And that would be okay. But it wouldn’t be enough.
It’ll never be enough, and I’m done playing these games with guys. Because no matter what I’ve told myself, that’s not what I want. Maybe at some point it was. I don’t know anymore. But everything’s different now.
I push his hand away. “I need to go, Henry.”
His eyebrows pop up, like he’s flabbergasted that St. Clair, the Patron Saint of Sluts, would turn down an offer to get freaky again in a closet that smells like mildew and rubber. He shrugs and moves back. “Sure. Offer stands, though.”
I watch him disappear into the guys’ locker room, feeling a dizzying mix of anger and sadness and relief. I heave a breath and make my way outside. The late afternoon sky blurs into smears of copper and lavender and pink, and the air smells faintly of burning leaves.
When I get to my car, I stumble to a halt. Leaning against it is a familiar bright blue bike and a familiar blond head streaked with purple.
“Livy.”
Her head pops up. “Hi.”
“What are you doing here?” I rummage through my bag to find my keys. It’s hard to look at Livy—her bleeding-heart, Sam-like features feel like little thorns in my skin.
“I wanted to bring you this.” She holds up a large tan envelope but makes no move to give it to me. She shifts from foot to foot. “Do you hate me?”
I sigh. “No, I don’t hate you, Livy. I just don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t want you to hate Sam, either.”
The thought of hating Sam is so appealing. It would make everything so much easier. “You know I don’t. But I don’t trust him either.”
She takes a step closer, her eyes brimming. “You can trust him, Hadley. He’s not . . . he didn’t . . .” She swallows a gulp of air. I can almost see it sliding down into her lungs, steeling her as she squares her shoulders. “I think, in the beginning, keeping quiet was his way of protecting you . . . and me. Before you were together, he didn’t see the point of telling you. He thought it would only hurt everyone.”
I shake my head. “And after?”
“He was going to tell you. He told me so. But come on, Hadley. Can you honestly say you don’t know why it was hard for him? Why he was afraid to?”
I drop my gaze, choking on the knot in my throat. “Livy, I know you and Sam are still dealing with your dad being gone and what happened with our parents, but it’s more than that for me. It’s not only that he lied. I can’t stop thinking about those papers on my door. You know about those, right?”
She doesn’t respond. Just stares at me with huge eyes.
“You have no idea what it was like coming home to that. My dad and I were close. I thought I knew him inside and out. I thought he was the one person who would never, ever hurt me. Those notes, what they said, they were like a bullet in my heart. I understand that my dad’s the one who had the affair and I understand that Sam didn’t know me then, but I can’t forget that he wrote them, that he would do something like that to someone’s family, to my mom and me. We weren’t the ones who hurt him.”
“Hadley.” Livy’s crying now, but something in me balls up and closes.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Livy. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
I fumble with the remote on my keys, hitting the lock button several times before finally landing on unlock. Behind me, I hear Livy take a giant, painful-sounding breath.
“Sam didn’t write those notes.”
My car clicks unlocked. I don’t get inside. I don’t turn around. I freeze and her words flitter around in my head, trying to land.
“That day we caught my mom . . . I was so confused,” she says to my back. “I felt like I was outside of my body. I went ballistic. I had a huge asthma attack, but afterward . . . I just remember feeling totally unhinged, and I couldn’t settle down. Sam was really freaked and kept watching me and following me around the house, but he eventually fell asleep. It wasn’t hard to find out your dad’s name. I looked through my mom’s phone after everyone else was in bed. She even had his address. I sat in my room, writing those notes all night long. I know it was a screwed-up thing to do.”
I turn to look at her now. The envelope is at her feet and she’s gripping her elbows like she’s trying to hold herself together.
“I skipped school the next day. Rode my bike to your house with a bag full of paper and tape. Sam had no idea until afterward.” Tears trail silently down her cheeks. “It was me, Hadley.”
“And Sam took the blame.”
