Chapter 3 #2
I turn away and walk back to the locker room in a blush tinted fog.
Tanner is here, in Illinois, in my hometown, in my old high school and he brought flowers for my daughter.
My heart is pounding something furious in my chest as I find Winnie sitting by herself, swinging her legs on the bench while the moms have the other girls practicing the dance.
“Alright littles, you’re up first. Moms, you can go ahead to your seats.”
I hug Winnie. “I am so proud of you for sticking this out.”
She smiles. “I like the dress.”
“Can I get you to do one more year for the dress again?”
She gives me a look that tells me I should know better. “Right. Okay. You got this.”
The auditorium lights lower as I shuffle in, the emcee welcomes everyone, and instead of Lauren’s reddish hair, I spot Tanner and the empty seat next to him.
“Is the end seat okay?” he asks as I sit. “I thought that in case you have to get up for anything and—”
“It’s perfect,” I tell him, my hand finds its way over to his arm. “Thank you.”
Before I can pull away, he reaches his other hand over and covers mine and damn it if my stomach doesn’t flip within itself.
I am going to have a lot of answering to do with Lauren later but for now, I steady myself and try to breathe as the music and spotlights come on.
Winnie's group comes onto the stage squinting. Winnie only has to shuffle a couple inches over to her spot this time. The dance is silly and cute, and they smile and spin around in their little sparkly outfits and it goes perfectly fine. Winnie doesn’t fall or cry.
She’s brave and she smiles and she even giggles when her and another girl bump into each other.
Then they line up, curtsey and shuffle off the stage.
“She did it,” I whisper into the dark.
I look over and Tanner’s smiling just about as wide as I am, then I realize my fingers have been digging into his bicep the entire time and his hand is holding my hand there.
All those late-night conversations, the texts, all of that, to end up here.
In the same seats I sat and listened to the stranger danger talk freshman year.
“Winnie!” Paul shouts once I bring her to the lobby after the program.
She beams at the whole crowd of people there for her, with a crazy collection of flowers in their hands. She launches herself into Paul’s arms.
He kisses her cheek. “You’re a star.”
Winnie pops her head back and looks over at Tanner.
“Hi Winnie.” He smiles and hands her the bouquet of flowers. “I picked these from my garden for you. I wasn’t sure which to pick, pink or orange, so I went with both.”
My heart flips, skips, whatever the word is.
“Hi Tanner.” She smiles bashfully.
“How do you know who Tanner is?” I question.
“He was on your FaceTime on your phone. Like I do with Aunt Laurey.”
“She called me this morning,” he explains nervously. “I answered assuming it was you.”
“So, you’ve met?” I ask and Winnie nods.
“He said he’s your friend too. Not just Uncle Rhett’s friend.”
“Well.” I scoop her from Paul’s arms. “It looks like he might be your friend after all with these beautiful flowers. What do you say to Tanner?”
“Thank you.” She smiles shyly and Lauren is staring holes into my head while she laughs.
“You two…” Rhett trails off, his eyes flickering between us with question.
“They talk on the phone,” Winnie interjects. “His name is spelled t-a-n-n-e-r. I see it on Mommy’s phone. A lot.”
“Okay. It’s Friday night,” I cut her off. “How about Chili’s?”
Everyone agrees and I would be embarrassed that I just got outed by my five-year-old, but Lauren is beaming at me, and Rhett is patting Tanner on the back.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about her getting on my phone,” I tell him while we walk out to the parking lot.
“I was going to tell you in person. She said you were busy opening the mail.”
“Thank you, by the way. Those seeds were one of the nicest gifts I think I have ever received.”
Our arms bump as we walk through the parking lot. Though the evening air is humid and warm, each brush against his skin sends a cool shiver through my body.
“Who knows.” His eyes flicker over to me. “If you let me come back, I can help you plant them.”
His words make my heart sink. My life is here, his is in Michigan and planting a garden will just remind me that this couldn’t actually work.
Chili’s is a touch less depressing tonight.
Instead of the post-divorce clientele, it’s filled with little dancers still in their hair sprayed updos and sequined dresses.
Tanner finds a seat across from me and somehow, I feel like a sixteen-year-old having her first date chaperoned by her entire family.
He answers all my parent’s questions while Winnie watches him from across the table like she isn’t quite sure what to make of him.
At one point she tosses a French fry across the table to Rhett who narrowly catches it in his mouth.
“Winnie.” I tip my head but the two of them are pink cheeked and giggling.
“It’s his fault,” Tanner chimes in, pointing at Rhett. “She’s innocent.”
“What does that mean?” Winnie asks him.
“It means you didn’t commit the crime.”
