Chapter 52

The three other roommates trickled back into the apartment one by one late Sunday evening. Phil had already moved his belongings nine floors below and Hailey, rather than watch him leave, had gone back to SouthPointe to spend the night with Beth.

None of the late arrivals had any idea of what had transpired the afternoon before in the apartment – but they knew what Phil had done at the press conference earlier.

Several of the local television stations had run snippets of the conference ad nauseam during the afternoon – after heavy editing to make sure Joe Pepper came off looking as badly as possible. Channel 3, the Mayor’s most vocal supporter, called for Pepper’s immediate resignation. They backed away when several other media sources, most notably a few bloggers in the city, pointed out how many of the Mayor’s staff had done far worse things and gotten away without any sanction at all.

The web sites that covered the city suggested that Pepper’s honesty was refreshing, particularly when compared to the Mayor’s fanciful versions of the truth that seemed to shift from day to day.

Katelyn waited for Phil and Hailey to return. She was mortified that Pepper’s job was on the line but she felt gratified that Phil would stick up for her. She had taken a call from Joe while the trio ate a light supper and he had assured her that her job would be waiting for her in the morning – if she wanted it. He would also understand if she told him to get lost. He would ensure that she received a positive recommendation – because she’d earned it – and help her find work in the city.

She decided that she wasn’t going to step away from something she liked. She had been vulnerable to Carter’s advances but she also was old enough to know better than to be smooth-talked by a lothario.

The group didn’t think anything about Phil and Hailey missing breakfast. Phil hadn’t eaten breakfast with them in several weeks and Hailey worked a lot closer than the rest of them. It wasn’t until Molly found a disheveled Hailey curled up on the couch asleep when she arrived home after work that afternoon that the truth came out.

Hailey barely stirred when Molly came in but Molly could see the puffy eyes that had nothing to do with sleep. Hailey had been crying.

Molly knelt down and shook her awake. Hailey’s eyes opened and she blinked rapidly.

“What’s wrong, darling?” Molly asked.

“Stay the fuck away from me,” she said hoarsely.

“Are you ill?” Molly wondered, putting her hand on Hailey’s forehead to check for a fever. Hailey slapped her hand away.

“I hate you!” Hailey screamed. “You three just leave me the fuck alone. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear you. I don’t want to smell you. Just stay the fuck away from me and you might live through the summer. But I promise you that you will regret living through it once we get back to school. I promised you that I would ruin you and I God damned will.”

“Hey, hey,” Molly said consolingly. “What’s wrong? You can’t ruin me because I don’t give a shit. But I do care about you. I might not have shown it but I do. Tell me what’s wrong. Where’s Phil?”

Hailey looked at Molly with hate-filled eyes.

“He’s gone,” she answered. “He broke up with me yesterday and moved out.”

Molly looked around the apartment and saw the telltale signs that Hailey wasn’t making this up. The light jacket that had hung beside the others was gone even though it was sunny and warm. The photo of Phil’s family that had been on the wall was no longer there.

“Why?” was the only thing Molly could think to ask.

“Why do you think?” Hailey screamed. “Because I went on a date with some asshole Saturday! I went on a date you and fucking Tiffany set up for me! He said he doesn’t trust any of us any more. He doesn’t want to worry about who I’m out with – or who one of you God-damned people will set me up with in order to further your own ends. He didn’t want to kick us out and so he left.”

“He moved out,” Molly asked in disbelief, “without a word?”

“The same way we all assumed he was screwing around without bothering to ask him about it!” Hailey yelled. “So, yeah, he moved out but he had plenty of words to say to me – and plenty to say about the rest of you.”

Hailey covered her eyes and started to cry again as the image of Phil packing up his clothes came to her again. Molly instinctively wrapped her arms around Hailey and wept, too.

The smile that Katelyn wore when she entered the apartment fled quickly when she saw two crying women on the couch. Katelyn’s day had gone well. No one had mentioned that it was she who had been caught with Josh Carter but a few other interns mentioned that he had made them uncomfortable. She planned to thank Phil for stepping in when she was too blinded to notice what was going on.

Now she wondered why Molly and Hailey were so upset. Her first thought, being the daughter of a police officer, was that someone had been injured.

“What’s wrong?” she asked with concern.

“Phil’s gone,” Molly was the first to find her voice. She couldn’t even really figure out why she was crying but she was suddenly overcome with sadness. She had expected a few more days of harsh words and then for the world to return to normal. “He said he didn’t trust us any more and he left.”

