Suffer Love (6 page)

“Yes, I can.” Kat is one of those girls who has no idea that she's beautiful or funny or talented. Her dad's been out of the picture since she was ten, but until Jocelyn finally kicked him out, he enjoyed whittling his daughter down like a piece of wood about everything from her nonexistent weight problem to an A-minus on a spelling test. When Kat met my dad in the swim class and his gentle voice actually encouraged her through the water, I'm pretty sure it took her a week to realize he was talking to her. Several years later, Rick, who would become her stepdad, wooed her mother with such swoon-inducing tenacity that he restored Kat's confidence in romance, but not so much in herself.

“And what did you say back?” I ask.

“I said thanks.”

Again, I let my eyebrows do the talking.

“What?” she says. “That's a lot for me. Plus, I got flustered. He was just standing there, smiling down at me, and his chest and stomach were all wet and slippery-looking and there were little drops of water on his lower lip, just hanging there, and—oh my God, what is so funny?”

“Nothing, nothing!” I laugh into my hands. “You're just so hilarious when you get all hot and bothered about Rob. It's as if you've spent your pubescent years underground and have just now been set loose. Hide your teenage sons, Woodmont! Rawr!”

She crosses her arms, hands hooked on her elbows. “No. No ‘Rawr'! I'm not hot and bothered. I'm . . . appreciative of his . . . his . . .
form.
”

“You're horny.”

“Hadley!”

“Concupiscent. Libidinous.”

“Hadley Jane!”

“Prurient.”

“I don't even know what those words mean.”

“They mean ‘horny.'”

“God help me.”

I grin and lean my hands on her knees. “Come on, Kitty Kat. Admit it. Rob is so hot that whenever you see him, your panties get a little—”

“Okay, okay!” She slaps her hands over her ears. Kat hates the word
panties.
“Just stop. I want him, all right? I want him so bad, I accidentally moaned a little during Government today when I imagined his Speedo slipping off when he dives into the pool.”

I laugh so hard I snort. “You
moaned?
”

“I was quiet. At least, I think.” Her face is full-on scarlet now, and she picks at her bottom lip, trying to glare at me. “I actually like Rob, you know.”

I nod slowly. Yes, I know. Romance, true love, yadda yadda.

I'm still laughing when my phone rings. I grab it from my pillow and nearly fall off the bed when I see the name flashing on the screen.

“Oh. It's Sam.”

“Sam? The new guy? You know him?”

“Yeah. I'm paired with him for that Shakespeare project in English.”

She jumps onto her knees. “You didn't tell me that! He's in my Government class. He's sort of hot.”

“Did he hear you moan too?”

She smacks my leg. “Answer it!”

I stick my tongue out at her and slide my finger over the surface of the phone. “Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?” I say again.

“Hadley?”

“Yeah.”

“It's Sam Bennett.”

“Hey.”

“Hey. So, listen, I need to change our plans for tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

“I was wondering if you could come here.”

“To your house?” Kat's mouth drops open. “Wouldn't the library be easier?”

“Not for me. Is that a problem?” His voice sounds weird. Not that I know his voice really well or anything. It just sounds . . . strained and sharp. In class, he sounded so relaxed, so amiable.

“Is everything all right?” I ask, my heart suddenly hammering.

“Yeah. Why wouldn't it be?”

“I'm not sure. You just sound . . . funny.” Kat raises her eyebrows at me and Sam clears his throat.

“I'm fine. Can you come here tomorrow after school or not?”

“Um. Sure, that's fine.”

“Great. I'll text you the address.”

“Okay, see you—”

Click.

I flinch and stare at my phone.
Sam B. Call Ended.

“What just happened?” Kat asks.

I manage a weak laugh. “I'm not sure, but apparently I'm going over to his house tomorrow to work on this project.”

Kat frowns and then releases a colossal “
Ohhh.
”

I look at her. “What do you mean, ‘
Ohhh'?
”

“Um. Nothing.”

