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“Belinda!” Poppy grabs her by the elbow and yanks her back a step. Then Poppy turns toward me again. “We’re so glad you’re back. Drew’s been an absolute wreck without you. Come”—she gestures—“come sit by me. Tell me all about where you’re at with the wedding preparations.”
I feel my eyes widen but try to cover it with a smile. Wedding preparations? I glance at Drew. I seriously can’t believe that he and my mother have been pretending that me leaving him was just…what? Some childish fit of temper?
As soon as we all get seated, I duck my hands under the table, ostensibly to arrange my cloth napkin over my lap. But I’m not wearing an engagement ring. Didn’t Drew think someone would notice eventually?
But Drew’s attention is already lost with his associates. They’re talking shop on the other half of the circle table. So even though I’m seated beside him, I might as well be a world away. It’s clear Poppy and Belinda mean to monopolize me for the moment, anyway, so I give in and try to scramble to remember everything a world away back when I was planning a wedding.
“Invitations-sminvitations,” Belinda says, “let’s get to what’s important. Do you have the dress?”
I perk up. Because I do, indeed, have a dress. I had to get a replacement phone for the one lost on the mountain in Alaska when Abaddon whisked me away—which I’m totally not thinking about right now—but when I did, all my photos and everything downloaded from the cloud. All replaced as if I’d never been gone. So, I pull it out, except as I flip through the camera roll, all the photos of me throughout my travels around the world prove that I did go.
Even before Abaddon swept me off, I was already different from the person Drew seems to want me to go back to being—
“Here it is,” I say, finally sweeping past the chronological order of my life in reverse, coming to the beautiful wedding gown I picked out one Saturday afternoon with my mother.
I flip the phone around to show the women.
“It’s lovely,” Poppy says.
“But it’s just on the rack,” Belinda complains. “Do you have a picture of you in it?”
Poppy smacks her lightly on the shoulder. “It’s bad luck to get pictures in the dress before the wedding. What if Drew saw?”
So, I guess I shouldn’t tell them that Drew has already seen it? I mean, it is kinda hard for him not to see it, when he was the one who picked it up from the shop after the alterations were made. It’s a big, poofy dress, and he said it would be easier if he just grabbed it on the way home from work. Besides, he said, he didn’t believe in superstitions.
Right now, it’s hanging in the back of the closet we used to share in his bedroom.
The whole thing makes a dark pit open up at the bottom of my stomach.
Because I can’t imagine in a million years marrying Drew. And again I’m hit with wondering if Abaddon is missing me.
Which I finally recognize for what it really is.
I miss Abaddon.
Maybe I didn’t give him enough time. He was changing. In a world where people never change, he was. Isn’t that something?
I was asking for so much, so fast.
But then I remember him so brutally striking Thing, and my whole heart clenches. I can’t stand to be around that kind of violence. And our child…
My hand below the table strays to my stomach.
“Hannah?”
I jerk my head toward Poppy. “Hmm?”
She nods toward the waiter standing behind me. “He’s asking what you want?”
The waiter stands there, smiling genteelly.
And all of the sudden, I wonder what the hell I’m doing here.
What do I want?
What do I want?
I scoot my chair back, and the feet screech against the marble floor of the fancy restaurant in a way that grates.
Drew’s head flies my direction. “Hannah, what are you doing?” His eyes are narrowed in a stop-acting-weird way.
“I’m leaving,” I say, getting up.
He shoots out his hand to assist me, but I pull back before he can touch me. Briefly, I turn toward Poppy and Belinda. “It was so lovely to see you.”
And then I all but flee the restaurant. I’m at the door before Drew catches up to me, where he snatches my elbow, but this time not to sweetly assist me. He yanks me around to face him. “What the hell are you doing? You made a fool of me back there!”
I blink at him. “Why did you ever want to be with me, Drew?”
He blinks, his mouth opening and then closing, but at least he drops his hand from my elbow. “What are you talking about? I love you.”
“But why?” I ask, genuinely wanting to know. “I’m not sure you even like me.”