Katelyn looked as though she’d been pole-axed. She stood a few feet from the others, her eyes blinking rapidly and her mouth moving. But she wasn’t seeing anything and no words came out.

“That can’t be right,” she said when the words finally arrived to her brain.

Hailey just nodded sadly.

“I thought ... I thought things were OK,” she stammered. “I mean, I knew they weren’t OK but I thought we’d, I don’t know, get over things.”

“He’s not ready to get over things,” Hailey said. “He ... he broke up with me yesterday.”

“I wanted to tell him how grateful I am he saved me from a huge mistake,” Katelyn said. “He really did! Every woman I work with had a story about Josh perving on them. I’m just the only one dumb enough to fall for it.”

She shook her head sadly.

“I’m going to call him and tell him,” she decided. “I’m going to tell him I’m sorry I ever doubted him.”

She pulled out her phone and touched his name before putting it to her ear. A second later she slumped backward into a chair.

“He’s blocked my number,” she said in a dull voice. She touched the speaker function and dialed Phil again.

“The subscriber you have dialed will not accept calls from this number,” a monotone voiced told them.

Molly pulled her phone out and got the same response.

“Try him,” she urged Hailey.

“Why?” Hailey asked, looking at the floor. “He’s right. Everything he said about me – about us – was right. We convicted him without even talking to him. I’ve gone out with other guys twice since he and I started to date – and my so-called friends have urged me to do it both times. No one forced me, though. I made up my own mind. He has no reason to trust us. He can’t count on us. He told me Saturday that he didn’t think you guys were ever his friends. He felt used and he was so hurt and sad yesterday. It’s probably best if we don’t talk to him for a while. He needs time to work through things.”

“I guess,” Katelyn admitted. She hated to cry but she couldn’t stop herself this time. Molly shifted over to console her but Hailey stayed on the couch.

“I told Molly and I’ll tell you,” Hailey said. “Phil’s not the only one who’s through with you. None of us has any other place to live so we have to make the best of it. I want one of you to change rooms with me. I can’t even go in there right now. After that, I want nothing to do with any of you again.”

“Hailey,” Molly said, “don’t be rash. We need to stick together. He’ll come around. I’m sure he misses us as much we miss him.”

“No!” Hailey said. “I should have done this a lot earlier. I don’t know if you’re jealous or you resent me or you want him for yourself. Every time one of you has gotten the chance to push us apart, you’ve taken it. I didn’t think you’d ask me to do anything harmful so I went along. Now I’ve lost him and I will not be friends with the people who goaded me into doing some of the things I’ve done. Which one of you wants the big bedroom?”

Molly and Katelyn exchanged startled glances. Molly shook her head first.

“I don’t want to stay there,” she said.

“Me either,” Katelyn answered.

“Fine,” Hailey said. “I’ll change rooms with Tiffany then.”

She went to the room Tiffany had lived in and started to pick up her things.

“You can help or stay the fuck out of my way,” Hailey said to the two others who stood in the doorway and watched helplessly. “I’m not staying another night in that room without him.”

Hailey was carrying the last of her things out of the bedroom she had shared with Phil when Tiffany came home from work.

She saw Hailey’s tear-streaked face and unkempt clothing before she noticed Hailey was carrying an armful of clothing toward Tiffany’s room.

“Where are you going with those?” she asked.

Tiffany’s voice brought the others from their bedrooms.

“You’re in the big bedroom now,” Hailey replied.

Tiffany stopped walking and just stared.

“I’m going to sleep in Phil’s room?” she asked. There was a trace of hopefulness in her voice; a trace she hoped no one else caught. Her family might have lost everything but she would be Head Bitch on Campus next year with Phil in her corner.

“Not the way you think, you little cunt,” Hailey hissed, dropping the clothing she was carrying and stalking toward Tiffany.

“He’s gone, Tiff,” Molly said to the smaller girl as Katelyn stepped in front of Hailey to avert a fistfight it the hallway.

“Gone?” Tiffany asked.

“He moved,” Katelyn said, still facing Hailey to keep her off of the woman she once considered her best friend. “Hailey doesn’t want to live there without him and you weren’t here. You won by default.”

“No,” Tiffany said sadly, slumping against the wall.

“You got what you wanted, bitch,” Hailey snarled, trying to move past Katelyn again. The taller woman blocked her path again.

