After Ever Happy

  And that includes Tessa. I love her, but I can’t stand being so close to her while she’s comforted by Zed. He doesn’t know her the way I do; he doesn’t deserve to be sitting next to her right now.

  “Stop that. She can ‘stand’ you,” Landon says. “This is her father’s funeral, try to remember that.”

  I catch my father—fuck—Ken, I catch Ken staring at me.

  He’s not even my father. I knew this, I’ve known for the last week, but now that he’s in front of me, it’s like I’m finding out for the first time again. I should tell him right now, I should affirm his longtime suspicions and just let the truth out about my mum and Vance. I should tell him right here, right now, and let him feel as fucking disappointed as I was. Was I disappointed? I don’t know for sure; I was mad. I still am mad, but that’s about as far as I’ve gotten.

  “How are you feeling, son?” His arm reaches across Landon to rest his hand on my shoulder.

  Tell him. I should tell him. “I’m fine.” I shrug, wondering why my mouth won’t cooperate with my mind and just say the words. Like I always say, misery loves company, and I’m as miserable as it gets.

  “I’m sorry about all of this, I should have called the facility more. I promise you that I had checked on him, Hardin. I did, and I had no clue that he left until it was too late. I’m sorry.” The disappointment in Ken’s eyes silences me from forcing him to join my pity party. “I’m sorry that I always fail you.”

  My eyes meet his and I nod, deciding in this moment that he doesn’t need to know. Not right now. “It’s not your fault,” I quietly remark.

  I can feel Tessa’s eyes on me, calling my attention from so many feet away. Her head is turned toward me, and Zed’s arm is no longer around her shoulders. She’s staring at me, the way I was her, and I grip the wooden pew with everything I have, to restrain myself from rushing across the church to her.

  “Either way, I’m sorry,” Ken says and removes his hand from my shoulder. His brown eyes are glossy, like Landon’s.

  “It’s fine,” I mumble, still focusing on the gray eyes holding mine.

  “Just go up there, she needs you,” Landon suggests, his voice soft.

  I ignore him and wait for her to give me some sort of signal, any tiny, little fragment of emotion to show me that she does need me. I will be next to her in seconds.

  The preacher steps to the podium, and she turns away from me without beckoning me to her, without a real indication that she was actually seeing me at all.

  But before I can feel too sorry for myself, Karen smiles down at Zed and he slides down, allowing her to take the seat next to Tessa.

  chapter thirty-four

  TESSA

  I give another fake smile to another faceless stranger and move on to the next, thanking each of them for attending. The funeral was short; apparently this church doesn’t take kindly to celebrating the life of an addict. A few stiff words and phony praises were given, and that was that.

  Only a few more people; a few more simulated thanks and forced emotions as condolences are given. If I hear what a great man my father was one more time, I think I’ll scream. I think I’ll scream right in the middle of this church, in front of all my mother’s judgmental friends. Many of them have never even met Richard Young. Why are they here, and what lies has my mother told them about my father if they are praising him?

  It’s not that I don’t think my father was a good man. I didn’t know him well enough to judge his character accurately. But I do know the facts, and the facts are that he left me and my mother when I was a child, and he only came back into my life a few months ago by chance. If I hadn’t been with Hardin at that tattoo parlor, chances are I would never have seen him again.

  He didn’t want to be in my life. He didn’t want to be a father or a husband. He wanted to live his own life and make choices that revolved around him and him alone. That’s fine, it is, but I can’t understand it. I can’t understand why he would run away from his responsibilities only to live the life of a drug addict. I remember how I felt when Hardin mentioned my father’s drug use; I couldn’t believe it. Why was I so accepting of his being an alcoholic, but not a drug addict? I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. I think I was trying to make him better, in my mind. I’m slowly realizing that, like Hardin always says, I’m naïve. I’m naïve and foolish to keep trying to find the good in people when all they do in return is prove me wrong. I’m always proven wrong, and I’m sick of it.

