Heartache and Hope: Heartache Duet Book One

by Jay McLean

  I practically sprint to her room, retrieve it, and come back out, not wanting to miss a thing. I focus mainly on the game while I fiddle with Mom’s prosthetic arm, pretending to clean it and adjust it just so I can watch more of the game.

  The team they’re against, Philips Academy, is at the top on the school district leaderboard and the same team that gave us our one and only loss. And Connor—he’s out for blood. I can see it in the way he plays. Everything is amplified. Every step, every dribble, every shot he takes. He’s nothing less than perfection, and the opposing team knows that because he’s double-teamed, and yet, he’s still managing to carry the team. He scores two three-pointers in a row halfway through the final quarter, giving us a three-point lead, and I don’t hide my squeal this time. I can’t. Mom sits up with a jolt, and I apologize immediately and calm her down. Two minutes to go, and we’re up by five, and I focus on the TV while trying to get Mom’s prosthetic on. “Ava, you’re putting it on wrong.”

  “Just one second, Ma.”

  “Ava!” She yanks the prosthetic out of my hands, and I watch, as if in slow motion, as she throws it across the room, smashing the TV square in the middle.

  “Mama!”

  She shakes her head. Doesn’t stop.

  I gawk, wide-eyed, at the TV as the picture stutters, and then fades, fades, fades until there’s nothing but darkness.

  Rage pulses inside me, beats strong against my flesh. “Why would you do that!” I scream, standing over her.

  She keeps shaking her head, and she won’t fucking quit.

  “Answer me!”

  “Ava!” Trevor yells, coming out of his room. “What the hell’s going on?!”

  Mom stands so fast I almost miss it. She pushes past me, sending me back a step, and then charges, full speed, full strength, right into the TV. It falls back, glass shattering. Mom wails, for no other reason than to wail, and I…

  I yell, tears blinding my vision, “Go to your fucking room!”

  Mom’s laughter is hysterical in the most menacing way.

  I ball my fists at my sides, my jaw clenched.

  “Ava, calm down!” Trevor orders.

  Pressure builds in my chest, and I can’t… I can’t breathe. Through clamped teeth, I seethe, trying to hide my anger, “You need to take her to her room so I can clean up the glass!”

  Trevor’s throat bobs with his swallow as his eyes bore into mine. He nods once. “Okay.”

  He helps Mom into her room, closing the door between us. I pick up my phone with only one thing on my mind. Connor. I need to show him that I’m here. That I care. That I’m trying.

  Ava: Good games, #3.

  Then I take a moment to put myself back together, to hide my anger and my fear and my self-loathing. I’ve never yelled at her like that before. Never. No matter how hard things got… I never raised my voice. At least not to her.

  I get what I need to clean up the glass, careful not to cut myself. It takes an hour on my hands and knees, making sure there are absolutely no shards left so we don’t have a repeat of the last two times she was around broken glass. I go outside to trash what I need to, all the while listening for signs that things will get worse. That we might need to call the crisis team… and it will all be my fault.

  I have one hand back on the front doorknob when a text comes through.

  Connor: Are you fucking serious?

  Connor

  I choked.

  And while the winning team celebrated around me, I collapsed on the hardwood, fatigue setting every muscle ablaze. Failure blocked my airways as I stared up at the arena lights, wondering if this was it.

  Some people peak in high school.

  And that’s as far as they’ll ever go.

  We were one point down with five seconds on the clock, and I choked. I had time, I had space, I had enough muscle memory to go blind into a simple lay-up. I went for the three-pointer. The rest is history.

  I thought all of that was as bad as it would get, and then I opened my locker, reached for my phone, and read her message.

  It’s ironic, really, because while I was on that hardwood, she was the first thing that came to my mind. I thought if I could just leave, if I could go to her, if I could see her, speak to her, then everything would be better. It wouldn’t be perfect, it wouldn’t even be okay, but it would be better.

