12. Chapter 12
Chapter 12
“ I ’m sorry, Maggie, but Halmoni wants me to tell you that you look too tan and that too much sun is bad for your skin.”
Hannah turns toward me, giving the back of her head to her grandma, and mouths “sorry” while rolling her eyes.
“It’s self-tanner,” I say, nodding my head at the both of them.
Hannah tells her grandma this in Korean.
Halmoni says something back and then looks at me and shakes her head slowly, disappointment on her face.
“She doesn’t believe you. She thinks you’re going to tanning beds.”
“I’m not! I promise.”
Hannah closes her eyes and puffs air out of her cheeks. She says something to her grandma, her voice elevated, and Halmoni raises her voice back. They are basically now fighting over my fake tan.
This doesn’t happen every time I’m here, but it happens often enough that I’m used to it and don’t worry about it. I appreciate Halmoni’s lecturing through Hannah. It’s nice to know she cares. If Hannah’s mom were here, she’d probably break it up, but I see her so rarely nowadays. She’s always working. Hannah too. It sometimes worries me, seeing Hannah work so much.
I get back to the jjajangmyeon Hannah’s grandma made us for dinner, while the two of them hash it out. I’m on my second bowl of the noodle dish; it’s one of my favorite things that Halmoni makes, even if Hannah doesn’t appreciate it as much. She says it’s like a Korean version of mac and cheese. Which makes me wonder, who doesn’t like mac and cheese? I’ll even eat the boxed version, on purpose .
I feel my phone vibrate in my back pocket and pull it out to see I have a text from Chase.
Chase: I listened to sad country music today.
Maggie: Rookie mistake. I should have warned you.
Chase: It was more painful than I thought it would be.
Maggie: I can say that part does get better. I don’t cry over any old song now. They have to be ones that mean something.
Chase: She loved country music
Maggie: My mom did too
Chase: What are you up to?
Maggie: Eating dinner at my friend’s mom’s house.
Chase: Is this the one with the grandma who lectures you?
How does he know that? I do a search in my messaging app for Hannah’s name and see this one I sent to my mom:
Maggie: We went to dinner at Hannah’s tonight and her grandma made us those noodles you loved. I think she’s made it her job to see that I’m fed. She also lectured me—through Hannah—about how my shirts are too old and I look like a slob. I just threw on an old T-shirt and some sweats to go over there. I probably did look like a slob. At least you can rest easy knowing I’m still being mommed. Miss you .
I go back to Chase’s messages.
Maggie: You’re not forgetting my texts, and you promised you would.
Chase: Right. Sorry. Will work harder.
Chase: How about I tell you something so we’re even?
Maggie: I mean, you should probably tell me ten things. Even that won’t come close.
Chase: Okay. Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you.
Maggie: They have to be bad things. None of this “I save puppies in my spare time” junk. I mean, that would be cool if you did. I just need stuff to hold over your head.
Chase: Got it. I’ll get you some real juicy stuff. Promise.
Chase: What have you been up to?
Maggie: Just getting ready for a big work party.
Chelsea has had me doing a lot of things this week for the party. Checking on little details, on RSVPs, making sure we have enough seating for everyone. It’s taken up most of my week.
Chase: Oh yes, the anniversary party.
Maggie: Did I tell you about it?
I search my brain, trying to remember if I told him when we were texting yesterday. Chase sends back one of those sheepish-looking emojis.
Maggie: Oh my hell
Chase: I’m sorry. You were complaining about how much Chelsea was making you do, and wishing your mom could be there to celebrate. It’s an easy one to remember .
I’m starting to wonder if Chase has a photographic memory or something. I mean, I can’t even remember what I ate for breakfast this morning. Wait, yes I can. It was overnight oats with honey and cinnamon. My favorite. But still, his ability to remember the things I texted to him is a little frightening. Especially since I need him to forget it all.
Maggie: I want that list. Stat.
Chase: I’ll work on it, promise.
“Who’s Chase?” Hannah asks, and I jolt at the sound of her voice.
I was so caught up in the texting between Chase and me that I didn’t realize the arguing had ended.
Now Hannah is standing over me, her eyes on my phone. Halmoni is cleaning up the kitchen, the argument she was having with Hannah resolved or forgotten.
Crap.
“Who’s Chase, and why are you smiling at your phone like a weirdo?” she says, accusation in her tone.
“I haven’t been smiling at my phone,” I say, pulling my brows inward.
“Yes, you have. Like a weirdo. Now … who is Chase? And why have I never heard of this guy?”