  “The ladies want to come over to the house when we leave here, so I need you to help prepare for that as soon as we get home,” my mother says after the last hug is given.

  “Who are the ladies? Did they even know him?” I snap. I can’t help the harsh tone of my voice, and I feel slightly guilty when my mother frowns. The guilt is pushed back when she glances around the church to make sure none of her “friends” caught my disrespectful tone.

  “Yes, Theresa. Some of them did.”

  “Well, I’d love to help as well,” Karen interrupts as we walk outside. “If that’s okay, of course?” She smiles.

  I am so thankful for Karen’s presence. She’s always so sweet and thoughtful; even my mother seems to like her.

  “That would be lovely.” My mother returns Karen’s smile and walks away while waving at an woman unfamiliar to me in the small crowd across the lawn of the church.

  “Do you mind if I come, too? If not, I get it. I know Hardin’s here and all, but since he’s the one that called me in the first place . . .” Zed says.

  “No, of course you can come. You drove all the way here.” I can’t help but scan the parking lot in search of Hardin at the mention of his name. Across the lot, I spot Landon and Ken getting into Ken’s car; as far as I can see, Hardin isn’t with them. I wish I had gotten a chance to speak to Ken and Landon, but they were sitting with Hardin and I didn’t want to take them away from him.

  During the funeral I couldn’t help but worry that Hardin would tell Ken the truth about Christian Vance right in front of everyone. Hardin would be feeling bad, so he might want someone else to feel bad, too. I pray that Hardin has enough decency to wait until he can find the right time to disclose the hurtful truth. I know he’s decent; deep down Hardin is not a bad person. He’s just bad for me.

  I turn to Zed, whose fingers are picking at the dots of fuzz on his red button-down shirt. “Do you want to walk back? It’s not a far walk, twenty minutes at most.”

  He agrees, and we slip away before my mother can shove me into her small car. I can’t stand the thought of being trapped in an enclosed space with her right now. My patience with her is growing thin. I don’t want to be rude, but I can feel my frustration grow with every stroke of her hands over her perfectly curled hair.

  Zed breaks the silence ten minutes into the walk through my small hometown. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I don’t know. Anything that I say probably won’t make any sense.” I shake my head, not wanting Zed to know just how crazy I’ve become during the last week. He hasn’t asked about my relationship with Hardin, and for that I’m thankful. Anything involving Hardin and me isn’t open for discussion.

  “Try me,” Zed challenges with a warm smile.

  “I’m mad.”

  “Upset mad or crazy mad?” he teases, playfully touching his shoulder to mine as we wait for a car to pass before crossing a street.

  “Both.” I try to smile. “Mostly just upset mad. Is it wrong that I feel sort of angry at my father for dying?” I hate the way the words sound. I know it’s wrong, but it feels so right. The anger feels better than the nothing, and the anger is a distraction. A distraction that I’m in desperate need of.

  “It’s not wrong to feel that way, but then again it sort of is. I don’t think you should be mad at him. I’m sure he didn’t know what he was doing when he did what he did.” Zed looks down at me, but I look away.

  “He did know what he was doing when he brought those drugs into that apartme
nt. Sure, he didn’t know he was going to die, but he knew it was a possibility, and all he cared about was getting high. He didn’t think about anyone except himself and his high, you know?” I swallow the guilt that comes with the words. I loved my father, but I need to be truthful. I need to let my feelings out.

  Zed frowns. “I don’t know, Tessa. I don’t think it was like that. I don’t think I could be mad at someone who died, especially my parent.”

  “He didn’t raise me or anything. He left when I was a little girl.”

  Did Zed already know that? I’m not sure. I’m so used to talking to Hardin, who knows everything about me, that sometimes I forget that other people only know what I let them.

  “Maybe he left because he knew it was better for you and your mom?” Zed says, trying to comfort me, but it’s not working. It’s only making me want to scream. I’m tired of hearing this same exact excuse from mouth after mouth. Those same people claim they want the best for me, yet they make excuses for my father, who left me, acting like he was doing it for my own good. What a selfless man, leaving his wife and daughter all alone.

