10 #2
“If he did, though,” says my father, “what would that look like?” He turns to Ellis.
“You’re here having dinner with us, and it’s either because you’re trying to wage some kind of psychological warfare, or it’s because you actually see a possibility of a future with Hannah.
I know how wonderful Hannah is.” He touches his own chest. “And my wife does, too, when she’s not getting distracted by other things.
So, I can absolutely understand why you might have thought you were going to use Hannah for one thing, and you realized what exactly she was. ”
“Yes,” says Ellis. “That.”
“Well,” says my father, “I’m not saying I believe you.”
“You fed that to him, Thomas,” snaps my mother. “He is going to take Hannah apart and we are going to have to pick up the pieces.”
“But if you really did want Hannah, what would that look like?” says my father. “Your alpha? No longer in the picture?”
Ellis stabs a piece of lettuce with his fork. “I don’t know what it would look like,” he mutters.
“Leave him alone,” I decide.
“You brought him here, Hannah-banana,” says my father. “Do you see a future with him?”
“Obviously not,” I say. “I’m just, you know, enjoying what I can get while I can get it.”
Ellis’s lips press together tightly.
I think I probably shouldn’t have said that.
“Well,” says Andrew, “about Callie—”
“Not everything is about Callie,” I interrupt.
But then, no one says anything, and I realize, what the hell, yes, everything is about Calliope. Damn it.
“If I tell her that you have an alpha,” says Andrew, “what will you do?”
“It doesn’t change anything,” says Ellis, stuffing lettuce into his mouth and chewing.
“The fuck it does not,” says Andrew.
“Andrew, language,” says my mother. “Not at the dinner table.”
“If she knows that you’re claimed, it will change a lot of things,” says Andrew.
Ellis shrugs at him. “Will it?”
Andrew huffs.
My father speaks up again. “Ellis, what happened with your alpha?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” says Ellis, and he doesn’t sound annoyed or ruffled, just firm.
I’m nervous. “Ellis, I really am sorry I said anything,” I whisper to him. “I don’t know why I did that.”
He shakes his head at me, and he’s still not annoyed or ruffled. No emotion at all.
This worries me worse than anything else. My heart starts to pound in my chest.
“What are you doing to her?” demands my mother. “I can scent that she’s frightened. Andrew, you must scent that?”
Andrew, I realize, is on his phone. “Sure,” he says noncommittally. He’s typing something.
My mother doesn’t scold Andrew for phones at the table. “Ellis, Hannah is terrified of you.”
Ellis gives me a look, an assessing look, and he blinks a few times and then turns to my mother. “I shouldn’t have come.”
No, he shouldn’t have.
My mother’s shoulders slump. “Oh, let’s just pass around the food,” she says, sighing.
So, then, we’re dipping food on our plates, and we’re not talking. There’s just the scrape of utensils on plates. Andrew is still on his phone, which is beeping off and on.
My mother finally takes him to task. “Are you texting at the table?”
He puts his phone under the table, on silent, but I can tell he’s still having a conversation with someone.
My mother eventually tries again with Ellis. “Is there some way I could entice you to leave her alone?”
“Hannah?” says Ellis. He glances at me. “Like you said, she’s scared of me. I think it’s over.” He turns to me, lowering his voice. “I’ll get an Uber, okay?”
“No,” I say. “I’m not… scared of you.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“I don’t want it to be over yet,” I breathe, very quietly, but I know everyone at the table hears.
Ellis’s jaw twitches. He’s still expressionless, but he puts a hand on my thigh.
I feel the heat of it burning into me, and it sears me but it somehow sears out all the fear as well. I am nothing but heat, nothing but desire, and that is what this man does to me.
“Hannah,” says my mother, “I wonder if we can talk somewhere alone.”
Ellis squeezes my thigh. “I’m all right here,” he says to me.
So, I leave the table, and I go off with my mother.
She paces in the hallway outside the dining room, shaking her head. “I neglected you.”
“Mom.” Not this again. Not her mom guilt.
I do not need this right now. “We have talked about this. A woman can only be one woman, and you showed me that a woman could be a leader and work in government and change policy and do what she believes in, and that’s a balance against whatever else you weren’t there for, and everyone blames their mothers for something, and all mothers fail, because no one’s perfect, and this is not your fault.
And anyway, there’s nothing wrong with me. ”
There, maybe she’ll shut up.
