Chapter 6 Spring Break #7
“Let’s jump on the furniture with them!” Joanie shouts into Hannah’s ear.
Hannah turns to give her an incredulous look, but Joanie only barks with laughter, grabs Luke’s hand, and climbs on top of the kitchen table.
She sways back and forth with her blond hair falling over her face while Luke starts doing the Wobble. The table thumps with their weight.
“Hey!” somebody shouts in Hannah’s ear.
She turns to find Baker behind her, wide-eyed and rosy-cheeked. The relief Hannah feels is overwhelming. “Hi!”
“Where’ve you been?!”
“Upstairs!”
Baker cups a hand around her ear to indicate that she can’t hear, then takes Hannah’s hand and tugs her away from the crowd.
Hannah thinks they’re headed for the porch, but Baker makes a sudden detour into a tiny alcove with a single door leading off of it.
She pulls Hannah through the door and into a vast, echoing garage.
“Whoa,” Hannah says, blinking against the dim light.
Baker drops Hannah’s hand and wedges a beer can into the doorway, keeping it from closing all the way. She catches Hannah watching and says, “I almost got stuck before.”
“What is this, your secret tree fort?” Hannah teases.
Baker looks right at her, searching her face for something. Whatever she finds must reassure her, because her expression relaxes. “It’s quiet,” she says, smiling, “and there’s water.” She leads Hannah to an auxiliary refrigerator and opens it to reveal a chilled pack of water bottles.
“Yes, please,” Hannah mutters, wrenching a bottle free for each of them. They gulp them down, and only now does Hannah realize how much she’s been sweating. Her heart rate is slowly coming to rest, but her body is still buzzing from alcohol and music.
“How’d you even know this was here?” Hannah asks.
Baker’s body language changes subtly; she is suddenly very interested in her water. “Um. I went looking for you. I was worried you had left without me.”
Hannah frowns. “I would never do that.” She waits for Baker to look up at her; when she doesn’t, Hannah pokes her at the waist. “Hey. I wouldn’t just leave. You know that.”
Baker has trouble meeting her eyes. “I thought maybe…” She trails off, her cheeks coloring.
“What?” Hannah prompts.
“I thought—maybe you saw—”
Hannah understands suddenly, and the memory cools her faster than the water could. “Saw you on the dance floor with Clay?”
Baker absolutely refuses to look at her.
“Maybe I did,” Hannah says, her voice rising. She feels reckless all of a sudden, and not just because she’s been drinking. “Is that why you brought me in here? To see if I’m pissed about the Clay thing?”
The music pounds on the other side of the wall. Hannah feels like she’s hearing it from underwater. She’s angry, and she’s hurt, and does she even have the right to be? Please make it stop hurting it hurts so badly—
“I should have told you,” Baker says, hanging her head. “About … about making out with him. I’m really sorry.”
The silence grows between them, prickly and raw. Hannah takes a deep breath, centers herself. “Why didn’t you?”
Baker still won’t look at her. “I didn’t know how I felt about it. And…” She chews the inside of her lip, debating something.
“What?”
Baker shifts her weight. She uncaps her water bottle, trying to seem nonchalant. “Clay told me you made out with Wally.” Her voice is casual, but there’s the slightest fissure beneath her tone. She looks straight at Hannah. “Did you?”
Now Hannah is the one to break eye contact. She finds herself gawping at the concrete floor, her mouth waiting for words that won’t come. “I’m sorry,” she says finally.
“No, no, it’s fine,” Baker says, so fast that she chokes on her water. Then she’s coughing and rasping and thumping her chest, and Hannah can only stand there, paralyzed. “I just—um”— another rasp, another pounding of her chest—“just wish you’d told me.”
“I’m sorry,” Hannah mumbles.
Baker clears her throat violently. “No, it’s okay, I think it’s great. Really great. I’m really happy for you.”
Hannah lifts her head. Baker seems anything but happy. Her face is splotchy and her eyes are watering—because she was choking, or for a different reason?
“So, um.” Baker clears her throat one more time. The words come out like she’s forcing them. “How was it?”
The bass thumps through the wall. Hannah can’t speak, can’t move. She takes in Baker’s stilted body language, her clenched jaw, her bleary eyes. There’s something unnamable in her expression—some kind of bigger question that Hannah feels shimmering on the air.
“I liked kissing you better,” Hannah whispers.
Baker breathes in sharply, almost like she might be hiccupping. Her eyes flit to Hannah’s mouth, then back to Hannah’s eyes, but the hunger is unmistakable.
Hannah leans forward and kisses her. Baker startles, pressing the cold water bottle between their waists, but then she’s kissing Hannah back.
And suddenly the water bottle crashes to the floor, and Baker’s hands are on Hannah’s hips, and Hannah moves her hands across Baker’s ribs and around her back.
They break the kiss to breathe, but Hannah doesn’t dare pull away from her, not when either one of them might realize what they’re doing.