  But I can’t get to Ava, don’t really want to, and so I search for what I needed from her and find it at the bottom of a bottle of beer. Or six.

  Rhys’s house is full of kids, and I don’t think any of them care that it’s a Sunday night and we have school tomorrow. Most of the team are in the pool house watching the highlights from today’s games. I watch, too, my lids heavy from the booze. I listen to the guys talk about how good they look on camera and how much pussy they think it’s going to get them. And then Karen enters the room, sits on the arm of the couch right next to me. “Tough break, Ledger,” she says, ruffling my hair.

  My head falls forward, and it’s an effort to lift it again.

  I focus back on the screen, and my heart drops, my stomach twisting when I see him—Tony Parsons. From Duke. And he’s shaking hands with the two guys from Philips who had me covered the entire game. At no point today did he shake my hand or even acknowledge that we’d spoken before.

  I drop my head in my hands, tug at my hair and groan the loudest groan in the history of groans. Mitch laughs. “It’s just a fucking game, man.”

  I glance at him, my words sloppy. “Hey, guess what? Fuck you.”

  Karen scoffs, taps me on the shoulder.

  I look up at her.

  “You want to get out of here?”

  Yes.

  But Ava.

  I check my phone. She hasn’t replied. Hasn’t called. And all it does is heighten my frustration. “Why the hell not?”

  I grab another six-pack on the way out and tear into it the second I’m in Karen’s coupe. Top down, I welcome the cold chill against my face.

  I don’t ask Karen where we’re going because Karen seems to have a plan. Karen’s also got good taste in music. I turn up the stereo to full volume and rest my head on the seat. I close my eyes, get comfortable, and don’t bother opening them until the car’s stopped. We’re parked just outside the sports park gate, and Karen turns off the car, filling my ears with silence.

  “Are we breaking and entering, because if so, I should call my dad and warn him about the bail money. We’re poor, Karen.”

  “You’re not poor,” she tells me, her blond hair blowing in the breeze. “You’re middle class. You just live in an area that has too many one-percenters.”

  “Perspective,” I mumble.

  “What?”

  I heave out a breath. “It’s all about perspective. You have good perspective.”

  “Riiiight,” she drawls. “And no, we’re not breaking and entering. Stepdad number five owns this place.” She hops out of the car, taking her keys with her, and uses them to open the giant padlock on the gates.

  “Will you get in trouble?” I ask when she’s back behind the wheel.

  With a shrug, she says, “He gave me a key for a reason.” And then she puts the car in drive and makes her way through the park, around the batting cages, and parks right in the middle of the basketball courts.

  Great.

  More basketball.

  Just what I need.

  “Let’s go, baller.”

  I force my body to move. Hand on the door, pulling at the handle. I use all my weight to push open the door. One leg first, then the other. Karen’s at her trunk and she pulls out a basketball, and if she wants to play one-on-one, I’m noping the fuck out.

  I’m done for the day.

  Dee-plee-ted.

  She stops a foot in front of me, slaps me across the face. Hard.

  “What the fuck?” I cry out, hand to my cheek.

  “Wake the fuck up, Connor! I’m not here to baby you.” She takes the beers from my hand, dumps them in he
r open trunk. “Let’s go.”

  “I don’t want to play,” I whine.

  She eyes me, hand on her hip. “You have ten minutes to sober the fuck up and get back to reality. If this is how you’re going to act after every loss—”

  “It wasn’t just a normal loss.”

  She slaps me again.

  “What the fuck, woman! Knock it off.”

  “Ten minutes,” she says, setting a timer on her watch. “I’ll wait.”

  I sit my ass on the ground, legs bent in front of me, arms outstretched behind me. And I look up at the stars, breathe fresh air into my lungs, again and again, and I let the coolness of it wash through me, my vision slowly returning to normal.

  I ask, because it’s something I’ve often wondered, “Why did you and Ava stop being friends?”