She continues pacing. “I made you feel like you didn’t matter. I never paid attention to you, so you never thought you were worth attention.”
“Mom, no,” I say.
“And now, you feel like you can’t get attention, so you’re settling for it with him, with that man.” She comes over to me. “I don’t know if Andrew knows this, but when I found them, the thing they wanted the most was access to an abortion.”
“No, he told me,” I say. Sort of.
She starts, surprised by that. “Really?”
“Mom, I don’t know what it was like for them growing up on that compound, not exactly, but you’re the one who always said that we need options for people trying to leave the Polloi that aren’t essentially erasing their designations.”
“Well, obviously, but—”
“But you don’t think people who were traumatized like that should be treated like humans, just kept away from anyone you actually care about?”
“I never wanted them for you two, not for my children,” she says. “Not because they’re not human, but maybe because of trauma. That’s a lot for you to take on. I was not pleased about what happened with Andrew, and you know that, but it’s done, so all I want to do now is try to triage this.”
“You’re being dramatic,” I say.
“Don’t throw that in my face. I’m an alpha, and I am treating this with exactly the amount of seriousness I think it warrants.”
I sigh.
She takes my hand. “Hannah, you can do better than that.”
I pull my hand out of hers. “No, I can’t.”
“You don’t need to lower yourself to—”
“Mom, I’m not lowering myself. I don’t get any attention.
This is better than nothing. He’ll get tired of me, and I’ll settle into my life of being a cat lady, maybe an aunt to Andrew’s kids if he and Calliope ever have them.
But I’m not the sort of woman that men even want.
And it’s not because you neglected me, it’s only because I’m… ” I gesture at myself. “This.”
My mother looks horrified. She is speechless as she shakes her head.
And then the doorbell rings.
She furrows her brow and goes past me, down the hallway, to answer the door. I hear her saying, “Oh, Calliope, what a surprise.”
Well, I guess that was who Andrew was texting.
ellis
I smell her before I see her, and Calliope’s scent is wild and intense, and it calls to me in a way I can’t explain. I have always felt connected to her in a way that I’ve never felt connected to anyone else.
Maybe the connection doesn’t always feel good. Maybe sometimes, it feels like being tethered to the bright face of an explosion, but whatever the case, it’s always there. We’re always connected.
Callie leads the way into the dining room, and Joni is trailing behind her and Hannah is bringing up the rear.
Calliope stops there and looks at me and then looks at Andrew and then back to me.
I get up from the table. “Let’s go for a walk,” I say to her.
Andrew gets up. “You don’t just take my wife for a walk.”
Calliope is gaping at me. “You told her.” She points back at Hannah. “That’s who you told.”
“It wasn’t exactly like that,” I say.
“You two don’t get to do this.” Andrew wedges his way between us, facing Callie. “You don’t get to talk like no one else is here.”
Calliope focuses on him. “What did you think was going to happen if you told me this? You wanted this.”
“I can assure you, I did not,” says Andrew.
I’m five steps ahead of all of this, because I could tell that Andrew was telling Callie when I saw him getting out his phone, and I was pretty sure I could predict how Callie would react, and I had a feeling it would involve a tense showdown like this.
Calliope doesn’t mean to turn everything into a performance.
She has very big reactions, though, and she isn’t good at disguising them.
And whenever she’s around, people want to look at her.
So, it seems like she’s doing it for an audience.
But no, she’d do it regardless. She just always seems to have an audience.
Me too, if it comes to that. People like to look at me, too.
She and I get this about each other.
One thing I can do is get this away from everyone else. I go past Andrew and I put an arm around Callie, and I murmur to her. “Let’s go, just you and me, okay?”
She looks up at me, nodding, grateful.
I look over my shoulder and locate Hannah. “Don’t worry about me. Don’t wait around just because you were my ride.”
Hannah gives me a frosty smile.
“I don’t mean it because…” Fuck. How is it that Hannah is becoming as difficult to communicate with as Calliope? Maybe all women are just confusing as fuck.
What am I supposed to say to Hannah?
Don’t be jealous?
It’s clear that whatever it is with Calliope and me is stronger and bigger and more complicated than the fragile thing I’ve started to build with Hannah. She’s not an idiot. She can tell that. And I know what it would require of me to really be in a relationship with Hannah.
I would have to center her.
I don’t think anyone besides Callie will ever be my center, however, so it’s all fucked.
What was I thinking?
Why did I come here?
What the fuck is wrong with me?