She kisses Baker again, and Baker kisses her, too, and when Hannah opens her mouth and touches her tongue tentatively to Baker’s, Baker responds with a hum and an equally eager tongue.
It’s better than Hannah remembered, better than she imagined all those nights she lay awake in bed.
It’s hot and sweet and it does something to her; it awakens her body in a way kissing Wally never has.
She feels it in her stomach, in her heart, and in that mysterious cavity at the base of her torso, propelling her to keep going, to kiss this girl until some unnamed need is filled.
Then: A noise. The slamming of a door.
They jolt apart, and with a terrible, sinking feeling, Hannah realizes the door is now fully closed.
“Someone saw us,” Baker chokes out. She takes a step back, her eyes suddenly wild with primal fear.
“No, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Hannah says, reaching for Baker’s arm. She can hear the panic in her own voice and struggles to control it for Baker’s sake. “I bet someone just bumped into the door on their way to the porch.”
Baker doesn’t seem to be listening. Her eyes dart all over the garage like a trapped animal trying to escape its cage. Her breath starts coming in short heaves and she has to grab the refrigerator handle to steady herself.
“It’s all right,” Hannah says, pleading with her, or maybe just pleading with herself. The panic she feels is suffocating. “We’ll just—we’ll go back to the party like everything’s fine—”
“We need to go home,” Baker rasps, her eyes frenzied.
“Okay,” Hannah says, trying to breathe through the invisible cord on her windpipe, “let’s just grab the others—come on—”
“No,” Baker says, refusing to look at her. “We’re not going anywhere together. We’re not. You go inside first, and I’ll come in a few minutes—”
“I’m not leaving you here by yourself, you’re too upset—”
“Just go!”
Hannah stumbles away from her, her heart in her throat, her entire body drenched with sweat.
She slinks back into the house and hurries out to the mercifully empty porch.
Only then do the sobs come. She clings to the railing and gulps on the saltwater air, begging her head to clear and her heart rate to slow.
Please, she thinks, reaching for rope like a drowning person. Please help me.
The walk home is fuzzy. Hannah is vaguely aware of Clay leading the pack, of Luke and Joanie plodding behind her, of Wally sticking to her side.
Hannah can’t bring herself to speak to any of them, too lost in the labyrinth of her own emotions.
The only thing she can focus on is Baker walking ahead of her, shoulders hunched and sandals shuffling listlessly on the sidewalk.
“I’m going to bed, y’all,” Clay says when they enter the house. In the dim light of the kitchen, he looks tired and worn. “Anybody need anything?”
“Nah, I’m passing out, too,” Luke mutters tiredly.
“I’ll get everyone some water,” Wally says.
“Everyone come take some aspirin,” Joanie whispers, riffling through her purse.
Hannah hovers at the back of the group, hyperaware of Baker and the knotted tension that seems to be radiating off of her. She wants nothing more than to get to their bedroom and talk.
“Hey,” Clay says, wrapping an arm over Baker’s shoulders. “You all right? Need anything?”
“I’m fine,” Baker whispers. “Thanks, Clay.”
“No problem.” He smiles.
The boys peel off to the basement and Joanie leads the way up the stairs, Hannah following behind her and Baker following several steps behind Hannah.
Joanie slips into the bedroom on the first landing, waving silently as she closes the door, and then Hannah leads the way to the bedroom on the top floor.
She turns to face Baker the moment they’re inside the door, but Baker pushes past her without a word.
Hannah assumes Baker just needs some time, so she busies herself with her hygiene routine, mentally running through a list of what she wants to say.
When a full fifteen minutes have passed and Hannah is tired of brushing her hair, she sidles up to Baker and waits.
They stand at the mirror together, Baker braiding her hair, Hannah trying to catch her eye in the reflection.
“Bake,” she says at last.
But Baker shakes her head—not in anger, nor dismissal, but in a frantic, uncontrollable way, like she’ll burst at the seams if she starts talking.
Hannah stares at her for a long, interminable moment. The ache has never sat higher in her throat. Then she turns and leaves the bathroom.
She opens the porthole windows and breathes deep into her stomach, trying to stay calm, trying to contextualize this night as just one disorienting event in what will otherwise be a long and steady life.
The bathroom door opens behind her, but Hannah keeps still against the window, holding on for dear life.
To her surprise, Baker speaks to her.
“I don’t want the windows open.”
Hannah spins around, entirely caught off guard. “What?”
Baker rushes past the windows, staring determinedly away. “Not tonight. I can’t handle it.”
“What do the windows have to do with anything?”
“Please, Hannah,” Baker says, her voice catching.
Hannah stares at her, waiting for an explanation, but Baker merely climbs into bed and turns away.
“Fine,” Hannah says. She shuts the windows hard—for a half second she startles, worrying that she might have woken the Landrys—but the room quickly dissolves into silence again.