  “I don’t know.” I sigh. “Let’s just not talk about it anymore.”

  And we don’t. We stay silent until we arrive at my mother’s house, and I try to ignore the annoyance in her voice when she scolds me for taking so long to get home.

  “Luckily Karen is here to help,” she says as I walk past her and enter the kitchen.

  Zed stands uncomfortably, unsure whether to help. Quickly though, my mother hands him a box of crackers, ripping open the top and pointing wordlessly to an empty tray. Ken and Landon have already been put to work chopping vegetables and arranging fruit on my mother’s best serving trays. The ones she uses when she wants to impress people.

  “Yeah, luckily,” I say under my breath. I thought the spring air would help cool my anger, but it hasn’t. My mother’s kitchen is too small, too stuffy, and it’s filling with overly dressed women with something to prove.

  “I need air. I’ll be back, just stay here,” I say to Zed when my mother rushes down the hallway for something. As thankful as I am that he drove all the way here to comfort me, I can’t help but hold our conversation against him. I’m sure once I clear my head I’ll see it differently, but right now I just want to be alone.

  The back door opens with a creak, and I curse at myself, hoping that my mother doesn’t come flying out into the yard to drag me back into the house. The sun has worked magic on the thick mud that covered the floor of the greenhouse. Dark, wet patches still cover half the space, but I’m able to find a dry spot to stand. The last thing I need is to ruin these high-heeled shoes my mother couldn’t afford to buy me in the first place.

  A movement catches my eye, and I begin to panic until Hardin comes into view from behind a shelf. His eyes are clear, and beneath them dark circles shadow his pale skin. The usual glow, the warm tan, of Hardin’s skin has vanished and been replaced with a fragile, haunted ivory.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know you were here,” I say, quick to apologize and immediately backing out of the small space. “I’ll go.”

  “No, it’s fine. It was your hiding space to begin with, remember?” He gives me a small smile, and even the tiniest of smiles from him feels more real than the countless fakes I’ve received today.

  “True, but I need to go inside anyway.”

  I grab the handle of the screen door, but he reaches out to stop me from opening it. I jerk away the moment his fingers graze my arm, and he sucks in a harsh breath from my rejection. He quickly recovers and reaches past me to hold on to the door handle, making sure I can’t leave.

  “Tell me why you came out here,” he softly demands.

  “I just . . .” I struggle for the words. After my conversation with Zed, I lost the urge to discuss my terrible thoughts about my father’s death. “It’s nothing.”

  “Tessa, tell me.” He knows me well enough to know that I’m lying, and I know him well enough to know he isn’t going to let me leave this greenhouse until I tell him the truth.

  But can I trust him?

  My eyes look him over, and I can’t help but focus on the new dress shirt he’s wearing. He must have purchased it solely for the funeral because I know every shirt he owns, and there is no way he could fit into Noah’s clothes. Not that he would ever wear them . . .

  The black sleeve of the new shirt is ripped open from the cuff, making room for his cast.

  “Tessa,” he presses, bringing me from my inner distraction. The top button on his shirt is undone and the collar is crooked.

  I take a step back from him. “I don’t think we should do this.”

  “Do what? Talk? I just want to know what it is you’re hiding from.”

  What a simple yet loaded demand. I’m hiding from everything. I’m hiding from too many things to name, him being the most important of those things. I want to vent my feelings to Hardin, but it’s just too easy to slide back into our pattern, and I’m not willing to play these games anymore. I can’t take another round. He has won, and I’m learning to be okay with that.

  “You and I both know you’re not leaving this greenhouse until you spill, so save us both the time and energy and tell me.” He attempts this line as a joke, but I can see the flicker of desperation behind his eyes.

  “I’m mad,” I finally admit.

  He nods sharply. “Of course you are.”

  “I mean I’m really mad, like pissed-off.”

  “You should be.”

  I look over at him. “I should be?”

