by Stacy Borel
When we got outside Dodger, Marvin, some kid from down the street I hardly saw, and myself were one team. Wrigley, Claire, and two kids from Dodger’s class were banded together. For the most part, we were pretty equal. Dodger announced the rules, then we were off. I was small so I could hide easily and jump out when I needed. Claire was the first one out in each round. We played three rounds total before she’d decided she was bored and wasn’t doing it anymore. Good, go back in the house.
I was grabbing another cup of lemonade that Donna had brought out, when I saw Wrigley standing by himself. Was this my moment? Claire had disappeared and I didn’t want to go home without letting him know I liked him. He was standing by the grill on the patio, while I was slightly around the corner by the pergola. He couldn’t see me, but I could see him.
You can do this, Hadley. You prepared, you know your speech. You know you’re cute and you have proven you can play with the boys. This is your shot. My internal pep talk gave me the bravery to begin to approach him, but then the kid from down the street ran up to him. I went back to my spot and listened. Dad told me that eavesdropping was rude, but I wasn’t listening to be nosy, I was listening so I knew when I’d get my chance again. Something they were talking about caught my attention. They mentioned my name, and I listened harder.
“So that Claire girl, she in your class?” the boy asked.
“Yeah.”
“Cool. She seems to like you, Dude.”
Wrigley tried to play it off. “I guess. But she likes everyone that’s on the baseball team in my class.”
“Well, she’s pretty.”
“Yeah.”
“What about Hadley?”
“What about her?” Wrigley questioned.
“She’s totally into you dude.”
“No she’s not.”
The kids laughed. “Oh please, she’s more obvious than the other girl. She twirls her hair when she’s around you and looks at you with googly eyes. Girl practically wants to make out with you.”
Wrigley made a face of disgust. “Gross! Hadley isn’t going to kiss me.”
The kid made some kissing sounds. “You sure about that? She’s here an awful lot.”
I could tell he was getting annoyed, as he poked at his dad’s fire pit with a stick. “Look Dude, Hadley is just a girl down the street who comes here with her mom all the time. She’s annoying and I wouldn’t let her kiss me even if she paid me a million dollars.”
The kid raised his hands in the air in surrender. “Okay okay, you’ve made your point.”
I didn’t want to listen to anymore. My heart had just been ripped out of my chest, thrown on the ground, where it was kicked around and stomped on. He’d called me gross and annoying. He was only nice to me because his mom was making him. I backed away quickly and quietly, but I needed to leave. I knew I would get in trouble for running home without telling my mom where I was, but I was panicking and could feel the tears pouring down my face. My stomach was churning and I could feel the food from lunch wanting to come up. I got to the gate at the side of the house before I bent at the waist and let everything out. I heaved, and gasped for air. I didn’t know how someone who I’d grown up with and been around so much, could be so mean. I’d never heard him speak so cruelly. And it was aimed right at me. Opening the gate, I darted out in the front yard and hit the sidewalk running as fast as my feet would let me. My lungs were burning and I was sobbing by the time I made it to my own yard. My dad was on the front porch lifting a hammer in the air about to hit a nail when he caught sight of me. He dropped the hammer and raced to me.
“Hadley? Hadley, baby what’s the matter? Are you okay?”
I could only tuck my face into his chest and cry. My whole body shook. Never in my life had I cried this hard. My nose was stopped up and cheeks were soaked. Words wouldn’t come out and I didn’t want them to. What would I say? ‘No Dad, I’m not okay. Wrigley hates me and I love him.’ That sounded just as stupid in my head as it would out loud.
“Hadley, I need you to tell me what happened. Where’s your mother?”
Nothing was working on me. My arm wouldn’t even rise to point to down the street. A loud sob bubbled up my throat and it made my dad squeeze me a little tighter. It was like he was trying to hold the pieces of me together before they all fell apart in the grass. The biggest piece was left behind at the Brooks’ residence. My heart was shattered and it would never be the same again. My mom always told me that I was an old soul and I felt things deeply. I was an emotional child, but I understood people in a way most kids my age didn’t. This was one of those times that I knew I had been damaged beyond repair. I should have never opened myself up to being hurt like that, but I was just a kid so what did I know.
