Suffer Love

by Ashley Herring Blake

  Hadley

  Sam. Nicole. Sam’s hand on Nicole’s shoulder. Nicole’s fountain of blond hair down her back. Nicole’s tanned legs under her tiny little denim skirt. Nicole’s lips on Sam’s cheek.

  I can’t stop this relentless march of thoughts as I unlock my front door. The house is quiet, my parents already asleep. I stumble through the pitch-black downstairs and notice that the little lamp on the hall table, usually burning bright all night, is turned off. Dropping my keys next to the lamp, I flick it on before I trudge upstairs.

  Sam . . . Nicole . . . Sam . . .

  I pass Mom and Dad’s room, and all thoughts of Sam and Nicole vanish. The door is wide open, the room a dark cavern.

  “Mom?” I call as I step inside.

  Nothing. I snap on the overhead light, blinking into the glaring brightness.

  The room is empty, the bed neatly made and layered with designer pillows. Everything is in its place. Everything except my parents.

  My pulse picks up as I walk down the silent hall to the guest room.

  Empty.

  My room.

  Empty.

  Dad’s study.

  Empty.

  By the time I get downstairs, my hands are shaking. The living room is empty, the kitchen is empty, the garage is empty. I dig my phone out of my bag and it takes me three tries before I successfully power it up. The voicemail alert pings and I tap on the message.

  “Hadley, it’s Dad. Listen, it’s around ten and I’m going out for a while. Your mom can explain, but everything’s fine. Call me if you want—”

  A fog glazes over my vision as I delete the message and tap Mom.

  “Hello, you’ve reached Annie St. Clair at Sony—”

  When I hear her voice, one tear leaks out. I call Dad but get the same thing, businesslike words that turn my parents into nothing more than wards, strangers even. I swallow hard, over and over, trying to push the water back, but I can’t get my breath. My fingertips feel fizzy and my insides twist into tight coils. I slide down the cool stainless steel of the refrigerator until I hit the ground. The microwave clock glows blue, the little colon flashing rhythmically toward midnight.

  Jinx slinks into the kitchen, mewing and sniffing at my shoe. She pads up my legs and nuzzles under my chin, and for some reason, this breaks the dam. I let out a sob that makes her tail snap straight, but she stays on my lap, peering at my face quizzically. My crying gets louder and messier, but Jinx doesn’t seem to mind. She presses closer, curling up on my legs with her back to me like she’s trying to give me some privacy, but purring a little louder than normal so I know she’s there.

  How many times have I sat in this kitchen, alone, clinging to my cat while I waited for my parents to get home? But never in the middle of the night. Never had my solitude felt so much like literal abandonment.

  I’m not sure how long we sit there. Eventually, my crying quiets, but the tears keep coming, a silent race down my cheeks.

  Then I hear the automatic garage door go up. A few seconds later, Dad walks in, his clothes rumpled, his hair a disheveled mess. When he sees me on the floor, he jerks backwards to keep from stepping on me.

  “Hadley. Honey, what are you doing?”

  His words are like fire, drying up every single tear. I pull myself to my feet and Jinx scampers to her water bowl. “What am I doing? What the hell are you doing?”

  He startles at my tone. He opens his mouth, but snaps it shut again as he takes in my clenched hands, my shoulders pressing up against my ears.

  “I left you a voicemail to let you know I’d be out for a while. Your mom and I . . .” He rakes a hand over his head. “Well, we argued and we both needed some space—”

  “I called you and you didn’t answer.”

  He pulls out his phone and frowns, tapping the screen almost frantically. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. The battery’s dead.”

  “You’re sorry?”

  “I thought your mother would’ve—”

  “You’re sorry?” I repeat, louder this time.

  He tilts his head at me, his brows furrowed. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Are you serious?” My knees wobble and I know I’m losing my grip on whatever got me through the last hour. “I come home and everything was dark, Dad. Everyone was gone. What do you think is wrong with me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You left.”

  “I . . . yes. I did. But only for a while, honey. Where’s—”

  “And Mom left.”

