Her stomach twisted and heaved. The man was capable of hurting her. She read that in his eyes. In his crazy eyes. He towered over her and he was huge. She couldn’t beat him in a physical contest. He could break her just like he broke her phone. If she challenged him, that was precisely what he would do. She knew enough about life, about men like him, to know that.
She nodded jerkily and choked out, “Yeah. Okay.” She waved toward the door, inviting him to leave. To take her stuff and go.
“Good.” He huffed out a breath, but stayed where he was, glaring down at her like she somehow might go against her word and give him trouble.
Alex appeared in her line of vision, struggling to hold up the TV by himself. “C’mon, man,” he snapped at his friend. “Let’s go. We got everything.”
With a grunt, the guy turned away from her.
Hayden backed up a few steps until she bumped into the wall. From there she slid down to the floor, landing on her bottom, her legs kicked out in front of her.
She gulped back sobs and hugged herself, watching as Alex’s friend moved to the table and gathered everything up in his giant arms. She watched mutely as he took her laptop and shoebox into his hands.
Easy come, easy go.
Except none of it was easy. Earning money wasn’t easy, and watching him take it from her was even harder. None of it was fair, but she knew better than to mourn the unfairness of life.
She was so close to graduating. So close to getting out on her own, and now this happened. Hayden gulped back another sob.
She watched as he took her future into his hands and walked out the door, leaving her broken and alone against the wall.
Lesson #35
If you need a distraction, there’s always exercise.
x Nolan x
No one was home when Nolan entered his house. He assumed Savannah had a game. Junior high games were during the week, freeing up the weekends for all the high school games. Mom would have left work and gone straight there.
He didn’t have to guess at where Emmaline was. He knew she’d probably be with Beau.
He dropped his backpack on the kitchen table and stopped in front of the fridge, browsing Savannah’s game schedule pinned to the door. Suspicions confirmed. She had a game across town. If he didn’t have an obligation, he usually went to her games.
Usually. Today wasn’t usual though. He didn’t feel like sitting in noisy bleachers.
He took his phone from his pocket and set it on the counter, leaving it there as he marched up to his bedroom. He was content to leave it there for the rest of the night. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone right now.
Nolan quickly shed his clothes and changed into a pair of athletic shorts and a T-shirt. He needed to let loose some energy. He grabbed a hoodie off the hook near the front door, his only acknowledgment that it was still a little cold out. They were nearing the end of January now, which meant it could be thirty degrees . . . or seventy.
He grabbed his basketball from the garage and jogged down the street toward the neighborhood park, the slap of his shoes on the sidewalk satisfying.
This was a good plan. Just to have something to do, somewhere to go, when he didn’t quite know what to do with himself.
Everything had changed. Some of it from his own hand, true, but the rest . . .
The rest had just sort of happened to him.
Like a car crash. Unexpected and just as irreversible.
Like waking up one day and finding out your father had less than a year to live. Life was full of the unexpected.
He needed a release. Some way to expend his anxious energy and settle into the idea that he wasn’t going to hang out with Hayden again. Not anymore.
She wanted to be left alone. He would leave her alone.
You didn’t always get everything you wanted in life. He’d always known that. Now he knew that even better. It was the lesson that kept on giving.
The basketball courts were empty when he arrived. He started shooting, settling into a rhythm, starting from afar and working his way closer in. After ten minutes he pulled his hoodie over his head and dropped it on a nearby bench.
He dribbled and took shots until he was sweaty and out of breath. He moved to the bench and wiped his face with his hoodie and then turned and drove in a lay-up. The ball swished through the net and he caught it, but held off on another shot as a figure approached him on the court.
“Hey,” Beau greeted, shrugging out of his jacket. He dropped it on the bench and joined Nolan, holding out his hands for the ball. “Want to play HORSE?”
Nolan smiled. He couldn’t help it. They’d been playing HORSE since they were seven years old. Not so much lately, but it brought back memories. He glanced around, almost expecting to see his sister, but there was no sign of Emmaline. Just Beau.
Just Nolan and Beau shooting hoops. That felt familiar.
“Sure.” He passed Beau the ball, watching as he dribbled to his favorite shooting position in the far right corner of the court. He could always nail those corner shots.
Beau moved into position, squaring up, narrowing his gaze before letting the ball fly through the air in a perfect arc. Of course, he made his shot. He never missed. Apparently some things hadn’t changed.
Nolan went next. They played in silence, taking turns, and that felt good. Dribble. Shoot. Dribble. Shoot.
At least some things stayed the same.
Lesson #36
If you want something to change, then change it.
x Hayden x
Hayden had the place mostly picked up by the time Mom got home.
Her door, of course, was another matter. It would require a handyman. She’d have to come up with the money for that somehow . . . and that brought a fresh wave of bitterness.
She was examining the extent of the damage when Mom sidled up next to her. “Where’d the TV go?”
She blew out a heavy breath and motioned to her door. It was of greater concern to her than their TV. Her door meant security, safety. It meant she could close her eyes at night.
Mom followed her gaze and whistled. “Damn. What happened?”
Her lips worked for a moment until she found her voice. “You happened to it, Mom. Your friend Alex. He robbed us. Took our stuff. Broke into my room and stole all my money.”
“Huh.” Mom nodded, her expression mild. Which pretty much summed her up: unmoved and unaffected by all the shit that happened to them. Obviously. Because if she cared, she’d be a different person. She wouldn’t do all the things she did that rained shit down on them.
With a shrug, Mom went to her bedroom and closed the door.
Hayden leaned against the hall wall and stared at that shut door.
Her life was this. It always had been. She’d accepted it. Took these hits and kept on moving, braced for the next collision. And there would be more collisions. That was without question.
If life was full of hits no matter what she did, she wondered why anything she did mattered. Because all she did was build walls. She erected walls to keep everyone out—and the only people she managed to keep out were the ones who cared about her. The rest, the assholes like Alex, still found the chinks in her armor. They still bulldozed through her walls and hurt her.
She was starting to realize that she didn’t want to be alone—a tough realization, considering she had turned away the one person she wanted to be with. Nolan cared about her, and she’d pushed him out of her life.