“God,” I say again.
“Livy went completely batshit crazy. Cussing, screaming, crying, followed by a huge asthma attack that almost landed her in the hospital. Then . . .” He swallows so hard, I hear the gulp in his throat. “Let’s just say it was bad. A couple months later, Dad decided to leave. Said he needed some space from all of us. How it all came out, it’s like Livy and me sort of remind him of it, you know? He says he knows it’s not our fault, but he acts like it is.”
I don’t know what to say. Things have been horrible in my house, but my mom never blamed me. For a brief, awful moment, I almost wish she did, because that would at least be something.
“The thing is,” he goes on, “I expected all of these explosions when he left. I thought Mom would beg him to stay, thought Livy would freak out again. Hell, I even thought I would cry a little. But none of that happened. He was just gone, this memory I can’t even remember clearly. I felt sort of lost, like I couldn’t get my bearings or something.”
I reach out a hand to his and he lets me take it.
“The house was really quiet after he left.” Sam stares down at our intertwined fingers. “It still is. My mom barely talks to me . . . though I guess I don’t really blame her.”
Questions flood into my mind, but I stay quiet. In fact, the whole universe seems to have fallen silent.
“I guess the world really does end with a whimper,” he says after a moment. “A whole lot of quiet, a million things left unsaid until it’s too late to say them.”
I nod even though he’s not looking at me. His hurt rolls off him in hot waves, and it’s so familiar I can hardly get a breath. There’s this dizzying sense of connectedness to him. Something fragile and new and nervous. As I sit with Sam on top of this hill, everything in my life seems so much less scary.
“T. S. Eliot,” I murmur.
“What?”
“T. S. Eliot. He wrote, ‘This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.’”
“Right. Eliot wrote that.” He inhales and blows it out through puffed cheeks. He shakes his head at the city. “Of course he did.”
At the sound of his flat voice, my stomach goes cold. I can feel him pulling back from me, fraying the connection. He starts to get up. Before I can stop myself, my hand is in midflight, reaching out to grab his arm and pull him back down. “No.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to let you do that again. Not this time.”
“Do what?”
I pause for a beat before answering, knowing I should shut up, knowing there’s a Nicole somewhere in his life, knowing I don’t want this. I can’t want this. “Push me away.”
He drags his hair back. “Hadley. I don’t want to. But this . . . it’s complicated.”
“What is? It’s just you and me. Why is that so complicated?”
He opens his mouth and snaps it shut again.
“Nicole?” I ask.
“No. Nicole and I aren’t together.”
“But . . . but you were?”
He narrows his eyes, thinking, before looking at me. “In a way. But she’s not . . . Look, she’s really great and a good friend, but we don’t like each other like that.”
Relief pours through me, and suddenly I need him closer. Unlike with Josh or any other guy, it’s not about filling some void or only having fun. It’s about Sam. It’s about me. It’s an overflow of whatever this unspoken, unseen thing is between us, and I realize that I do want it. I want him.
I push myself up to my knees and inch forward. My stomach flutters as I close my hands around the collar of his jacket. The ends of his hair curl around his neck and tease my fingers. He’s so close that I can feel his shallow, warm breaths sweep over my face, smell his piney, boyish scent.
“Hadley, maybe we should—”
I cut him off with a brush of my lips over the corner of his mouth. His breath hitches and my head feels light and dizzy. His hand drifts up, sliding over my face before moving to work the elastic out of my ponytail. My hair curtains around us and his fingers press into my hips. He pulls me against him and my breath vanishes, replaced with his when our lips finally meet.
Chapter Nineteen
Sam
Her kiss is a starter pistol at a marathon. My body springs into action before my brain can even register what the hell is going on. My arms wrap her up, my mouth tastes and teases her lips and neck and collarbone. She pushes closer, her fingers working a button on my shirt before she slides her hands inside over my shoulders. She feels amazing this close—sweet and wild all at once.
Then everything that is her and me piles up in my head like rocks from an avalanche.
“Wait.” I take hold of her wrists. She makes a sound of protest and I know I must be completely insane, but I force myself to push her away.
“What’s wrong?” Her voice is thick with our kiss.
“It’s just . . . Hadley, this has been a really weird night. Maybe we shouldn’t . . . Listen, I don’t want to be some distraction for you.”
She frowns and her shoulders drop a little, but she doesn’t pull away from me. Instead, she leans into my hand that I hadn’t even realized had snuck up to her cheek. “You’re not. You’re not a distraction.”
“Then what am I?” I’m not sure what I want her to say. Any answer will only complicate this whole mess even more. What can possibly come out of her mouth that will make this work, make either of us someone other than who we are?
She tilts her head and puts her soft hand on my face, letting her fingertips glide down to my neck, to my chest. She flattens her palm there, the heat of her hand searing through my shirt. “You’re . . .” She pauses and I take a breath, my heart thumping madly. “I don’t know. It sounds stupid, but . . . you’re like home.”
And that’s when I know I’ve finally lost this battle with myself. I don’t care who I am, I don’t care what our parents did or how I’ll explain everything to her. I only care about being with her, right now up on this hill. I feel her in my gut and in my bones and that deep, hollow place in my chest.
