How it Ends (13 page)

I think Seth might finally like
me again.

He had a free period, so he stopped by my locker, and I cut class, so we ended up hanging out in the upstairs hall, leaning against the window ledge next to each other. The whole time I was absorbing his details, the shape of his hands, his fingertips callused from playing the guitar, the way the bottom of his wavy hair was summer-sun blond, mingling threads and fading up to a darker winter blond, his eyes, not a clear blue but a smudgy one, and how, even sitting, my shoulder was inches below his, perfect for resting my head against if the opportunity ever came up.

A lot of kids passed by on the way to the staircase, gave us interested looks, and said hi, which was kind of funny after a while because we both know so many people that we started making bets on who the next one would be, one of mine, one of his, or an unclaimed neutral.

“So what do I get if I win?” he said, giving me a dangerous smile.

“Ummm…a hearty handshake?” I said brightly.

“Get the hell out of here,” he said, laughing.

“Okay,” I said, pushing off the windowsill like I was leaving.

“Get back here,” he said, catching hold of my wrist. “Am I gonna have to hold on to you just to keep you from running out on me?”

“I don’t know. Let me go and let’s find out,” I said, cocking my head and giving him a sparkling look from under my lashes.

“I don’t think so,” he said, sliding his fingers through mine and holding my hand. He caught sight of a couple of guys heading toward us, and grinning, he raised our linked hands and said, “How you doing?”

“What’s up, Seth?” they said, giving him these really cheesy guy-congratulatory grins.

“Three more for me,” he said smugly when they passed.

“Maybe, but you’re starting a rumor,” I said, giving our hands a pointed look.

“So?” he said, glancing at me. “Do you care?”

And what I wanted to do was shout,
Make it more than a rumor!

Make it a reality!
But what I actually did was shrug and say, “Hey, if you don’t care, I don’t care.”

“Okay, then,” he said and waved our linked hands at kids four more times, which put me three kids behind him, and the bell rang before I could recoup my losses.

“Woman, you are now
my
love slave,” he said, rising and releasing me.

“I’ll think about it,” I said, fluffing my hair and tucking it back behind my ears. “What’s the job description?”

He laughed and fell into step beside me. “You do whatever I want you to do.”

“Hmm. So far, no good. Pay?”

“None.”

I snorted. “No wonder you’re having trouble filling the position. What about benefits?”

“You want benefits, too?” he said, grinning.

“Well, yeah, because so far, I don’t get anything at all,” I said.

“You get me,” he said, nudging my arm.

My heart skipped and I caught my breath and, for a second, all sound stopped and the air shimmered and I almost said,
okay,
I almost showed my whole hand and I would have if some dippy sophomore in blue eye shadow hadn’t bumped into me hard and knocked me right out of the moment.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, ducking and slipping past.

“Nothing like watching where you’re going.” Shaking my head, I crossed the hall to my locker and got my history book. “Well…”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said. “You’re not getting away that easy. Come on, I’ll walk you to class.”

So he did and even though I didn’t see him again for the rest of the day, the last thing he said was, “You know I won fair and square. That should get me
some
thing.”

“Oh, I’m sure it will,” I said. “I just don’t know
what
yet.”

“I do,” he said with a slow, sexy smile.

“Bye,”
I said, laughing and heading into class.

I can’t even believe it.

All I have to do to
get
him is pretend that I don’t want him.

Seth was stoned in school today and Connor told me he had to go sit out in Phil’s car just so he wouldn’t get snagged and suspended. Then he told me that Seth was having a hard time at home and his parents were thinking about taking him out of St. Ignatz and sending him to public school instead.

“Wow, that would suck,” I said.

Connor looked at me hard, like he was trying to gage something. “You should go out and see him,” he said finally.

“Me?” I said, surprised. “Why?”

“Do me a favor and just go,” he said. “I think he needs a friend right about now.”

A friend.

Great.

But I went, of course.

Seth was lying down in the back of Phil’s car, so I climbed into the shotgun seat.

“Hey,” he said, not even bothering to sit up. “Where you been hiding?”

“Oh, I’ve been around,” I said, more than a little freaked at how out of it he was. “What’s going on with you?”

He grunted and closed his eyes. “Too…much…shit.”

“Do you maybe want to talk about it?” I said, leaning over the seat and nudging him into opening his eyes. “I’m a decent listener.” And a fool because, yes, I still wanted him.

“You’re a decent everything,” he said and then shook his head and gazed up at the ceiling. “I’m pretty fucked up.” He laughed without humor. “It runs in the family.”