  “Hell yeah, you should be. I’d be pissed off, too.”

  I don’t think he gets what I’m trying to say. “I’m mad at my father, Hardin. I’m so mad at him,” I clarify and wait for Hardin’s response to change.

  “So am I.”

  “You are?”

  “Hell yeah, I am. And you should be, too; you have every right to be pissed-off at his ass. Dead or not.”

  I can’t stop the laugh that falls from my lips at the serious expression covering Hardin’s face while he speaks such ridiculous words. “You don’t think it’s wrong that I can’t even be sad anymore because I’m so damn mad at him for killing himself?” I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and pause before continuing, “That’s what he did. He killed himself, and he didn’t even think about how it would affect anyone. I know that’s selfish of me to say that, but that’s how I feel.”

  My gaze drops to the dirt floor. I’m ashamed to say these things, to mean them, but I feel so much better now that they are out there floating around. I hope the words stay here, in this greenhouse, and I hope that if my father is up there somewhere, he can’t hear me.

  Hardin’s fingers press under my chin and he tilts my head up. “Hey,” he says, and I don’t flinch from his touch, but I am grateful when he drops his hand. “Don’t be ashamed to feel that way. He did kill himself, and it’s no one’s fault but his own. I saw how fucking excited you were when he came back into your life, and he’s an idiot for throwing that away just to get high.” Hardin’s tone is harsh, but his words are exactly what I need to hear right now.

  He softly chuckles. “But I’m one to talk, right?” He closes his eyes and slowly shakes his head back and forth.

  I quickly direct the conversation away from our relationship. “I feel bad for feeling this way. I don’t want to disrespect him.”

  “Fuck that.” Hardin waves his cast-covered hand through the air between us. “You are allowed to feel how you want to fucking feel, and no one can say shit about it.”

  “I wish everyone felt that way.” I sigh. I know confiding in Hardin isn’t healthy, and I have to tread lightly here, but I just know he’s the only one who actually understands me.

  “I mean it, Tessa. Don’t you let any of those snobby fuckers make you feel bad for how you feel.”

  I wish it were that simple. I wish I could be more like Hardin and not care what anyone thought of me or how other people feel, but I ca
n’t. I’m just not made that way. I feel for others, even when I shouldn’t, and I would like to think that eventually that trait will stop being my downfall. Caring is a good trait to have, but it hurts me too often.

  In the few short minutes I’ve been in the greenhouse with Hardin, almost all of my anger has disappeared. I’m not sure what has replaced it, but I no longer feel the burn of fury, just the steady burn of pain that I know will be a longtime companion of mine.

  “Theresa!” my mother’s voice sounds through the yard, and Hardin and I both wince at the interruption.

  “I have no problem telling any of them, her included, to fuck off. You know that, don’t you?” His eyes search mine, and I nod. I know he doesn’t, and part of me wants to unleash him on the crowd of chatty women who have no business being here.

  “I know.” I nod again. “I’m sorry for venting like this. I just—”

  The screen door opens and my mother steps into the greenhouse. “Theresa, please come inside,” she says authoritatively. She’s trying her best to mask her anger toward me, but her façade is slipping, and fast.

  Hardin looks from my mother’s angry face to mine before stepping past both of us. “I was just leaving anyway.”

  The memory of my mother’s finding him in my dorm room all those months ago passes through my mind. She was so mad and Hardin looked so defeated when I left with her and Noah. Those days feel so ancient now, so simple. I had no clue what was ahead, none of us did.

  “What are you doing out here anyway?” she asks as I follow her through the yard and up the porch steps.

  It’s none of her business what I was doing. She wouldn’t understand my selfish feelings, and I would never trust her enough to reveal them. She wouldn’t understand why I was talking to Hardin after avoiding him for three days. She wouldn’t understand anything that I could tell her, because she fundamentally doesn’t understand me.

  So instead of answering her question, I stay quiet and wish that I would have had the chance to ask Hardin what he came to my greenhouse to hide from.