Chapter 8 #2
My neck burned as I quickly let go, mindful of Fiona’s gaze. I didn’t look at her, just crouched down, kissed Clara on the cheek, then hurried out the door.
Not subtle. Not casual. Not cool.
It wasn’t until we were in Fiona’s car and she was reversing out of the driveway that she spoke.
“Want to tell me why you shook Beau’s hand like he was your bank manager?” Fiona asked playfully.
“No.” I pursed my lips, embarrassment running through me like hot lava. "I do not."
Fiona was a no-bullshit type of person, from what I’d witnessed, so I half expected her to push it. I mean, it was an extraordinarily weird exchange to witness, so I wouldn’t have blamed her.
But she merely nodded. “Okay.”
The rest of the drive was not quiet. I didn’t think Fiona had the ability to be quiet.
She spoke, asking questions. About nursing school, about when I planned to leave Jupiter, which school I wanted to go to, and what my plans were for the future.
She seemed genuinely interested and somehow expertly skirted over subjects she sensed were sensitive to me.
Like where I grew up. Boyfriends. Beau. Etcetera.
Fiona came across as direct, warm, teasing. But I couldn’t get over the idea that she was handling me with care. Like she could tell I was broken.
I didn’t know how I felt about that. Embarrassed? I wished I could embody the badass self-assurance that dripped from her seemingly poreless skin.
We pulled up to a small, well-maintained house that required a code at the gate to enter. The dense woods around the property gave it a cozy feel. A plethora of cars were already in the driveway. They were all expensive, but not flashy.
All the saliva in my mouth evaporated at the thought of the people I’d have to interact with.
Fiona patted my hand. “Don’t worry. They don’t bite. Not people they’re not married to, at least.” She winked then got out of the car.
Because I had no other choice, I followed her.
Though I was immensely nervous, I didn’t have the chance to feel self-conscious since the moment I walked in, people greeted me, thrusting food and drinks into my hands.
I took them, grateful to have something to do, and greeting everyone who, apparently, remembered my name. I hoped I didn’t commit the faux pas of forgetting someone’s. It was practically the same group that was at Clara’s birthday party, minus Calliope, the husbands, and the children.
“These are great,” Tiffany said to Avery, who was handing out drinks.
“You wouldn’t know there wasn’t any booze in them, would you?”
Tiffany's eyes widened, and her sweet face narrowed at Avery. “There’s no booze in these?”
“I put champagne in mine.” Fiona held up her amber-colored glass. “Anyone else want some?”
Fiona started pouring into Tiffany’s glass, averting whatever crisis had been about to unfold.
“Where did you get champagne?” Avery asked, her brows knitted together.
“Yes, this is meant to be mocktail night,” Nora reminded her.
“I got champagne from this bottle I brought,” Fiona replied to Avery, waving the bottle in question.
Then she narrowed her eyes on her best friend.
“Mocktails?” She shook her head. “I’m not a mocktail girl.
Cock or nothing.” She waggled her brows.
“In all senses of the word. My husband’s cock only.
” She took a long breath. “And it may only be the booze I’ll be imbibing for the next nine or so months since I’m ovulating tonight and planning on getting pregnant the old-fashioned way… while shitfaced.”
She drained her glass to accentuate her point before pouring another and reaching over to top off mine. I’d only been sipping for something to do. Feeling awkward and not quite aware, I opened my mouth to protest, but the other women’s voices drowned it out.
“I thought you said you were one and done?” Avery asked Fiona, holding out her mocktail to be spiked.
“You said, and I quote, ‘anyone who willingly has more than one child is psychotic, masochistic, or a trad wife,’” Nora remarked with an arched brow. She was pregnant with her third child.
Fiona drained her wine. “Okay, I’m a fucking idiot. I long for morning sickness, hemorrhoids, vaginal tearing, sleepless nights, diaper blowouts, tantrums… I want to do it all again! I want to give June a big family, and I want my big, stupid husband to hold a newborn again. So fuck me.”
I sipped my drink again to stave off the uncomfortable feeling in my skin. That yearning. To live in that world. Really live there. To have a ring on my finger and a partner who adored me the way all of these women’s husbands did.
Oh, what a regressive longing. To be a wife. A mother. Didn’t I have much bigger dreams than that? Hadn’t I already tried that once and gotten trampled over? Wasn’t I still, technically, someone’s wife?