“He’s just … someone I met.” I reach up and play with my necklace.
Hannah sits back down at the table. She now looks appalled. “And you didn’t tell me about him?”
“You’ve been busy.” This is true; however, it’s also not the reason I withheld this information from her.
“Okay,” she says, placing her forearms on the table and intertwining her fingers. I know this look. I’m about to be interrogated.
“Let us look at the facts,” she starts.
“I didn’t break any laws.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. And you did break the friendship code. While not illegal, it’s offensive.” She looks and sounds very lawyerly right now as she starts her interrogation.
“It’s not what you think.”
“That’s what all guilty people say,” she points out.
I slump in my seat and Halmoni tsks at me from the kitchen where she’s currently cleaning dishes.
I sit up straight. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“I’ve got all night,” Hannah says, looking me directly in the eyes.
“No, you don’t. You have to go back to work.”
“Fine,” she says, annoyed. “I’ve got thirty minutes. Now, spill.”
I let out a breath. “Fine,” I say, my tone matching her annoyance.
Am I really going to tell her this? I guess I should tell someone. And if it has to be someone, Hannah is my safest space. She probably won’t have me committed. I hope.
“Okay, so remember how I asked my dad to keep my mom’s phone number? Just for a little while?”
“Uh-huh,” she says, giving me a confused look.
“Well, he didn’t.”
“What?” She pulls her chin inward, her face scrunched. “How could he?”
“Right?”
“Well, okay. I mean, I didn’t really get why you wanted to keep it, but I know Katherine Cooper’s phone meant something to you, so I didn’t question.”
“I can’t really explain it. It was like an extension of her. I know it was dumb.”
“Not dumb. You have to do whatever to cope,” Hannah says.
“Remember you said that, okay?”
Now Hannah looks concerned. “Tell me.”
“So … I didn’t know that my dad had turned off her number, and I knew no one was looking at her phone. So I started texting her.”
“You were … texting your mom.”
“Yes. And it became sort of a journal thing. Or a venting thing. I texted a lot of feelings.”
“You were texting your recently deceased mother’s phone about your feelings.”
“Yes.”
“Right.”
“I know, it sounds a little crazy.”
“I love you, but it sounds a lot crazy.”
“I didn’t mean for it to happen—it just did.”
“Weren’t you worried about your dad or someone seeing them?”
“Of course. But as time went on and no one did, I just got more confident,” I say with a shrug.
“Right. So … I’m still not understanding how this is about this Chase person.”
I will her with my eyes to see where this is going without me having to say it.
“My mom’s number is no longer hers.”
“I know,” she says .
“It belongs to someone else now,” I say, nodding my head slowly as if to nudge her along.
Hannah looks confused, but I decide I’m just going to let her lawyerly brain put the puzzle pieces together.
I see the moment she realizes. Her eyes practically bug out of her head. “The texts you were sending to your mom were going to this Chase guy?”
“Yes,” I say, feeling suddenly relieved that this secret is no longer mine alone. It’s almost like a weight I didn’t realize was there has been lifted off my shoulders.
“What in the … the entire time?” I’m not sure her eyebrows can go any higher at this point.
“No, only for the last two weeks of it. It took him that long to tell me. I think he thought they would just go away, and when they didn’t … he finally texted me back to tell me.”
“And now you’re what? Texting buddies?” Her voice gets more shrill with every question.
“Sort of?”
Hannah stares at me. Her facial expressions vacillate between confusion and concern. She stands up and starts pacing the dining room, back and forth, and back and forth.
She finally stops in front of me.
“So you’ve been texting a stranger? Like, how often?”
I take in a breath. “Here’s where it gets weird.”
Her eyebrows shoot up again. “It gets more weird than this?”
“So he told me he had my mom’s number, and that was that. I stopped texting my mom, obviously, and deleted the number off her contact page.”
“Right,” Hannah says, sitting back down at the table.
“And one night a few weeks later, Chase texted me. ”
“Creeper!” Hannah yells, and Halmoni says something to her from the kitchen.
“Mind your own business, woman!” she yells back at her.
“Go on,” she says to me.
“I was initially concerned about him contacting me … but he reached out because it turns out his mom died in a car accident.”
“Oh,” Hannah says, sitting back in her chair. “That’s so sad.”
“I know, and my heart just—”
“Wait, how do you know his mom died? How do you know he’s not catfishing you?”
“He’s not.”
“But how do you know? Have you seen pictures of him?”
“I’m getting to that,” I say, letting the impatience show in my tone.
