No Hard Feelings

eighteen

a / n :

this took a while. i'm so sorry. college got in the way. also, i needed to sort my personal life out to finally come up with an ending i know i can be satisfied with for this story. trust me when i say i constantly thought about it. now i know i said it's going to be the last chapter, but it actually turns out that there'll be another chapter after this (due to the small adjustments i had to make). sorry!!

once again, sorry for the late update, and i hope you enjoy this still! :)

love,
sam xo

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E I G H T E EN

WHEN DEXTER WAS barely nine years old, he climbed up a Sycamore tree down the block to prove himself worthy of Declan Sawyer's friendship. Everybody wanted to be Declan Sawyer's friend back then, for reasons Dexter can't even remember or even bother to remember now.

All Dexter can remember is that Declan would often thrust his nose up the air, looking regal, the way kids who grew up in big houses were supposed to look, and every kid in their block would follow him around like a puppy waiting for him to spare them a glance, tail wagging energetically when he does.

So when Declan asked Dexter to climb the tallest Sycamore tree they could find, Dexter did so without question.

It was a plump summer day. Dexter remembers the crisp, dry air and the pretty glint of the sun as it shone bright and high on the whole neighborhood, making the leaves seem magical in their own right. His heart swelled with a sense of weightlessness as he climbed higher – and higher still – watching his friends shrink below him, cheering him on as his gangly arms reached for the next branch, and the one after, and the one after.

Dexter no longer remembers how, exactly, it had happened, but he does remember feeling weightless one second, and falling down, down, down the next. He ended back where he started, the ground solid and unforgiving, and knew something was wrong before he knew what it was, just from looking at his friends' faces, frozen and terrified, staring at him like they were waiting to see if he was dead.

He wasn't, he wanted to tell them, making a move to stand up just to prove it so, but pain shot up his right arm, white and blinding hot, and when he checked to see what was wrong, he realized it was bent in an angle that was never meant to be worn by his gangly, freckly arms.
For days after that, he had to learn to do things with his left hand, his right rendered useless by the solid white cast that Declan Sawyer would later draw on.

His days without Hadley felt a little like that – like some part of him had suddenly become useless, a part no longer working in time with the sum of the others, and everything just seems off balance somehow, sloppy and clumsy.

Saying goodbye to her felt a lot like climbing up that tree too. One second, he was feeling weightless – his anger and pain bubbling to the surface, bleeding into his words, sharp and stinging – and he watched as he burned the bridge that connected him to her, the flames licking at his feet, threatening to take him too, and it felt good. Like he was a kite, and Hadley was tying him down, and when he'd cut himself off her hold, he finally caught enough wind to take flight unperturbed.

One second, he was weightless.
And the next, he's sprawled on the ground, and something isn't right. Unnatural. Bent where it isn't supposed to be.

It's this that finally makes Dexter grab his phone.

He dials a number that has ingrained itself in his memory and she picks up in three rings.