I downed my drink then helped myself to more. There was more than enough, now that the mocktails had been abandoned by everyone who wasn’t pregnant, and bottles of champagne were materializing everywhere.
The bubbles were nice. As was the conversation happening around me. I tried to engage in it, but my mind was elsewhere.
My mind was in Beau’s dining room. Not going over the credit card bills.
Staring at his grey eyes, gluing me in place. Hearing him say, “I do like you, Hannah, and that’s the fuckin’ problem.”
What did that mean? That he liked me?
Except he didn’t. I had a wealth of evidence to back up that fact.
And yet… There’d been stolen moments, glances, the brushing of fingertips in the kitchen. I kept going over those things, using them like petals on a daisy. He likes me. He likes me not. He likes me.
“Hannah.”
I jerked out of my head, mortified that I’d been chanting, “He likes me,” like a lovesick teenager. I was meant to be getting away from Beau, not letting him take over my mind.
I gazed at Fiona, who was staring at me with an interesting expression on her face. She looked almost … sheepish.
“This was kind of a setup,” Fiona explained, her eyes on me as the door opened and closed.
Clutching on to the stem of my glass for dear life, my lungs stopped working at the prospect of some kind of blind date in front of these women. Surely, they weren’t that cruel.
I was not dressed for a blind date. I knew how these women typically dressed.
They were all warm, approachable, and down-to-earth, but I had a practiced eye to recognize money—who had it, who didn’t.
It had defined me in my childhood, had become a defense mechanism to ensure that I didn’t befriend people who would eventually find out I lived in a trailer and got my clothes from Goodwill, dropping me like a bad habit if I was lucky, teasing me mercilessly when I wasn’t.
All of these women had money. Even Fiona, the most casually dressed of them all, was in three-hundred-dollar jeans, a cashmere sweater, and had a huge diamond on her left ring finger.
We were currently drinking in a house that required a code to enter, located on a sprawling plot of land, decorated with some of the nicest furniture and art I’d ever seen.
I’d spent my life protecting myself from the pain that came with befriending people higher on the socioeconomic ladder than me, yet here I was, surrounded by them, enjoying their company. And apparently, being set up on a date.
Did they think I was that pathetic? A charity case living with an asshole, unable to find a romance of her own?
“Lori!” Fiona exclaimed, rushing over to shove a drink in the hand of the pretty woman around my age who had just walked in.
Lori took the glass with a shy smile, saying hello to everyone. The cogs in my brain turned, oiled by champagne. This was a setup. For me. And Fiona had said that just as this woman walked through the door.
They thought that I was a charity case and a …
lesbian? Don’t get me wrong, if I could choose who I was attracted to, it would be women.
Men were horrid at best, deadly at worst. Such a flaw in nature, to make women attracted to and have to breed with their biggest predator. Unfortunately, I was attracted to men.
Grumpy single dads who hated me and whom I lived with, if I wanted to get specific.
My cheeks flamed with shame as Fiona ushered Lori forward. I panicked, looking for an escape. But there wasn’t one. Only a kitchen behind me, the rest of the women between me and the front door.
I did the only rational thing I could… I downed my entire drink, as if the answer to politely informing my new friends I was not a lesbian in front of the woman they were trying to set me up with was at the bottom of it.
Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.
“Lori, this is Hannah,” Fiona said when they stopped in front of us. “I’ve wanted the two of you to meet for the longest time, but you’ve been away doing…” She frowned.
“I’ve been getting my PhD in Archeology,” Lori shyly told Fiona and me.
“Yeah, she’s going to be all The Mummy and shit.” Fiona looked between the two of us. “Oh god, you’re both too young to get that reference.”
“Um, Brendan Fraser?” Lori pursed her lips. “Not too young. That movie is a classic, even if it’s wildly inaccurate.”
Fiona cupped Lori’s cheek. “I knew there was a reason I didn’t hate you because of your seemingly eternal youth. Anyway, Lori’s back, and this is Hannah. She’s nannying for Beau before she finishes nursing school.”
“Nice to meet you,” Lori stated pleasantly. “Nursing? That’s amazing. I could never do it. I faint at the sight of blood.” She winced just thinking about it.
I laughed, sounding a little forced and maybe vaguely hysterical.
“I just thought the two of you—”
“I’m not a lesbian!” At my bellowed declaration, I felt all eyes in the room move to me.
Well, the plan of being subtle and polite went out the window.
Now I was just the freak in the discount sweater who shouted about lesbians.