seventeen

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

a / n : 

hi guys! i know it's been forever and frankly, i'm struggling but please bear with me for a while. there'll be one chapter + short epilogue after this one. i haven't written it yet. i barely even got to to write this one, but i hope this is enough for now. 

* * * * *


 S E V E N T E E N


"HERE."

Dexter looks up at Adrian, then drops his gaze back to his outstretched hand. His fingers are wrapped around a can of beer and Dexter only blinks at it for a long while before finally reaching for it.

"Thanks."

Adrian huffs and takes a seat next to Dexter, popping his own beer open as he stretches his legs out the front porch steps. He holds it up, asking for a toast, and though Dexter shakes his head, he opens his can and clinks it with his brother's anyway.

They take a long swig, tipping their heads back almost completely in sync, and finish exactly at the same time.

Neither of them speak for a long while as they stare out at the dark, empty street, seated on the front porch steps of their little house. After a while, Dexter checks his phone. No new messages. He lets out a breath, his grip tightening around the near useless thing. Stupid. What was he expecting?

He feels Adrian's stare, heavy and probing.

"What?" Dexter asks, sounding defensive without really meaning to.

Setting down his beer next to him, Adrian leans back against his hands and shrugs. "Why don't you just call her already?"

His gaze darts to his brother for a second and then falls back to his phone. He considers dodging the question, but it would have been futile anyway. He couldn't fool Adrian even if his life depended on it.

Days have passed since the day he and Hadley fought. It's unsettling, to be honest, to watch the last couple weeks of their summer dwindling down so quickly. He feels like he's still stuck in that moment, when he told Hadley that they should stop being friends, and now an important piece of his life had gone missing and his world had stopped functioning without it in place.

And if there's one thing he realized about this whole new world without her, it's that the only thing worse than being with Hadley is not being with Hadley.

It's driving him crazy.

Back then, it felt as though the only thing that could make things better was to break it off with Hadley completely. He can't remember what, exactly, he was hoping for when he decided they should stop being friends, but whatever it was, it wasn't this.

He's been spending his days checking his phone, waiting—quite stupidly—for Hadley to leave him a message, to ask if they could meet so that they could patch things up and everything can go back to normal. It's like the sun isn't nearly as bright as it should have been and Dexter's left fumbling in the dark, blindly walking around hoping he'd reach the end of the tunnel someday.

Beside him, Adrian lets out a groan. "You know what?"

Dexter fixes him with a wary look, but Adrian moves quick, snatching his phone without so much as a warning.

"If you're going to mope around waiting for someone to call," his brother says, "then what's the point of telling her to fuck off?"

"I didn't tell her to 'fuck off,'" Dexter protests weakly. He tries to grab the phone but Adrian keeps it out of his reach.

"Uh, yes, you did," he said. "Maybe not in those words, but you did."

Dexter winces.

He'd told his brother everything. From sleeping with Hadley to him telling her they should stop being friends. The news didn't really seem to faze Adrian at all, much to Dexter's surprise. There was something oddly comforting about that, and by the time Dexter had finished talking, he was admittedly feeling much better.

"What I'm saying," Adrian tells him now, "is that this doesn't make sense. If you want to talk to her, talk to her."

"I don't want to talk to her." The lie runs thin. He isn't fooling either of them, he knows, so he lets out a breath and runs a hand through his hair. "I don't want to be the one doing the fixing this time. I know it sounds stupid—"

"That's because it is stupid."

"You don't get it," Dexter raises his voice. Adrian shoots him a rather disinterested look and Dexter immediately scowls. "I've always felt like she doesn't really care about us. Like I could disappear from her life and she wouldn't even give a fuck because I don't really mean anything to her."

"So that's it?"

Dexter's eyes snap to Adrian's. "She didn't even try to stop me, Ade. She let me walk away. Just like that."

"For the record," he says, "you walked away 'just like that,' too."

Dexter stops for a moment. There was certainty in Adrian's eyes that Dexter couldn't help but envy.

When they were young, their mom would often ask Adrian to help Dexter with his homework. That was how it felt like at that moment, sitting there with Adrian. It was like his brother had already solved the problem and was just waiting for Dexter to finish adding this with that, patiently pointing out his mistakes and guiding him until he got the correct answer.

You walked away just like that too.

The words seem almost foreign to him. He turns them over and over in his head, almost fascinated because it never really quite occurred to him.

"You're the one who willingly volunteered to disappear from her life, Dex." Adrian gives him a lazy shrug, picking his beer up from beside him. "Looks to me like you're the one who doesn't give a fuck about disappearing."

"But I do give a fuck," Dexter says before he can stop himself.

Adrian's brow quirks up. "So why did you walk away?"

A lump forms in Dexter's throat. He knows the answer, but he can't seem to bring himself to say the words out loud. He feels like a child throwing a tantrum, running away from home with nothing but three bags of chips and empty threats about him never coming home again unless his mom bought him whatever overpriced action figure he'd been seeing in those TV commercials.

