Have Mercy

by Hart, Lane

  “Oh,” Royal says. “Sorry, but I, um, I sort of have plans tomorrow that I can’t cancel. I wish I could…”

  “No, it’s fine,” I say. “Maybe we could go next week or something…”

  “Hannah, I’m really sorry, but I can’t go with you next week either.”

  “Oh,” I mutter, swallowing down what feels like a dozen razor blades thanks to his rejection that basically tells me he doesn’t want to see me once we get home. History is repeating itself, and I’m such an idiot…

  “It’s not because I don’t want to. I do. I really, really do want to go, baby,” Royal starts while the tears welling up in my eyes cause the road in front of me to blur. “I just, I won’t be here.”

  “Why not?” I ask with relief at hearing him say he wants to spend time with me but can’t. “Where are you going? Did you get into a school somewhere?”

  “No, I’m not going to school.”

  “Then what are you going to be doing?” I sneak a quick peek at him when he doesn’t respond, noticing his jaw is clenched tightly before my eyes have to go back to the road. “Royal?”

  “I enlisted in the army,” he finally says.

  The words echo around in my head for several seconds before they actually sink in. “You did what?” I exclaim while slamming my foot on the brake and pulling off the road. Surely, I misheard him.

  When the car comes to a complete stop, I put on the parking brake and turn toward him. “Please start from the very beginning and explain what you just said.”

  “There’s nothing to explain really. I’m joining the army.” There they are, those insane words again.

  “The army?” I repeat to be certain. “As in the United States Army?”

  “That’s the one,” he agrees with a slow nod.

  “Why? When?”

  “I signed the contract a few months ago after going through testing and the physical. I’ve already taken the oath, but I deferred my reporting until tomorrow, August first,” he says. “The local recruiter is going to drive me down to Fort Bragg…”

  “No, stop! I don’t understand!” I blurt out. “So…so you’ve known about this, that you were going off to the army all summer long, and you just didn’t bother to tell me?”

  “I wanted to spend my last few weeks here with you, without worrying about the future.”

  “How-how long?” I ask. “How long will you be gone?”

  “Four years active service and then four years reserve.”

  “Four years?” I exclaim. “That’s-that’s forever!”

  “No, it’s not. It’s just four years, the same amount of time you’ll be in college,” he says with a grin.

  “No, Royal, you can’t!” I tell him.

  “I have to, Hannah. Think about it. What else is there for me to do? I don’t have a place to live or a dollar to my name!”

  “You were staying with Sophie. Why can’t you keep living there?” I ask.

  “I can’t live with her forever. Besides, in two weeks, she’s leaving for school in California,” he reminds me.

  “Oh,” I say on a sigh as I run my fingers over my braid, trying to think of another option, any other option. “I just, I don’t understand. This is dangerous, Royal. The army is sending out soldiers every other week to the Middle East, and some of those guys won’t ever come back!”

  “I know that, baby. I watch the news too. But even with the risks, I have to do this. I need to do this,” he says. Reaching over, he removes my hand from my hair and interlaces our fingers. “I’m strong and I’m tough, so being a soldier makes sense. Also, you make me want to be a better man, and this is the only way I know how to do something good.”

  “Why…why couldn’t you just stay in Winston-Salem and be a firefighter like Aric?” I ask.

  “Because I don’t want to be a firefighter, and because my name is already down in Uncle Sam’s book. I have to see this through, not only for myself but to prove to my father that I’m not the worthless piece of shit he’s always said I am.”

  “There’s nothing you have to prove to that asshole who hurt you,” I assure him as a teardrop slips down my cheek now that it’s really sinking in. Royal is going to do this. He’s going to leave to serve in the military, and he may never come back.

  “There’s not much I can do without a college degree. I don’t even have a home anymore, Hannah. I’m fucking homeless!”

  “I could be your home,” I tell him. “You could stay with me at Madison. We could get an apartment…”

  “I wish I could, baby, but Madison is your dream. You need to do that on your own.”

  “Wh-what if you leave and I never get to see you again?” I ask.

  “If you want to see me again, then you will see me again. But I don’t think you will…”

  “That’s not exactly something you can guarantee,” I point out since whether he lives or dies is going to be out of his hands. He’ll be a soldier who has to go where he’s told and do what someone else says, even if it’s dangerous. Even if it could kill him…

  “Once you start painting and drawing and do everything that makes you happy, you won’t even notice I’m gone,” he says while swiping his thumb over my cheek to wipe away the tear that’s quickly replaced with another.

  “But you make me happy too,” I whisper.

  “Sometimes, maybe. Mostly, I make you miserable. I hurt you bad for a long time…”

  “That wasn’t your fault,” I remind him. “It was mine for not talking to you, for not telling you about Garrett’s recording or the truth about the SAT.”

  “I was still an asshole and you deserve better than that. You deserve someone better than me, Hannah. You always have.”

