The Hardest Fall

by Ella Maise

  “Go, Zoe,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Since Dylan had moved in, Mark had never once come to the apartment. There had been a handful of times he’d invited me to meet somewhere far away from campus—far away from watchful eyes—but more often than not, he had stood me up. In months, I’d seen him a total of three times, or maybe four. On the most recent occasions, he had barely even looked me in the face. The guy who acted like he was interested in getting to know me had disappeared somewhere between my sophomore and junior years, and I was an idiot.

  I stepped inside and panicked for a moment as I wondered where Dylan was.

  Mark didn’t waste any time walking past me into the living room. His posture was rigid, his knuckles already white.

  “Tell me what this is all about,” he ordered when I was standing close enough.

  “What?”

  “Don’t make me repeat myself, Zoe. Where did this thing about telling Dylan everything come from?”

  He couldn’t be that blind, could he?

  “I like him,” I said slowly. “We’re more than just friends.” Just saying it out loud made my stomach tighten in the best way possible. If I hadn’t been staring at Mark’s angry face, I’m sure I would’ve grinned.

  “You can’t be this stupid.”

  I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth and chose not to reply.

  “He is Chris’s friend, Zoe. He’ll tell him everything.”

  “He won’t, but why does it matter? We’re going to tell him after the last game anyway.” He gave me a look filled with hatred, and I tried to keep my expression neutral. “We are going to tell him, right?”

  In jerky movements, he ran his hand through his hair and muttered something under his breath as he looked out the window.

  I took a step back and the backs of my calves hit the couch, so I sat my ass down.

  “Even after the last game, you weren’t going to let me tell him, were you? You’ll never tell him he has a sister.”

  Deep down, I’d always known. If not, I was pretty stupid, and I really didn’t want to believe I was that stupid. At any time I could’ve walked up to Chris and struck up a conversation, but I didn’t because I was partly afraid of how he’d react. I didn’t know him, didn’t want to deal with rejection, so I let Mark put it off. Also, I think secretly I wanted to give Mark the benefit of the doubt, wanted him to want to be a part of my life. He was my biological father after all, and loving what came from you was instinctive, wasn’t it? Considering the look on Mark’s face, I doubted that was the case with us.

  “Why did you even let me come here? To Los Angeles? You don’t want me near Chris. You don’t want to know me. My freshman year, the way you were with me—was that all a lie? Were you just acting and lying to keep me quiet?”

  He turned to face me and smoothed down the edges of his mouth with his fingers. “It’s not that simple. There are things you don’t know.”

  “What things?” I asked. Frustrated, I hit the couch cushion with my palm. “Tell me then. I’m so tired of this back and forth between us. We’re getting nowhere. What things do I not know? Mom said you wanted me here. She said you wanted to get to know me, she said you were excited. She told you I wanted to meet him, that’s the whole reason—he is the whole reason I wanted to come here. I didn’t come here on a whim. I could’ve called Chris and gotten it done with, but you said you wanted to see me, meet me. What am I missing here?”

  “Your fucking mom lied to you, all right? That’s what you’re missing. She did nothing but lie to everyone in her life. Even in her grave, she is still fucking with me.”

  I looked at him in shock. His salt and pepper hair was thick, no signs of thinning, and I remembered feeling so silly for noticing it when I met him. When he met my stunned gaze, I stared back at my own eyes: green mixed in with hazel. What a cruel joke. Before I could even think straight enough to come up with an answer, he kept going.

  “Did she tell you we were in love?”

  She had, but I didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to need my participation in the conversation anyway. He never did.

  He shook his head and kept breaking my heart, disgust written all over his face.

  “We fucked,” he snapped, opening his arms in exasperation. “We fucked behind my wife’s back, her best friend. That’s what we did, Zoe. There was no falling in love, just mindless, careless sex because I was having problems with my wife, because we couldn’t have kids, because… It was nothing more than a mistake. After I convinced her to give Chris up, she wanted to go back to the way we were and I didn’t. That’s it. I lied to her so I could get my son. That’s where the story ends. You were just another one of our mistakes. It only happened once or twice after Chris, and then she was pregnant again.”

  My frown got deeper, and I stood up. “No, you’re wrong. You didn’t know about me. She didn’t tell you she was pregnant.”

  He gave me a long look and shook his head. “I knew about you. I paid her to end the pregnancy. She took the money, told me it was done, and then moved to New York.”

  We were standing too close so I took a few steps back and put the couch between us. If I could have, I’d have just walked straight out of L.A. without even a glance back.

  “What I didn’t know was that she actually lied to me and kept it—that I only learned when she called to tell me about her health issues. She begged me to come see her. When she realized I wasn’t going to do that, she told me about you. Maybe she thought that would change my mind, or maybe she thought something else. I have no fucking clue what she was thinking lying to me about ending the pregnancy.”

  I felt like there was someone sitting on my chest, crushing it. My mom and I had had a lot of issues, and there’d been a lot of anger toward the end because of the things she’d kept from me, but I had come to terms with everything. I’d accepted it. It was her life, after all, and it wasn’t like I could go back in time and hope she didn’t become a cheater the second time around. I couldn’t make her reconsider giving up Chris. I couldn’t tell her Mark was a liar and she would be stupid to believe any word out of his mouth. Even that first night she had sat me down on the edge of her sick bed to tell me about my ‘real father,’ I hadn’t felt as helpless as I did standing there in front of Mark.