My dad stood up and carried me into the house. I had my arms and legs wrapped around his neck and waist. He was the only man that I knew loved me. My dad was my rock. He was the center of my universe and was someone I wanted to find in another person as I got older, so I could marry them and be as happy as him and my mom were. But why didn’t he tell me it would be so hard? Why didn’t he tell me that boys were stupid and I shouldn’t even try till I was like, thirty? He should have warned me.
He sat me down on the couch and pulled my arms from around him. “Sit right here. I’m going to call down to your mom so she knows where you are, okay? I’ll bring you back a glass of water.”
I was certain I was a mess. I just looked down at the hardwood floor and stayed silent. My eyes burned, and I used my arm to wipe snot away from my upper lip. Anger flared in me. Now that’s what’s gross Wrigley Brooks. It was nasty to look at. The wet glistening on my arm from something he caused. I was not gross. I was a person. He was the only boy I’d ever liked, and he ruined me. I never wanted to go to the Brooks’ house again. I straightened my back and took a deep, ragged breath. My body quivered from the crying. I was thanking my lucky stars I’d never really told anyone I liked him. How embarrassing would that have been if I showed up at school and people asked me how it went?
Dad came back with some water and tried asking me a few more questions. I just nodded my head yes or no, instead of speaking. I didn’t feel strong enough to let words come out without the need to cry again.
“Dad, can I go take a bath?” I didn’t want to feel so dirty and ‘gross’ anymore.
“Of course, Princess. I wish you would tell me what happened.”
He was looking at me with pity in his eyes. I got up from the couch and dragged my feet as I climbed the stairs. My stomach felt empty, my body felt soar and lacked energy. When I was in the bathroom, I could hear my mom had come in downstairs. She was talking quietly with my dad. She mentioned something about calling Donna to ask the boys if something had happened. I wanted to race out and scream ‘no don’t’, but I stayed put. They wouldn’t even know what happened. They never even saw me. Wrigley never saw me. He never saw that I tried to be pretty for him. He never saw that I always did a little extra to get his attention. He was blind to me. He only noticed girls like Claire. The ones who weren’t deserving of attention because it’s all they ever got from boys.
In the mirror, I watched a tear stream down my cheek. I let it go without wiping it away. I never wanted to feel this way again. I never wanted to like another boy. I never wanted to feel the cruelty of words from someone I cared about. I never wanted to try to be prettier for someone that was so mean. Wrigley Brooks was nothing like I’d thought he was. He was a faker. He was an actor who played how his mom wanted him to and when she wasn’t there, he was someone that fit in with all the other boys who teased girls and the nerds in school. He was nothing like I thought he was. I climbed into the water that I’d started and let my body sink down and watch it fill. I let the water get as high as covering my lips before I used my toes to shut it off.
Now…I wondered how long it would take for me to erase Wrigley from my heart so I no longer felt this emotion towards him.
Chapter Six
BUZZ�
�BUZZ…BUZZ.
“Hadley, if your phone goes off one more time, I might flush it down the toilet,” Aurora growled from her side of the room.
“Hmmm?” I was lying face down and wasn’t paying attention. I was having the most bizarre dreams. Something about knights, jousting, and men hitting each other with baseball bats.
Buzz…buzz.
Aurora slung her covers off and jumped up. She speared me with an angry gaze...clearly not a morning person. “I’m not kidding Hadley, whoever that is has a death wish. It’s freaking seven in the morning on a Saturday. Nothing is that fucking important to keep messaging you.”
My phone was going off? I looked down where it was sitting on the floor and saw the light on the screen just before it shut off. Holy crap, did that say two missed called and five text messages? I blinked, my brain not ready to wake for the day. Aurora got up and padded to the bathroom. When she shut the door, I reached down and picked up my phone. What in the ever loving hell… all of the notifications were from Wrigley. I rolled over and brushed my hair out of my face.