She nods. “When your dad called my mom that night, I guess he broke it off pretty harshly. Mom was . . . God, she was such a mess. I’ve never seen her so hurt and angry. She found Sam and me in the kitchen and started yelling and crying.” She pauses, looks up at the darkening sky. “Sam didn’t even look at me. He didn’t even ask. He just said he did it. Mom slapped him. Hard, across the face. Dad came home later and Mom told him everything. I’ll never forget the way he looked at her—at all of us. Like we were strangers or something. Sam took his reaction pretty hard. They were always close, with baseball and climbing and stuff, and I still don’t think he’s over it. Those notes changed the way my parents saw Sam.”
“But it wasn’t the truth.”
“It was the truth to them, and they both pulled away from him. And I let them do it.”
“Oh, Livy,” I whisper. I try to gather up the anger I felt toward Sam for those notes, but it’s like trying to grab a handful of water.
“I’m sorry, Hadley,” she cries. “I didn’t mean to hurt you or your mom. I was just . . . I was so mad and all I could think about was hurting them. I didn’t mean for Sam to take the blame. It just happened and I didn’t know how to fix it. But it’s been so hard on him. His relationship with Mom gets worse every day. She has no faith him. I don’t think she even likes him. And now you. You’re the only person who makes him really happy, and I couldn’t let you believe that he did that to you. I know he still lied, but at least you know he didn’t write those notes. You can hate me instead of him.”
Fresh tears spill out of her blue eyes. I reach out and pull her into my arms. She doesn’t resist, but falls against me heavily.
“Shhh,” I tell her as she cries into my shoulder. “I don’t hate you, Livy.” And I don’t. How could I? She was only thirteen when all of this happened. Thirteen. She saw her own mother having . . . God. Having sex with another man and then watched her family fall apart because of it. That’s punishment enough. With her tiny fingers pressed into my back, something starts thinning out inside of me.
When Livy finally pulls away, both of our faces soaked, she leans down and picks up the envelope. “This is for you.”
I take the thick package. “What is it?”
“Copies of the photographs I took for my project.” She wipes her thumbs through the dripping mascara under both eyes. “I thought you might like them.”
“Thanks. You okay?”
“I think so. It feels nice having someone other than me and Sam know the truth. Especially if that someone is you.”
I manage a smile. “I should go.”
“Will you talk to Sam now?”
“I don’t know, Livy.” I swallow thickly. “I just don’t know right now.”
Disappointment floods her features and she takes a drag on her inhaler.
“But thank you for telling me the truth.” I squeeze her hand. “That was really brave.”
She nods, scuffing her boots over the asphalt.
I hug her one more time and get in my car. She climbs onto her bike, feet poised to hurtle herself home.
“Hadley?”
“Yeah?”
She hesitates, and then nods toward the envelope. “I named my photography project Absolution.” Then, the hint of a smile shimmers across her lips. “It gave me some hope.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Hadley
At least a dozen photographs span the area on my bed. I stare at
them, my SAT vocab book hanging limply in my hands. I knew what the word meant when Livy said it, but reading the black-and-white print, staring at the black-and-white photographs, it feels almost too fresh, like skin sloughed raw with a harsh scrub.
Absolution: formal release from guilt, blame, or punishment.
Livy’s photos are beautiful.
Four are scenes from her own world. Cora standing outside Sam’s closed bedroom door, her hand on the doorknob with her head resting against the frame. A photo of a photo— the Bennett family, whole and intact, in front of Turner Field at a ball game in Atlanta. Sam’s dad, a dark-headed version of his son, smiles out from the picture like a ghost. The original photo is torn in one corner and coffee-stained in another. There’s one of Livy standing in front of a mirror, shot from an upward angle with the camera poised at her hip. She’s dressed all in black, hair color-free and pushed away from her face. Her eyes are heavily lined and wide as she considers her reflection. Her blank expression is so hauntingly beautiful, it makes my chest hurt. There’s another of Sam handing a cup of tea to his mother, her arm outstretched, their fingers mere millimeters from touching, eyes on each other, waiting for the other to speak.
Seven photos are of Sam and me.