  He flinches and turns, staring into the still-open garage door at the glaringly empty space next to his own car. “She what?”

  “Mom’s not here, Dad. Gone. No note or anything. And you were gone and no one was answering their phones and I . . .” His form blurs in my vision, but I can see him pale, his mouth fall open. I wipe at my eyes. “I can’t do this. I am so tired of this.” In the hallway, I find my bag. I sling it over my shoulder and head for the front door.

  “Hadley.”

  I throw the door open and it cracks against the wall.

  “Hadley Jane, you get back here! What has gotten into you?”

  Dad follows me outside, but I keep moving, nearly running to my car while clawing through my bag for my keys. I mutter a curse when I realize they’re still on the hall table.

  “Hadley. Come inside. This is ridiculous. It’s nearly one in the morning!”

  I flip him off. I’m not sure if he can even see me in the dark, but that one finger shoved into the air as I walk off down the sidewalk succeeds in holding back the river of tears welling in my eyes right now.

  He calls my name a few more times, but eventually I get far enough away that he gives up. I stop at the end of my street and sink to my knees. The quiet is so thick, I can taste it. I find my phone and stare at it, clicking the top button and igniting a picture of me and Kat at a Vanderbilt football game more than a year ago, our faces covered in black and gold paint. My fingers move on their own and land on a name. I hit Call and press the phone to my ear, the space between each ring like a thousand years.

  Finally, a click.

  “Hadley, hey.”

  “Sam?”

  “Uh, yeah. What’s up?”

  “Can . . . can you come pick me up?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sam

  “Pick you up?” I sit up in bed and rub my eyes. I hold my phone away from me and squint at the time. 1:16 a.m. What the hell? “From where? Are you okay?”

  She doesn’t answer right away, just breathes into the phone. Deep, rib-cracking breaths.

  “Hadley?”

  “Please.”

  Her tone makes my guts curl up. I fling the covers back and pull on some jeans. It takes me a few seconds to get a shirt over my head while gripping the phone, but I can’t put it down. On the other end, Hadley’s breathing gets a lot thicker.

  “Okay, where are you?”

  “On the corner near my house.”

  “Stay on the phone with me,” I say after she gives me her address. I don’t even bother being quiet as I leave. Mom sleeps with earplugs, a habit left over from living with my dad’s chainsaw snoring for twenty years. Even if she did catch me leaving, I doubt she’d give a shit.

  As I start my car and back out of the driveway, Hadley starts full-on crying. It’s quiet, gentle, even, but it’s there, filling up the distance between us with all sorts of weird. So I start talking. Well, babbling really. I tell her about my first memories of Livy as a baby and how I used to try to hide her in my closet because I hated all the attention my parents gave her. I tell her about my dad teaching me how to throw a changeup, how I met Ajay on the first day of first grade when our moms got into an argument in the carpool line.

  I keep talking until I spot her sitting on the curb, her whole body washed golden from the streetlight. As I slow the car, she stands, phone still mashed onto her ear. Her face is tear-stained and pale, her hair wrapped in a messy ponytail. She flops insid
e and I slide her phone from her ear, dropping it onto my lap along with mine.

  We sit. A dog starts barking, really throwing all he’s got into it. Hadley jolts in her seat, her body tensing like a spooked cat. The dog barks for what feels like thirty damn minutes and I’m about to go find a shotgun when he finally shuts up. Hadley relaxes and leans into my shoulder a little. I lean back. She still smells like coffee from our time in Fido.

  Quieter night sounds fill in the space around us. Hadley’s very still, posture almost impossibly straight. Her fingers move up and down the zipper of her hoodie. It takes me a few seconds to realize she’s counting the teeth.

  “My parents were gone,” she finally says.

  “What do you mean?”

  She tells me about coming home to her dark, empty house.

  “That should be one thing you can count on, right? You come home late at night and at least one of your parents should be there. It just hit me how . . .” She takes a deep breath, her gaze turning inward.

  “How what?”