  I shake my head in denial of his words as tears stream down my face. “I don’t want anyone else!” I sob. “I love you, and now you’re telling me all of this after an amazing summer, and-and it’s like you’re breaking my heart all over again!”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Royal

  “Don’t say that!” I growl at Hannah through clenched teeth when she buries her face in her hands while she breaks down crying. “Don’t tell me I’m breaking your heart again when I’m hours away from leaving and there’s not a damn thing I can do to fix it!” She’s upset because of me. I managed to fuck everything up. Again.

  That’s not what I wanted and not why I didn’t tell her sooner about enlisting. I thought she would be ready to get rid of me by the end of the summer, like my parents, so that she could go off to college and be free of me once and for all.

  Of course, I knew I would miss her and that spending four weeks together would make it that much harder to walk away. But I needed to see her, to fix things before I had to leave.

  If I had known she would be this upset, that I would hurt her instead of healing the old wounds I caused, I would’ve just reported to the army right after graduation like I originally planned before the night at prom.

  Leaning over, I release Hannah’s seatbelt buckle and then pull her onto the passenger's seat with me so that she’s straddling my lap. I need to hold her while she cries. And, boy, does she cry and cry some more with her face pressed against my chest and her entire body trembling. Seeing her hurting makes me ache all over with each and every tear she sheds. There are so many that they soak through my t-shirt and seep into my skin.

  “Shh, it’s okay, baby,” I say as I stroke my palms up and down her back, underneath her shirt so I can feel her warm skin one last time. A shake of her head is her only response, so I just keep my arms around her, holding her to me until she gets it all out of her system.

  When she finally starts to settle down, minutes or maybe hours later, I try to talk to her again. “I would tell you I could call you or we could write each other, but we both know that after a few weeks you’ll probably be too busy with new friends and new guys to talk to me. Then, the weeks will become months, and you’ll have a boyfriend who wants you to stop wasting your time on some ass
hole from high school…”

  “That’s not true,” Hannah mutters into my chest. “I waited years for you once. I could do it again.”

  “Now who’s making promises they can’t keep?” I tell her.

  “I promise,” she says softly. “And you know I’m not a liar.”

  “Don’t get my hopes up, baby. That would just be cruel. You’ll have better things to do than wait around for me. As soon as I’m gone, you’ll remember all the bad shit I’ve done and forget all the good, because there is so much less of the good. It won’t take long before you question everything you felt and wonder if it was real or just me telling you what you wanted to hear to try and get inside of you…”

  “You went a whole month without trying,” she reminds me.

  “Yeah, only because I knew that being with you would make today even harder, that I would probably consider fleeing the country and going AWOL after having you underneath me again.”

  “It’s too bad you waited to tell me this now,” Hannah says as her lips press a damp kiss to my collarbone. “If I had known we only had a month together, I would’ve thrown the no sex rule out the window.”

  A low groan is all I’m capable of after hearing her say that. Still, in my head I know abstaining was the right call. If only the rest of my body agreed with me.

  “You would’ve just tried to fuck me right into a court martial for not reporting, until I regret having to leave you as much as you regret letting me be your first.”

  Hannah’s face finally pops up, her face still wet, eyes red and swollen from crying. “I told you I don’t regret that, and I never will!”

  “Sure you will, on your wedding night when you can’t help but think about me and you, wasting your first time with me instead of with your new husband…”

  Lowering her sad, hazel eyes to the collar of my shirt, she says, “Why couldn’t you and he be one in the same?”

  What the fuck?

  Why couldn’t you and he be one in the same?

  She doesn’t mean that. There’s no fucking way...

  “Because you would have to be fucking insane to want to marry me,” I quickly say before a thought suddenly hits me like a bolt of lightning. “Hold on. You’ve never been with anyone but me. Is that because, did you actually think…”

  “That you weren’t lying to me all along when we were silly, inexperienced teenagers, fooling around together at church camp? Maybe.”

  “Hannah,” I say on a sigh because I’m dumbstruck. After everything I put her through, she still agreed to give me a second chance this summer. Me, a dickhead who doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as someone as good as her. And then, just a few minutes ago, she screamed at me that she loved me, something she’s never said before. I don’t deserve her or her kindness and forgiveness, but I crave them. Now, though, I can’t lead her on or ask her to wait for me. It’s just…wrong and wouldn’t be fair to put her through that shit.

  “I’m sorry, baby, but that’s never gonna happen,” I say, even though the words burn my throat.

  Without responding, Hannah reaches over to open the passenger door. She climbs off of me and then walks around to sink down into the driver’s side seat again before pulling back onto the road.

  The rest of the hour drive home is silent other than her occasional sniffles that are like tiny daggers digging their way into my heart.

  Finally, all too soon, we’re pulling up in front of Blake’s house and it’s time for me to say goodbye.

  “Good luck at Madison,” I tell her, unsure what else there is to say other than I love her too and wish I wasn’t a complete fuck up who she should wait for.

  “Good luck with the army,” she replies blandly, keeping her eyes straight ahead without relaxing her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel at ten and two, unwilling to look at me.

  “Can I kiss you goodbye?” I ask, and she briskly shakes her head no, another crushing blow that I swallow down like a razor blade.