  “Why did you ask me to come here?”

  “She wanted you with me.”

  “I already have a dad, her husband. She wouldn’t—”

  “You don’t get it, do you? Your mom was just trying to get my attention, threatening me with calling Emily and Chris, and she’d already told you everything. You would have come here to find Chris with or without me. At least this way I got to protect my son. At least this way he can focus on his future and not this nonsense.”

  Just like that, I was done with him. Every painful, forced conversation we’d had since I stepped foot in L.A. made much more sense. Was I sad? Yes, but only because I’d been stupid enough to believe he was interested in getting to know me when really he wanted nothing to do with me.

  I realized I was holding myself up, hugging my arms. Dropping my hands to my sides, I straightened my spine and nodded. “Now that I’m caught up on everything, I think I want you to leave.”

  “This is my apartment.”

  “And you can have it all to yourself. I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

  “You’re going back to Phoenix?”

  He could wish that all day every day, but I wasn’t gonna do a single thing to make life easier for him anymore.

  I let out a forced laugh, but it came out more like a cough. “I’m sure you’d love that, but no. I have another year and a half of school, and I’m not going anywhere until then. Don’t worry though, you won’t see me anymore. Neither one of us wants to see the other, so at least we have that in common. It should be a relief to you.”

  “That’s fine,” he said, looking at his feet with a frown and nodding to himself. “You can leave L.A. after you graduate.”
/>   “I’ll leave whenever I want to leave. I don’t need your permission to do anything—not anymore.”

  “Fine, do whatever the hell you want. Just stay away from my family.”

  I felt nothing, absolutely nothing for this man, and the realization was staggering. I was done listening to him, and that definitely felt good, like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. He wouldn’t get to have a say in anything anymore, not who I dated, not who I talked to—nothing.

  I chose to stay quiet, and Mark didn’t like that. He started walking toward me.

  “You’re not going to tell Dylan a single thing.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not going to work for me. Dylan isn’t your family,” I said in a controlled voice. Inside I was boiling with anger as my pulse rocketed.

  “I’m not playing with you, Zoe. You’re not going to tell my son’s best friend a single thing.”

  “I won’t lie to him anymore. We’re not just friends.”

  “Who do you think you are? Just months ago, he was fighting with his teammates over another girl. Do you think you mean something? He’s an athlete with a promising future ahead of him—he’ll find someone else in less than a week.”

  “No. He thinks I’m sleeping with you, and because of you, I couldn’t even correct him. If you think you can stop me from—”

  Before the words could leave my mouth, he was right in front of me and there was a loud crack in the room then an intense stinging on my face. It echoed in my ears and my cheek burned with a pain I’d never felt before. I stared at my feet in shock and touched my skin with my fingers when the pain seemed to radiate in pulses. Before I could think, before I even knew how to react, Mark’s fingers were grasping my chin and he was forcing me to look at him. My hand dropped to my side and I finally looked up into his familiar eyes. The only difference was that mine were filling with tears while his were overflowing with anger.

  “I didn’t bring you here so you could fuck the football team. You’re just like your mom, aren’t you? Just a slut going after football players.” He wasn’t yelling anymore, but his face and throat were red, and I could feel his spit on my face as he hissed at me. “That’s what your mom did before she fell into my bed. God knows how many of my teammates had their fun with her, and the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, does it, Zoe?” My heart beating in my throat, I kept silent but tried to escape his grip. His fingers only tightened further. “It involves my family, so I am the one who decides, not you—never forget that. You’re not going to tell anyone anything. I don’t care what Dylan thinks of our relationship. I don’t care if he thinks I’m sleeping with some girl he thinks he’s interested in. You keep your mouth shut and stay away. If you think you can go behind my back and still talk to Dylan, think again. You breathe a word to him, I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure he won’t have a future playing football, starting with the team’s last game. I see you anywhere near him, he is out of the game this week, and with all the recruiters watching them—”

  Before he could finish his threat, the apartment door opened and I knew Dylan had walked in. For a moment I panicked and tried yet again to move my face away from Mark’s grip, but there was no point. I was stuck until Mark decided to let me go after seconds that felt like they lasted years. I turned my head. Dylan looked so calm, just staring at me with his blue eyes as if he wasn’t surprised, as if he wasn’t hurting.

  I just stood there, my eyes caught in his stare. Suddenly the sting on my cheek was gone and the pain I felt in my chest took over.

  “I think it’s time for you to find another place to stay, Dylan,” Mark said, and I jerked back, noticing how close we were standing.

  A chill rushed through me and I stepped away from Mark, discreetly rubbing the spot on my chin where he had touched me. My stomach in knots, I looked into Dylan’s eyes until I couldn’t anymore. Would he understand that I’d needed him? That I wanted him to take my hand, link our fingers and take me away? He didn’t. The moment I broke eye contact, he spoke up.

