Suffer Love (12 page)

We pull into my driveway, and Hadley jumps in her seat as I jerk the keys from the ignition. Her movement startles me out of my fog, and I turn to look at her. A lawnmower cranks up next door and we sit in its rumble as I try to figure out why the hell I'm so furious with Josh, want to slash Sloane's tires, want to crush every guy who even looks at Hadley below the neck.

“Sam?”

Her expression is open, but behind her eyes, there's this whisper of uncertainty. Then she smiles a little and it's like a clap of thunder. I feel an almost painful jolt in my gut coupled with this vision of Hadley in my house again, this time pressed up against me on the couch while we watch some lame movie I can't even remember the name of because she's taking up all the space in my brain and the only thing I can think about is
Dear-sweet-Lord-please-just-let-me-touch-her.

Holy shit, Sam.

And just like that, I know I can't invite her in my house.

Ever.

“Um . . . you know what?” I say. “I just remembered that I have to turn in this paper for Humanities. It's already late.”

Her eyes darken, but I swear I see a flash of relief. “Oh. Okay, that's fine. We can go back to school.”

“I'm really sorry.”

“Don't worry about it.” She gives me another smile before turning her face away toward the window.

We drive back to school, letting some song I don't even like all that much fill the awkward silence that's sprung up between us. God, I hate this. I should've kept walking when I saw her at her locker this morning. She didn't need me to swoop in to save her from a bunch of sex toys. I would've felt like an asshat, but at least I wouldn't be such an angsty cliché right now.

When I pull into the school lot, we say goodbye. She thanks me for helping her and I thank her for taking me to the Green-Eyed Girl and it's all so polite and weird that I want to punch a hole in my dashboard. I watch her duck into the building, a cavern in my chest so huge, I'm sure my next breath will flip me inside out.

I drum my fingers on the steering wheel, trying to figure out what to do next, how to get rid of this torrent of clashing emotions in my gut. School is the last place I want to be. Besides, if I see Josh right now, it'll just remind me what a complete idiot I am. I check the clock. A little before noon.

I should just go home. Pump some loud, angry music through the house, cook something complicated that'll take me hours, and make Livy happy. Or I could find a batting cage and hit until my arms ache. Playing with the guys on Wednesday was enough to prove I could use the practice.

But I know I won't do either of those things.

Forty minutes later, I'm sitting outside Nicole's house in Nashville.

The first time I slept with Nicole was the night everything blew up. Livy was an incoherent mess and I had driven her to her friend Caitlin's house. Mom and Dad weren't talking to me, and when they weren't alternating between screaming and tears, they were smothering Livy like they were afraid the air in the house would kill her.

Nicole and I had hung out a few times in groups. She was friends with Sara, and Ajay wanted me to get with her so we could be one of those nauseating inseparable foursomes. I'd never felt much when I was with her. She was beautiful, she was fun, but there was no real connection between us. She used nonwords like “supposably” and “irregardless.” I think she did this mostly to annoy me, because she was in the top five of our class.

That night, she called at exactly the wrong moment. Or maybe the right one, I don't know. Either way, I unloaded everything on her and she told me to come over. When I got to her house, her parents weren't home, because they're both real estate agents and are never home. She didn't say a word. She just took my hand and led me into her bedroom. This became a regular occurrence for the next few weeks. Things got too thick at home, I'd get Livy to a friend's house and I'd always end up at Nicole's. I don't even know her middle name.

Hadley's is Jane. I'm not sure how the hell I know that.

Now I punch the glowing orange circle next to Nicole's front door so hard, my thumbnail splits.

“Sam Bennett, oh my God,” Nicole says as she opens the door, her eyes wide with surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“Hey, Nic. How are you?”

“I'm great now. How'd you know I have early release from school?”

“Lucky guess.” Or not. I texted Ajay on my way here and asked him and then ignored him as he proceeded to blow up my phone with a bajillion versions of
What the hell are you doing?