“Uh-uh. That ‘
Ohhh'
was not a nothing kind of ‘
Ohhh.'
It was a very loaded ‘
Ohhh.'
”

She blows some air into her bangs. “It's just—You were supposed to meet in the library?”

“Yeah.”

“You set that up before the whole locker thing?”

Nod.

“Well, I mean . . . He's new and doesn't really know anyone, but then he saw the locker. So what if he thinks . . .”

“
Ohhh.
You think he wants to hook up with me?”

She shrugs. “I don't know. You said he was acting weird on the phone.”

“He was, but it's not like I'm acquainted with his normal MO.” My stomach somersaults as I think back to English. “Crap, he was talking to Josh before class. And after class.”

“I heard he's a baseball player.”

“Ugh.” I drop my head into my hands. Did Sam really change the place so we could hook up? Not that I consider myself particularly alluring, but it is suspicious considering the whole locker debacle. I run my fingers over the top of my hand and feel suddenly nauseous. He just seemed so different. Like when I looked at him, I saw something I recognized and could understand. I'm not even sure what it was. Something about him was just . . . familiar.

“Hadley, I hate to tell you this, but this is kind of your own—”

“Don't. Don't say it.”

She sighs. “Are you still going to go?”

I pause, thinking. I hear my dad's study door close downstairs, hear the clink of a glass against a bottle in the kitchen. I ball a hand into my comforter. I roll my shoulders back. “Yes. I am.”

Kat groans. “Please don't tell me you're actually going to—”

“There's no way I'm going to let some asshole assume crap about me after reading what a bitter bitch wrote on my locker.” I snap open my vocab book and flip.

Kat's eyes widen, but she shuts up.

Galvanize. Hubris. Inexpedient.

I click my phone off and throw it on my bed. My breath is going in and out way too fast. I can't believe I invited Hadley to my house just to piss off my mother. What the hell is wrong with me? I rub my eyes and walk myself back through the last ten minutes. I scrolled through my iPod. I tapped on Sea Wolf. I opened my calculus book, picked up a tooth-gnawed pencil, and scanned number 11, where I'd left off an hour earlier. Then my fingers were flying over my phone and I was talking to
her.
Inviting
her
to my house.

The entire day was one shitstorm after another. After English, the rest of school went by in a blur. I honestly can't even remember what class I had for seventh period. Mom picked Livy and me up after school and sped like a bat out of hell to the shop to pick up my car, yammering about her
amazing
new job and how
amazing
her students are and what an
amazing
commitment the school has to the arts.

After she paid for my two new tires that had finally rubbed bald on the trip from Atlanta, she went back to her job. Seriously. It's our first day of school, our house looks like a warehouse, and the woman goes back to work—again—to finish tacking posters that say shit like
Imagine
and
Believe to Achieve
on the walls in her classroom. Livy nearly bit a hole through her lip, but neither of us said anything. As usual.

When Livy and I got home, I started dinner. After digging the pots and pans out of a box, I put on some music and took out stuff to make pasta primavera. Easy. Livy set up at the kitchen table and started her homework. As I cut up vegetables and set the water to boil, I kept flicking my eyes to her. I wondered if she had heard the name
St. Clair
drifting through the hallways. She didn't look angsty or anything, but I should probably warn her, just in case. It's been nearly six months since everything happened, but Livy's a little unpredictable these days. The morning we left Atlanta, she came downstairs in a neon blue wig—this sleek bob that actually looked pretty freaking cool, but still. It was a wig. It was blue. Mom spluttered her coffee back into her mug and I'm positive Livy cracked a grin.

“So, Livy,” I said, adding oil to a skillet. “How was your day?”

She shrugged. “Fine, I guess.” Her pencil scritched across her paper, her geometry book open in front of her. Her voice sounded like an automated recording.

“Do you like your teachers?”

“I guess.”

“Did you meet any cool people?”

“Sure.”

“Who?”

“I don't know.”
Scritch, scritch.

I added the pasta to the boiling water, set the timer, and went over to my sister. “Livy.”

