Suffer Love (25 page)

“Are you okay?” I ask. “Are you home to stay?”

Mom tosses a glance at my dad, who's clutching his phone and staring at his lap. “I'm okay. And yes, I'm home. But we need to talk to you, honey.”

“All right.” I let her lead me to the couch.

“Hadley,” Dad says. “We . . .” He blows out a long breath and rubs his eyes. “Are you . . .” He looks at the ceiling, his throat bobbing with a hard swallow.

“Jason, I'll do it. I'll tell her.”

“No. This is my fault. I need to tell her.”

“
I
need to tell her. I need to face this too.”

Dad and Mom square off, their expressions a mess of glares and pleas. Finally, he deflates and rests his head in one hand.

Meanwhile, my entire world is shrinking.

This is it,
I think. This is why she came home. To tell me they've finally given up. Soon our house will fill up with
That's mine
and
That's yours
and
Hadley will stay with me on the weekends and every other Christmas.
I'm a minute from bolting, flinging myself into my car and texting Sam to meet me at Love Circle. Nothing can touch us up there, on top of the world.

“What's going on? You guys are scaring me.”

Mom inhales deeply before speaking. “Honey, Cor—” She swallows and clears her throat. “Your father called me a while ago, right after he received a phone call from Cora Bennett.”

I flinch, sinking farther into the cushions. “What? Why? Why is she calling you?” None of this makes sense.

“She called because she's concerned about her son,” Mom says.

“Her son?”

“Are you friends with a boy named Sam?”

“Why are you asking me that? What does he have to do . . . with . . .” But Sam's name in Mom's voice sparks something in my head, and my questions fizzle out.

“Hadley,” Dad says from his corner, eyes locked on the floor. “Cora Bennett was . . . she was the woman I had . . . with whom I was involved.”

I blink at him. That's all I can do. Open and close my eyes. Any moment now, I'll open them to a different room, different people, different words.

Mom rests a hand on my arm, but I shake her off.

“Sam is . . . His mom is . . . No, this is crazy.” I say. “This isn't the same Sam.”

“Oh, honey, I'm so sorry.”

“No, it's not possible. And even if it is, he can't know who I am. He would've told me.”

“He knows,” Dad says, his voice impossibly small. “From what his mother said on the phone, he's always known.”

I need to tell you some things, but it's really hard for me.

“Oh, my God,” I choke out raggedly. “
This
is who you screwed around with?” Dad flinches, but says nothing. All this time, I've always pictured some super young grad student who got pregnant in high school the first time she slept with her boyfriend, popping out this strange kid who would one day freak out and plaster dirty notes all over my front door. I never fathomed she was a sophisticated woman with a real family. A family with feelings and lives and hearts.

“Hadley,” Mom says. “I really think it's better that we know this. We can get it all out in the open and put it behind us.”

“We can never put this behind us!”

I cover my mouth with my hand, pushing back the sob that's fighting to break free. Mom presses next to me. She twirls a strand of my hair around her finger like she used to do while we watched a movie or just sat and talked.

“Honey, who is Sam to you?”

“He's . . . he's . . .” My God, how could I be so stupid? My mind flies over Sam's own story, about his father leaving, what Livy told me about why he left, the timing of it all that he so conveniently never let slip and I stupidly never asked about. How could I not have known?

I press my hands harder against my mouth. My nails dig into my cheeks.

Mom keeps twirling my hair, winding her finger up to my face. Her touch is soft and steady.

“I wish you would've told me about him,” Mom says.

“And when would I have done that?”

“I know I've been . . . detached from your life for a while, but—”

“
Detached?
Is that what you call it?”

Her lips press flat. “I want things to change, Hadley.”

“Mom, please don't.” I disentangle her hand from my hair. I can't sit here and listen to her voice of reason after everything that's happened.

She grabs my hand again, the familiar scent of her jasmine shampoo wafting over me. “I know you're angry. With me, with your father, with this boy. But we love you so much, sweetie. We're so sorry. We all need to try and move on. This anger, it'll bury you, honey.”

“Then let it!”

“Hadley,” Dad says, standing.

Mom's eyes brim with tears, the first I've seen in months. “Sweetheart. You don't mean that. It's time to let it go.”

Just get over it, Hadley.

“Like you have?” I say, snatching my hand back.

She frowns and looks down at her lap. “I know I haven't set the best example. But I'm here now. I'm ready to try.”

I shake my head. Dad's voice says something else, but I'm not here anymore. Not in this room, in this house, in this life. I'm standing in front of a red door, papers flapping in the breeze. All I see are those words, that messy black scrawl like a thousand knives cutting through my skin, revealing a life I didn't even know was being lived right in front of me. A hidden life, with me in the dark.

Then it all connects with a sickening crack.

Sam
wrote those notes.

My head swims and my eyes and nose sting. I'm floating up, up, up. Not on top of the world, but too far above it. I can't decide if I want to laugh or cry. This is really happening. The one guy I choose to trust, choose to give myself to, and he turns out to be nothing but a liar with an unfathomable connection to my family.

Someone who hurt my family.

Both my parents watch me, but I barely register their worried expressions. The enormity of the truth takes over everything. I fumble to standing. Jinx, lying at my feet, mews and bolts upright. I take the stairs two at time, but Mom follows me up and down the hall, past my parents' dark bedroom, past the guest room where her paisley duffel bag sits on the bed. In my doorway, I whirl around, preventing her from coming inside.

“Hadley—”

“You want to know who Sam Bennett is to me, Mom?”

She just stares at me, my own pain and confusion mirrored in her expression.

“He's no one. He's just a guy, like every other guy.”

She steps back, and I close the door on my lie.

