Chapter 21
Tanner and I stand there in silent regard of each other, a chess match facing a draw.
Reagan comes back out of the bathroom, and must read the situation better this time, because she simply tips her head and disappears back down the hall and into the crowd.
The only thing louder than the music is my heart.
I don’t even know what words to say or what move to make.
“I will tell you everything you want to know,” he says. “But not here. Please.”
I let out a shaky breath with no real response. Do I want to hear it? Is it even my story to hear?
“There you two are.” Lauren pops into the hallway. “We’ve been looking for you. They played Santana! Your guys’ song from…” She trails off as she looks between us. “Is everything alright?”
“Yeah.” Tanner nods, doing a terrible job at pretending.
“Yup,” I lie.
Lauren narrows her gaze between us. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Tanner and I say together.
“There you are.” Now Rhett joins. “What’s going on?”
“Just taking a breather,” Lauren tells him. I can feel her staring, but my eyes are still on Tanner’s. Another damn standoff.
“If we are trying to leave, I would be happy to go,” Rhett says, and the three of us agree. “Laur, how about you come with me. Han, you go with Tanner.”
“Sure.” I shrug.
Tanner raises his eyebrows. “Really?”
“Sure, why not. Nothing is going on.”
We all begin to walk out, and Rhett nudges Lauren. “What the hell is going on with them?”
The air outside is humid and thick as the crickets and frogs sing their song.
The moonlight glints off what I can only imagine is broken bottle fragments in the gravel parking lot and my ears ring as the pounding music echoes into the night.
Tanner and I don’t speak as I follow him to his truck and Lauren and Rhett go to theirs.
He opens my door and when he gets in on his side, he grips the wheel until his knuckles are white, but he doesn’t start the truck.
“I'm sorry I never said anything,” he says quietly. “You’ve spent months telling me about your life, about your ex, and I couldn’t even bring myself to tell you that I had a failed engagement and that you were friends with my ex.”
I chew on my lip, my facade cracking. “Why couldn’t you?”
“At first, I was embarrassed by what happened with her. Then, I thought if you made friends, and if Winnie had friends, then maybe you would stay. I know you won’t stay for me, I get that, but I—” He stops and bites at the inside of his cheek.
“But I hoped you would stay and I wasn’t about to care what helped the cause. ”
He cranks the key when I don’t say anything and backs out of the parking spot. We are silent the rest of the drive back to the apartment.
“We dated for a few years in high school,” he finally says when he pulls up outside my door.
“After we graduated, she got pregnant, so I assumed I just needed to do the right thing and propose to her. I decided to keep working at the auto shop instead of going to school. I was young and just assumed that’s what love was, you know?
It was simple and no big emotions. So, she was pregnant and though I didn’t really want to be with her, I did want to be a dad, and I thought marrying her was my only way to really stay in my kid’s life.
I had this weird anxiety about all of it too, and I just blamed it on the fact that I believed I was about to be a dad. ”
“How did you find out the baby wasn’t yours?”
He laughs an unfunny laugh. “I almost didn’t.
I had spent all those months going to doctors’ appointments and ultrasounds and reading baby name books.
Then one night, I was having dinner with Rhett’s family at the diner, and Jack came out and saw he had a flat tire.
It was faster to grab a jack from the shop than his house.
So, I swung by the shop after hours. Proctor Morton was the manager and had given me a key because he was always late getting there in the mornings.
Anyway, I noticed the office light was still on, so I swung over to turn it off and found Proctor Morton and Riley literally having sex on the desk. ”
“Oh my God.”
He rubs his jaw and purses his lips off to the side. “Yeah. It all hit me so fast. I asked her if the baby was even mine and she just shook her head no and I left.”
“Proctor Morton, as in Morton’s Bar?”
“Kinda. His mom, Willa, runs the bar. His brother Porter has a coffee roastery business.” He drops his head back against the headrest. “Proc quit after everything went down. He and Riley are married now.”
“That’s how you got Winnie into the Y. She really did owe you.”
He blows out a laugh and turns his head to face me.
“I was hurt by them, but I couldn’t be more thankful that it happened.
That’s why I don’t hate her and don’t mind you guys being friends.
If they hadn’t done what they did, I don’t know if I would have ever ended things.
I would have just settled and married her with no real clue of what love felt like. ”
“Do you think you know what it feels like now?”
He nods. “I’m starting to think I do.”
I realize now he’s holding my hand, and his thumb is rubbing circles into the back of it.
I lift our hands together and kiss the back of his because I have no words that seem adequate for this moment.
Because damn it, I am starting to think I know what it might feel like too. No matter how hard I fight it.
“Will you call me later?” I ask.
He unlaces our hands and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’ll call you whether you answer or not.”
Upstairs, Mayben is watching Back to The Future, and the apartment is cleaner than it has been since we moved in.
“She just fell asleep.” She smiles and stands.
I dig through my purse to find some cash. “Thanks again. I really appreciate you watching her.”
“Oh, don’t you dare try and pay me.” She grabs her bag. “I need all the practice I can get.”
My eyes flutter to her stomach and then back to her eyes. “The test at the grocery store?”
“It was positive. I haven’t told anyone else yet. Only Jackie.”
“Congratulations.” I wrap her in a hug.
“Thank you. I can’t wait to bond with Lauren over it. Two Atwood grandkids at almost the same time!”
