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“You’re not homeless. Colby will let you stay with him as long as you need.”
“He’s driving me crazy, Tess. He has banned me from singing, and dancing is only allowed in my room where he can’t see it. Oh, and he still won't call it my room. He always refers to it as “the guest room.” I don’t know if he’s doing it on purpose or not, but it sure doesn’t make me feel at home there. If I had anywhere else to go, I would be moving there right now.”
“I would say you could come live with me, but we’re already bursting at the seams in our tiny house. We’re planning to start house hunting soon,” Tess says.
“I’m just going to have to suck it up until I can find a better-paying job,” I groan, not mentioning that the job won’t be in Waverly. I’m not ready to have that conversation and answer the slew of questions that will come with it.
Colby is a good big brother. I love him to pieces, but I don’t know how long the two of us can live together without one of us strangling the other. His Debbie Downer attitude is really starting to get to me. And everything is so meticulously organized that I feel like I’m living in a museum instead of a house. Sure, I like things neat and tidy just as much as the next person, but Colby takes it to the extreme. The singing and dancing ban is just the tip of the iceberg of the long list of his complaints over the past two weeks. I left my blue fuzzy blanket draped over the back of the couch a few days ago, and I could see a vein poking through his forehead while he tried his utmost best to refrain from saying anything about it. He lasted ten minutes before he demanded that I take my “girly things” to my bedroom. It’s not even that girly…it’s blue. I didn’t bring any pink things into his house because I was worried he’d have an aneurysm.
He hasn’t asked me if or when I’m going to start looking for another place to live, but I know he’s thinking it every time he walks into the living room to see me sprawled on his couch, watching The Bachelor. He hates that show with a burning passion. Even if I could afford to get a rental here in town, almost all of my furniture and belongings burned with the house, and I can’t afford to replace them. Not without sacrificing my savings, which would put me further away from owning my bookstore. I’m not willing to make that sacrifice...yet. A few more weeks of Colby, and I might change my mind.
Tess and I finish up our coffee and decide to go to the boutique down the street. I walk in and see that Millie’s younger sister, Lo, is working today. She bounces over to us, grabs my shoulders, and says, “Hannah, please tell me it’s true. I almost died from pure happiness when I heard, so it simply has to be true!”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. I just stare at her until she tells me what’s going on. “Are you and Seth really dating?!” Her face is lit up like a Christmas tree, and I wish I didn’t have to be the one to crush whatever young, romantic dream she has for me. But I am going to. This rumor has to stop.
“Oh my gosh,” Tess says with a laugh.
“Why do people keep asking me this?” I shriek. Are people asking Seth, too? What if he thinks I started the rumor? He’ll never speak to me again. Actually, that might be okay. It would be a lot easier to forget his perfect face, curly hair, and adorable smile if he didn’t talk to me. Then, I would finally be free to fall in love with someone new, and that would make my mom enormously happy.
“Does this mean y’all aren’t dating?” she asks. Her shoulders slump, and her freckled face goes from excited to disappointed in one second flat. Girl, I know how you feel. I’ve been feeling this disappointment for my entire life.
“No, but really, why is everyone under the impression they’re together?” Tess asks.
“I don’t know, but literally everyone in town is talking about it,” Lo says. She glances between me and Tess. I rub my temple, wracking my brain as to how this crazy rumor got started.
“I bet someone saw you two last night with Joey,” Tess says. That’s probably true. I did fall asleep on Seth in the hallway at the wedding. It’s too bad I was unconscious and couldn’t enjoy every second of my cheek resting on his amazing shoulder. But none of that signifies a committed relationship. It was all about survival.
“And he was gawking at you throughout the entire wedding ceremony,” Lo adds.
“What? No, he was not!” I argue. If he was staring at me, I would have noticed because I was staring at him every chance I got. Now that I think of it, we did make eye contact a few times during the ceremony, but I didn’t think too much of it.
“Yeah, he was,” Tess says. How am I the only one who missed that?
