Partners in Crime (Carl Gallagher Book One of the Ride or Die Series)

Sick of Heartache

They were too young to be this desperate, too young for this much rage

Breakfast the morning after Carl and Hailey's fight was extremely uncomfortable, for the Gallagher house it was unnaturally silent and subdued. Fiona found it so difficult to watch that she had helped the kids make the food and then headed over to V's place to explain the fight to her and see if she could guess at what had caused the sudden unravelling of such a strong friendship. 

Fiona was spreading butter on her toast when she decided to break the news"Hailey and Carl got in a fight last night" she spoke hollowly, the aftermath of Hailey and Carls fight somehow worse than the screaming of last night.

"Oh no, what's broken, there was no hospital visit needed was there?" It wasn't that Hailey and Carl never fought because they did, it was just that usually you could tell that they weren't trying very hard to hurt each other, usually, they through each other around a bit and then laughed about it after.

"It wasn't that type of fight V, it was awful they were screaming at each other" 

Veronica put her fork down slowly and looked up at Fiona, this was worrying. Sure sometimes she had seen them throw insults around at each other but they were all dumb insults made in fun. 

Fiona went on "Hailey actually cried afterwards, and it was just so quiet, it was wrong" it made Fiona physically uncomfortable to think about the screaming that had occurred. She didn't realise how she had kind of looked at Carl and Hailey as one of the healthiest relationships she had seen, as sad and pathetic it was to view a friendship between two teenagers as the best example for healthy.

"Jesus" V breathed out.

"Do you... do you have any idea what it could be about" Fiona, she wondered if Carl and Hailey's relationship would recover from this or if some essential thing had been broken forever.

"You didn't hear this from me ok?" V stated.

 "Of course"  Fiona nodded, Gallaghers didn't snitch.

"So I came home to get something quickly a couple of days ago and I overheard Hailey talking to Debbie about some plan, I didn't hear the whole thing but from what I heard Hailey has feelings for Carl"

Fiona looked shocked at V "Hailey is crushing on Carl? but that didn't sound like the fight they were having at all." 

Veronica rolled her eyes "Just because they were saying something else doesn't mean that what they were saying was what they were talking about if you get my meaning."

Fiona nodded, it made sense they were probably holding back a lot of what they had really wanted to say in that fight, she remembers how Hailey had unconsciously stepped towards Carl when he had turned away from her, she just hoped that they could fix it before it was too late.

$$$$$

Hailey needed to build a bridge and get over her own bullshit. She knows that the fight they had last night had been the worst they ever had. Knows that a lot of it had been her fault, she hadn't told Carl what was going on and she had said things she didn't really mean. He wasn't going to wan her to help him with anything that was going on with Frank after last night but she was going to help him even if it cost her, even if he didn't want it. Even if he was mad at her, even if he was mad at her for the rest of her life she still loved him, she would still do anything for him. So while he stole gas from the busses, she redirected teachers and made sure he didn't get caught, even if he didn't know she was there. Conveniently this meant that she overheard the sweatlodge plan. She thought it was a terrible idea and that it would probably end in pain, but she wasn't going to judge after all just about every single thing she had done over the last week had been wrong. She would help from the shadows, she would do anything for Carl, a sweat lodge? no questions asked this would be easy.