Sam had suddenly found himself firmly back in the friend zone and to be honest that was being generous, she was barely acknowledging him and he didn't like it, it was not were he wanted to be and he struggled with it. He tried to understand and be patient but it was hard. Polly just wasn't interested in anything other than Abbey and that meant she had little time for him and he had no idea if she still considered him as her boyfriend.
Now he was lucky to get a conversation from her at all as most of his phone calls went unanswered or they were very short. Every night he sent her a good night message and sometimes he got a reply but most days he didn't. He just didn't know where he stood anymore.
He did know that Polly had tried to take on some of the responsibility for Abbey's overdose because they didn't like her boyfriend Jamie but didn't do anything about it. They chose to spend less time with them when they were together. Not that Abbey was likely to listen anyway; she seemed to like him and was much happier than she had been in a long time. Sam wasn't Abbey's greatest fan in the beginning; he didn't like the way she treated Polly early on so he felt like he couldn't really say much. Her behaviour towards him when he first started showing an interest in Polly was pretty repulsive and the way she talked to Polly on some occasions made his blood boil but she took it and the few times Sam tried to talk to her about it she shut him down. So he bit his tongue and as things settled down he started to like her, she could be a lot of fun and when Abbey was feeling good she was a great friend to Polly.
When Jamie came on the scene Abbey was happy and pretty much left them alone, she threw herself into that relationship. Jamie, who was a little older than them, was also a complete fuckwit who seemed to be basically interested in Abbey for one thing and that was obvious the moment he dumped her when she opened up to him about her abuse.
He also used to hang it on Sam because he wasn't getting 'pussy' from Polly and asked him why was he hanging around if he wasn't getting laid? Obviously Abbey had told him because they never mentioned it. Sam wasn't really bothered that Polly talked to Abbey about sex, he figured that's what girlfriends did but what he didn't like was that Abbey talked to Jamie about it. When he mentioned it to Polly she got all defensive and basically told him to back off. Polly just wanted to see Abbey happy and why was Sam trying to ruin that so they would catch up when the boys weren't around and everyone was happy with that.
She also took a while to come around to the fact that her mother approaching Janice had put this all in motion, it was hard to see that it was a positive when Abbey ended up where she did. If anyone was to blame for forcing Abbey's hand it was this guy and Simon, not Polly and it took her a while to accept that.
The photos didn't help although Polly dealt with them better than they thought she would.
Once Abbey was home from hospital she was leaning heavily on Polly for everything. So much so that even her parents were starting to worry that it was getting too much for Polly to handle. Kim had called Sam and invited him back for Sunday dinner when he hadn't been seen for a couple of weeks. Polly just shrugged when Kim asked her if they had broken up and Sam apparently had no idea what was going on.
Polly seemed happy enough to see him when he did show up for dinner and Sam tried desperately to show her how much he cared but she didn't give him a lot to work with and he was just as confused as before. Adam should have been happy that Polly wasn't interested in getting too close to Sam but he wasn't because this wasn't Polly. Before this all happened sometimes he felt like he needed a crowbar to prise them apart.
Kim and Adam took it upon themselves to try and put some distance between the girls, which was not well received and Polly basically ignored them and continued to do whatever she wanted and while they were at work they couldn't stop her. Not that they wanted Polly to walk away from her friend but she was taking to much upon herself and everything else was starting to suffer, including her school work and as far as they could tell her budding relationship with Sam had floundered.
It wasn't because they weren't proud of her for trying to help out her friend but it wasn't healthy, for her or for Abbey.
When Polly got into a fight at school enough was enough. They understood why she did it but physical violence was a step to far. Polly had shoved a girl against her locker and punched her in the face. Without a doubt she deserved it but that didn't make it right and having Polly heading down this path was not what they wanted or expected.
Polly was defending her friend and Abbey's return to school had been harsh. People talked about her behind her back or they ignored her out of fear of not knowing what to say which was a little easier to understand but still hard for Abbey to handle. They were young and this was something pretty confronting however when some nasty piece of work called her a slut and that it was probably all her fault Polly had snapped and jumped in and took on the girl. She was wild and it took two teachers to restrain her. Adam and Kim were far from impressed to get that phone call. Adam had stormed downstairs and basically hauled Kim out to the car and ranted to her the entire way to the school. He'd had a gutful of her bad behaviour, they'd tried to give her a chance to right herself but she was getting more and more out of control and it had to stop.
Polly was still full of spit and fire when they both rocked up, her Mom in uniform and her Dad didn't even bother to hide his badge or gun and his face was like thunder. He didn't even speak to Polly as he stormed into the office; he was too pissed off. Whereas in the past she would have dissolved into tears the moment her parents walked in this time she was stubbornly sulking in the corner with her arms crossed across her chest in defiance. The more she refused to apologise or back down the angrier Adam got and Polly was lucky to get out of there in one piece. Kim sent him back to work while she stayed home with Polly, who had been suspended for two days because Adam was so close to exploding it wasn't funny and that wasn't going to help anyone. Everyone needed to take a deep breath and calm down.