  Karen’s quiet a moment, and when I glance at her, she’s sitting cross-legged, staring down at her hands. “I don’t think we ever really stopped. Things just got too hard after everything with her mom. We couldn’t really hang out, and too many calls went unanswered, and after a while, I just stopped trying to reach out to her.” She looks up now, her eyes on me. “I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault. At least I hope she doesn’t feel like I’m to blame. I tried, Connor. We all did, but…”

  “It got too hard,” I finish for her.

  She nods. “How are you guys doing?”

  I shrug. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  “You brought it up.”

  “Then I’ll bring it back down.”

  Her watch beeps, and she gets to her feet. “Time’s up.”

  Moaning, I stand, catch the ball she throws at my chest.

  “Where were you?” she asks, pointing to the three-point line.

  “What do you mean?”

  She stands around the area where I made my choke shot. “Was it here?”

  “About, yeah.”

  She motions for me to join her at that spot, and so I do. I stand there while she walks off the court.

  “Shoot your shot,” she says.

  I chuckle. “I’m still kind of drunk.”

  “Do it anyway.”

  I shoot, sink it.

  She grabs the ball, throws it back. “Again.”

  I do it again.

  She returns the ball to me. “Again.”

  I make the next five shots. Miss one. Then sink the next two.

  When I’m done, she takes possession of the ball and holds it to her hip. “Nine out of ten and you’re drunk, Connor,” she states.

  “So, what you’re saying is that I should’ve made the shot, because I know this, Karen. But thanks for reminding me.”

  “No.” She shakes her head. Adamant. “What I’m saying is that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” She throws the ball back.

  Dribbling lazily, I retort, “You’re just quoting Wayne Gretzky, and that’s hockey—”

  “Shut up,” she laughs out. “Now I’ve forgotten my point. It was going to be something amazing about 90% of the shots made or… something.”

  “I get your point,” I say through a chuckle. “And I appreciate what you’re saying, even if it doesn’t really make sense.”

  She rolls her eyes and moves toward me, hands out asking for the ball. I throw it to her and step aside as she takes over my position. She sinks a three-pointer effortlessly. “Damn. Skills much?”

  Her eyes narrow. “You know I’m captain of the girls’ basketball team, right?”

  “I didn’t even know we had a girls’ basketball team.”

  She asked for no mercy during our one-on-one, so I beat her 21-3. I do a celebratory Steph Curry dance around her. She smirks, then says, “Hey, who am I?” She drops to the ground, on her back, and looks up at the sky. “Boo hoo. I missed a three-pointer under immense pressure, and now my life is over. Wahhh.”

  I stand over her, brows bunched. “You’re kind of a bitch.”

  “I kind of know this already.”

  I lie down next to her, the ball between us, and stare up at the darkness above.

  “What’s your favorite game of all time?” she asks.

  “Umm… 1980. Game 6, Lakers versus 76ers.”

  “Yesss. Magic came to play!” she whoops.

  “You?” I ask.

  “Without a doubt, 1976, Game 5, Celtics versus Suns.”

  I shake my head. “Such a weak answer. That’s everyone’s go-to. Do you like the actual game or the fight?”

  “I mean, it went triple OT, so it was a good game, but man, I do get all tingly between the legs when I see guys beating the shit out of each other.”

  “You’re weird.”

  “No, you.”

  Ava

  “Mama, stop, please!” I cry out. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.” I hold her head to my chest, try to stop her from banging it against her bedroom door like she has been for the past fifteen minutes.

  I can barely see through the tears of frustration constantly filling my eyes, and now Trevor’s at the front door letting the crisis workers in. More money wasted.

  Mom stops with the headbanging, only to start smacking the heel of her palm against her head. She’s rocking back and forth, her knees up between us, and I don’t know how much longer I can take this. “Just stop, Mama!”

  “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can! I don’t understand—”

  “What don’t you understand?” she screams so loud I release my hold. She continues with the pounding, and I grasp her arm, try to get her to stop. “I don’t want to be here, Ava!”

  “Don’t say that!” I cry out.

