Suffer Love

by Ashley Herring Blake

  “Dad?”

  “Mm?”

  “It’s not too late.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Sam

  I used to think Benedick was a smart-mouthed dick who morphed into a whipped asshole with no concern for anything other than getting laid. The guy’s ready to kill his best friend, all because of some girl who until about ten minutes before claimed to hate him.

  Now I’m starting to understand him a little better.

  I sit on my bed, Much Ado in my lap as I read over act 5, scene 2. He and Beatrice banter back and forth, quipping about how they first came to love each other. Suffer love! A good epithet. I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.

  The words bounce against my chest, my own translation coming too easily. My hand moves across my notebook, dark blue ink bleeding onto the page in a mindless word vomit. I sit back, fingers aching, and reread what I wrote.

  My heart is crushed within me. Here is the truth: You made me love you—your eyes and mouth and voice. You pulled me into your heart. You don’t want me there and I don’t want to be there, but it’s where I will always live.

  Jesus.

  I stare down at the words I scribbled into my notebook and shake my head. I’m pretty damn sure Benedick is just flirting with Beatrice, a girl who loves him back and can actually stand the sight of him, but my pen took on a mind of its own, spilling out mush I didn’t even know was inside me. I have no idea how the hell I got here, but I feel physically sick at the thought of Hadley, beautiful and existing and hating me.

  I slap the play shut and rip the page from my notebook. Then I throw all three things across the room. The play crashes into a framed picture of me and Ajay playing Little League, sending the two of us sprawling. It feels good to slam things around and get pissed, little rebellions against my slowly dissolving heart.

  I flop back on my bed, arm flung over my eyes, and hear a soft knock on my door.

  “What?” I yell it. Rudely.

  The door creaks open and I hear feet padding over the carpet toward me.

  Mom.

  I can tell by the sharp, unhindered sound of her steps. Livy always drags her toes. The bed depresses as she sits. I keep my face covered, waiting for her to speak.

  She doesn’t.

  She just sits there and breathes my air.

  I lift my head to look at her. She’s staring at me, her eyes crinkled softly like she hasn’t seen me in years.

  “What?” I ask again.

  Her body jolts at my harsh tone. “Sam, I—”

  “Mom, I’m sorry. But I’m really not in the mood for another lecture about something I did or didn’t do or a dream I had that you somehow extracted from my mind and saw all of my devious plans to crap all over your life.” I sit up and pull my laptop closer, flipping it open so hard, I’m surprised it doesn’t snap in two.

  I busy myself on Twitter, reading inane tweets like OMG, I have so much homework! and Craving Sonic tots somethin’ fierce #hungry.

  “I guess I deserve that,” Mom says after a few moments. Something about her tone makes me look up. Black shit smudges up under her eyes and she looks pale. Her hair is in a messy ponytail and her hands are trembling.

  “Sam, I don’t even know what to say.”

  I close my computer on the blissfully frivolous teenage world I seem to be no freaking part of. “Say about what?”

  “About you.” She covers her mouth with a trembling hand. “About us. About everything.”

  What the hell is there to say? I’m so done with this. Done with treading water in my own house, with my own family, always on guard for an attack when I ran out of defenses a long time ago. Maybe I haven’t run out so much as I’ve stopped looking for more.

  “I talked to Olivia,” Mom says.

  “Yeah? Did she actually talk back?”

  Mom looks at me, pain coloring her irises like ink in water. She pulls on her earlobe and it’s this tiny, familiar tic, her finger under her silver hoop earring, that snags my attention.

  “She told me everything, Sam.”

  “Told you what?” My voice is still hard and almost cruel, but something in my chest starts shriveling up.

  “I think you know what, sweetheart.”

  My stomach flips at her use of a term of affection. I almost open my mouth to refute everything and anything Livy might have told her. I’ve gotten used to Mom’s scathing glare and I don’t really feel like dealing with another change. Not after the crap week I’ve had.