It was all falling apart in front of him and he didn't know how to stop it. Polly was spiralling out of control, Angus basically did anything not to be at home and Kim was barely eating and she was fading away before his very eyes. They were trying to hold their kids together while they barely took a moment for themselves but thankfully they had friends who stepped up and kept them at the very least pointing in the same direction.
The epic emotional shit storm that erupted when Polly was told that she had to step back from Abbey a little left both Adam and Kim reeling and living in a house with a teenage girl who did not utter a word for days was far from pleasant. Adam had commented how Kim now knew what it felt like to be hated by their daughter too, which wasn't particularly well received and he'd copped Kim's abuse on the chin. They allowed her to see Abbey two days a week after school and either on Saturday or Sunday and that went down like a lead balloon.
It was an ugly few days when Adam would drive to the school and pick Polly up and bring her back the district where she had to sit and wait for one of them to finish work. The break room basically became a no-go zone some days because of the fire breathing teenage dragon that inhabited it.
When Abbey told Polly that she was moving to New York to stay with her father for a while she blamed her parents, somewhat irrationally. She felt that if they hadn't stopped her seeing Abbey she could have helped her and made her stay. It wasn't until Abbey explained to Polly that it was her decision, that she couldn't stay in Chicago with all these memories and it would be the best thing for her to go away for a while that she started accept it and deal with it. Abbey begged her not to blame her parents because they had been such a source of strength for her throughout this whole sorry situation and she couldn't have made it this far without them. Abbey also told her to rethink what she doing with Sam, because she liked them together and that she would need Sam when she was gone.
From the moment she came home from hospital she was invited back for dinner on Tuesday nights as soon as she felt up to it and Abbey did come back and those dinners helped her enormously in those early days. Those evening dinners were like nothing had happened, nothing changed and it was a place where Abbey could just be Abbey and she felt safe and happy in the Ruzek house.
They promised Polly that they would take her to New York to visit as soon as Abbey had settled in.
There were tears for days before she left and all through it Sam stood on the sidelines and he missed her like crazy. Adam had told him to not lose contact with her and to be her friend if that was all she wanted. He knew Sam would eventually get through to her but he had to keep going and at one point he told Adam he was not sure that he could. He'd come into the District in desperation because he knew Polly would be furious if she found out he was talking to her Dad behind her back but he just didn't know what else to do. Adam never thought he would be pushing Polly's boyfriend to spend more and more time with her, but just as Sam was desperate to see Polly, Adam was just as desperate to get his daughter back.
Sam kept on messaging her, calling her, stopping by and inviting her out for ice-cream or to the movies or just for a drive, sometimes she went and sometimes she refused but he didn't stop asking. When she did go out with him they talked about Abbey a lot and how she thought Abbey was doing and occasionally she would talk a little about how she was feeling. Most of the conversation he kept to himself because Polly asked him to but he did assure her parents that she was talking about things she just wasn't talking about them and their relationship or quite frankly if they had a relationship at all. She wouldn't even hold his hand.
Their biggest fear was that Polly was going to fall down a hole and that it was going to be so deep that she would struggle to get back out. Sam could see how worried her parents were and Polly would also rant to him about them, how they were stopping her from seeing and helping Abbey and that they didn't care. It wasn't true, he kept telling her that. He kept telling her that they were out of their mind with worry about her but he had no idea how much of it was getting through.
It would have been easy for him to walk away but he couldn't. He just liked her too damn much. He couldn't stop himself falling in love with her.
Sam's parents worried about him too. They worried that he was taking on too much trying to fix Polly but they were also proud of him for not giving up on someone when things got hard. He was learning some very tough lessons about life and falling in love. It wasn't easy. It wasn't the cute dates, stolen kisses and sweet glances that he expected. It was harsh and brutal and hard to fathom some days.
One day Polly reached out and slipped her hand into his when Sam had picked her up and taken her out for breakfast and for the first time in weeks he didn't feel like she was just going through the motions. When she asked him about school and his job she genuinely seemed interested in what he was doing. When they got back to the car, Sam opened the door for her and Polly looked at him and suddenly burst into tears. She apologised for pushing him away, she told him that she missed him and wanted to make things right between them. The watery kiss he got was all that he wanted and they spent the day together and Polly didn't let go of his hand.
Adam found Kim standing at the window staring outside and when he asked her what she was looking at she pointed at Sam and Polly. In the past he didn't need to see his daughter kissing her boyfriend but today they actually both thought it was perfect, he reached slipped his arm around her shoulder and they stood and watched them for a few moments. Sam was back in the boyfriend zone and Polly now just had to let him know where she wanted their relationship to start from again and it seemed like he had to be content to go back to the beginning.
Adam and Kim breathed a sigh of relief as their daughter came back to them. It had been more than a month of pure hell but their bright, funny, sweet and smart daughter who had a big heart started to shine back through. Sure the heart was now a little scarred but it was still a big beautiful heart.
And they couldn't help but admire Sam for sticking it out.
A/N: This was bit of a weird chapter to write as it has no dialogue in it, it was also a bit of a filler to basically move the story forward a bit. Hope it makes sense.