Chapter 22 The Summer Of Hannah
The Summer Of Hannah
P.S I Know Who You Did Last Summer
The summer Sydney’s cousin Hannah came to visit, it rained almost every day.
Summer Sixteen felt different. Maybe it was the way the sun hung longer in the sky or how everyone seemed a little more grown up, wearing their edges sharper, like armour.
Even Wynter felt different—more self-assured.
Like he was finally stepping into the charm he used to shrug off.
He was cockier now, leaning into his confidence with a smile that had half the people around him hooked. Including me.
But no one knew that. Or at least I’d tried my very best to conceal it all.
Boys at school were starting to notice me more as I’d gotten older, that or it was the fact that I’d gone from a training bra to a solid B cup.
Their glances lingered and questions turned bold, but none of them meant anything to me.
They faded into the distance because who I truly desired remained in full focus.
They didn’t matter to me, They couldn’t.
I was branded by Wynter Andy Kwon, and it was a mark that couldn’t be erased.
I waited for Wynter like an owl in hibernation waiting to see a season it would never witness. I knew I belonged in the cold, I would never see spring, I would never watch his love blossom for me like it did for Hannah. Even at sixteen, I knew that much.
But that summer, he still just saw me as Jiwon’s friend, his best friend's baby sister and nothing more.
And maybe that would never change.
And so, one warm afternoon, Jiwon and I lay stretched out on the grass at the park while she seemed lost in thought, her face softer and a little more vulnerable than usual as we shared watermelon ice pops, lips stained pink.
“Jiwon, what’s on your mind?” I asked, nudging her arm.
For a moment, she just stared up at the sky, as if searching for the right words. “I’ve…I’ve been writing to someone,” she said finally, her voice soft.
I propped myself up on my elbow, watching her. “Yeah? Who?”
She hesitated, cheeks flushing a little. “Sydney’s cousin, Hannah.”
“The one who’s visiting this summer?” I questioned as if there was any other Hannah. There was only one in this story.
Hannah was a force, a storm wrapped in silk.
She had the same carefully spun bundles of golden hair atop Sydney's head. Eyes oceans of blue. Her bright eyes held an intensity that made you feel both small and challenged, like she could peel back your secrets with a single glance. Her beauty was almost unsettling, softened only by the hint of a smirk that always played on her lips, as if she held some secret she’d never share.
She moved with the confidence of someone who knew the world bent to her will—American royalty in her own right, expecting no refusals, accustomed to getting everything she desired.
She didn’t demand attention; it followed her, pulled along by her quiet arrogance and the mystery that lingered in her wake.
“Wait… Hannah? You guys have been writing?” I asked, genuinely surprised. “She can spell—”
Jiwon nodded, smiling a little. “Yes she can spell, don’t be mean.
It started small. Sydney gave her my address last year, and she sent me a letter just to introduce herself.
We wrote a little, and then… I don’t know.
We started talking about things that I haven’t really talked about with anyone else.
I talked to her about Mum and everything. ”
If the Kwons were talking to you about their mother out of their own free will you knew you were close.
Her voice grew quieter, almost shy, and I could tell that whatever she thought she’d found with Hannah, it was something important to her. This was the only thing that led me to ask,
“Do you…like her?” I asked carefully. “As in, like like her?”
Jiwon sighed, running her fingers through the grass beside her. “I think so, but I get the sense that that makes me different somehow. I don’t know if I’m ready for everyone to see me as an outsider.”
“Woah,” I said aloud. “But you’ll never be an outsider with me, Jiwonie, I hope you know that.”
There was a small pause, like she was weighing something, and then she looked at me with that familiar mix of determination and fear.
“But she’s from this super religious family.
They’d probably freak out if they knew. And even if she did like me back, which she probably doesn’t…
it wouldn’t change anything. They’d never accept someone like me. ”
“Wait, so you don’t even know if she likes you back?” I questioned, seeing a reflection of myself in her eyes.
“Yeah…which is why I’ve kind of just kept quiet about it. I’m okay with being interested in her quietly if it means not inconveniencing her. I don’t mean to confuse her or be the one that causes conflict between her and her family. I want to preserve our friendship.”
