Everybody Needs Somebody

Everybody needs somebody, that’s what he had once told her. What a damn lie that turned out to be. Hayley Rose Hepburn didn’t need anybody. She definitely didn’t need Will Matthews. She could make it on her own.

“I wouldn't have thought it of Scott,” MaryBeth sighed as the Matthews family discussed the day’s events. Will shrugged.
“What do you say back, son?” Paul frowned, his fingers covering his mouth.
“Well, I...”
“You didn’t just stand there, did you, William?” MaryBeth snapped, as Will recoiled. He pulled at a loose button on his shirt and bit his lip. He should have said something, and he knew it. The guilt was eating him alive.
“You do like her, though, don’t you, son?” Paul asked, not believing his son could just kiss a girl and not be her boyfriend.
“I...I do, but everyone at school-”
A short slap on the back of his head from his mother shut him up. “You march round that house right now, young man, and you will invite Hayley to dinner to apologise! Everyone at school,” MaryBeth fumed, leaving the room to prepare more mash potato for Hayley.
“I can’t, Dad,” Will moaned. “I can’t. Hayley hates me.”
Paul frowned. He was a quiet, old soul, but his son’s pleading eyes wore him down.
“Alright,” he murmured. “I’ll go ask her.”
And he was true to his word. MaryBeth was furious with her son for not inviting Hayley and her husband for doing it for him, but she called them to the table a few minutes after Paul closed the door and nodded.
“She’s coming, but she didn’t seem too pleased about it,” he told Will, taking his seat at the oval mahogany table and sipping water.
Will and his mother took their seats around their kitchen table, with a spare chair between them, awkwardly waiting Hayley’s arrival.