  But I stop myself. Livy’s not a kid anymore. If she took the initiative to set the record straight, she had her reasons, and I’m done using her as an excuse to cover up my own shit.

  “Why?” Mom says, eyes filling. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me think it was you for so long?”

  “Come on, Mom. Would it have really made a difference? Would you have treated Livy like a pariah too? Would you have blamed her for everything? She was thirteen and one wheeze away from landing herself in the hospital. She was confused enough already.”

  “Sam . . . I . . .” She presses both hands to her mouth and whispers through her fingers. “I’m so sorry.”

  I shake my head. I don’t want her apologies. I want her faith and I’m not sure that’s even possible anymore. “Who put that stuff on the St. Clairs’ door isn’t the point, Mom. Don’t you get that? The point is that you never really owned what you did. You never seemed sorry, not even at how you got caught, just that you got caught at all. We were kids. We’re still kids. No matter how we reacted, no matter who went nuts for a few days and who didn’t, it was your mistake. You were the parent and you and dad both acted like we were to blame. Like I was to blame.”

  Her tears spill over. “I know. I just . . .” She reaches out for my hand and it takes all of my control not to yank it back. “I was going to tell your father. I was. In my own way and in my own time and I felt like you took that away from me. Or those notes did. Jason . . . he was so angry. He ended it before I could do or say anything and I . . . I was devastated.”

  I close my eyes and live in the dark for a too-short moment. Open them again. “Did you love him?”

  She rubs her eyes, blows out a breath. “I think you know that your father and I hadn’t been happy for a while. Truthfully, I’m not sure what I felt for Jason St. Clair or what he felt for me. I do know I was hurt and angry when it all blew up in my face. I was furious with you, and I needed someone to blame.”

  “And you found him,” I say, almost to myself.

  “I was wrong, honey. So wrong and I’m sorry.”

  I look up at her, meet her teary gaze. “Don’t punish Livy for this. I swear to God, if you make her feel the tiniest smidgen of guilt, I’ll take her and leave. I’ll go to Dad’s. I don’t care if he wants us there or not.”

  She shakes her head vigorously. “Livy was so upset because she let you carry this for so long. She had to use her inhaler twice before she even got it all out. I understand that this was . . . this is all my fault and I know how unfair I’ve been to put all of that on you.”

  I feel the familiar blankness of my expression, but as Mom acknowledges how shitty things have been—her own role in creating and maintaining that shittiness—something loosens in my chest and blows away.

  “I’m going to speak with your father. He needs to know the truth, Sam. I know you think it doesn’t matter, but the truth always matters, honey.”

  “All right. Yeah. Fine.” I drop my head in my hands, not looking forward to having this conversation again with Dad. At the same time, I know it’s time. Long past time, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a freaking tsunami of relief.

  We sit there for a minute, a million unspoken words passing through the air between us. Finally, she says, “I’m sorry about Hadley, Sam. I didn’t mean to treat her unfairly. I didn’t want you to get hurt. That’s why I called her parents.”

  I just nod. I don’t want to talk about Hadley. Can’t. />
  “I believe things can get better, Sam. I have to believe that.”

  Better. What is that?

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she says again. And again and again until her words form a lump in my throat I can’t swallow around.

  “Okay, Mom. It’s okay.” She squeezes my hand. We both know it’s not okay. Maybe it won’t be for a while, but I guess it’s a start. Maybe it’s a step toward that nebulous place called Better. I can only hope that when we get there, we’ll recognize it.

  Livy comes in a few minutes later. She throws herself onto the bed and lays her head on my shoulder. She puts a tentative yet steady hand on Mom’s. We huddle together, all of our eyes stinging, a cracked unit trying to feel whole. Trying to act whole.

  I breathe in, breathe out.

  Feels a little better.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Sam

  A week later, I’m on the hill at Love Circle after sundown with Ajay. It’s cold, the kind you can smell and taste on the back of your tongue. We’re bundled into coats and sprawled out on the grass under a clear, star-packed sky, a faded blue Frisbee resting on my chest.