I remember when Livy took the one from Fido. Our heads are bent close together over half-eaten cheesecake, clear I’m-obnoxiously-into-you grins on both of our faces. God, was I really that obvious?
In another, we’re standing in his open front door, the streetlight throwing us into a gray shadow. His forehead is pressed to mine, our eyes closed, my fingers bunched into the hem of his T-shirt, his hands soft on either side of my neck. I stare at this one for a long time before moving on to the others.
Me grinning broadly while Sam cooks in that ridiculous green and white apron.
Me cuddled under Sam’s arm while we watch a movie.
Me on a swing at the park after a picnic with Livy and Ajay, laughing while Sam pushes me, our hands and feet blurred colors in the setting sun.
Me and Sam asleep, tangled in an intimate knot on his couch.
I can’t tear my eyes away from my own face, the way I look when Sam touches me and interacts with me. I’m almost unrecognizable. Laughing. Happy. Hopeful. It’s all there in glossy black-and-white. I know it’s me. I know it’s Sam. But we’re not us. In those pictures, we’re something else entirely—we’re the excitement of a moment and the possibility of a future.
The last photograph brings me back to reality.
It’s my dad.
He’s sitting alone at a table by the window in the Green-Eyed Girl. The angle is from within the café, somewhere in the vicinity of the Green-Eyed photographs. His favorite Montblanc pen is poised in his hand, but he’s not writing. His chin is cupped in his hand and his eyes are distant and a little glassy, the way they get when he’s trying to rearrange a sentence in his head before he writes it down. Something about his expression reveals a deep loneliness.
Or maybe that’s just me, hoping that’s how he feels.
Then I notice the notebook on the table, its fraying edges, and a familiar feather lying next to it. I pull the photo closer, squinting through the black-and-white to the hidden color.
Yes. It’s the same snow-white feather I found in the backyard and gave my dad when I was five. The one he used as a bookmark in the red-covered journal he started writing to me when I was born. The one he said he planned to give to me when I turned eighteen.
What are you writing, Daddy?
I’m writing about you, sweetheart.
I had convinced myself that it had drifted into the background of his life like everything else after his affair. My mind and heart revolt. This photograph is old. Years old. It has to be. But Livy took this picture. Livy, who’s only been in town for a few months. Posted on the wall to Dad’s right is a flyer for Woodmont Elementary’s Fall Festival, dated this year. Dad’s jaw is peppered with the scruff I’d become accustomed to while Mom was gone but that would never have been allowed to flourish in the past.
The photograph is slick under my sweaty fingers as I grip it, wondering what he wrote down that day, what he wrote down for a thousand days before that. A desperation blooms in my chest. My eyes glide back to the pictures of me and Sam, and a raw sob chokes me.
Before I can set my tears free, a knock sounds on my door. I swallow hard.
“Hadley?” Dad calls when I don’t respond. The door creaks open and he sticks his head inside, keeping his body in the hallway. He looks nervous. I’ve sniped at him to get out so many times, I guess I don’t blame him.
“Had?” His eyes scan my face and he frowns. “Your mother and I are going out for dinner. Would you like to come?”
I shake my head.
He opens the door wider, his expression drenched in concern, but he dries it up quickly with a blank look. “You sure? You’ll be okay on your own?”
No, I want to say, but I don’t. I don’t say anything.
He steps into the room, approaching my bed with the wariness of a hiker caught in a hungry grizzly’s path.
“We won’t be long,” he says. “We’re both tired of turkey leftovers and I—”
He freezes, his gaze falling on the photographs. My eyes follow him down as he sits on the bed. One by one, he picks up the pictures. Something both hot and cold creeps through my veins as he looks at me and Sam, at the woman he possibly loved, at her son and daughter.
I rip the photo of the Bennett family out of his hand. I gather all the pictures into my arms, hugging them to my chest. I don’t want him to see these. They’re me. My life, my heart. My own father ruined all of it. Our family. Mom. He ruined Livy. He ruined Sam, turned him into a liar. This boy who I think I might have loved and now I’m alone and he’s alone and Dad doesn’t even care. He doesn’t even care—
“Hadley!” I jerk as Dad’s hands encircle my arms to stop me. My throat feels hoarse and thick, my eyes burning with tears as I realize I’ve been speaking aloud. Screaming. Every word that just swam through my head had fallen out of my mouth in a messy rush.