She opens the door wider and I slip past her. She looks incredible, as always. Slick, straight blond hair, green eyes like a cat. Smooth, tanned skin that I remember felt like silk under my fingers.

“You look good,” she says as she closes the door.

“Thanks. You too.”

“To what do I owe this visit?” She leans against the wall, her hips popped out into the space between us.

I shrug and look around her house. It's still dark and woodsy and open, like one of those ritzy lodges at ski resorts. “Just wanted to say hey.”

“After four months?”

“I just got back into town last week.”

She purses her lips and pushes herself off the wall. “Well, well. Welcome home.”

I follow her into the living room, drawing cedar and a leftover smoky scent from the wood-burning stove into my lungs. We sit on her blue and red plaid couch and watch one of those house renovation shows she always loved, chitchat mindlessly about baseball and her theater group and school. It's always easy with Nicole. Nothing complicated, nothing twisted or contrived or hidden. Simple.

And predictable. After a while, she clicks off the TV, leans into me, and sweeps her lips over mine. I pull her closer and squeeze my eyes closed as I kiss her. She tastes like watermelon lip balm, a trace of clove cigarettes. We end up on her blue and white striped bed, our clothes on the floor and my hands in her hair. Her room is exactly the same, the floor littered with screenplays and SAT prep books and her million pairs of shoes.

“I missed you,” she whispers into my ear as she slides on top of me, straddling my hips.

I have a sudden flash of Josh's lying face and I almost swear out loud. Not exactly the image I want in my mind at this particular moment. But there he is and then there's my mom's lying face and my own lying face and then there's Hadley's dark eyes, and even Livy worms her way into my rapidly clouding thoughts. I know I should stop this. I should just kiss Nicole one more time and leave, but the creeping oblivion on the edge of my thoughts is like a drug.

Fighting through Nicole's warm breath on my neck, I find a moment of clarity, a piece of truth that I need to give her because I can't seem to give it to anyone else. I push her hair back from her face so I can see her. “Nic. I don't think I can give you anything other than this. I'm just not . . . I just can't.”

We stare at each other for a few seconds, our bodies pulled taut with anticipation. Then she reaches for the condom on the nightstand. She tears it open and leans in close to my ear again. “I didn't exactly ask.”

Soon I'm lost in her skin and scents and sounds. She could be anyone. I could be anyone. There's only a mass of sensations between us. There are no minds or hearts or effed-up twists of fate or blame or guilt. Colors don't even exist here. Just shade after shade of gray, with me hiding in between them.

Mom always said she never understood Dad's and my obsession with swimming. A runner since she was a girl, she couldn't fathom pushing your body to the limit without sweat, without the wind in your face and shifting scenery to prove that you're attaining something, getting somewhere. She came to all of my meets, but whenever they confined her to an indoor pool, Dad clad in his West Nashville Wahoos hoodie and whistle and determined brows, Mom would sit in the bleachers and try to look interested, devoted to me but not so much to the sport itself. I don't think she so much as blinked when I quit competing.

But for me, swimming is freedom. I love the feeling of weightlessness with control, speed without impact. The water hems me in above and below, and I can cut my body through the pool and fly.

Tonight the water is a relief.
Stroke-stroke-stroke-breathe. Stroke-stroke-stroke-breathe.
Twenty-four freestyle strokes per fifty meters. Not bad. Not great, either, but after months with avoidance as my only motivation, I'm probably a little out of shape. A tiny sliver of water edges into my goggles, but I keep moving, extending my arms to their full length and willing my body forward. If I stop and surface, my eyes will automatically swing to the clock on the cement block wall. If I see the time, no doubt tick-ticking toward the mandatory St. Clair dinner, I'll have to go home, because there's this part of me that sort of
wants
to be there just to see if my mother will actually show up. And if I go home, I'll probably just walk into an empty kitchen, waiting around with Jinx for one of my parents to stumble through the door with takeout.

