Chapter Thirty-Seven
“I think she’s here,” Dad says, poking his head into my room.
“What, were you watching the window or something?” I ask, getting up from my desk and following him down the hall.
“I’m surprised you weren’t. Your girlfriend is coming over.”
“Dad,” I moan, looking out the living room window to see Hannah parked on the street.
“She’s here!” he shouts to wherever Mom is. “Clarity’s girlfriend is here!”
“Dad! She’s going to hear you through the walls,” I snap, tugging his arm and pulling him away from the living room window so that Hannah won’t see him stalking her.
“This is exciting,” Mom says, coming into the living room. “You’ve never dated before.”
“You guys are going to embarrass me,” I whine. There’s a good chance this is a terrible idea, just for new reasons.
While we were at the mall, Hannah texted. Turns out her parents had very similar sentiments about us getting sent to the principal’s office instead of whoever it was that put the pictures on our lockers, so she wasn’t in trouble either. We both just got to have a day off from school.
She asked if she could come pick me up later so that we could get coffee or something and talk about what happened. In the interest of being open and honest, I asked Mom if that would be okay, and she loved the idea.
Both my parents latched on to the idea, because even though they’ve seen Hannah, and Mom even spent an afternoon with her in our house, neither of them has met Hannah My Girlfriend.
A knock. It’s soft, but I guess that doesn’t matter since we are all hovering around the front door anyway.
“I will get the door,” I say, crossing the entryway when I catch Mom taking a step in that direction.
I pause with my hand on the doorknob, thankful that we don’t have one of those doors with a big glass window—which are actually common in Colony Grove.
We have a window toward the top, but it’s more for art than function.
So Hannah doesn’t see me standing on the other side, which I realize is the only thing standing between us becoming the us we’ve been fighting for for so long.
She doesn’t see me take a deep breath, hyperaware of the fact that my parents are watching me do this and thankful that they don’t ask, that they don’t get confused or try to rush me.
I’m pretty sure I hear Dad take a breath beside me, or maybe that’s my imagination.
Either way, here I am. Here we are. Similar to how I collected the details of our first kiss, I collect the details now: the smell of Pledge in the air because Mom went on a cleaning spree when we got home from the mall to make sure the house would be perfect; the feeling of the cold metal doorknob, warming in the confines of my clammy hands; the sound of coffee brewing in the kitchen because Mom likes decaf in the evenings, and I do too sometimes; the taste of my pomegranate Burt’s Bees lip balm as I bite my lip, feeling that excited kind of nervous.
The sight of Hannah, smiling at me when I pull the door open. I unlatch the storm door and suddenly flowers are in my hand, bright pink chrysanthemums, soft petals, crinkly plastic wrapping, an earthy, sweet smell.
“Hannah, nice to finally meet you.”
Dad steps forward, shaking her hand. Mom goes in for the kill, wrapping her in an embrace and rocking back and forth a little.
“So good to see you,” she says.
“Good to see and meet you too,” Hannah says, her shoulders shrugging nervously.
“I still can’t believe your principal. That whole mess today,” Mom says.
I note how she takes a step back, fading into her post next to Dad. Similarly, Hannah takes a step back, a relaxed, absent-minded step that places her next to me so that we are standing squarely across from them.
“That was so stupid,” Hannah says, some of the stiffness leaving when she turns her gaze my way.
“Did they find out who did that? Who put the pictures on your lockers?” Dad asks, a protective edge underlining his voice.
“Not that I know of,” Hannah says.
“I haven’t heard anything either,” I say.
“A couple of our friends have their ears to the ground though,” she says, helping Dad relax a little.
“Well, I just hope that if they figure it out, your principal does something.”
I drive, deciding on a Mitchell’s milkshake instead of coffee. Once the GPS puts us on a main road that’s basically a straight shot to the ice cream shop, I’m able to wrap my head around some things.
“So, I reached out to Maurice,” I say, turning down the radio. “He’s denying telling anyone that he saw us, and I think I believe him. I didn’t get to press him because it, like, just happened before you got to my house.”
“Maurice didn’t tell anyone—or, at least, he didn’t tip off anyone at our school.”
I glance over and see Hannah fidgeting.
“Hannah…”
“I know who outed us.”
I gathered. I wait quietly for her to collect the words.
“You were right, and I’m so sorry,” she says, running her hands through her hair—her ultimate nervous tic.
“About what?”
“It was Rowena.”
“Field hockey Rowena? Your best friend Rowena?”
You were right. I knew we couldn’t trust her.
“Yes,” Hannah says.
I roll to a stop at a red light, thankful for the thirty seconds that I can look at her.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Hannah’s head snaps up, a wry smile on her face even though I can see now that her eyes are red with the threat of tears.
“Wait, you know that this doesn’t change anything, right? I still love you, and I’m not mad at you. It might be a while before I go sharing any secrets in the same room as Rowena, but we are good… right?” I say.
“Yes, I just didn’t know if you would hate me or feel like you couldn’t trust me.
I mean, you called it, you literally called it.
You told me not to tell anyone but I did, and you were furious—so mad that you didn’t want to be in the same car as me and walked up a very steep hill.
” She laughs a little, sniffling but holding back the tears.
The light changes; I refocus on the road and resist the urge to look over.
“I don’t hate you, I don’t think I could ever hate you,” I say. “I’m just sorry because she’s your best friend. Even though I was angry, you were so sure that she wouldn’t tell, you put full faith in her and she let you down.”