She stops and thinks about it for a moment and then her eyes brighten. “Mommy went through a red light because she had to go pee the other day. Is that a crime?”
Tanner's eyes meet mine and a giddy smile is all over his face.
“A cold hardened criminal.” He shakes his head. “Who would have thought?”
“We had been at dance all day, nobody was at the light, and it was taking forever to turn. I was literally going to pee my pants if I didn’t get home.”
Tanner laughs and leans forward. He slides my glass of water away from me and drinks it himself. “We may need to keep a closer eye on you. This is an accessory to the crime.”
“I’ve been trying to warn y’all she was trouble.” Paul adds.
Everyone laughs and Tanner is still looking at me like I am the only person in this room.
“Can I go with Grampy and Nan?” Winnie asks once we get to the parking lot, already pulling on the locked handle to their car.
“I don’t mind if they don’t mind,” I tell her.
As if Paul would ever mind. I hear them hatching a plan to eat popcorn and watch more Bluey as the car door closes and they drive away. I know he would pack her in his suitcase to bring her with them to Florida in the morning if he could.
Everyone else makes quick goodbyes, leaving Tanner and I alone under the bug swarmed streetlights.
He takes a step forward and wraps his arms around my shoulders because there really aren’t any words.
With my arms wrapped around his waist, feeling his heart beating as quickly as mine, I take in the smell of him.
The smell of a shower and rain and the woods.
When I woke up this morning, I had no idea when I was going to see Tanner next. It’s been over six months since I visited Lauren in Green Branch and saw him last. But now, here he is, in my arms.
“I have something for you,” he says into my hair, before stepping away to his truck just a few spots away. A dark green thing from what I'm sure is the early nineties with rusted wheel wells and a dented back panel.
He reaches into the back space behind his seat and pulls out another bouquet of flowers. Pink peonies. The milky pink color is almost white and nothing like the bright eye-catching bouquet like he had for Winnie.
“Tanner—” I begin to say but I'm not even sure what I’m going to say.
“These ones are yours.” He hands them to me. “I didn’t want to take away from Winnie's big moment, so I kept them out here for you. They reminded me of you.”
“I love them,” I say and wonder just where the hell he has been hiding my whole life. Why did he have to live so far away and why did we have to meet too late? “You’re making it hard to be just friends.”
“You’ve never made it easy for me.” He leans back onto my driver side door.
I sneak a glance up at him. His hair has now lost some of its structure and a piece is hanging over his forehead. It’s never quite brown and never quite blond, either. It lives somewhere in the middle. Like spring. Inconsistent but beautiful all the same.
I brush the loose strand back, then hold my palm against his cheek.
I want to memorize the way his eyebrows knit together as he thinks.
Or the way his eyes flick down to my lips then back to my eyes just as quickly.
Him being handsome is no mystery, but up close, where you expect to find the flaws, all I can find are smile lines, and sun freckles across his nose.
There is warmth and kindness and something deeper I can’t name in his eyes.
“I wish things were different.” I admit as he takes the flowers and sets them on the hood of my car, and pulls me back into him.
When I expect him to agree, he doesn’t. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I'm here, and you’re there. And I have baggage and it’s just complicated.”
“Hannah,” he whispers into my hair.
We don’t come right out and say that long distance might be too much, because where would it end? What if it worked? I can’t take Winnie away from here, I would never allow him to leave his home to come live here, and then we would both be heartbroken.
If I have learned anything from the past six years of my life, it’s to not go chasing a man and uproot my life for him.
“You should probably go,” I tell him and use all my self-control to unfold myself from his arms. “You have a long drive.”
“The distance doesn’t scare me.” He reaches for my hand, kissing the back of it. “I don’t think it scares you that much either.”
Maybe he’s right. But it’s everything else that scares me.
It’s the putting myself back in a place to have my heart broken again.
Losing Ethan was the smallest loss of the divorce.
It was the loss of the life I dreamed of.
It was the family nights and vacations, it was a bunch of little barefoot kids running around in the grass that I’m afraid I lost. But losing Tanner?
“I don’t want to lose you as a friend.” I pull my hand away and he drags his over his jaw. “Thank you for the flowers.”
“Always start with flowers. They make things better,” he tells me, and though I know it’s meant to be sweet, it comes out sad.
He opens my car door, and I get behind the wheel. He hesitates, ever so briefly before closing the door without another word.
Lying in bed later, after I get Winnie into her bed, I pull my phone out and dial his number.
“Hey Han,” he answers on the first ring.
“Tell me about your day.”
“Even the boring parts?”
“Especially the boring parts. Let me keep you up on the drive home.”