Chapter 7 #2
There had been many nights in the year following when she’d gotten into bed and hoped she would wake up and it had all been some sort of awful nightmare or, worse, that she wouldn’t wake up at all.
She wished more people talked about those ugly hours, the ones when slipping away to wherever your person went and confronting them face to ghostly face seemed better than waking up in the cold light of morning and continuing on.
A tear dropped onto her journal. She hadn’t felt it fall.
Hanna was about to start number seven when someone crested the hill in front of her, a bright yellow bucket hat framing their face.
Off we go, she thought, shoving her journal back in her bag.
She followed them for long enough that she worried about being mistaken for a stalker, so she fell back to the other side of the street and put in her earbuds.
She found the sad-girl playlist she'd been curating since college, through a lifetime of bad dates and Big-T traumas, and let it rub salt in her wounds for a few more blocks.
Twenty minutes later, her bucket hat-bearing guide darted into an apartment building.
Well, shit, Hanna thought, looking around for her next spot of sunshine.
She choked on a laugh when she glanced up and read the sign above her head. Tucked between The Roxie theater and a Money Mart, The Sunflower hovered over 16th Street. The windows glared in the midday sun of the hole-in-the-wall restaurant.
She debated if it was too early for lunch.
“Hanna?”
The hell? Hanna spun, a familiar figure hanging out under The Roxie’s unlit neon sign, waving to her. Chloe, clad in tight, acid-washed jeans and a cropped t-shirt of a band Hanna had never heard of, darted forward from the shadows.
“Chloe?”
“How funny! Did Milo invite you?” She hugged Hanna quickly, her very cool perfume drowning her senses.
“Um, no, actually, I was just on a walk and ended up here.”
“Crazy,” Chloe said, her head tilting. “Well, hey, it must be meant to be! Milo and I are playing hooky and catching a matinee. You should join us!”
She looked far too earnest in her invitation.
“Oh no, that’s okay, I don’t want to crash…” She almost said ‘your date,’ but then remembered that Milo doesn’t do the dating thing.
“No, seriously, it’ll be fun! There’s almost never anyone here midday. They play old movies during the week.”
“Uh, well, I have to…” You fucking idiot, Hanna, say literally anything!
“Hanna?”
Welp, too late now, she thought, turning as Milo approached in a faded t-shirt while trying not to notice the way the cotton curled around his biceps.
She wished he hadn’t seen her, wished she’d been clever enough to escape. Chloe was a stranger. Hanna didn’t care if Chloe thought she was insane. She could have bolted.
But Milo, in all aspects, was more complicated.
“Hey,” Hanna breathed, the nerves in her throat clenching on the sound. Maybe a car would pop over the curb and take her out. At least then she could bitch about this to her mother’s face.
“Look who I ran into!” Chloe announced. She bounced in a way that only added to her charm.
“What are you doing in The Mission?” Milo asked, shoving a hand in his pocket.
“Long story,” Hanna mumbled.
Chloe chirped, “I invited her to join us!”
Milo’s face curled in a mix of surprise and concern. “Oh, uh, cool. Yeah. Are you sure?”
Hanna wasn’t sure who he was asking, but she resisted the urge to bark, “No! No, I’m not sure! I actually want the street to open up and swallow me to the depths of hell!”
Instead, she shrugged and whispered, “Totally.”
“Did you tell her what we’re seeing?” Milo asked Chloe.
“No, but you like the classics, right Hanna?”
Of course she fucking did. “I suppose so,” she muttered.
“Great!” Chloe beamed.
“Great,” Hanna repeated, her neck sweating. She followed them to the ticket booth as Milo awkwardly paid for three, despite her protests. Her head spun as they grabbed seats, Chloe placing Milo between them before bouncing back out of the theater for snacks.
Hanna glanced at her ticket stub.
Love Story.
Her stomach churned. Milo must have sensed the boiling anxiety in her chest. He leaned over and said quietly, “You don’t have to stay for this.”
“Uhhh, it’s fine. I’m fine,” Hanna insisted.
“One more and I’ll believe it, Arizona.” He smirked. “I can tell Chloe work called or something. She won’t think twice.”
Hanna took a long, deep breath. Before she could answer, her eyes dropped to his shirt, and she silently cursed her mother. The light off the screen illuminated the remnants of a sunflower field, a pale blue sky peeling from the top under half of a band name she remembered from the early aughts.
Her mother always did have a fucked up sense of humor.
She’d followed the sunflowers that far. She couldn’t give up then.
Was it ideal? Hell no.
Was it better than crying in a park alone? Debatable.
She shook her head. “I’ll be okay. But you have to do me a favor.”
“Anything.”
“If you see me crying, no you didn’t.” She grimaced and tried to translate it into a smile, but didn’t quite make it.
Milo chuckled, a genuine smile breaking across that jaw of his.
“Fine, but if you see me crying, yes you did. I fucking love a public cry.”
Hanna groaned, bracing herself for the next ninety minutes as the lights dimmed.