  “How different things are now. My parents. Everything.”

  I swallow hard, try to think of something else to talk about, but she keeps going.

  “It’s our whole family for the past six months.” Tears well up and she wipes her eyes. I want to press my hand to her mouth, turn up the music, roll down the windows, and drive seventy miles an hour.

  Because I know what’s coming.

  “My dad had an affair,” she says, real quiet. “He screwed around with one of his students for a year, and now my mom is practically a ghost. I mean, she hasn’t been the same since we found out, but it’s just getting worse and worse. Lately, I barely see her. She doesn’t talk to anyone, and I . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what she’s thinking.”

  God, I had really hoped she’d never, ever tell me this. Because now I can’t play dumb—I can’t pretend like I never made the connection. This tiny sliver of time has officially changed me from clueless asshat to dickhead liar.

  “Um . . . Hadley . . .”

  She turns toward me. Her cheeks are all pinked up and when her gaze lands on mine, she sort of softens. I have to sit on my hands to keep from touching her. There’s no way in hell I can tell her anything when she’s looking at me like that.

  “Thanks for coming to get me,” she says. “I’m sorry I called you. I just didn’t feel like being alone.”

  “It’s fine.” My voice sounds scratchy, so I clear my throat. “It’s no problem.”

  Something buzzes and I remember that I have Hadley’s phone in my lap. I lift it up—Dad lights up the screen, blinding in the dark. I angle it toward her and she groans and rolls her eyes.

  “Shouldn’t you talk to him?”

  She shakes her head, lips pressed flat.

  “He probably just wants to know where you are.”

  Nothing.

  I breathe out heavily. The phone stops vibrating and registers the missed call. Seconds later, it rings again. Dad. She flicks her eyes to the phone before meeting my gaze.

  “All right,” I say, rubbing my forehead with the back of my hand. “I’ll talk to him, just so he knows that you’re here and safe. Is that all right?” Jesus, I don’t want to do this, but the last thing I need is for Jason-effing-St. Clair to show up outside my car looking for his daughter.

  She frowns, but nods.

  I slide my thumb over the phone. “Hello?”

  “Had— Wait. Who the hell is this?” His voice is smoother than I remember from that awful rainy day back in April, my mom freaking out and Livy’s lungs slamming shut, but it’s still nauseatingly familiar and comes back to me like a hard slap.

  Whoa, whoa. Let’s all just calm down. Cora, there’s no need to get hysterical.

  “A friend of Hadley’s.” I shake my head to clear it of the memory. “We’re—”

  “Put my daughter on the phone.”

  I glance at Hadley. She mouths no.

  “Um. We’re at . . . Waffle House. She had to go to the bathroom.”

  “Dammit,” he mutters. “Is she okay?”

  “I’m not really sure.”

  He sighs loudly. “Her mother and I fought earlier. I only left to give her some space. I didn’t know she was going to—” He stops abruptly. Thank God. “Is Hadley back yet?”

  She reaches out and squeezes my forearm.

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry, who are you again?”

  I swallow hard. “Sam.”

  “I’ve never heard her mention you.”

  I have no freaking clue what I should say to that, so I settle for the sanest, simplest explanation. “We have English together.”

  “Fine. Sam.” His voice drops low and gets a little shaky. “Just . . . get her home safely, all right?”

  “I will.” I hang up before he can say anything else. My fingers bleed white on her phone and I take several deep breaths. “He said he didn’t know your mom—”

  “I heard him.” She slips her fingers free from my arm. She takes her phone back and slides it into her bag before dropping her head into her hands. “Sam, I really, really don’t want to go home right now.”

  I’m pretty damn sure I should take her home. It’s the middle of the night and her dad is pissed and sad and all sorts of other real human emotions I don’t want to even think about right now. And her mom . . . Jesus. This is such an effing cluster and if I were smart I’d let Hadley rant a little more, deposit her on her doorstep, and get the hell out of Dodge.