“Oh my gosh, he sent you pictures? Please don’t tell me they were of his junk. Were they of his junk? The world is full of pervs. I just saw a case where this woman was catfished by this old dude and he stole a bunch of money from her. Has he asked for money? Please tell me you didn’t give him money. As your lawyer, I advise you against ever speaking to this guy again.”
“Are you done?” I say, holding up a hand to stop her rant.
“I have more to say.”
“Please hold your objections until the witness has finished.”
The corner of her mouth lifts up slightly. “Well played with the attempt at lawyer speak,” she says.
“He has not sent me pictures of his junk. I’ve only seen his Instagram page.”
Hannah lets out a breath.
“If he was going to ask for money, it would be an elaborate scheme, and it’s not like I’m some billionaire to make all the effort worth it. I’ve seen pictures of him, his family, and I even saw his mom’s obituary in the newspaper.”
After ending our texting yesterday, I did a bit more stalking. I found his sister’s Instagram page and she had posted the obituary. It wasn’t because I didn’t believe Chase; I just wanted to know more.
“Well, that makes me feel a little better, I guess.” She twists her mouth to the side. “But still … why would he text you like that?”
I shrug. “I guess he needed someone to talk to. Made sense since he knows that I’d just gone through the same thing.”
“Because of your texts to your mom.”
“Yes. Exactly. I know it’s … weird.”
She’s silent for a few seconds, looking around the room as she thinks. “Yes. I maintain that this whole thing is weird. I mean, I wouldn’t do that.”
“But you’re also heartless and dead on the inside.”
She points a finger at me. “Correct.”
This is Hannah’s MO. But the truth is, she’s a big softy. I just let her believe she’s cold and hardened, even though it’s not true.
“So now you’re like, what? Friends with this guy?”
“Not really; I hardly know him. It’s been nice to talk to him, though.”
“What does he look like?”
“I can show you,” I say, grabbing my phone from the table and pulling up the Instagram app. I type in his name and pull up his page.
Hannah takes my phone away and studies his picture. She moves the phone to the side and looks at me for a second, a questioning glare, and then brings the phone back to her face. I watch as she clicks out of the picture and studies the other ones in his feed.
“So”—she hands the phone back to me—“you should have started with ‘I’ve been texting this random hot guy.’ I would have had no problems with that.”
I laugh. “Liar. What about the catfishing?”
“That’s real, and you have to be careful. But like, that guy is super hot.”
“Well, I mean, he’s no Dawson,” I say.
“Does he have a girlfriend? That Chase guy?”
“I believe he’s single.”
“How do you know? What if he’s married?”
“Did you see anything in his Instagram feed that would make you think that? And besides, so what if he is? It’s not like something is happening between him and me. He’s actually been giving me advice about Dawson.”
Hannah pulls her face back, looking confused. “How would he know about Dawson?”
Crap. I didn’t mean to go there. “I … may have been texting my mom about Dawson.”
Hannah swipes a hand down her face. “So, to recap. You’ve been texting your life issues to Katherine Cooper’s phone, only her number is now owned by some dude named Chase, who also lost his mom, and now the two of you are like besties and he’s giving you men advice?”
“When you put it like that …”
She lets out a breath, slowly, through her nose. “Mags, this whole thing is above my pay grade.”
“I know.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What did he say about Dawson?”
I smile. “He said that men are dumb. ”
“He gets points for that.”
“And that I have to spell it out for him … if I ever get another opportunity.”
“Right,” Hannah says. “He’s right. I’m gonna get the scoop on Saturday; I’m ready to be your wingwoman.”
“Well, it will probably be pointless.”
“Or I’ll be right and I get to rub it in your face.”
“We’ll see.”
We sit there in silence, doused in the warm yellow hue from the light hanging over the dining room table. I pick at my nails while Hannah twists her faux-diamond earring around in her ear.
“I just want to know,” she says after a bit. “Just for my own personal knowledge.”
“Yeah?”
“Did you … was I not …” She takes a breath. “Was I not there for you enough? Is that why you were texting your mom’s phone?”
I feel my stomach fall. “Han, no,” I say, reaching over and touching her arm. “I just … I was feeling so many things, and there really wasn’t anyone I could talk to about it, you know? Not even my family.”
“I guess,” she says. “I just want you to know that I’m here, any time you need to talk. I may be cold and heartless, but not when it comes to you.”
“I know that,” I say, rubbing her arm. “I love that about you.”
She gives me a small smile. “Come on. Let’s go raid my mom’s closet.”
I feel my stomach fill with warmth. As different as my life has become, some things never change.