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The reporter, Cynthia, or maybe Sylvia, Mike thought, was nice enough. She sat down with her notepad, the coffee in her left hand steaming from one of Mike’s mismatched mugs, her determination reminding him a bit of his sister. She regarded Mike warmly, with all the respect and reverence awarded to a person of Mike’s renown.
“It’s so amazing to finally meet you in person, Mr. Wheeler. Can I ask you, I’ve always been inspired by your attention to detail and the great care you give to all of your characters, what inspires your stories, and the characters in them?”
“That’s a great question, Cynthia-“
“Sylvia,” Sylvia corrected.
“Sylvia,” Mike had heard this question a hundred times before, and had always given the same answer: something vague about his youth and his friends growing up. Not a lie, per se, but not the entire truth either. Something must have prompted him to be more honest on this particular day, as he found himself answering, “Um…I would typically say it’s my friends who inspire my stories, which is honest, but it goes deeper than that, in many aspects. Most of all, it’s my need to be brave, a trait I’ve carried with me since I was a child. In fiction, I can write my characters to be brave in a way I was never able to achieve myself, whether that be because of the time we grew up in or my immaturity. In a way, writing allows me to rewrite the past, giving it an ending I think it deserves, and in turn, allows me to heal from it.”
Lie, Mike thinks, awkwardly finishing his answer. He had never truly healed from any of it. Glancing around the spacious living room as Sylvia finishes writing, he gazes at his plethora of knick-knacks and prints of familiar-looking paintings that adorn the walls. Finally, the reporter speaks up.
“Mr. Wheeler, you always dedicate your books to a Will. I have it on good authority that the name belongs to one Will Byers, a man from your hometown. Who is Will Byers to you?” Sylvia cocks her head, frowning slightly in curiosity. Mike is taken aback and has to make sure he’s heard correctly.
“Will Byers?” He asks, and Sylvia nods. Mike is silent for a long time. Finally, he parts his lips, and his voice takes on an almost childlike tone as he continues, “Will Byers was my friend, a very long time ago. I met him in kindergarten, and we were best friends until we left for college. Twelve years. He was very dear to me.”
“When was the last time you saw him, if I may ask?”
“The last time I saw him? That must’ve been…what? ‘98? ‘99? It was my friend Dustin’s wedding. He brought his boyfriend, I went alone.”
Mike recalls dancing, speeches being given, and endless amounts of champagne. He remembers seeing Will laughing from across a crowded dance floor, looking so happy in a way that made Mike’s chest ache with an emotion so fierce it was like he was looking at it from close up. Like he would’ve needed to stand a few yards back to even place what it was.
He remembers Will turning to look at him, directing a smile at him, and nodding his head to the back patio of the venue. He remembers making a comment about the champagne, and Will returning a comment about a caterer who almost dropped the cake, the look on Dustin’s face as they tripped. He remembers laughing with Will, really laughing in a way he hadn’t in the almost 10 years spent away from him.
“Do you love him?” He remembers asking once their laughter had quieted, searching his face for an answer rather than relying on his words.
“I do,” Will nods, smiling in a way that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, staring at Mike for a long moment with a gaze that’s almost teary.
“You do,” Mike nods, thinning his lips and looking out across the venue. Few people are scattered outside, most of them on the dance floor or at a table pretending to be awake. The base of a pop song thumps from somewhere inside. Mike speaks up again.
“Don’t be with him.”
“What?” Will snaps his head to look at Mike, gazing at him like he’s gained a head.
“Don’t be with him, Will, be with me.”
“Stop.” Will begins to shake his head with a frown that reminds Mike so much of a little boy with a bowl cut standing in his garage during a rainstorm.
“Will, we could go back to New York together. Be just you and me, like we were before,” Mike pleads, feeling a little desperate.
“Mike-“
“Like we’ve always been.”
The words land like a blow to Will, making him jerk his head back. He stares at Mike for a long moment, his shock fading to a hardened expression in the pale light of the moon.
“No, Mike, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to just walk back into my life after ten years like it means something. Like I would just drop everything and go to you and- and spend my life with you when I have a perfectly kind, loving boyfriend waiting for me inside. Like you could ask me anything and I would just follow like I’ve always done because I’m so in love with you, I can’t help it. I won’t do it, Mike. Not again.”
“Not again?” Mike frowns, tears starting to turn his eyes glassy as he grapples with the implication of Will’s words.