  “You know,” he says, “I was going to bring Kat here later tonight, but when I got to your house, you looked so desperately pathetic, I knew you needed a romantic evening. I am your one true love, after all.”

  My eyes glaze on all the stars so they almost bleed into one spread of light. “Bros before beautiful girls . . .”

  Ajay snorts. “No. Kat’s mom dragged her to some self- concept seminar.” He checks his phone. “I’m meeting her in T-minus sixty-three minutes.”

  I swing the Frisbee around and connect with Ajay’s gut. He lets out an exaggerated oof.

  “Why did you want to come here, anyway?” he asks, rubbing his belly.

  “I come here to think. I like it here.” I only brought Ajay along because he showed up as I was leaving. I don’t mention that coming here is my own version of self-flagellation. Punishment, as I remember the first time Hadley knelt in front of me, her fingertips and her eyes skimming my face like she was discovering something brand-new and intriguing. Something she wanted.

  “I take it you haven’t talked to her,” Ajay says.

  “Nope.”

  “Have you tried?”

  “Nope.”

  “Should you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Samuel, man up. Admit it, you’re miserable.”

  I sit up and toss the Frisbee at his face, the closest version I can get to manning up, whatever the hell that means.

  He bats it away and smirks. “Exactly.”

  “Age, I know you’re trying to help, but just stop. Hadley doesn’t want to talk to me, nor should she. I fucked up. Messed with her life, her family, her heart. Just leave it alone and go enjoy your own little romance, all right?”

  I expect a snarky response, but none comes. He just looks at me, his brows furrowed in deep thought. He was ecstatic when I told him my parents knew the truth about the notes on Hadley’s door, because, of course, Ajay’s known all along.

  “Finally!” he had shouted through the phone. “God, I’ve been so tired of carrying that around. Don’t you feel better? Is Livy okay?”

  “Yeah, she’s good,” I said, purposely ignoring his former question. The truth was, I did feel better about my family. Hopeful. But it wasn’t enough. The whole Hadley thing had really screwed with my head and, if I was being honest, my heart. It was going to take more than Mom’s apologies and Dad’s assertions of love and commitment to me and Livy to heal up the bloody mess in my chest.

  “Samuel,” Ajay says now, “you’re my best friend, and normally I cherish your idiotic, self-deprecating ways, but both you and Hadley need to get the hell over yourselves. You guys are like a pair of tragic lovers out of a Tolstoy novel.”

  “I don’t see either one of our bodies mangled under a train.”

  “Close enough.”

  Before I can offer a pointless rebuttal, a branch snaps behind us and we both swivel around. I suck in a breath and blink a few hundred times before what I’m seeing registers.

  Hadley.

  “Hey,” I say automatically, standing.

  “Hey,” she says. God, she looks amazing. Moonlight streaks across her face, paling her already ivory skin. Her hair is long and loose and spilling over a fitted gray pea coat, buttoned up against the chilly wind.

  “What . . . what are you doing here?” I ask.

  “She’s here to see me, man,” Ajay quips, elbowing me.

  Neither Hadley nor I respond, our eyes locked on each other.

  “Damn. Not even an obligatory smile. Okay. Too soon for humor.” He slaps my back after snagging my keys from the grass. “I’ll just go attend to my own little romance . . .” His voice trails off as he disappears over the side of the hill. I barely register the sound of my own car starting up and driving off, leaving me stranded on a hilltop with a girl whose expression I’m finding impossible to read at the moment.

  “How’d you know I was here?” I ask. Then I realize that maybe she’s not here for me at all. Maybe she’s here in search of her own peace and solitude and is revolted to find me here, polluting her air once again. My gut clenches and I think through options about how the hell I’m going to get home, mentally tracking to the nearest bus stop.

  “Livy told me. When I stopped by your house.”

  I exhale loudly as she steps closer. Closer. Closer, until we’re only an arm’s width apart.

  “You went to my house?”

  She nods.

  “Why?”

