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Her therapist said she should allow herself to be mad at them about it, that if she did, she wouldn’t get her buttons so pushed when other people tried to make plans for her. But sitting here watching them, she wasn’t mad at them, just exhausted. She was tired of hoping they’d be people they weren’t, and tired of parenting them and herself.
Hell, she was tired of hating traveling. She missed seeing new things, and eating new food, and meeting new people. She wanted the experience of finding travel joyous, and she couldn’t have that, because her parents had ruined it for her, which had doomed her marriage before it even started, and they were still asking what had happened like they were brand-new to her as a human being.
She set her head down on the table and groaned.
“Hannah, that can’t be sanitary,” her dad said.
“Please leave,” she said. “I’m not even going to pretend. I love you both, it’s wonderful to see you, and I’d love to have you visit again in July, or for Rosh Hashanah. But right now, please leave early. I don’t, in fact, want to talk to you about Levi. I will talk to my therapist and my friends. Maybe Kringle if I can lure him back from Blue.”
Her mom wrapped the end of the dropped braid around her palm and said, “I’m sorry we haven’t really been the parents you can talk to about boy problems. We’ll go. For what it’s worth, we love you, and we love him.”
“Thank you for the apology. And for leaving.”
Levi peeked his head around the kitchen door into the dining room. “Are your parents gone?”
“You know they are,” Hannah sighed. “You just watched them leave.”
He didn’t try to pretend otherwise, just walked in and sat down at the table across from her.
He smiled at her. “I like your ponytail.”
“I’ll kill you,” she said flatly.
“You need me.”
She barked out a surprised laugh. “The fuck I do.”
“You’re hosting the highest profile series of events Carrigan’s has ever taken on,” he said, leaning toward her, “and you need extra kitchen help. And the bride wants me.”
“No.” She shook her head hard enough that her braid whipped her.This fucking hair.
“The better this event goes, the better it is for the future of Carrigan’s All Year,” he pointed out. “Are you so drowning in business you can afford to turn down the kind of publicity a happy governor would provide?”
She tapped a fork on her plate, glaring at him. “You’re not doing this out of the goodness of your heart. What do you think is going to happen, that I’m going to let you stay and be so overcome with gratitude I fall into your arms?”
“You’re not letting me stay, because I own as much of the building as you do,” he said, and her eyebrows lowered. “No, I do not think you will simply fall into my arms. Again.”
She started to stand up, to make him leave. He held up his hands.
“Sorry. I want an opportunity to show you we can be happy together. You want me to leave. Right after the wedding, I have to be in Manhattan to film a pilot.”
“Oh, so you are in fact planning to leave again the minute it’s in your best interest,” Hannah said.
“I am planning to go five hours away on a train for a week or two and then come back when I am done,” he said slowly, “because I already signed a contract with Food Network and my agent says I can’t afford to back out of it. In the meantime, I will help with the events for the wedding, in exchange for a series of dates. With you. When the wedding is over, if you still want me gone, I’ll give you the shares and make the city my home base. If you want to get back together…”
“I won’t, under any circumstances, ever want that, but hypothetically, you would what? Give up your life dreams and move to a place you hate?” Hannah looked at him and knew he was completely full of shit. “You think you’ve changed because you got to be anyone you wanted to be out there, but back here, everything is the same.”
She swept her hands around the room to indicate everything that was broken. “We want opposite things. You’re determined to think the worst of everyone. We’re still keeping secrets and pushing everyone we love away. You’ve been back for less than a week, and my best friend isn’t speaking to me. There’s no way for us to be happy.”
She sat back, her arms crossed.
“Let’s make a bet,” he said, stretching his legs out in front of him, his head quirked at that angle he got when he was making trouble. “Let me take you out. I prove to you we can make a new love, or you prove to me that I should walk away forever.”
She didn’t want to go on any dates, but she also knew he would stick to a bet once he made it, and she knew she could outlast him if she had an end date.
“You scared, Rosenstein?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you back down from a Shenanigan.”
She narrowed her eyes. Since they were kids, if one of them said that magic word, they would all go along with whatever dare or game had been declared, no matter how terrible an idea it was. And even now, after everything, she couldn’t make herself break with that tradition. For better or worse, a Shenanigan, once called, must be seen through.