  “Thank you for the summer. For everything,” I tell her since this may very well be the last time I ever see her. “For all of my firsts. I wouldn’t change them for anything in the world.”

  When she continues to ignore me, I reluctantly climb out of the car with my bag. As soon as the door shuts, she speeds off down the road.

  Well, that’s not how I thought the end of our summer would go. I thought Hannah would say that she understands why I’m leaving and that she’s proud of me. Honestly, I figured she would be glad to be rid of me.

  Instead, I think maybe she’s angry at me for not telling her my plans before now. I hate when she’s upset with me. It makes me feel like my body and soul is off kilter, unhinged and unbalanced, making it hard to take a deep breath. But it’s better this way. Having her hate me is better than having her love me and miss me, especially if something were to happen to me.

  As time goes by, I’m sure I’ll figure out a way to get back to normal. Hopefully.

  Shaking my head, I walk up to Blake’s house and ring the doorbell, ready to get another goodbye over with.

  Even though I know from his text messages that Caroline had their kid, it’s still mind-blowing when Blake opens the door, holding the baby on his shoulder.

  My best friend is a fucking father.

  “Whoa,” I say, nearly staggering back a step at the sight. Everything really has changed.

  “About time!” Blake says. “I texted you weeks ago and haven’t heard a peep!”

  “We’re not allowed to have cell phones at camp, so I just got your messages a few hours ago,” I explain to him as I stare at the kid. “You’re a dad…”

  “Yeah, I am,” he replies with a grin before he places a kiss on the top of the baby’s black head of hair that’s sticking up every which way. “His name is Price. You want to hold him?”

  “Ah, no. I’m good,” I say since I’m not in the right headspace to be responsible for something so fragile at the moment.

  “Well, come in at least and tell me about your summer,” he says. “Just keep it down. Caroline’s sleeping.”

  “Oh, she’s here too?” I ask in surprise when he shuts the front door and leads the way to the living room.

  “Yeah, we’re living here. Together.”

  “Like, together, together?”

  “Yeah. Together,” he confirms, grinning ear to ear. “I’ve decided to defer school for a year, you know, until he’s a little older so I can help Caroline. The nights are rough since he wakes up every two or three hours to eat.”

  “Wow, I don’t know what to say,” I tell him.

  “Enough about me. How did the summer go with Hannah?”

  “Ah, not as well as I had hoped,” I admit. “I know it’s a bad time, but I need to ask a favor.”

  “Sure, yeah, anything,” Blake agrees while he bounces the baby on his shoulder like he’s done it a million times.

  “Mind if I crash here on the sofa tonight? I hate to ask since you’ve got a full house and all…”

  “It’s fine, man. You know you can stay here anytime.”

  “It’s just for tonight,” I assure him. “Tomorrow I’m leaving.”

  “Leaving? You mean, like, going out of town or something?”

  “Yeah, I’m leaving town.”

  “Where are you headed? Vacation?” he asks.

  “I’m going to Fort Bragg,” I reply. “I enlisted in the army and report tomorrow.”

  “Hold on,” Blake says as he walks toward the kitchen with me following him. “Let me grab a cup of coffee. I think my sleep deprivation is making me hallucinate, because there’s no fucking way you just said you’re going into the army.”

  “I am.”

  “Why? What the hell are you thinking?” he asks when he spins around in front of the kitchen counter.

  “You sound like Hannah!” I tell him. “I thought everyone would be happy for me now that I’m finally getting my shit together.”

  “Risking your life isn’t getting
your shit together. It’s crazy.”

  “A lot of people join the military after high school, especially ones who can’t or don’t want to go to college.”

  “Here,” he says, handing the baby over to me and I have no choice but to take the bundle or drop him. “I need some time to wrap my head around this.”

  I awkwardly figure out how to cradle the kid while he makes an annoyed sound, but Blake doesn’t seem bothered by the fussing. He just makes a cup of coffee in silence, staring at the Keurig and waiting.

  “The army?” he eventually says again.

  “Yep, the army.” The kid settles down and blinks up at me a few times before his eyes close like he can’t fight sleep another second. And I have to admit, he’s sort of cute and smells good, like brand new hopes and dreams…

  “I can’t believe it,” Blake says. “Was this some spur-of-the-moment decision you made while you were drunk?”

  “No. I made this decision completely sober after thinking it over for a few weeks before I put it in writing.”

  “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “Because I figured you would freak out and make a big deal about it. I didn’t want the last days of our senior year to be about me leaving or you and Aric trying to talk me out of it. Besides, you had enough shit to worry about.” I glance down at the sleeping baby again who seems surprisingly content in my arms.

  “You’re not gonna see Price again until he’s walking and talking. He’ll be getting ready to start school by the time you get out!”

  “That’s crazy but true I guess,” I agree. “But it’s still just four years.”

  “A lot can happen in a year,” he replies with a nod of his head at the kid. “So no telling what will happen in four.”

  “Yeah. I know,” I say on a sigh. “Hannah will have graduated from college and will probably be married by the time I get out.”

  “And you’re okay with that, her marrying someone else?” he asks.

  “I have to be.”