Her words are so genuine and sweet. So, I'm surprised when they sting. This is something she and Lauren will share together as sister in laws. As a family. Without me.
“Nice flowers by the way.” She tips her head toward the big bouquet on the counter.
“Oh they’re—”
“It’s okay. I know.” She smiles. “But do know, he doesn’t go around giving those to just anyone.”
Once she’s gone, I crash onto the couch and press play on the movie.
I am almost asleep when I hear my phone buzz on the coffee table.
“I don’t want to talk about my day,” I say quietly.
“Me either. I just wanted to hear your voice. I don’t think I can sleep without it now.”
I chew on my cheek and rest my head back on the pillow.
In high school I had dated a couple different guys.
Nothing serious. Never anything more than a guy to carry my books to geography class or meet up at football games with.
They weren’t smooth or charming. They were hardly kind and usually horny.
Straight to the point over text, and quick to cop a feel in the back seat of my friend’s beater Honda Civic.
When I got to college and met Ethan, I didn’t know someone could feel the way he did about me.
I would usually wake to a long rambling message about how beautiful I was, how anyone would be lucky to love me and how nobody else would be able to love me the way he did.
We had a special connection, he said. He talked and he talked, saying anything and everything to get me to believe how much he loved me.
Or how beautiful he thought I was. Convincing me to take steps I wasn’t ready to take.
Begging me to let him love me better. To give him more of my time. More of myself.
Soon I had no friends, and I was sleeping most nights in his bed at the frat house because he insisted it was more comfortable than my cheap mattress.
He said condoms were uncomfortable. He said he loved me.
He said he would marry me. But goddammit he never actually show me that he loved me.
For months, years, I kept giving and giving until he would give a fraction of what I prayed for.
So, when I did get it, it was like an adrenaline high.
I was so blind and so in love. Or at least, he told me we were in love.
I was standing at my engagement party alone and pregnant while he was off talking to “our” college friends, when a large broad-shouldered version of Ethan walked up.
“Hi,” the man had quipped and shook my hand. “Sebastian.”
It took me a moment to place the name. “Ethan’s brother?”
He nodded as he considered what he was going to say next. “Ethan’s an asshole.”
I choked on the non-alcoholic champagne that Ethan’s mom insisted I drink to keep appearances up and suspicions of a pregnancy down. “I’m sorry?”
He sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “Be careful.”
“Careful?” I question. “We’re getting married.”
“I know. But are you sure that’s what you want?”
It had been the first time someone questioning me actually broke the surface of the spell I was under.
None of my friends were left to question me.
My family hardly knew him because it was easier to keep him away than having to explain his behavior.
But his brother, standing next to me speaking in hushed tones seemed to step through the cloud of spells and shadows I had been hiding in.
“What do you mean what I want?” I asked him quietly, silently begging for him to tell me more.
“Do you want to get married? Or does my mom want a wedding to smooth things over, and Ethan is willing to go along with it?” Well shit.
“When he said he met a girl, I imagined he found someone who was equally as morally twisted as him, but I have a feeling you’re not.
” He gave me a pointed look before he was joined by a raven-haired woman who wrapped herself around his arm. “Maybe just think about it.”
It felt as if he threw a bucket of ice water in my face and just walked away. Like a baptism, except instead of coming up holy and new, I felt like someone was holding me under.
But it all felt too late at that point. Deposits were paid, venues were booked, and I was having the man’s kid for God’s sake. I was in too deep and I didn’t see a way out.
Paul gave me an attorney’s number at my wedding reception, but I threw it away in the ashtray of the limo on the way to the hotel after.
I had convinced myself I would make it work.
I had a new resolve to prove to Ethan that I was a good choice.
As his wife, I continued to try and prove my value to him.
To his life. But you can never prove yourself to someone who has no interest in seeing you.
It took me years to realize I would never want Winnie to stay in a place where she had to work so damn hard to be seen. To be heard. To be listened to.
“I'm sorry Riley did what she did,” I whisper to Tanner on the phone.
“It’s not your mistake to apologize for.”
“No, it’s not, but it isn’t fair. You deserved better than that.”
“So did you.”
“We both deserved better,” I muse.
“I think we still do.” His voice an invitation, one I’ve been fighting since his eyes met mine across that rooftop in Chicago almost two years ago.
I let out a shaky breath I am sure he hears on his end.
Soon, I am drifting back off again with my phone pressed to my ear. It’s not until the credits roll that I wake up and see the phone call hasn’t ended.
“Han?” he asks sleepily as I shuffle off the couch.
“I'm just getting in bed.”
“You’re welcome in mine,” he laughs gently, sounding half asleep too.
“Very funny.”
“I would never joke about that. We both know it’s a serious offer. So was panty sorting.”
I roll my eyes even though he can’t see it and tuck myself under the covers.
“Hannah?”
“Tanner?”
I can hear his sigh through the phone. “I’m really sorry. I should have told you.”
“Yes. You should have.”
There’s a pause on the other side before he clears his throat. “You’re my best friend.”
With his words I wonder if maybe I am, in fact, his. Not just his friend, but really his. Even a just a little bit.
“You’re mine too,” I admit into the dark.
And with this revelation, I wonder if maybe I’m trying to balance too much.
Yet again, my heart is on the line and divided at that.
Pieces being split amongst the people I love, and that unsteady fear creeps up as I fall asleep.
The fear that I can’t give Tanner what he deserves.
He deserves a whole heart, not my broken one.