Page 1 of Hate To Love You

PROLOGUE

Apollo

“My parents are getting a divorce.”

The thing about eleven-year-old girls, even Patience, who has been my best friend for as long as I can remember and is the least like anyone else I’ve ever met, is that they tend to exaggerate.

It’s why I don’t immediately take her seriously. It’s October, and the wind is screaming outside. What few leaves there are on this big sturdy tree that has housed our fort for the past five years shake and tremble and moan right along with it. Before she passed away a few years ago, on days like this, my mom used to say that it was going to be a long, brutal winter, and then she’d laugh and ask when are winters in northern Michigan not long and brutal?

God, I miss her.

“I don’t want to believe it,” Patience whispers as she flips over and puts her feet on the roof of the treehouse. We built it together a few years ago. I guess our dads helped out too. It’s not very well made since, of the four of us, I probably have the best construction skills, and they’re not great by any means.

“I thought they were in love.” It might not be the smoothest thing to say. My parents were so in love. They were always touching each other’s hands and kissing, even right in front of me. They were never shy about that. I know other people’s parents might not be like that, and Patience’s parents definitely aren’t, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.

“I thought so too.” She taps her bare feet on the roof boards. The plastic blow-up chair and the bean bag beast are off to our left and right, but we wanted to lie on our backs, looking up at the roof. With her toes, and by only a few inches, she misses the shingle nail sticking through the boards where it must have missed something. “They always said marriage was sacred.” She says that with the solemn understanding of an eleven-year-old.

She turns and looks at me with that same intense expression. I’ve always felt that Patience was born knowing the world in ways I just don’t. Maybe in ways that most people don’t, no matter how old they are. I feel like she’s always been like this. There isn’t one thing I don’t like about her. I know we might have only turned eleven a few months ago, but sometimes I dream about growing up and marrying her. I think it would be nice for her to be my wife and for me to be her husband. We wouldn’t have to do all the kissy stuff all the time, but we could help each other. We could give each other advice like we do now. I can’t imagine my life without her. Since our dads were best friends before we were even born, I’ve never known a time without her in it.

“My dad says marriage is supposed to come before anything.”

A sudden, horrible fear bites through me and chills me the way the wind that’s shredding through the gaps in the boards in here can’t. If Patience’s mom and dad get a divorce, what does that mean? Would she have to move away?

She bites at the corner of her thumbnail. “But in private, my mom calls my dad a prick.”

That’s jarring. I’ve never heard her use bad language before. She might not have much patience, which she finds funny because she’s named after that very trait, but she never says foul things. “Sometimes people get mad at each other.”

She grimaces, and I feel like a dolt for just not getting it. “I’m sorry, Pace.” My dad must not know anything about this because if he did, he would have told me, wouldn’t he?

Our dads aren’t just best friends and haven’t just been best friends since they were kids. They run a business together. I thought there wasn’t a single thing they didn’t know about each other.

This sounds serious. It sounds like something that can’t be fixed. I’m already thinking ahead, with more than just a trickle of selfish panic. I can barely breathe. I don’t think Patience’s dad would leave. He’s got his job here with my dad. But her mom? If she leaves… “Are you…you’re not going with her, are you?’

Patience shakes her head. She drops her hand away from her mouth and sighs such a heavy sigh that her whole body heaves with it. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I just heard them fighting last night, and then I heard my mom say divorce. Over and over again. My dad doesn’t want it. He kept saying no. They were downstairs. They didn’t know I was awake up there, listening. Dedind is my home.”

Yes, we really live in a town with a population of a few thousand that sounds exactly like dead-end. But it’s not. It’s Dee-dind, named for the guy who founded it a long time ago.

We’re both facing each other now. I don’t remember twisting to her, but I did, instinctually. She puts her hand on my shoulder, and her touch does something to me that makes me feel like I’m dizzy, but all over my body. “I’m not going anywhere,” she states stubbornly like she has a say in it. “I don’t want to think of a part of the world without you in it. I don’t want to exist in that world.”

“You won’t have to. We’ll be together forever. I promise. I’ll do anything it takes. I’ll even marry you myself one day.”

“Ewww.” Her nose wrinkles, but she doesn’t laugh. It’s not a joke, and she knows that. “I don’t want to marry you. Gross. We’re best friends. You’re like a brother to me.”

“But I’m not your brother. Maybe one day we’ll fall in love. We’ll go from friends to more. That’s how my parents fell in love. They were friends and then high school sweethearts. Then, they got married as soon as they were done with college.”

Patience normally knows just what to say when I talk about my mom. She doesn’t get weird about her not being here anymore like some people do. “I don’t want you as a husband. You can’t be a husband and a best friend.” Patience might be wise, but maybe for once, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

“Yes, you can.”

She pulls a sour lemon face. “I would never want to kiss you. I don’t want to kiss anyone. Kissing is nasty. And the other stuff sounds so…scary. I don’t want to do that, ever. Not with anyone.”

“People get married for other reasons. Sometimes they get married because they have to.”

“That’s never going to be me. I’m never going to get married for any reason. I don’t want to date either. I just want to be me. I’m making a resolution right here and now.”

“That’s silly. You can’t make promises as a kid for the rest of your life. What if you change your mind? Are you going to hold yourself to some funny standard just because you said something wild when you were young and didn’t understand what it truly even meant? I used to say I’d never go swimming because I hated the water. I was scared of it.”

She nods, but it’s clear that she thinks swimming isn’t the same thing as marriage. “And now you swim every day,” she says anyway.

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