  “Is it, Zoe?” Dylan asked, and my eyes flew up to his again.

  “Dylan—” Mark started.

  He raised his voice and spoke over Mark. “I want to hear it from her.”

  My breath got caught in my throat and I couldn’t say a single word. Mark could’ve held a gun to my head, yet I still wouldn’t have been able to say, Yes, Dylan, I think you should leave.

  With Mark in the room, I couldn’t give him the long overdue explanation either, not when I knew one wrong word out of my mouth could cost Dylan his future, one he’d been working toward his whole life. I didn’t know if Mark was being truthful with his threat, but I couldn’t chance it, not on something that important.

  I was so lost in my own thoughts, going over everything, trying to come up with a solution, an answer, I only looked up when I heard the apartment door gently close.

  That quiet click broke something in me and I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. There wasn’t enough air in the world, not after he left, not when I was standing in the same room as Mark. Realizing I was on the verge of having a panic attack, I pressed my hand to my chest in the hopes of slowing down my aching heart and tried to ignore the fact that I was feeling dizzy and hot and cold all at the same time.

  After a few minutes of struggling passed and I had it under control enough that I knew I could move, I swallowed everything I wanted to say to Mark and headed toward my room in the back of the apartment.

  “Where are you going?” Mark asked.

  I just kept walking.

  “I’m talking to you, Zoe!” Mark shouted, raising his voice for the first time, causing me to flinch, yet I still walked away without a backward glance.

  My first stop was the bathroom, and that’s when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My face was flushed, my eyes big and lifeless. The left side of my cheek was a darker shade of red than my right, the sting had come back with a vengeance, and there was a bonus ache accompanying it. I wondered if Dylan would have stayed if he’d seen the harsh redness of my skin. I tilted my head up and realized my neck didn’t look pretty either with all the bruising.

  None of it mattered though. None of what I was seeing hurt worse than the ache in my heart.

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to look away. Grabbing a hair tie, I put my hair up in a ponytail and started grabbing everything. Then I went to my bedroom and made neat piles of my clothes on my bed. Dragging my suitcases out, I packed every single thing I owned. It took me fifteen minutes.

  Tugging my luggage through the hallway, I stopped next to the door and got my keys out of the pocket of my jacket. I found the two that didn’t belong to me and pulled them off of my purple key ring. I looked up and saw that Mark was sitting on the couch, his back to me, shoulders hunched forward as he held his head in his hands.

  My dad had sat just like that three and a half years ago when I’d learned that he wasn’t my real father. He’d been upset because he thought I’d be angry at him for lying all those years, but how could I? How could I be angry at someone who loved me every single day of my existence even though I wasn’t his blood? Seeing Mark sitting like that…that picture of him bothered me. What had he lost?

  Nothing.

  It was either walk farther into the apartment and place the keys on the kitchen counter or just drop them and leave. I chose to go with the latter and simply let them drop on the hardwood floor. Not even the sharp sound the metal objects made caused him to flinch or look up.

  I stepped outside without uttering a single word, and he did nothing to stop me. He was free at last, I supposed.

  Still shell-shocked, I stood in front of the apartment door and tried to think. It was pretty late, but I could call an Uber and get to Jared’s place, or I could… It was stupid of me to hesitate—where else would I go?

  After grabbing the handle of one of the suitcases, I was reaching for the other when Ms. Hilda opened her door. She was the last human being
on earth I wanted to talk to. Well…let’s say she was second to last, right before Mark. I ignored her completely and started to move. At first she said nothing, but the silence didn’t last long. It never lasted when it came to her.

  “Where are you going, Miss Clarke?”

  “Ms. Hilda, this is not—”

  “I heard everything.”

  “Good for you. Have a nice life.”

  I was just about to pass her to reach the stairs, but she stepped in front of me. Before I could dodge her, she got a surprisingly strong grip on my chin and started examining my cheek.

  When I drew back, she harrumphed and let go of me.

  “You could’ve told me you weren’t his mistress, you know.”

  I pressed my lips together, and my grip on my bags tightened. “If you’ll get out of—”

  “Oh, stop it. Get inside. I’m not gonna lose sleep because of you, wondering where you are.”

  “Please!” I raised my voice. “Get out of my way.”

  Her eyes narrowed at me and she stood straighter. “Do you want him to come out here? I didn’t think so. It’s midnight. Where will you go?”

  “Ms. Hilda—”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, just call me Hilda.”

  Exasperated and pretty much over my limit for how much crap I could take in one night, I tried again. “I just moved out, as you can see. I’m going to my friend’s place. If you could just—”

  “You’re not doing anything of the sort.” Despite my protests, she yanked one of my suitcases from my hand and walked straight into her apartment.

  “Ms. Hilda! What are you doing?”

  She came back and took the other one. “I know I’m not the easiest neighbor to have, but if you think I’m going to let you leave looking like that, you’re wrong, Miss Clarke. Now you either keep standing there and wait for that monster to walk out and see you or you get inside and regroup.”

  Pinching the bridge of my nose, I took a deep breath and exhaled. When I looked up, I saw her standing in the doorway, waiting for me.

  “Just for tonight.”