So you see, Jiwonie and I were more similar than I’d thought.
I squeezed her hand, my heart aching at the thought of her carrying this alone. “Jiwon…you’re amazing just as you are. And if she knew you the way I do, she’d see it too.”
“I just feel a bit stupid,” she chuckled in an awfully sad voice.
“Why?”
“For getting all worked up over make-believe. For putting my heart on the line over a maybe,” she expressed.
“Can I be honest with you about something?”
“Well, I kind of just came out to you, I’m pretty sure you could tell me you have herpes and I’d sit with you in the doctor’s office.” She laughed and so did I.
“Okay fair, but I don’t think being gay and herpes are of the same severity,” I reminded her, and she laughed even more.
“Well yeah.”
“I have liked someone for a long time,” I said out loud, for the first time. This summer secret I’d only ever whispered to God and my pillow in the dead of night had flown past my lips. “A very long time, even though I know he can never like me back.”
“Oh my God!” She gasped standing up and damn near running laps around the lawn. “Yesoh liking a living, breathing human being? Are we in the matrix?”
“Shhh, you’re so dramatic someone might hear. Sit down!” I urged, and she calmed herself and did just that. “Be sane for a second!”
“Okay, okay, fine!” she panicked. “Go on, I must hear all about your impossible love, tell me what’s he like? Do I know him?”
“He, well…he’s kind. He’s beautiful inside and out, and selfless in every aspect of the word, and that’s everything to me,” I explained, “but it can never happen.”
“Why not?”
“Well, that’s part of why I can’t tell you, Jiwonie. It’s all a part of this web of impossibility between us.” I sighed, leaning back on the scratchy grass looking at the crisp blue sky. “Telling you would unravel the web.”
“I see, well, I won’t push you to tell me but I will say this.
Any guy on the face of planet earth, who was able to catch your eye and hold your affection for this long, well, he has to be quite the exceptional human being,” she marvelled, then glanced at me sadly.
“Soh, what are we going to do about our impossible loves?”
“We nurture them like a secret, but we must vow to let them grow up and away someday if they so please.”
“I wished we lived in a world where it was as easy as loving someone and having them love you back.”
You have been tricked. And allow me to be the first to tell you how, you and many others have been greatly misled.
Because this is a story of hard truths after all, nothing else, only hard truths.
We have been led to believe that when you love somebody greatly, and if that love is true enough, they will know, that they will sense that your heart is true and that inevitably they will love you back.
That is a lie, and that is not how things work majority of the time.
The truth is, while yes, sometimes your feelings are reciprocated, most of the time that is not the case.
People fall in love at different times, rarely is it ever perfectly synchronised.
They have attempted to shield you, and everyone else from the fact that majority of the time people fall in love alone.
We are led to believe that these stories do not matter, that these are tragedies, more foul than any bloodshed or atrocity.
Because for shame, right? For shame on anyone who dares love a person who is unable to return their affections, for shame that they ever even tried.
I often wonder where all of these lost stories go, do they simply disappear like stockings in a dryer or keys in the backseat, maybe they simply fade away like ice in summer without a trace.
These stories are buried, hidden in plain sight.
And yet I will still pose the question, is a love story still a love story even when it is unconventional?
Not this time, this time our stories will be told. I figure that we are owed that much at the very least. To share this, through every ugly truth, past every white lie, every tragedy.
We will demonstrate the art of unrequited.
She laughed softly, but there was a sadness in it.
“You’re sweet to believe in me, but I don’t think Hannah’s the kind of person who’s going to give up anything for me.
She just…takes whatever she wants. She’s like that.
And I know she could have anyone she wants, so I highly doubt that when push comes to shove she’d pick the difficult choice.
What about you, Soh, do you think that your impossible love would choose you, even if it’s difficult? ”
“I think that trying to go for him is like a gold rush, the second everyone knows of him or catches a glimpse it’s over.
They’re smitten, just as I am, and when everyone’s vying for his affections I will always be doomed to get the short end of the stick.
When it comes to drawing straws for him, I lose then too. ”