Dad’s eyes are wild and shining. He keeps his grip on my arms. My head falls to my chest, deep sobs racking my body.
“Honey,” he says, his voice a cracking, desperate. “I do care, but I don’t know what to do or say anymore. Tell me what to do.”
The tears spill over and I’m unable to tell him anything. Because really, what can he do? We can’t go back. None of us can. Eventually, he releases me and rises to his feet.
He lets me go.
I hear his heavy sigh as he turns away. A myriad of emotions—panic, regret, loneliness, remorse, love—fill in the empty spaces inside me, and I pull myself off the bed. The photos float to the ground like black-and-white petals.
I’m so tired.
Tired of pretending I don’t feel anything. Tired of pretending I haven’t been hurtling toward this spot—this place where acceptance finally sneaks up on me and wraps me up in its arms—for months. Tired of pretending I don’t miss my dad. Miss us. Miss my family. Miss Sam. Miss myself.
Miss, miss, miss . . .
My thoughts settle around Sam and I feel a wash of relief, just to let myself see his face behind my eyelids. I remember how his whole body trembled a little when I slid that note across the table at the Green-Eyed Girl. I kept waiting for him to give me some explanation, but when he didn’t, I wasn’t surprised. Sam Bennett wears his loneliness like a skin. He’s resigned himself to it, believes he deserves it, thinks it’s just the way things are and nothing will ever change it. He looked so small and young as I watched him leave, his whole frame weighed down by half a year of brokenness, of missing his parents, of trying to be superhuman for Livy. I cried that day because, deep down, I knew he loved me. But I couldn’t bridge that gap between the anger and the acceptance. The broken trust and the need to let him be someone important to me.
Just like my dad. I know he loves me. I also know things will never be like they were b
etween us. But they have to be something.
“Dad.”
It’s a whisper. I barely hear it myself. But he stops and turns. Something in that tiny word, in my face, must cue him in to how I’m feeling, because his expression shifts from weary to relieved in a blink. He crosses the room in two strides, wrapping his arms around me and cradling my head against his chest. I breathe out months of anger, breathe in his familiar smell—the same one I remember as a little girl when I’d fall asleep in the car and he’d carry me to my room. Paper and ink and wool sweaters and coffee.
We sink to the floor and sit against my bed, his arm around me. He hands me a tissue and I lean my head on his shoulder, gulping jagged breaths. I don’t know how long we sit there, both of us sniffling and swallowing over knots in our throats. Outside, the day fades into twilight, filling my room with a soft lavender haze I’ve always loved. This time of day makes me believe in magic. Of living in between two possibilities and letting that be okay.
Mom’s form appears in the doorway. She leans against the frame, her hands clasped in front of her. I can barely see her face in the dim light, but I can tell she’s smiling. It’s a sad smile, but it’s there. She’s here. We’re all still here.
“Had,” Dad says quietly. “It’s not too late, is it? For us all to start over?”
So much has happened—so much hurt and lying and unforgiveness and time—that I’m not sure what to say. I know what I want my answer to be, but is it even possible? To go back or move forward or whatever the healthiest reaction to all this crap actually is?
So I don’t answer right away. I pick up the photo of him at the café, my eyes settling on the open journal, on his poised pen, on the illegible scrawl blurred underneath it.
“Do I still get to read it?” I ask. “When I’m eighteen?”
He tightens his grip around me and I hear the smile in his voice. “Of course. It’s yours.”
I nod against him, my heart settling into a steady rhythm. Mom comes in and sits down on my other side, her arm around me, fingertips resting lightly on Dad’s shoulder. My chest feels open and airy, that sort of peaceful, exhausted sensation you get after you’ve let go of a bunch of tears that should’ve been released a long time ago.
Suffer Love Page 21
