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“We’ve done multiday events for large groups.” Hannah chewed on her braid. “I wasn’t this nervous about the engagement party.”
“Are you having feelings because you never had a bachelorette party, just skipped right to a secret elopement?” Tara asked.
“I don’t think so?” Hannah mused. “I’m not really a bachelorette party kind of person.”
Tara hummed. “Okay, so tell me about the event.”
“Delilah requested a slumber party theme, including facials and massages, makeovers, and horror movies, so we’re partnering with a nearby spa to have several aestheticians and massage therapists set up in the great room downstairs, along with nail art stations. The barn is now a movie theater with a drop-down screen and projector, and the women are going to take turns doing each other’s makeup.”
“Did you go to a lot of sleepovers as a kid?” Tara asked, and Hannah laughed.
“Not unless you count staying with my cousins. I’ve only seen movie versions of them.”
“So you never got the experience of seeing someone else’s house, eating the dinner their mom made, seeing what sort of shampoo they kept in their bathroom or how many kinds of mustard they kept in the fridge,” Tara guessed.
“What if I’m re-creating it wrong?” she worried, lying back on the bed. She was going to have to change the pillow covers again. “What do people do at sleepovers?”
Tara laughed. “I stopped getting invited to sleepovers in about the fifth grade, when it became apparent to some of the moms that I had a crush on their daughters. But I have a theory. Your problem is not that you’ve never been to a sleepover.”
Hannah sat back up, wrapping her hair up and out of the way. “Whatismy problem?” she asked. “Because I’ve been trying to figure it out all week and I can’t.”
“Your problem,” Tara said, “is that you’re afraid all these women are going to judge you as small town and boring.”
Hannah began to protest, but Tara cut her off. “You’re living in a place you’ve known all your life. You’re in a will-they-won’t-they with your childhood sweetheart. You haven’t made new friends in years, unless you count me and Marisol.”
Miri always said that Tara argued in lists. Apparently, she also gave pep talks in lists.
“I do count you both,” Hannah said. “Also, Elijah and Jason!”
“How long have you been friends with the Greens?”
Hannah thought about it. “Ten years.”
“That’s not new,” Tara told her. “You’re not stressing about a childhood you missed out on, or a bachelorette party you never had. You’re stressed out about trying to look cool in front of a bunch of women.”
“You really think I’m having a freak-out because I’m not cool enough?” Hannah asked. “That’s so embarrassing. I’m too old for that.”
“How often did you feel cool enough for the cool girls growing up?” Tara asked.
“Never,” Hannah admitted, “but look at how cool I am now. I have an amazing business. I have great clothes. I live with a giant magical cat.”
“You have a hot TV star husband,” Tara supplied, and Hannah froze.
“He’s not really my husband,” she halfheartedly protested.
“Okay, your hot TV star, secret half-married ex, whatever is going on between the two of you,” Tara drawled. “But you’re right. You are cool. How are you going to believe it?”
“I need to feel unstuck, like someone who makes wild, impulsive decisions sometimes,” Hannah said.
“Wild, impulsive decisions like getting married on a whim?” Tara suggested.
Hannah worried her lip. “That was years ago, and I haven’t done anything like it since. Also, I’d prefer something a little less legally binding right now. A small act of rebellion.”
“Tattoo?” Tara offered.
“Too permanent. Kind of a religious gray area.” She flicked the end of her braid, which had once again fallen over her shoulder. The braid she’d cultivated for years, that hung down her back like an anchor, weighing her down with all the ways she’d tried to make Levi want her enough to stay.
She was sick of taking care of it. She was tired of it in her way, in her mouth, weighing down her head, the time it took to deal with it. She hated the comments people made, wanted to be something other than the woman with the Rapunzel hair. She had started to grow it out as some sort of tether, some rope to keep him bound to her, even as she pushed him away. As penance, for cutting the ties of fate that bound them in an impossible love. She’d taken garden shears and hacked at all the threads tying them in a hopeless tangle to each other, but on her head, she wore all the threads at once. As a beacon in a storm, bright enough to lead him home.
