A Different Kind of Us

Chapter 10

[Last time on ADKOU: Sutton visited Ada's apartment, went on a run with her, and learned more about her life; at work, the team celebrated On-Delay's birthday and Marta announced that Cyntera officially acquired the company in Florida; Sutton came home late on a Thursday night to be greeted with the news that her parents are getting a divorce after almost 30 years of marriage.]

Her first instinct was to call Ada. It was the only thought in her head that made sense. Everything else was a jumble, a mad carousel of questions and bitter knowledge and images of her parents’ faces and echoes of their voices.

She paced around her bedroom, her face and neck flushed with uncomfortable heat, her throat tight. Wilson Phillips lay on the bed, watching her with bored, unimpressed eyes. Sutton dropped to her knees in front of the cat and smoothed her palm over its ears. “You don’t understand, do you?” she asked, but when she heard the question spoken aloud, she couldn’t understand anything either.

Sutton turned away from Wilson Phillips and rested her back against the runner of her bed. Ada’s presence pulsed all around her, even stronger than these ugly, raw emotions that were growling inside of her. She caught fragments of Ada's eyes, her voice, her elbows.

There was a rational part of Sutton that knew she should call someone else - someone who had been a constant in her life for the past few years. A month ago her first instinct would have been to call Amber, and if not her, then probably Taryn, her best friend from law school. But here she was, sitting on the floor of her childhood bedroom, learning that her greeting card Mommy-and-Daddy family was dissolving, and the only person she wanted to talk to was the best friend she’d had growing up.

Ade?

Ada texted back within a minute. Sutton?

Sutton deliberated, her chest building with heaviness. She didn’t want to be needy. She hated being needy. But her parents’ faces fizzed behind her eyes and she was overwhelmed by her raw need to be near Ada.

Parents are getting divorced. They just told me.

She stared at the words after she sent them. They looked fake, like they hadn't come from her phone. 

The ellipsis bubble appeared on her screen, indicating that Ada was typing. Sutton breathed through her stomach while she waited for Ada's response.

Do you want to come over? Ada wrote. Are you okay to drive? Do you want me to pick you up?

I can drive, Sutton wrote back. Are you sure? You’re not busy?

Ada’s reply came quickly again.

No. Please come. 

Sutton remembered how Amber and her college friends had reacted when her granny had died back in the spring of her sophomore year. They had burst into her dorm room and swooped around her, rubbing her arms and cooing like she was a stray puppy, their too-loud voices demanding, "What happened? What happened?" over and over again, and when Sutton hadn't been able to answer them, when she had sat there as if made from stone, they had switched to a never-ending refrain of "Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay?"

She expected that now with Ada. She expected she would have to rehash everything from the last hour: the burnt smell of the eggplant parmesan, her dad petting at his bald spot like a nervous child, the sound of her mom's clinical, detached voice. She tried to string it all together as she drove mindlessly into the city, as she parked with automatic, programmed movements, as she dazedly took the elevator up to Ada's apartment.