secure you a job somewhere down there, perhaps even secure you a scholarship. With your skills in mathematics it shouldn't be too hard. That is, if you want to go?"
Will could see in the hesitation, the internal battle being fought within Morgan's head. He clearly wanted to go, wanted to stay with Will, but his pride was telling him not to accept such charity. "Are... are you sure?"
Will stared at Morgan as he said with absolute confidence, "Yes I'm sure. I lost you once Morgan, I don't ever plan on doing that again."
"Promise?"
And Will couldn't help but feel an overwhelming amount of love for the man sitting next to him at that moment. A man that, despite—or perhaps in spite of—all his flaws and weaknesses and faults, had managed to worm his way back into Will's life after disappearing for ten years. He had made him see the world in a new way. He had helped Will to understand that status doesn't matter, wealth and fame didn't matter, that material possessions did not matter. What mattered was that they were all people, all with strengths and weaknesses and hopes and dreams, all striving to survive, to love, to be loved. And that it didn't matter where someone came from or where someone was, all that mattered was what was in their heart and how they chose to use it.
Will knew he couldn't have chosen a better person to give his heart to.
"Promise."
I knew Georgia from the first moment I pulled into the dirt parking lot of the Pine Valley Resort. My daughter, Annalee, had told me that her fiancée's mother was a free spirit and admittedly I'd had a sort of Dharma-and-Greg idea going on in my head. But even that mental image couldn't have prepared me for Georgia Wesley as she stopped whatever complicated yoga move she was doing on the hill and turned toward me, her white linen pants obviously see-through in the direct sunlight, and her white fringe top falling about her stomach and barely coming down over her ribs.
"Is that a belly button ring?" I asked as soon as I'd stepped out of the Ford pickup I'd had since it was new. Fifteen years now, almost as old as my youngest kid. At one time I'd promised the truck to him for his sixteenth birthday but the face he'd made and the fuss he'd added about being seen in something that old had made me reconsider the matter entirely. He would now be lucky to get socks for his birthday next month.
In hindsight the question might not have been the best but Georgia didn't seem to mind as she lifted her bare arms above her head and waved to me, her long fingers trailing in the light breeze that brought the scents of pine and forest floor around us.
"Beth? Is that you?"
I didn't know who else she thought it could be since our kids had rented the little resort especially for us while we did a weekend-long planning session for them but I still lifted my arm to wave at her as well. She was a good ten feet from me and I shouldn't have been able to see the ring that dangled from her navel except that it had a trail of sparkling jewels that flowed down the front of those damn see-through pants. No one should be wearing something as thin as that, especially not people as old as we were. I was nearly sixty-five and Georgia, from what Annalee had told me, was a few years older than me.
I offered her my hand as she came toward me on dusty bare feet. She ignored it and quickly took me up into a hug. "Our girls are going to be married in six months," she told me as I eased my arms around her slimmer frame. "We should be hugging."
I wasn't sure if I agreed. I wasn't much of a hugger and I didn't have any close female friends to practice it on, but I still stood there and accepted her gesture until she pulled back and I got my first real look at her.
"Geo?" I couldn't believe it. I recognized the woman who still had her hands clasped onto my forearms. Forty years ago she'd sat two desks down from me in a college class on statistics. She had more lines in her face and her eyes weren't as bright as they'd been then but I recognized her all the same.
The corners of her full lips pulled up into a smile. "I haven't heard that name in going on thirty years. Did Lynne tell it to you?"
I shook my head. I was starting to remember more. Her hair was the same length and style that it had been then. Only the ashy blonde now had a bit of gray sweeping over the top. She's always been thin where I'd never been able to go around in a bikini and that didn't seem to have changed a bit either. And then there was her smile, that same hopeful, almost promising smile. She'd dropped her pencil the first day of class and I'd picked it up for her as I had walked by her desk. She'd smiled at me then just like she was smiling at me now.
"We were in college together once." She'd walked out in the middle of the semester. I didn't understand why and we weren't close enough friends for me to have known who to ask. I hadn't even really thought about her since then.
Georgia released my arms and stepped back, putting a good foot of space between us. "Were we now? That must have been ages ago. What class?"
"Statistics." It didn't bother me that she didn't recognize me. I'd grown up a bit over the years, filled out and dyed my hair a few dozen different shades of the same mousey brown I'd been born with. But she looked nearly the same.
Her smile widened until I could see the little crooked eye teeth that framed her front teeth, one of which was chipped. "Ah. I hated that class. I dropped out in the middle of it."
We were still standing in the parking lot and I knew I should be getting my bags out to get settled in. But talking to her, standing by her—this was nice in a way I hadn't remembered. In school we hadn't been exactly close. Sure we said hi to each other a few times but it wasn't anything more than that.
Not like I'd once wanted it to be. She was my first female crush at a time when I'd been so sure my little phase would work itself out without me ever having to really face the fact that I preferred looking at her to the man who had been courting me at the time. "I remember. No one knew what happened to you."
Her smile slipped a little. Nothing too noticeable but I'd been looking at her lips and so I hadn't missed it. "It was a royal mess at the time. A true disaster. But in the end I suppose everything worked out for the best. You see, my little sister Clara found herself pregnant at seventeen. Not such an issue now but back then?"
I shook my head and winced, imagining what that must have been like for her in the early seventies. I didn't know what I would have done had that happened to me. It didn't, partially because no boys had been interested me at that age, but also because my parents hadn't let me out alone with any of them either. "So what happened?" I asked, hoping she'd continue the tale that I'd been curious about for a good month after she'd mysteriously disappeared from the dorms.
Georgia lifted her arm and ran her hand through the short, bone-straight hair. "Our father gave her a choice of course, just like she and I had both expected him to. She could give the baby up for adoption or she could get her things and get out of his house. I was livid but my sister, though she said she loved her little girl, was prepared to sign her away. I was nearly in tears when she went to an agency to work out the details but I couldn't see my niece go to a stranger, no matter how nice the woman at the agency said this new family would be."
I was captivated by her story, unable to look away from, and unable to care about my bags in the passenger seat. "What did you end up doing?"
Georgia touched the nape of her neck and my gaze followed that simple movement. She wore braided leather cuff bracelets and others made out of what looked like rope as well. They moved up and down her wrist whenever she lifted her arm. "I adopted her and Lynne was mine. Clara got to stay at home but then I had to find an apartment of my own and a job that would let me afford daycare. I fell into a bit of luck there with a widow who missed her grandchildren and had a room for rent over the garage. She didn't judge me for what she thought was an indiscretion and I didn't tell her the truth."