“I know, I still can’t believe she did that to us—to me.”
“How did she? Like, who did she tell? If it was just her, then whoever she might have told could lead us to who played that prank.”
“It won’t lead us anywhere, actually,” Hannah says, sighing. “She posted a picture of us at Valerie’s party on her X. She captioned it cutest couple or something like that—I don’t know for sure, I don’t have X—”
“Neither do I…” Which has to be why she did it there, because neither of us would see that it was her…
“Whatever she said, it outed us as a couple—and outed you. Anybody could’ve seen it. She only told me the truth because she saw us going into the main office and thought it was her fault that we got in trouble… I really am sorry, Clarity.”
“It’s okay. You weren’t the one who did it.”
Trying to stay positive, I focus on the fact that Rowena outing me forced me to open up to my parents.
But I don’t forgive her. Just because everything turned out all right doesn’t mean what she did was okay.
When I left school, I could’ve driven home and gone into the house to face my worst fears coming true.
And for what? Because she thought the secrecy was an overreaction.
That wasn’t her call to make, nor was it her place to take that away from me.
I’m happy that I’m out and my parents accept me—and accept us. I don’t have to hide anymore.
“Don’t hate her, don’t stop being friends with her,” I say, glancing at Hannah. “Though very misguided, her heart was in the right place. It doesn’t seem like she was trying to hurt either of us.”
Hannah huffs, shaking her head.
“You guys have known each other almost as long as Kristen and I have known each other. When you’ve been friends with someone that long, it really does suck to lose them…”
“Is Kristen still mad at you?” Hannah asks, the shift catching me a little off guard.
The sting of our phone call the other day rips through my chest. My nerves and guilt at the fact that I jeopardized her relationship for mine without realizing it, without considering how asking her to keep my secret really affected her.
“I don’t know. She hasn’t said anything. I didn’t see her this morning either.”
I glance over and find Hannah looking at me, her head tilted to the side.
“You don’t think…”
“No.” I’m certain. “She wouldn’t do that.” She can be mad at me, maybe she even wished something like this would happen, but I know she’d never be the one to do it.
“You’re sure?” Hannah asks, some intensity leaving her voice.
“I am.”
“And Vincent?”
I open my mouth but a denial doesn’t come as fast. Kristen said he didn’t know, but anything could’ve changed between yesterday afternoon and this morning. I admit that I simply don’t know, and Hannah lets the subject drop.
I crack my window, glad for the crisp air that seeps through, tinged with the scents of damp leaves and the smoke from someone’s nearby chimney.
The smell, the night stretching before us, the sky dark and streetlights scattered along the road, are what I associate with autumn in Stow.
I wish I could bottle up the essence and keep it for when I need it, keep this moment, the calm aftermath of everything that happened today.
At a red light, Hannah tucks one of her legs under herself. A wave of pride washes over me at the sight of her getting comfortable in my car. All these little moments that I can preserve and treasure as we navigate the very real, way less scary future ahead of us.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the idea of us going to the same college…
of continuing our relationship after high school.
” I grip the steering wheel a little tighter, gathering the nerve to finally address what’s been nagging at the back of my mind.
“After we talked about it on our first date, it seemed like you backed off the idea of going there once you realized I wanted to go there too… And I’m not saying you have to apply there.
I guess, what I’m trying to say is, I think it would be cool if we both applied, and if we both get in to Pitt, that then there’s this… option.”
Hannah exhales sharply, as if she’d been holding her breath. I fight the urge to say more, to backpedal and give her an out and forget this whole conversation—
She laughs. It’s a small laugh, quiet and seemingly private, but she laughs.
“When we talked about where we were applying on our date, you were still… figuring things out,” she says, choosing her words carefully.
“I backed off because I didn’t want to put you in a position to feel pressured to come out because of the possibility of us going to the same school.
Or for you to not apply at all because of that. ”
“I thought maybe it was because you didn’t want to go to the same school,” I admit, guilt and embarrassment tightening in my chest.
“I didn’t want to make things harder for you. I wanted you to feel free to make your own choice.”
I turn into the parking lot of Mitchell’s Ice Cream and put the car in park, happy to finally be able to focus fully on Hannah and our conversation. I turn in my seat and take her in.
My Hannah.
“You don’t have to worry about that anymore.
And… honestly,” I pause, reaching for her hand.
Holding on to her, feeling how real she is and letting my mind slip into the equally real possibility of our future together.
“The idea of us both going to Pitt is what’s been keeping me going this semester.
At first, it was the idea that if I didn’t come out, we could go to the same school, far enough away that we would just exist in our relationship there.
Now, I’m not hiding at all. We can be in a relationship here, and if we do decide to go to the same school, we could be in a relationship there too—I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d be open to long distance, but…
Pitt is a great school on its own. The fact that you might be there makes it even better. ”
A small smile creeps across her face. She squeezes my hand and leans close, not close enough to kiss me but close enough that her face fills the entirety of my vision and seals us in the sensation of being the only two people in the world.
“I’m applying.” She whispers the words like a promise.
“I am too,” I tell her, my heartbeat fast and hard.
Somewhere in the twinkle in her eye and the tingle in my soul, I wonder if we’re talking about more than college. If we’re committing to the chance at a larger future that we might actually get to have.