She's already here. I stand outside the Green-Eyed Girl, freezing, and watch her through the window dotted with colored leaf decals. She's sitting at the same table where we sat that day we skipped school. She cradles her coffee mug between both of her hands, her long hair braided and pulled over one shoulder. As much as I want to touch her, talk to her, hear her say my name, I'd give anything not to have to walk into this damn café right now.

Hadley called a few hours ago and, I swear to God, relief almost swallowed me. Since I woke up at the crack of dawn, I'd already called her twice, texted her three times, and was ready to risk a run-in with her dad by driving to her house. Mom was holed up in her room and Livy had disappeared after breakfast on her bike, so I roamed the house freely, chewing my nails down to the quick. When she finally called, I thought I'd feel better just hearing her voice, no matter what the words were.

I didn't.

“Have you talked to your mom lately?” I'd asked after her robotic greeting.

“Yeah, she's home now.”

“Oh. Well, that's good, right?”

She didn't answer, so I pushed forward. “I'm really sorry about last night.”

No response.

“Hadley?”

“Yeah. Can I see you later this afternoon?”

We worked out the details, but after I hung up, I felt like I'd chugged a two-liter of Coke on an empty stomach. I still do.

I open the door to the café. A blast of warm air hits me, along with scents of butter and espresso and, I swear, a hint of Hadley. I slide into the chair across from her. She looks up slowly, her expression unchanged. She doesn't meet my eyes.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.” She nods toward her drink. “You want something?”

I shake my head and plunge in. “Listen, last night was so screwed up, but I really wanted to talk to you. I understand it was weird with my mom and I don't blame you for wanting to get the hell out of there, but now I need you to listen—”

“Why is April the cruelest month, Sam?”

Her voice is almost tender, but the words explode in my ears. “What?”

“The first day we met, you were wearing a shirt that said ‘April is the cruelest month.' I asked you if you believed that and you said yes. Why?”

Behind the counter, the milk steamer kicks into gear. A baby wails in the corner. A chair screeches across the tile floor. Suddenly, everything is chaos in my head. Too loud. Too wrong. Too late.

“Maybe it has something to do with this.” She digs into her bag and retrieves a wrinkled slip of paper.

And everything slows down.

Crash.

In
Romeo and Juliet,
stars didn't cross. They collided.

Game over.

Hadley slides the paper across the table.

I don't need to look at it.

I know what it is.

Crash.

“You wrote that,” she says. “You put that on my door.” She finally lifts her eyes to mine and it takes all of my concentration not to look away. Because she's looking at me like I'm a stranger.

I've seen this look before.

I try to push back the memory of that day in April, but it comes bubbling up anyway. Jason St. Clair calling Mom, every ounce of color sucked from her face, his tense voice on the other end of the phone. Mom's eyes landed on me and they went completely dark—dead.

I can't believe you did that, Sam. I can't believe you did that to me, to that family.

Neither one of my parents ever looked at me the same again. Neither one of them bothered to contemplate why a kid would do such a thing. They never even
asked.

Hadley doesn't ask why either. She doesn't even look at me for more than a few seconds before her eyes float away from me.

I want to shake her. I want to ask how the hell she found out, to explain, to deny it, to take her hands in mine and tell her that none of this matters, none of this is about
us.

But I don't. I just sit there, watching her not looking at me, her hands trembling. I try to clear the crud from my mind, try to figure out the right thing to say, but there's nothing. Nothing but the ugly truth that I'm not who she thought I was.

She slides the note back toward her with two fingers and crushes it into her hand. Then she gets up and leaves without saying anything, without ever really looking at me, and I'm left with a mouthful of words that wouldn't have made a difference anyway.

He stays inside the shop for almost an hour. He just sits there, staring into space, alternating between dropping his head in his hands and resting his chin in his palm, fingers picking at the scruff on his cheek. When he finally comes out, I edge down a little in the front seat of my car, torn between wanting to disappear and wanting him to see me so he'll know how much I hate him and love him and every blurry shade of gray in between.

But he doesn't look up.

He hovers on the sidewalk for a few seconds, holds the door open for a mother with twins strapped into a double stroller, picks up a yellow leaf, and runs his thumb over its smooth veins.

The leaf flutters to the ground and he makes his way to his car. When his back is to me, I finally release the sob I've been holding in since last night. I imagine all those tears covering me in a protective sheath that nothing will ever break through again.

The next morning, the smell of pancakes and sizzling bacon lures me from the mountain of warm blankets under which I've been hiding with Jinx. Last night, I didn't offer an explanation about why I refused dinner, and my parents didn't ask. It appears as though the obligatory family meal is now more of a recommendation. I used to hate those dinners, but as I had lain in bed, listening to my parents' even voices filtering up through the floorboards, I felt that kind of sadness you can't explain—a weird sort of déjà vu, homesickness for another life you can't even remember.

Now I shuffle into the kitchen, familiar scents and sounds wrapping around me. Every Sunday used to start like this—eggs and bacon and pancakes, Dad at the stove armed with a spatula and homemade batter. A St. Clair tradition that died an abrupt death, along with everything else, when news of Dad's affair made its ugly appearance.

Which is why I freeze in the doorway of the kitchen. It's not exactly the same. Mom's not here, but Dad has succeeded in destroying the kitchen with all of his previous fervor. He hovers over the stove, humming a song I can't place while he flips silver dollar pancakes onto plates already loaded with bacon and scrambled eggs.

“Dad?”

He whirls, batter-soaked spatula in hand. “Hadley. I'm sorry, did I wake you?”

“No.”

“Good.” He removes the last of the pancakes and flips off the gas stove. “Your mother should be down soon. I thought I'd make us all breakfast.”

“No, thanks. I'll just . . . cereal. I came down for cereal.”

“Oh. All right, then.” He gives me a weak smile, trying to cover up his obvious disappointment, before filling two mugs with coffee.