She lifted her vacant eyes.

“Mom's not here.” I tugged on the ends of her blond hair. No wig today, but there is a light purple streak in the front. “It's me, remember? Thammy.”

Her mouth twitched at my use of her kid name for me, back when she had a lisp. And then her eyes cleared and her shoulders let go of her neck.

“Now tell me about your day,” I said. “I really want to know. No more vague crap, okay?”

She smiled and nodded. I went back to the stove. For the next hour, she told me everything about school. She and a girl named Annalise bonded over Evanescence (I made a mental note to step up Livy's education on good music), a kid named Jared kept making obscene gestures at her during Biology (I made a mental note to find this asshat and break his legs), and her photography class, which she had been put into accidentally, was the only part of the day that kept her from chewing off her own tongue. Her words, not mine.

“I think I might go to the Photography Club meeting tomorrow after school,” she said.

“Wow. That's serious. You're getting
involved?
”

She laughed and threw a balled-up paper at me. “I don't know, I just really liked it. I was lucky I could get the lens cap off the camera today, but I love the whole idea of capturing these little moments and making them, like, last forever. Mr. Grayson showed us this one photo of a little girl chasing a plastic bag down an alley. I mean, that doesn't sound very interesting, right? But it was. The way the light hit the bag and made it seem like it was alive, the way the girl reached out for it like it was . . . I don't know. More than a bag.” She shrugged and glanced up at me. “Um. It was cool.”

“That's does sound cool, Liv.” I smiled. I hadn't seen her excited about anything in a long time. “When's the meeting over?”

“I think around six-thirty? It's sort of a kick-off-the-year party thing. Annalise will be there too, and she said her mom could give me a ride home.”

I slid the peppers into the hot oil. “Sounds good.”

Then I told her about baseball and Josh, but I had no desire to mention Hadley yet, even if her last name were Jones. Back in Atlanta, Livy was constantly on my case about why I didn't have a girlfriend and whether or not I still talked to Nicole. I expected our time in Woodmont, or wherever the hell we were, to be no different. Livy wasn't exactly a little girl anymore, but seriously, she's my little sister. I wasn't even thinking about telling her that I'd met a girl—a girl I had deemed
magical,
for Christ's sake—but she'd turned out to be a blast from the past of our own personal hell.

As soon as dinner was ready, Mom blew in the door.

“Oh, wonderful. You made dinner,” she said in greeting.

Hello. You're welcome.

She dropped her work bag by the fridge while I piled pasta onto three plates. Livy slammed her books closed and cleared the space so we could all sit down at the table.

We started eating in silence. Mom refused to let us eat in front of the TV. She said dinners were family time. What a joke. I wouldn't mind just me and Livy, so we could talk, but you add Mom to the mix and it's like a few feet of chains have been wrapped around both of our throats.

“How was school, Olivia?” Mom asked.

“Fine.”

“Make any friends?”

“Sure.”

“And your asthma? Any—”

“Fine.”

Mom pressed her lips flat. “What about photography? Will you be all right in there or do you need a schedule change?”

Livy shrugged. “It's fine, I guess.”

Mom nodded and I wiped my mouth with my napkin to cover my grin.

“Did you know we're only about a mile from the Y, Olivia? I signed us up for a family membership,” Mom said while popping a pepper into her mouth. “You can ride your bike there—slowly—and swim a little. What do you think about that?”

“Maybe,” Livy said, and I tapped her foot under the table. She smiled without looking at me. Dad always said Livy had some mermaid blood in her. There was rarely a time from April to October that she wasn't in the pool we had at our old house in Nashville. Not that she was going to smack a kiss on Mom's cheek for the suggestion, but I knew my sister. She'd find her way to the Y sooner or later. It's the only exercise she could do that didn't aggravate her asthma. Something about the warm air and humidity wasn't as hard on the breathing tubes as the conditions of other cardio workouts.

“What about you, Sam?” Mom asked.

“What about me?”

“School?”

“School is school, Mom. Same here as it is everywhere else.”