Wrigley: Wakey wakey come find the snakey.
Wrigley: Ok wait! That didn’t come out the way I meant.
Wrigley: I’m starting to think I’m not as funny as I think.
Wrigley: Hadley, wake up!
Wrigley: I’m going to call.
I must’ve just missed his call when Aurora had woken me up. Was he crazy? His first text had my mind going places it definitely shouldn’t be going. What did he expect me to do with all of this? When he said he would text, I didn’t actually expect him to. It was too early for this crap. And he wasn’t supposed to follow through with the things he said. The water was running in the bathroom and I felt like I needed an IV drip of coffee. I sat up and set my phone down, choosing to ignore the texts for now. I saw no reason to respond. He never cared before, I didn’t expect him to keep trying.
Getting up, I went to the coffee pot, but I wasn’t the one who normally made it. I was pretty sure I might be able to figure it out and not ruin it. Besides I watched my parents do it all the time, how hard could it be? I filled the coffee urn up, but when I got to the part with scooping the grounds into the filter, I had no clue how many scoops I needed. Going on a whim, I dumped seven scoops and shrugged my shoulders. Good enough. My phone buzzed again. My eyes widened and I held perfectly still as I looked at the offending object on my bed. It was like I had stepped on an IUD and triggered a pressure plate. If I moved so much as a muscle, the whole building would go up in smoke.
I heard footsteps beside me. “What are we doing?” Aurora whispered as she looked at my bed with me.
“Shhh.” I hushed her.
“I think I’m missing something.” She spoke out of the corner of her mouth, holding just as still as me.
“I said shhh, it’s going to happen again.” As if on cue, my phone buzzed. My eyes grew wider. “That!”
She dropped her arms that she had been holding up just to be dramatic. “You got a text. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is I don’t get texts.”
I knew she had rolled her eyes at me as she walked over to the coffee pot. The smell of the fresh brewed coffee filled the room and she smiled as she poured herself a cup. When she started coughing up a storm, I twisted around and watched her gasp for air. She dumped the cup in the sink and stuck her mouth under the running faucet to get the taste out of her mouth.
“Hadley, what the fuck did you do to the coffee?”
“Too strong?”
She was holding the pot up to the light trying to see into it. “Uh, yeah. I’m pretty sure I got a mouth full of grounds.”
“Oops.” I said sheepishly.
She dumped it and started to make it the way she always did. “So, what’s the deal with the text messages?”
I peered at my bed over my shoulder. “It’s from Wrigley.”
She set the pot down loudly on the counter and water sloshed around. “What?”
I shrugged. “I don’t get it. It’s like he’s on some sort of pity mission to be my friend or something.” She didn’t know the details of our chat yesterday because she’d wanted to give me every detail about the blond guy she was interested in.
Aurora was looking at me like I’d sprung a second head. “He’s not doing it for any other reason other than you got his attention.”
I shook my head. “No.”
She walked over to my bed and picked up my phone. I cringed when she opened the messages and read them out loud. She giggled at the first one. “Hadley, he’s flirting.”
“Don’t go there. Wrigley has never and will never flirt with me.”
She tossed my phone back on the bed and walked over to finish what she’d started. “I’m going to make your cup a little stronger, ’cause you clearly need to wake up. Do you wanna know what the last text said?”
Of course I did, but then again, I didn’t. “What?”
“He said he was on his way over.” A devilish grin appeared on her face.
“You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not. Check.” I must’ve had a look of sheer panic on my face because she laughed and said, “Well, that reaction right there tells me that you do, in fact, like him.”
I ignored her and walked over to my phone. Fine, I liked him. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped liking him. I’ve attempted many times over the years to unlike Wrigley Brooks, and it has been failed efforts on my part. I’ve simply taught myself how to live with it, and how to hate-like him. It was a thing. Picking up my phone, I went to the texts and read the last message.