Home.
I pull her onto my lap and a little gasp of surprise escapes her throat. “That doesn’t sound stupid.” I slide my hand to the nape of her neck and hold her there, look at her, inhale her. Closer, closer. Then her mouth is on mine and her hands lace through my hair. My fingers move on their own, unzipping her hoodie and slipping under her shirt, pressing against the warm skin of her lower back. She sighs my name against my lips and with that sound—that tiny, one-syllable word—any doubts still holding me above water snap, and I go under.
The knocking on my door the next morning is deafening.
“What?” I grumble, stuffing my head under the pillow.
“Sam? It’s almost ten.”
Mom. Awesome.
“I just went to bed thirty minutes ago.” Not exactly true, but from the way my eyelids are glued over my eyeballs, it feels true.
“Your father called the house. He’s been trying to reach you on your phone.”
I groan and roll over, grabbing my phone from the nightstand and checking the missed calls. Dad. Ajay. Dad. Dad. “I had it on silent.”
“May I come in?”
God, please, no. “Fine.”
She opens the door and stands in the entryway. Her blond hair is loose around her face and she’s nursing what I would guess is probably her third cup of tea.
“Does he want me to call him?” I ask.
She sighs and sips. “Yes, and I don’t appreciate you putting me in that position, Sam.”
“What position?”
“Your father called the house.”
“So you mean the position where you have to talk to the guy you had two kids with?”
She closes her eyes for a good ten seconds and runs a thumb down her ear. “No. I mean having to hunt you down to get you to speak to your father.”
“You didn’t hunt.” I throw the covers back and get up, spreading my
arms out. “I’m in my natural habitat. And I wasn’t ignoring him, I was sleeping.”
“All right, fine. Just call him.” She turns to go but then stops, looking back over her shoulder so I can only see her profile. “How’s that project going with the St. Clair girl?”
“Fine,” I say, white-knuckling my phone.
“She still doesn’t know? She hasn’t said anything?”
I frown at her tone—it’s that sticky, probing tone she uses when she’s trying to weasel some sort of damning information out of me. I’m well acquainted with this tone. “She’s said many things, but nothing relevant to you.”
She turns around to face me. “I don’t want you to see her outside of school, all right?”
Memories of last night and Hadley’s fingers gliding over my stomach flood back. I feel my damn face heat up and look away. “You’ve already told me this.”
“I mean it, Sam.”
“Okay. Fine.” I toss some clothes into the hamper and start moving around my room, a clear indication that I’m done talking. Luckily, Mom doesn’t make a habit of sticking around in my presence any longer than she has to.
I shower and then call Dad. A predictably awkward conversation takes place, during which he splutters vague ideas about Livy and me heading up to Boston for Christmas. Something we both know will never happen. After we hang up, I can picture him in his barely furnished apartment, checking the obligatory weekly phone call to his progeny off his to-do list.
I flop back on my bed and finally let my thoughts take over.
I kissed Hadley.
I did more than that. I liked it. I couldn’t get enough of it, of her. We stayed on that hill until night started fading into a gray morning, kissing and talking, over and over. By the time I took her home and crawled into bed, my lips were totally numb and I felt drunk. The weird thing is, even with all the crap surrounding us, all the fucked-up history, I don’t regret a single minute.
I pick up my phone and send her a quick text. I just want to know she’s real, that it all really happened. Then I find Ajay’s number, knowing he’s going to flip his proverbial shit when he hears about my night, but a text pops up from Josh Ellison.
Last minute game at school fields. 11AM. U in?
Beyond the regular Wednesday games, Josh and I haven’t talked much since I found out what happened between him and Hadley. When I saw him the day after she and I skipped school, I had calmed down enough to know nothing good could come of me confronting him.
But now things feel different. Sure, Hadley still doesn’t need me to fight any battle for her, but maybe I need it. Hell, maybe I just plain want to. Plus, it’ll be a relief to blow off some steam on the mound and get my mind off Hadley. My fingers itch to call her, to hear her voice, but I know she’s dealing with her parents today.
I tap out a message to Josh. Sounds good. See u then.
In search of something interesting for her hope-in-black-and-white photo project, Livy comes with me to the game.
“I think I’ve already settled on a subject,” she says in the car on the way over, “but I want to make sure.”
“What’s your subject?”
“Uh-uh. Not telling.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not a sure thing yet. I just said that.”
“Sorry, Ansel Adams.”
She snaps a picture of me. “Now, that is a face that reeks of hope.” She laughs as she checks out the digital display.
I pull on her still-pink hair.
“How’s Hadley?” she asks after she swats me away.
I nearly swerve off the road. “Why are you asking me that?”
She shrugs and flips her camera lens on and off, on and off. “I heard you on the phone with her last night. And I heard you leave. And I heard you come back this morning.”
“Oh. Right. Um. I think she’s okay. I haven’t talked to her today, though.”
“You like her, don’t you?”
“Why would you say that?”
She gives me a look dripping in sarcasm.
I breathe out heavily as we pull into the school. “Yes. I like her. I’ve tried not to, but I do.”
“And she likes you, right?”