  She glares up at me, eyes wide. “I. Don’t. Want. To. Be. HERE!”

  I cower, wiping the tears off my cheeks with the back of my hands, my breaths coming out in puffs. “I know!” I yell, exhausted. Mentally. Physically. All of it. “I know you don’t want to be here, but I need you here! Why can’t you see that?!” I break off on a sob. “Look at me!” I clutch a hand to my chest to stop the pain. So much pain. Years and years of it. “This is killing me as much as it is you!” I try to push down my hurt, but it just grows and grows and grows, every fucking day, and I’m done. “I can’t do this anymore,” I cry. “I just can’t.”

  “I never asked you to!” she screams, her spit flying. “I hate you for what you did to me, Ava! I hate you.”

  Everything inside me stops.

  My breaths.

  My pulse.

  My cries.

  I look at her, try to find any semblance of the woman I love, the mother who raised me. But she’s gone. She’s so far gone, and there’s nothing left of her. And nothing left of me. “I’m trying,” I whisper, getting to my feet. My chest heaves, but I’m breathless. Lifeless. “I’m trying so fucking hard, and it’s not enough. It never will be.”

  I grab my phone before storming past Trevor and the crisis workers and run outside.

  I need time.

  I need space.

  I need air.

  I need Connor.

  I stand in front of his house with the phone in my hand, and I remember his text, barely. The phone hardly visible through my tears, I try to calm down, my thumbs searching for the last couple of minutes of his game.

  I need to be prepared.

  I need to be present.

  For him.

  I find the video, skim until the end, my heart dropping, lips parting when I watch it back.

  I don’t think. I just run to his window and knock, guilt building a solid fortress in my stomach. When enough time passes and there’s no sign of life, I knock again. Wait. I check for his car, but it isn’t there, and I knock again and again and again, getting louder each time.

  My heavy breaths create a fog in front of my eyes and inside my mind, and I check the time, 2:27 a.m. I sniff back my cries, dial his number and hold the phone to my ear.

  It rings on my end, but it’s silent in his room, and I have no idea where he could be. My self-doubt
and insecurities fight for a space in my thoughts, and I don’t have the energy to push them away. The call connects to his voicemail, and I suck in a breath, try to replace my weakness for courage.

  Vincit qui se vincit.

  “Hey, Connor. It’s me…”

  Chapter 48

  Ava

  It’s been a long time since I’ve just “hung out” in the hallways at school, and maybe that’s why I feel like there are even more stares, more whispers than usual. I sit in front of Connor’s locker, my legs crossed and my head down, waiting for him. I want to catch him after practice and before psych so we can at least get a few minutes to talk. I need to explain my stupid text.

  I have my headphones in, but no music to accompany it. I wear them so I’ll be left alone, but I’ll still be able to hear Connor coming. Instead, I’m hearing people mock me as they walk past, and then two sets of feet, girls, stop in front of me. I don’t look up when they giggle to themselves. Not even when one of them says, “I bet she has no idea what he gets up to when she’s not around.”

  My head spins, my stomach does, too, and I don’t… I don’t understand what they’re saying. All I know is that Connor wasn’t home in the early hours of the morning. And so maybe they’re right. Maybe I don’t know him at all.

  Another set of feet stops beside me, and I recognize them as Connor’s. “Hey.”

  I take a quick moment to get myself together before looking up at him. His face is blanched, dark circles around his heavy eyelids. His body’s slumped as if it’s a task to remain upright, and I get to my feet, say, “Hey.” I ignore the ache in my chest when he bypasses our usual morning kiss and goes straight for his locker, throwing his bag in without taking anything out.

  He slams his locker shut, then leans against it, his hands in his pockets when he says, “What’s up?”

  His eyes are on mine, but the soul behind them… it isn’t Connor.

  I yank the headphones out of my ears and cross my arms over my chest. I feel so little, and I need him to stop making me feel like that. “I’ve been trying to call you,” I murmur.