Wrigley: Hadley I know UR awake by now. You have ten min to text back or I’m coming over.
Oh shit. I looked at the time on the top of the screen. When was this text sent? My eyes darted all over the screen. I had one minute to spare. As quickly as I could, I typed back to him. Doing my best to sound nonchalant, and unaffected.
I just woke up.
I added the sleeping emoji for good measure.
No need to come over but good morning.
I nodded. There, that didn’t sound needy or dumb.
“Did you dodge the bullet?” Aurora seemed pretty pleased with herself as she slipped on a tank top that had been laying on the floor, then poured a cup of coffee.
I gawked at my phone. Three little dots showed up indicating he was typing back. “Huh?” I couldn’t pry my eyes away. “Oh, uh yeah, I think so.”
When she flopped down on her bed, she said, “If he’s coming over, you need to tell him to bring Bishop with him. But I’m going to need ample warning. The coffee hasn’t kicked in yet, and he woke me about three hours too early. There’s dark circles under my eyes.” She pointed at them as if I’d see something that wasn’t there.
I waved my hand at her to hush. “He’s not coming over. He was joking.” Why aren’t those dots going away or words appearing? What was he saying?
Wrigley: I’m here
There was a knock at the door seconds after the message flashed on the screen. Aurora sat up, and I twisted around so fast, I hopped. “Oh my god!”
“That asshole, he didn’t even give me a chance to finish my first cup.” She stood up to go answer the door.
I held my hand out. “No, don’t.”
She paused. “What?”
“Don’t open it,” I whispered.
Laughing, she put her hand on the knob. “He knows you’re in here, silly.”
“No, he doesn’t. I could have gone out for a jog. Yes, I’ll text him back and tell him I’m out for a run and he can’t come over.” My rattled brain was rolling through as many excuses as I could, trying to find one that was feasible.
She sighed. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”
I truly wasn’t ready to see him again so soon. My entire life, I’d never been around him as often as I had been since school started. It was a foreign concept and not a welcomed one. Aurora chose to ignore me as she opened the door. There he was in a
ll his glory. Not a single soul on this planet should look that good this early in the morning. I’ve seen it many times before, but never once was it with him staring in my direction, grinning like an idiot, holding two cups of coffee. He had on a basic, white shirt that was loose around the waist, but tight on his arms, and board shorts that had some wild colors and designs on them.
“Ladies,” he said in greeting, stepping inside. “I took the liberty of grabbing some coffee on my way over here. I wasn’t sure if either of you had any yet this morning.”
Aurora snagged a cup, like she was a starving woman and he was dangling a burger in front of her face. “Perfect! This one over here,” she nodded her head towards me. “Apparently likes to drink the grounds.”
I gaped at her. “I tried.”
She chortled and walked past me, slapping my butt on the way to her bed so she could sit down. It made me jump. While she was looking adorable as ever, I was currently wearing a long t-shirt that had a pink Power Ranger and the words, ‘I fight mornings’. I was sans bra, and my nipples were at attention, which I was painfully aware of. My hair was a tangled mess that I know was sticking up on one side, and I had on my oldest pair of shorts, which I was pretty positive had a small hole on the seam right on the butt. I could do nothing but stand there looking at him, a picture of perfection, while my less than enthusiastic self wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. I’d been embarrassed before, but never like this. What’s worse was I hadn’t had a chance to brush my teeth. Clamping my mouth shut, I tried hard not to breath.
Wrigley took a couple steps in my direction and had his hand with the other cup of coffee extended. I took it from him and took a tentative sip. It was hot on my tongue, but absolutely perfect. He’d added a little creamer and a small amount of sugar. I used my arms to cover my nipples while I held the cup to my lips, trying to play it off like I wasn’t doing it on purpose. He glanced down, and I knew he had seen them. More than just the coffee was warming my cheeks.