“Do you know how many years I’ve waited for you, Mike? So many, almost our whole lives, over and over again I’ve waited for you, and every time you…you just leave again. In California, in sophomore year, in college. You never called once, Mike. You never even wrote me a letter. I called you so many times, waiting for my best friend to at least talk to me, thinking and deliberating and crying about how I could approach you without seeming too desperate. Shit, we’ve lived ten fucking minutes from each other for the past decade. Where have you been? Because I’ve been here, waiting for you for so long, and I’m tired. So no, Mike, not again. I won’t do that to myself again.” Will looks down, brow furrowed in devastation as he blinks back a few tears that threatened to spill. He looked beautiful, even given the circumstances, hazel eyes shining in the moonlight.
“I’m sorry, Will. I’m so sorry. I’ve gone through so much shit in the past ten years. God, I- Listen, I know it doesn’t fix the past, it doesn’t even begin to, but at least let me try? Let me try to make it up to you? Because I- fuck, I’m in love with you, Will. I’ve loved you since…since before I even knew what it meant. So long, Will, you don’t even know. And it took me so long to be brave, but I think I’m finally there. I’m finally ready. Let me try, Will, please. I won’t let you down, I promise.” Mike shakes his head, brows quirking together as he grabs Will’s hands, shaking them a bit in a pleading manner.
“It’s too late, Mike. You’re too late, I’m sorry.” Will shakes his head, a wistful little smile gracing his lips, eyes full of emotion. He slips his hands out of Mike's before saying the words that would haunt Mike for the rest of his life. “Hey, maybe in another life I can wait longer, or you’re a little braver? Who knows.” Will kisses him on the cheek, lingering a moment. “You’ll always be my best friend, Mike Wheeler.”
With that, Will walks away, back into the party and out of Mike’s life forever. He didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time he ever saw Will Byers.
“But that was so long ago, wasn’t it?”
He saw Sylvia out shortly after, unable to collect himself to answer the rest of her questions with anything of use.
After the night of Dustin’s wedding, Mike Wheeler’s love for Will Byers would go on to exist in late nights staring at the ceiling, imagining a thousand what-ifs and dreams where they could be together. In thinking up scenarios where Mike could have been braver, where he could have realized his feelings sooner. It would exist in every dedication of every book Mike would ever publish, in every story he would ever go on to write. Every story where a boy fell in love with his best friend and that best friend, by some miraculous chance, would love him back. The very same story Mike promised himself he would never tell, so very long ago.
Will Byers would go on to marry in 2016, and Mike would find out by way of a Facebook post, or maybe a concerned call from his sister. He would drink himself into oblivion that same day and end up on his floor, imagining it was him who got to spend his life making Will happy, instead of being a lingering ghost of his first love, his first friendship. He would imagine their first apartment together, their house that Mike could now afford with the success of his fifth book. He would imagine the girl they chose to adopt together, how they would read her bedtime stories and teach her to play DND. Mike would cry harder than he ever had in his life that night.
Mike would never marry; his love for Will too all-encompassing to make any relationship feel real. He would love Will from afar for the rest of their lives, holding onto the hope that someday Will would recognize his bravery, that it would be enough, and that he would finally come back to him. Mike would hold onto this hope until the day of Will’s death, when he would receive a teary call from his sister, informing him of the funeral.
The service would be beautiful, Will being buried in a cemetery in New York, where he could forever be free from the horrors of the town they all grew up in, far from the cemetery in Indiana that still held a tombstone with his name on it. Mike would watch Will’s husband give a speech, and have to pretend that it was moving, that the man knew Will half as well as he had. Mike would give a speech of his own and lose his composure so badly that he would have to walk away before finishing.
Mike would visit Will’s grave every day with fresh flowers, yellow, his favorites. He would speak to Will sometimes, finally getting to tell him what was on his mind, things he had always wanted to tell him, had they been given the time. He would tell Will about his day, about his writing. He would tell Will the things about him he missed, tell him the things about him that Mike loved. Mike would tell Will he loved him every visit, making up for so many years when the words had lived on his tongue with nowhere to go. Sometimes Mike would talk to Will when he wasn’t at the cemetery, looking up at the stars from his back patio and speaking to him like one would speak to their spouse after a long day. Mike missed Will with a fierce kind of despair, regretting the time they wasted, regretting his own lack of courage. Remorse filled him so full that it spilled out into everything he did. Every friendship, every story he wrote, every conversation he had was tainted by his own particular shade of blue, lying somewhere between melancholy and guilt.
The day Mike died, he visited Will’s grave. He had known it was the day, had been sensing it for some time. He was not so very old, but if one could die from a broken heart, Mike was sure he had met the criteria tenfold. He told Will it was his time, that he would see him soon, and somehow, Mike knew Will was listening. Mike died that afternoon with a smile gracing his lips, for he knew it was time to go, and he had vowed long ago to never keep Will waiting again.