Adrian was right: He was being stupid.

But he'd rather be stupid than chase after someone fleeting.

That's how Hadley always felt to him. Fleeting. Like she'd always be there only until she decided she no longer did. One day he would wake up and find no traces of her ever existing. He could just imagine it. She'd disappear so well that he'd begin to wonder if she was ever really real or if he'd just conjured her up in his mind.

That's what scares him the most.

He might have walked away but he'd left pieces of his heart behind him, hoping Hadley would follow them and find her way to him. Hoping, despite everything, that he mattered to her enough for her to chase after him, even though he knew Hadley would never.

She let him walk away.

So he did.

He'd told her he was tired of her, but he wasn't. Not really. He's just tired of never knowing if she cared. Enough, anyway. Because he does know that she cares, somehow. He just doesn't know if she cares as much as he does, and that has always been the problem when it came to them.

"You don't understand," he tells Adrian.

"I really don't," Adrian deadpans, making Dexter look at him in surprise. "But you know what? I don't think you do, either."

His brother says it nonchalantly, but it leaves Dexter speechless. Adrian barely gives him a glance, though. He tosses back the last of his beer, and when he's done, he stands up and stretches.

"I'm going to bed. Can't risk going to work late again tomorrow."

Adrian leaves, giving Dexter a pat on the shoulder before retreating into the house. Dexter doesn't know what to make of the conversation they just had. Once again, it seemed as though Adrian had already figured the problem out, the solution perfectly mapped out in his brain.

Dexter, however, was still scrambling to make sense of the problem itself. And maybe Adrian was right. Maybe he really didn't understand either.

He walked away because he wanted to see if she would chase after him. He walked away because he wanted to see if she cared enough about him to follow. He walked away because he wanted her to be the one to fix them this time.

He walked away, two weeks ago, hoping he'd hear from Hadley one of these days.

He hasn't.

Still, he can't help but think like he's doing the right thing.

It just doesn't feel like he is.

* * * * *

"You don't seriously think you can avoid us forever, do you?"

Hadley freezes on her tracks, but she isn't actually surprised. Startled, maybe, but she'd seen it coming, and knew it was only a matter of time before it did.

Aanya gives her a challenging look, daring her to argue otherwise, but Hadley merely replies with a resigned sigh. "You should've rang the doorbell. Lola would have let you in." She spurs back into motion, taking the last steps to the front door. "Come on in."

Sadie stands up from where she's been sitting on the porch steps. She's quiet, surprisingly so, and Hadley wonders if she should be worried. Her anger wouldn't be much of a surprise. Both her friends have been diligently calling and texting and visiting. The calls and texts were easy enough to ignore. The visits, she mostly avoided either by going out with Josh or spending her time at this quaint little café at Sunset Road.

The days have passed listlessly by since her fight with Dexter, and though her friends have been trying—quite impressively, to be honest—to reach out to her, Hadley had successfully managed to duck out of their reach time and time again.

Until now.

Sadie and Aanya don't move even as Hadley steps into the house. She turns back to them, holding the door open as she waits for them to follow suit. They don't.

There's a crease between Aanya's brow that makes her look uncertain. Sadie, however, almost looks ruthless. She stares Hadley down with a cool gaze and makes no effort to mask her anger when she speaks.

"Come on in? After weeks of nothing, that's all you've got to say?"

Hadley flinches, and the guilt she feels coaxes out a quiet "Sorry."

Sadie's eyes soften, much to her surprise. Aanya's expression changes too and Hadley's chest constricts a little. Their concern reminds her that she doesn't deserve them; that she has always been an awful friend to them and they've always deserved better than her.

"Are you all right?" Sadie asks her, and even Aanya seems surprised to hear how gently she speaks.

It's this that makes Hadley's eyes burn. It takes her a moment to realize that they're brimming with tears and she falters for a second, stunned, and she lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding and finally says, "I don't know."

"Oh, honey," Aaanya says, immediately crossing the distance between them. She wraps her arms around Hadley, which only makes it harder to keep the tears at bay.

"I'm sorry," Hadley says, trying to rub her eyes dry. "I'll be okay. I'm just—I'm fine."

"Don't." Sadie holds up a hand, as if to tell Hadley to stop right there, and so she does. "Don't give us that crap, Had. You're not okay and trust me, that's okay. Okay?"

It's not, Hadley wants to say. It's not okay. But something lodges in her throat and the world blurs before her. She stands there, helpless, feeling too volatile, too vulnerable. She feels Aanya's hold on her tighten, so she buries her face into her friend's shoulders, hiding what she could of her fragility.

She hasn't let herself cry until now. She hasn't allowed herself to remember the words he'd told her before they parted, to reach out to that empty space where he used to be and feel the weight of his absence.

Now she does, and the world dissolves until all that's left is his absence.


You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net