september 2004
http://cakehole.org/zedpm
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Will shows up one morning completely unannounced.
You're not quite awake at six o' clock, and immediately regret getting out of bed. You trip over your shoes in an effort to open the door, and fight the strange, irrepressible urge to shut it in his face.
"Will?" you ask incredulously. The sun's already out, and you squint against the ache already forming in your head.
"Hello, Sam," Will replies, that ever-pleasant smile on his face. He steps onto the threshold, only partly attempting to hide a battered suitcase sitting on the pavement. "Can I come in?"
Your head is spinning too fast to come up with a reasonable protest. "All right," you say, and shut the door behind him. Inside the apartment there's barely enough room for a table, much less the both of you. You left almost everything behind, but you hauled your law books across the country; they line the peeling walls, leather-bound and pristine.
There's so much to remember from long ago, even the things that hurt you so much.
"Nice place you've got here," Will remarks casually, without any mockery. He follows you to the kitchen and slides his suitcase under the chair. Your knees collide under the table, and both of you shift around until he gives up and scoots away.
You sigh tiredly, rubbing at your eyes. "What are you doing here?" you ask. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"
Will flinches at your harsh tone, and the faintest traces of pink start to creep up his cheeks. "I just wanted to see how you were doing," he offers, as if his sudden appearance requires no explanation. "No one's seen or heard from you for months, you know, since the race. And I asked Leo if I could leave for a little while, and he said yes."
He leans back and fidgets with the zipper on his sport jacket. He's always been bad at hiding his feelings, but in a different way than Josh—Will isn't even aware of his own actions. He's looking past your shoulder at nothing in particular, his brown eyes distant and faraway, and your sarcastic tone makes him jump.
"That's not why you're here."
"Excuse me?" Will falters, adjusting his glasses.
You give him a condescending look. "They sent you here to find out why I didn't take the job," you say, and fold your arms across your chest as if there's nothing more to say.
And there isn't. Leo called you, and when you turned him away, the President called you, and you still said no, and Donna cried over the phone, and it comforted you a little that everyone missed you so much. But it didn't seem right to go back, after you'd already left.
You don't know what you would have done if Josh had asked you.
Will bows his head slightly in defeat, acknowledging a point scored. "Well, Leo wanted me to ask," he says simply, "but that's not the only reason I'm here." He looks up earnestly. "Why didn't you?"
"It wasn't the same," you reply. It sounds so pathetic, but at the moment it's all you can say.
Will swallows, obviously steeling his courage. "You don't understand," he says, looking intently at you. "It's not all about you. Everyone lost something when you went away. The President lost the best speechwriter he's ever had; Toby lost his protégé; C.J. lost a best friend; Donna lost the only person who took her seriously. It's not the same for us anymore, either."
A feeling begins to stir in your chest. "Not everyone lost something," you snap. You've lost everything, to be sure, millions of somethings and someones that patched up the holes in your life since New York, and your father, and Lisa. "Josh didn't—"
"Josh lost the man he loved," Will says without hesitation.
Your heart stops beating altogether. You open your mouth and nothing comes out. You try again. Finally you manage to whisper, "Josh never loved me."
No one says anything for a moment. Will knows he's hit you somewhere deep, and gives you a few seconds to blink back the prickling in your eyes. He looks away, then presses his lips together and leans forward in his chair.
"We're observant, you and I," he says calmly. "We notice things that other people don't—that's what makes us good writers. And you know that I wouldn't have come here if I hadn't lost something as well, and if I didn't think I could get it back."
It finally hits you: Will knows exactly what to say. Will's playing his own game. Will knows where you're going to move next.
You've never mistaken Will for stupid; you've just never expected him to be this assured, this certain. You've always believed you were the more confident of the two, but now he's sitting at your kitchen table with a suitcase under his chair and the barest hint of a smile on his face, holding all your answers behind his steady hands, and you're not sure of anything anymore.
"Sam," Will says, supressing the tremble in his voice, and the way he says your name makes your chest tighten. He puts his hand on yours, and somehow it feels more right than anything else. "I'm not Josh. But I'm here."
You turn to him, and you see in his dark eyes what he's already said in his words and his smile.
He's not Josh. But that doesn't mean you can't love him all the same.
