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Chapter 2
Hannah
Hannah was proud of herself. She’d handled seeing Blue again beautifully. She’d gotten in the last word, and there was no way he’d seen her shaking. But why did he have to be here? Just because she’d specifically asked him to come home and had in fact sent someone to find him?
And why did he have to look so unholy hot? It was like his entire being radiated hormones her body always responded to, no matter what her brain was saying.
She’d locked herself in her room, in the middle of a workday, under a tent of blankets, and was now repeating to herself over and over that she’d handled that really well. Her breathing was slowly returning to normal. She could feel her fingers again. Unwrapping her bun, she shook out her hair and wrapped it again, moving slowly and intentionally.
Levi had loved her hair. He’d spread it under his hands and over his pillow, playing with it mindlessly while they talked and getting tongue-tied when she took out her ponytail or her braid after a long day and brushed it all the way down her back. Since he’d left, she’d grown it out. She kept meaning to cut it short to spite him, but something in her obstinate, hopeful heart stopped her. She wanted to be able to break his heart and stop his breath, still, if it ever came to that. If he ever came home. And now he had.
She looked around at the room she’d completely redesigned since he left, so it held no trace of the life they’d built inside it, together. Her little tower. She’d had to make the space unrecognizable in order to breathe. She could have changed rooms, certainly. She lived in a hotel; there were several to choose from. She could have taken over Cass’s old rooms when she died, or Noelle’s when she moved with Miriam to the carriage house. But she didn’t want to show weakness, to herself or anyone else. She didn’t want to admit that every part of her missed him every day, even while she built this beautiful new life that brought her so much joy.
Suddenly, her best friend was banging on her door, demanding she be let in.Ugh.
“It’s open,” she yelled, scooting over in bed to give Noelle a place to sit. Noelle was a fat, dapper butch, often in flannel and suspenders and currently wearing a short-sleeved button-down with a ladybug pattern. Her auburn hair swooped up in a pompadour and her head was shaved on the sides. She kicked off her work boots at the door to expose neon yellow taco cat socks.
Noelle was the love of Miriam’s life but she had been Hannah’s best friend in the universe first.
“I brought a lot of ibuprofen,” Noelle said. Hannah guessed she could forgive the intrusion. “I figured you were going to get a crying headache, and we should get in front of it.
“I also brought your planner up from your office, because I thought you might be feeling the urge to organize your day to within the minute, and I didn’t want you to have to run across him on your way to get it.” Noelle handed her the journal stuffed with color-coded flags.
Hannah hugged it to her chest. It would be better if she had her laptop so she could update her spreadsheets, but this would do.
“I love you,” Hannah said, leaning over to touch her forehead to Noelle’s. “You are my platonic soulmate and I could not live without you.”
“I know,” Noelle told her, kissing her forehead. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Nope nope nope nooooooope, a world of nope. I am that gif of the nope octopus. I am only made of nope.” Hannah shook her head. Noelle might be her number one person, but Levi…Levi was off-limits.
He wasn’t off-limits to only Noelle. She never talked about him withanyone.
When she was younger, being in love with him was a secret she’d kept from everyone, him most of all. When they’d gotten together, their relationship was so precious, they wanted something that was just theirs, without Cass, the Matthewses, and everyone else in their lives inserting their opinions. Miriam had already stopped coming to Carrigan’s by then and never knew they’d been in love until she came back last year. She and Levi had been chaotic at best, on the verge of falling apart, when Noelle moved to Carrigan’s. Then he left and Noelle picked up all the pieces of Hannah’s heartbreak, so she’d never really seen them happy together either.
No one here had, except for the Matthewses. It wouldn’t be fair to dump her feelings about their son on them, so she’d kept the whole of it—the years of longing, the overwhelming out-of-control roller coaster of their relationship, the way she missed him—locked inside. She and Levi were an island nation, trapped in a civil war, and the only person who understood the scope of the casualties was the one person she couldn’t talk to about it.
Noelle nudged her gently, interrupting Hannah’s thoughts. “Do you want me to stoke your fire, then sit with you and go over all the things you could be doing today that would leave you too busy to see or talk to your ex?”
“Yes. That is what I want,” Hannah declared, opening her planner on the blankets in front of her.
There was another knock, the pattern—two short knocks followed by three quick ones—that Miriam had been using since they were four years old.
“Your girlfriend doesn’t believe I should be alone to wallow,” Hannah complained.
“You’re not alone, you drama queen, I’m here,” Noelle said, ruffling Hannah’s hair. “She’s probably worried about you.”
“She’s probably worried about him,” Hannah grumbled unfairly.
Miriam didn’t wait for an invitation, just stuck her head inside, then slipped through.
“Babe,” she said, her hands on the hips of her overalls, “what’s happening here?”
“She’s not talking about it,” Noelle told Miriam.
“Is she leaving her room today to finish up preparations?” Miriam asked curiously.
“She’s not,” Hannah said, giving in to impulse and pulling her blanket over her head.