“Give her a minute to get her feet under her and then I’ll let you at her,” Katelyn said. “You kick the ever-loving shit out of her if you think it’ll make you feel better but she deserves a chance to defend herself. Just give her a minute until things become real for her.”

“This isn’t what I wanted!” Tiffany said.

“Sure it is,” Hailey said. “He’s free and clear and you can do your damnedest to land him. Don’t count on help from me, though, because I will not give him up that easily.”

“I ... I didn’t want him to break up with you,” Tiffany said. “I never thought he’d do that. I just wanted him to include us more. Not like when we went camping. I just wanted him to remember we were here. I missed him, too. I thought if he felt threatened he might think about things a little – realize if he wanted to screw around on you he had people right here willing to do it – so long as you were there, too. He didn’t need Nikki when he could have had us.”

She was leaning against the wall with tears rolling down her cheeks.

“I have to see him!” she said. “Where is he? I can fix this. I have to fix this!”

“He moved to a vacant apartment downstairs,” Hailey said. “I don’t know which one.”

“I’ll call him and talk to him,” Tiffany said, reaching into the small clutch purse she carried.

Molly had turned away but spun around as quickly as she could. She was too late. Tiffany had already heard the message and had slumped down to the floor and wrapped herself in a ball.

“He can’t leave,” she wailed. “He can’t. We need him. Can’t he see that? He told me that he loved me. I know he meant it. He can’t leave me, too! If he won’t love me, no one can!”

Hailey made her way past the two stunned figures in the hallway and knelt down beside Tiffany to stroke her forehead. As angry as she was, she found that still loved the dark-haired girl.

“He still loves you,” Hailey said softly. “He still loves all of us. We all made some really huge mistakes and I’m not sure he’ll forgive them. I didn’t know what you were trying to do and I don’t think the others did either. He needs time to get over what we did and we need to let him have that time. You need to be strong, Tiff.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Tiffany sobbed. “I was only strong because he’s strong. I need him, Hailey. I’m not sure I want to go on if he’s not with us.”

Hailey let out a long breath. She didn’t want to admit that she had been thinking similar thoughts for most of the past 24 hours.

As Tiffany was having her meltdown in the top-floor apartment, Phil was back in Memorial Park.

No one had a press conference scheduled – or at least none that he knew about – instead he was sprawled on the grass reading a magazine and enjoying the sun. One of the many drawbacks of departing his dwelling was losing access to the rooftop deck.

He had considered slipping up there during the day but his mother had alerted him to the fact she had dropped Hailey off that morning with instructions to take a personal day. His mother also had asked if he was sure this was what he wanted. She had listened as he explained his distrust of his roommates – and thus his need to remove himself from the situation.

“She’s a mess,” Beth had told him. “I’m not sure you wouldn’t have been better off just to kick them all out.”

Phil admitted that he had considered the possibility but he also had realized that none of the others had anyplace else to go.

“I don’t hate them,” Phil had told her. “I still like them all. I just can’t be around them. I can’t accept the way they insist things be.”

“We all have lapses in judgment, Philip,” Beth had told him.

“And we all have to accept the consequences of those lapses, mother,” Phil had cut in.

“We do,” Beth had admitted. She had come to understand that one of her son’s “tells” was the use of the term “mother.”

“I just wanted you to know of the situation,” she had told him.

And he did know. As he sat in the park watching people throw Frisbees or sit and talk, he decided it would have been a lot more fun to be there if the others were with him. He could hear Katelyn’s comments about the ever-present protestors stationed near the entrance. He could see Tiffany’s eyes checking out the businessmen who walked past – just as he could picture Molly gazing at the skateboarders or the grungy guy playing his guitar for tips.

He pictured Hailey beside him in a sundress or a bathing suit, with her sunglasses perched on her nose as she luxuriated in the sun on her face. Instead he sat there on a blanket, alone, and read a magazine that really didn’t interest him.

He reclined on the blanket with his hands behind his head and stared up at the clear blue sky. He could see the 16-story Barton Building in the distance, the uppermost floor where his mother held court sticking above the smaller buildings that surrounded it. He knew the apartment building stood just across the street. He figured everyone was there by now. He wondered how Katelyn’s day went. He wanted to ask Tiffany if there had been any fallout at her job. He wanted to ask Molly when her next performance was.

He mostly wanted to wrap his arms around Hailey and tell her everything would be fine. He couldn’t tell her that because he didn’t think everything would be fine. He missed her; he loved her; but he couldn’t be with her.