  But I think I’ve proven multiple times over the past several months that I’m a total dumb shit. Looking at Hadley now, her eyes all puffy but still deep and gorgeous, I sure as hell don’t want her to go home either.

  “Buckle up,” I tell her, and throw the car in drive.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hadley

  We end up back in Nashville. While Sam drives, I fall asleep, my head pressed against the cool glass of the car window. The chilly night air tickling my face and Sam’s gentle voice calling my name wake me.

  “Where are we?” I ask as I unfold myself from the car.

  “Love Circle.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He laughs and shuts my door. “You’ve never been here?”

  I look around, trying to get my bearings. We’re parked on the side of the road. A hill. Below us, I see darkened houses spiraling down toward a highway. Looks like West End Avenue, a major road in Nashville. Directly in front of us is another huge hill, grassy and looming in the dark, with rough stone steps slicing a path to the top.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “This place is great.” He opens his trunk and retrieves a woolly, ruby-colored blanket. “Technically, it’s a neighborhood—the main street is called Love Circle and winds up the hill—but this hill is why people come here all the time. The view is amazing.”

  We start up the rocky stairs. At the top, there’s a flat grassy area. The entire city of Nashville spreads out in front of us, lit up and alive and warm. I can see the Vanderbilt Stadium and the electric high-rises in downtown. The Batman Building—I think it’s actually the AT&T building, but its blue lights and spires on either side look like something right out of Gotham City—blinks in the distance. The sky is so huge. Even in the dark, I can imagine it filled with kites, a swath of rainbow against the black.

  “This is beautiful. I can’t believe I’ve never been here.”

  “I used to come up here all the time after baseball practice, especially a bad one. Clear my head.” Sam spreads the blanket and settles onto it, propping his elbows up on his knees.

  “How did you get into baseball?” I ask, eager to get my mind off my parents and whatever comes next. I sit down beside Sam and tuck my legs under me. The night is pretty mild for November, but a cold breeze picks up and cuts through my thermal shirt. I zip up my hoodie.

  “I guess the same way any kid does. Throwing a ball around with my dad in the backyard.”

  “He taught
you how to pitch, right?”

  A little smile dances over his mouth. “You remember that, huh?”

  “I wasn’t that out of it.”

  “Yeah, you kinda were. I mean, with good reason, but I probably could’ve told you that my name was Seraphina and I was your fairy godmother and you wouldn’t have questioned me.”

  I toss him a hard look and he throws up his hands. “Yes, my dad taught me to pitch. He was in the minors for a while with the Brewers’ farm team. That’s how he ended up in Nashville—he played for the Sounds. He met my mom when he was on the road in North Carolina, where she went to college. They met in some bar he went to after a game.”

  “A bar? Really?”

  “I know, right? Not exactly the makings of a happily-ever-after, but they got married two years later.” He shrugs, picking at a clump of clovers.

  “Did he ever play in the majors?”

  “He got called up a few times. Right around the time I was born, he blew out his elbow. Had surgery and could’ve gone back after physical therapy, but by that point, Mom was pregnant with Livy and he decided to give it up. He coached at Belmont until he moved to Boston.”

  I shiver as the wind picks up again, bringing with it the smell of dead leaves and Sam’s day-old cologne. “Livy told me about your mom . . . why your dad left.”

  He sucks in a breath through his teeth. “She did?”

  “It must be hard, with your dad gone.” His shoulders drop and I shift a little closer to him.

  “It’s not great,” he finally says after a pause. “Livy and I both wanted to go with him, but he didn’t want us to.”

  “Why not?”

  He pulls at his ear and looks up at the inky, moonless sky. “The whole thing came out because Livy and I caught my mom.”

  This time, I suck in a breath. “Wait. You mean . . .”

  “Yeah. Caught her, caught her.”

  “Sam.” A cold fist closes around my heart. “God.”

  “The day it happened, Livy got sick and had to leave school early, but my parents weren’t answering their phones. I was third on the list, so I picked her up and brought her home. I remember it was raining.” He claws at the clover again, decimating the little patch in a matter of seconds.