  She shrugs, hands in her coat pockets. “I guess I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Why, Hadley?”

  She looks up, her lashes fluttering heavily as she blinks at me. “Livy told me everything. You know that, don’t you?”

  I literally stumble backwards, feeling like I’ve been punched. Of course Livy told her. Hell, she probably told her a week ago, before she even told Mom.

  “Sam.”

  I take another step back, needing more space between us, because I’m either about to crumble to my knees or gulp her into my arms, neither of which is a good idea.

  “I’m sorry . . .” I say. I should add more, explain every little crazy tick in my thought process from the first day I met her, but my throat closes up as she pushes through the distance between us.

  “You could’ve told me the truth,” she says softly. “I could’ve handled it.”

  “Maybe I couldn’t. And it would’ve changed everything. You know it would. It has changed everything.”

  “You lied to me, Sam. You were one of the only people I trusted and you broke that. You broke us.” Her voice cracks and I fist my hands, aching to hold her.

  “I’m sorry. I am. I don’t know why—” I snap my mouth shut. Because I do know why. I’ve always known why.

  “Sorry doesn’t change anything.” Tears spill down her face. “You know how I felt about lying and you kept doing it, every day, over and over. I don’t understand why you didn’t—”

  “Because I wanted to be with you, all right?” I yell it, my voice raspy. Her eyes widen and cloud up. “You’re all I think about and I knew if I told you, you’d disappear. You’d hate me. That’s why, okay? I know it’s not right. I know I screwed everything up, but I physically couldn’t tell you. I didn’t care about your last name or what our parents did. I wanted you. I wanted us. You made all of this . . . I don’t know. It sounds crazy, but you, in my life—knowing you almost made everything worth it.”

  I can’t look at her. I shove my hands through my hair and pace in circles.

  “Sam—”

  “I want to be with you, Hadley, and I don’t care what our families have to say about it. It’s not about them. Our parents have nothing to do with us.”

  “But they do. My dad’s a part of me. Your mom’s a part of you. Nothing will ever change that.”

  “We don’t have to disown our families or
our own stories. We just have to . . . I don’t know.” I hang both hands around my neck. “Move forward.”

  “How? How would an us work? You really expect us to pose for prom pictures in my foyer with my dad behind the camera? Will our moms shake hands at graduation? Will we head off to college and stay together? Will we get married and turn our ex-lover parents into in-laws and co-grandparents?” She snorts a laugh, but then her eyes fill as she slides them up to mine. “How, Sam?”

  I realize she wants a real answer. She wants to know how. She wants an us just as much as I do, despite everything. I bridge the gap between us and slide my hands up her arms to cup her face, relieved as hell when she lets me. “We’ll figure it out. If you can forgive me, we’ll figure this out.”

  “Sam.” She puts her hands on my chest. “This is about more than just you and me. What about Livy? What about my mom and your dad?”

  “I don’t know.” I pull her closer, inhaling her scent. God, she’s like a drug. “I know I should care about all of that, but I just don’t right now.”

  She presses her forehead to mine. “You will. I know you, Sam. You will care, and then where will we be?”

  I don’t answer. I can’t. Our breath mingles as the night air hems us in against the rest of world. She’s so close that I can feel her heart pounding against my chest. I slip a finger down her chin to the hollow of her throat, feeling the thrum, thrum of her pulse under my touch. She sighs, a shaky, desperate sound.

  And then we’re kissing, a mad scramble to gather up everything we both fear we’ve lost. There’s nothing but lips and tongues and hands. Hadley trembling in my arms, her tears mingling with mine, my name falling from her mouth again, just like that first time we kissed in this very spot. The first time I went over the edge.

  She breaks our kiss and dips her head onto my chest, heaving giant breaths.

  “Hadley.” I smooth her hair, but she doesn’t respond. “Had.”

  She lifts her head and I search her face—her eyes, her mouth, the crease between her eyebrows—searching for any sign that she’s ready to try this, that I haven’t destroyed everything all over again.