For the past two weeks since the vacuum incident, I feel like I catch only little glimpses of Mom. A blur of color as she whips into the kitchen in the morning for coffee, and then whips back out. A quick peek when she gets home long after dinner right before she disappears into her room. She haunts the house, more memory than flesh.

Any words spoken between my parents are either about who can pick up the dry-cleaning or my mother setting passive-aggressive bombs for Dad to walk right through, turning our house into a minefield.

Oh, I love digging soggy food out of the sink's drain.

Oh, I wish I taught college so I could work three hours a day a few times a week.

Oh, I just read this fascinating article in
American Literary History.
Jason, didn't you submit a piece to them a while ago?
Whatever happened with that?

Dad meets all of this with heavy sighs, hands raked down his face, and even an hour-long call to Liam, my parents' therapist, during which I overheard phrases like
coping mechanism
and
acute stress.
But he doesn't speak to my mother about it. No arguing or blaming or name-calling. Everything's quiet and razor-sharp.

So I keep swimming.

When I'm about 250 meters in, a girl dives into the lane next to me as I turn. She carves through the water gracefully and soon we're swimming side by side, spurred on by each other's presence and speed. The old thrill of competition surges through me, that familiar rush of adrenaline and anxiety and determination. My lungs burn as my body pivots perfectly with each stroke, but this girl keeps pace with me, edging me by a half a head by the time we've gone 200 meters. At 400, my body feels boneless as I plunge into the wall a split second after she does, surprised that she also stops, as if there were an agreement on the length of our race.

I gulp the chlorinated air, pulling off my goggles and purple swim cap. Intrigued, I turn to face my competitor and suck in a little stream of water as my gaze locks onto Sam Bennett's sister.

“Oh,” she breathes out, her eyes wide on mine, her own chest heaving up and down from her effort and, now, I can tell, her surprise. She grabs an inhaler from on top of a towel on the ledge and sticks it in her mouth. I watch her take a few puffs.

“Hey,” I say when she gets a breath. “Livy, right?”

She nods, sliding a hand over her wet hair, and looks away from me.

“Are you okay?”

She nods again.

“I'm Hadley. We met a couple weeks ago at Wasabi's.”

“I remember.” She takes another drag on her inhaler before hanging one hand on the edge of the pool. Her other hand taps out a rhythm on the water's blue surface. “You're Sam's friend.”

I frown at this, not sure whether to agree or deny or just pretend I didn't hear her. I don't think Sam considers me his friend. Since our breakfast at the Green-Eyed Girl, I've seen him every day at school, but aside from the occasional wave in the hallway and our businesslike conversations whenever Ms. Artigas gives us time to work on our project in class, our relationship consists of polite smiles and a flock of birds careening through my stomach every time he taps his pen against his full bottom lip.

I know he didn't have a Humanities paper to turn in that morning. He was completely bullshitting me. But honestly, his excuse was a relief. As I sat in his car outside his house, I could feel the red panic sliding up my neck and settling into my face at the thought of being alone with him again.

“You're a great swimmer,” I say to Livy. “At least at freestyle. Do you swim competitively?”

She shakes her head. “I just like swimming.”

“Me too.” I try to catch her glance, but she's well practiced at avoiding eye contact, looking in my direction in a way that convinces me she's interested but wary.

“Woodmont has a great team,” I say. “You should try out.”

“Maybe.” She hauls herself out of the pool, her shoulders and slim legs leanly muscled just like a swimmer's.

I look up at her, the fluorescent lights behind her turning her into a silhouette. In the open-swim pool, a few human cannonballs slam their bodies into the water. She dries off while I climb out and do the same. Livy pulls on a pair of track pants and a huge, ratty Harrison High Baseball T-shirt that has to be Sam's. She has the same blue eyes, same elegant cheekbones, same full mouth that probably spreads into the same lopsided grin when she lets herself smile.

“Why aren't you on the team?” she asks.

“I used to be on a team at my school in Nashville, and my dad used to coach my neighborhood team when I was a kid.” I wrap my towel around my shoulders. “But . . . well, I just needed a break.”