The memory of Hadley’s mouth brushes across my jaw and I shiver. “Pretty sure she does.”
Livy nods, her lips pursed into a little knot. For the first time in a long time, I can’t tell what she’s thinking.
“Does that bother you?” I finally ask.
She fiddles with her camera lens. “I’m not sure. I feel like it should, but I . . . I like her too, you know? And like you said, none of what happened was her fault.”
“Hey,” I say when her lower lip starts jittering. “None of it was yours, either.”
“Or yours?” She lifts her blue eyes to mine.
I press my lips together, but shake my head. “Or mine.”
“But it makes me nervous, Sam. I mean, how . . . what are you going to . . .” She trails off, knowing the same unanswerable questions are in my head too.
“I don’t know, Liv.” She squeezes my hand, comforting me. It’s a nice feeling, knowing she’s behind me. I’ve never really thought of my baby sister as someone who could help me. It’s always been the other way around, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel better from her just listening to me. “Let me know if you get any brilliant ideas.”
She smiles and nods once. “Will do.”
Before the game, I check my phone, but Hadley hasn’t texted back. I try to push it out of my mind. She’s fine. She’s got her parents to deal with. She’s busy. The guys split up and I end up pitching on Josh’s team. It feels amazing, hurling the ball down the stretch, the pull in my shoulder and arm, the sound of the ball thwacking into the catcher’s glove, the lighthearted curses from the guys when they strike out, my own embarrassed laugh when they smack a double into center.
About halfway through the game, the cheerleaders show up on the next field over, practicing for some competition they have in a few weeks. Josh cranes his neck toward them, a familiar expression on his face. It’s not the kind of look guys get when we’re checking out hot girls. It’s the kind we get when we’re looking at one particular girl—a girl we actually like.
“Josh, what’s up with you?” I ask. Our team is batting and he and I are in the dugout, our arms dangling over the railing.
“Nothing, man.” His eyes are still glued to the pixie-haired girl as she vaults into the air.
“Her name’s Jenny?”
He swivels his head toward me. “Who?”
I nod toward the field. “She was your girlfriend, right?”
“Yeah.” He narrows his eyes at my tone. I cringe a little, realizing I’m using that same tone Mom tried with me earlier. The I’m-going-to-weed-you-out tone.
“I’m guessing you wish that were still the case.”
He exhales, then blows a bubble with his bright pink gum. It pops and the residue coats his upper lip. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
“What happened?” Smooth, Sam. Very smooth.
“I fucked up. We’d been dating for a few weeks and she wanted me to meet her parents.”
“So?”
He snorts a bitter laugh. “Dude, her parents are both record label executives and live in this gated, rich-ass neighborhood. Each house has its own freaking zip code. My mom works two jobs and I’ve never even met my dad. He took off before the strip turned blue.”
I don’t say anything, but I get this feeling in my gut like I inhaled a bag of Cheetos for breakfast.
“I freaked out and bailed at the last minute on the dinner Jenny planned. We had a huge fight, and I ended up at that party. I saw Hadley and she was . . . Christ, she was there and she’s hot and I drank too much and my head was totally messed up. Then Jenny shows up and I was . . . well . . . occupied when she got there and I guess Sloane saw Hadley come out of the room we were in.”
My hands ball into fists. The idea of Josh with Hadley
in a room makes me want to hit something. Hard. But as Josh casts another wistful eye at Jenny, my anger starts fizzling out. A foul ball soars into the dugout, narrowly missing beaning Josh in the head.
“You put Hadley in a really shitty position,” I say as he flips off Matt, the batter.
“I know, man. I didn’t mean to. I’ve told Sloane to lay off, that it wasn’t Hadley’s fault.”
“Why’d you have to lie to her?”
“I don’t know. I told you. I just wanted . . . I thought I needed . . .” His eyes drift back to Jenny before whispering weakly, “I don’t know.”
I stay silent and watch as Josh yanks up a bat and heads to the batter’s box. When someone pisses you off, it’s so easy to forget they still have blood under their skin. Yeah, he acted like a dick, no doubt about it.
But.
And this is a big but, because I’d like nothing more than to make this all his fault. But, his mistake had a reason behind it—something that flipped a switch and changed him into a smooth-talking assclown without any common sense or a conscience.
I scan the outfield and spot Livy on the other side of the fence, viewing the game through her camera as she walks the perimeter, her pink streak catching the sun. I think about our parents, who sure as hell didn’t have a fairy-tale marriage. Their conversational style consisted of loaded statements and comparisons of who did more around the house or for Livy and me. Long before my mom pulled the trigger on the gun that killed their marriage, they were effing miserable.
I check my phone again and there’s a text from Hadley. Looking up to find Livy, I see Josh smack a line drive down the third base line, a thing of beauty. I glance back down at Hadley’s text. My heart bolts into a sprint, feeling like I just clicked the safety off a loaded gun.
Chapter Twenty
Hadley
I’m already awake, lying in bed and staring at the undulating shadows the midmorning sun is casting on my wall, when my door creaks open. I roll over, expecting to see only Jinx’s tail flicking at the air as she saunters toward me, but it’s not my cat.
Suffer Love Page 14
