Hadley: An Ansel Elgort Fan Fiction

Chapter 14

Omf I guess it's that time of the month for Wattpad, it's saying the story has 0 reads when it really has 2.3k (I think idk fo sho) BUT THANKS SO MUCH THATS A LOT & I DON'T DESERVE IT. ILY BYE

-Beth

I rapped on Dung's front door. His ma answered.

"Hadley!" she shouted. "What's wrong?"

"I just really need to see Dung," I replied. She noticed Ansel towering beside me.

"And who is this? A boyfriend?" she said pronouncing this as dis, with a mischievous grin.

I laughed. "Uh, can I just see Dung? I'm so sorry for barging over here like this it's a bit of an emergency."

"Of course, of course." She waved us in and we traipsed up the stair case.

Ansel's POV

Hadley burst through Dung's bedroom door and immediately collapsed into sobs on his bed. I hated seeing her this way. I didn't even know what had happened much less how to help her. Dung stood there looking at me wide eyed. I shrugged and sat down on the bed next to her. She squeezed a throw pillow over her face and screamed into it.

"Hadley, what the fuck happened?" I asked her as Dung sat on the other side of her.

"Babe?" Dung set a hand on her arm. She didn't reply. "She never cries, dude, like ever," Dung told me.

It did bother me a little, the whole 'babe' thing and him knowing more about her than I did. I knew he was her best friend and that he was gay, he made it obvious from the moment we met, but there was still a pang of jealousy. I wanted to know things like that she hardly ever cried. I wanted to know her better than anyone else. Maybe that was selfish, I don't know. I just liked her, a lot.

"She did earlier today..." I mentioned quietly. "Her dad is cheat-"

"NO!" Hadley shouted, and I flinched.

"No? So he didn't? What about the note-"

"It was my mom's," she cried.

Holy shit.

"Fuck," I groaned. "Your mom is- wait it said Melissa that's a girl's name-"

"What the fucking fuck..." Dung muttered.

Hadley took the pillow from her face and sat up. Her eyes were swollen from crying and her lips were extra pink and puffy. I'd never wanted to kiss someone more in my entire life. I didn't just want to kiss her, I wanted to help, make her feel better, and for her to never be sad. She was so beautiful, her body and her soul. Too beautiful to ever be this upset.

I gripped her hand. She looked at me with her exquisite eyes. Big, wide and wavering, penetrating my soul with every glance.

"My mom cheated on my dad with another woman, guys. How could she do that to my dad? To us? She ruined everything. We weren't a perfect family but we were getting by, and then she..." she made those kinds of hiccupped noises people make when they cry really hard. God, I wanted to just pull her to me and hold her, never let her go, but I didn't; just sat there staring at her. I was dumbstruck. What was I supposed to say to that? That everything is gonna be alright and we'll get through this together? She's not an idiot she knows things won't be okay, at least not for a little while.

So instead I said the thing that you're supposed to say that doesn't actually make people feel better, but at least I meant it. "I'm so sorry."

"I can't believe she'd do that," Dung said.

"Well, she did," Hadley told him.

I stood up. "C'mon guys we're going out."

"Ansel, I don't really feel up for that party-"

"No, not that dumb party. Just c'mon," I pulled her up from the bed and down the stairs.

"My parents must be asleep," Dung said from behind us.

"Perfect," I said.

Hadley looked at me with a small smile. I tugged her into the kitchen and dropped her hand to open the fridge. Just as I suspected, there were multiple bottles of very expensive looking Vietnamese wine.

"I'm sure they wouldn't notice if a few of these went missing?" I said taking two into my hands and kicking the fridge closed.

Dung smirked. "Please my parents are practically senile."

"Really?" I asked him.

"I shit you not," Hadley interjected.

I laughed and tossed a bottle to Dung and took Hadley's hand in mine again.

Twenty minutes later I was seated with Hadley on my lap on a park bench in front of a stream. She said she used to come here with her brother when they were little. She had finished the first bottle by herself and we were currently taking turns sipping on the second. Dung sat on the other side of the bench, asleep.

"I'm just so- angry," she said. "At Mom, because what she did was selfish. She didn't care how it would affect us if we found out; she just wanted to get some."

"She's unhappy though, with your dad?"

"Well, yeah. But why couldn't she talk to him about it, or divorce him, not go behind his back and lie to all of us."

"Maybe she thought staying in a relationship where she was unhappy would be less painful than getting a divorce. Parents divorcing changes your life forever, one moves out, and two people who you thought loved each other unconditionally all of the sudden don't anymore, and you think, why? You looked up to them your entire life, wanted something like what they had, and it turns out they never really had anything. It makes you think marriage and love is all a lie."

"What happened to Mr. I'm-so-optimistic-about-love?" she mocked me.

I laughed. "I'm optimistic about it, but right after the divorce happened I wasn't. I just learned from their mistakes and promised not to make them."

She nodded and took another swig from the bottle.