“Mm?” I said, settling my chin on the back of the seat and watching him.

“Oh, yeah,” he said and then was quiet for a while. When he finally spoke, he didn’t look at me. “I don’t get you.”

“What’s not to get?” I said lightly.

He snorted and this time he did smile, still without looking at me. “Forget it.”

“No, really, what?” I said, leaning over and poking him. “Tell me.”

He caught hold of my arm and then slid his hand down to cover mine. Gazed at our hands as if debating, then ran his thumb gently across my knuckles. “You’re nice.”

“Is that a bad thing?” I said, watching him.

“You always look happy,” he said, frowning.

“And…?” I said.

“You are
definitely
not who I thought you were.”

“So is that good or bad?” I said and waited, heart thumping, to discover my fate.

“I don’t know yet.”

I must have made a little noise as the blade sank into my heart, because he blinked and glanced at me, saw my face, and said, “No, I don’t mean that in a bad way, not to you. I mean it to me.” He shook his head. “Shit, I really didn’t want to…look, it’s not you.”

“Okay, I get it.” My voice was rusty. “You don’t have to say anymore. Just forget it.”

“No, you’re thinking wrong, I can see it. You’re nice, Hanna.” He stopped and seemed to struggle with something.
“I’m
not, okay?”

“What, nice?” I said, surprised. “Yes, you are.”

He shook his head, refusing to meet my gaze. “Every time I go to ask you out, I think,
Yeah, okay, she’s a major flirt, she knows what’s up, she knows how to play the game,
and then you give me that big smile or you say something that totally throws me a curve, and then I’m like,
Shit, maybe not,
and…” He cleared his throat.

“So you’re saying I’m too nice,” I said flatly.

“No,”
he said, looking at me now. “I’m saying you’re nice and I don’t want to fuck that up, okay? And if we go out, I
will,
because I always do.” He looked away again and ran a hand through his hair.

“Then why did Connor even send me out here?” I said.

He was silent for a long moment. “I told him to.”

“Why?” I said.

“I almost didn’t,” he said in a low voice.

“But you
did,
” I said, laying my hand on his arm and smiling when he finally looked at me, because there was something there, I could feel it, and if it took all I had, I wasn’t going to let it go. “So why?”

His smoky blue eyes grew shiny and he muttered, “Oh,
Christ,”
and looked away, but he was laughing a little when he did it, like he
was embarrassed and then he swallowed hard, I saw his Adam’s apple bob, and he said, “You sure you want to do this?” and I said, “Do what?” and then he laughed to himself again like he couldn’t believe he was going to do this, and my heart started pounding so loud I could hardly hear him when he looked at me and, with a crooked, bittersweet smile, said, “So do you want to go out with me, Hanna?”

Yes.

It’s done.

The truth I’ve never dared speak to anyone but Lon is actually down now, in writing. It was Lon’s idea to send it away and make it into a real book because Hanna always borrows those.

The thing is, she doesn’t read nonfiction, and so I had to think further.

I wanted her to listen.

I wanted her to understand.

And because I was doing so poorly and missed her so much, the fear of losing her fell under the need to sit with her through this story just like I had when I’d told all those other stories.

This was the one that counted, and so I sent my words, my secrets, to a narrator, and they came back as an audiobook.

We spent the rest of the
day in Phil’s backseat.

My
yes
did something, unlocked him somehow, and he dropped his distant-Seth self and turned into…I don’t know, a sweet, sexy Seth who wrapped me in his arms and blew my mind. All those pent-up emotions came out in sighs and whispers, in touching and stroking and murmuring each other’s names and laughing softly and being able to lean against him the way I’d wanted to for so long, to feel his arms holding me so tight it was like he would never let me go, hearing him say things like, “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” and they came out kind of hesitant at first, like he was wondering at it, and his bewilderment made me a little sad for him and also love him all the more.

We talked some, too, during those up-for-air moments, and I told him all kinds of important things about my life because I wanted him to know about me and I wanted to know about him, too.

I told him about my parents separating when I was little but how they were okay now, and the sub shop robbery, how Gran had come to be my grandmother, and about how she and Grandpa had met. I told him about her stray-cat condos on the porch, and he said, “So
she’s a crazy cat lady,” and I said, “No, not at all,” and tried to explain why taking care of them mattered and how we had kind of a sanctuary there for deer, too, but halfway through he started kissing my neck and I lost track of everything but him, which I think, when it comes to true love, is exactly how it should be.

I don’t know what I love more: being Seth’s girlfriend, or the surprise on peoples’ faces at school when they see us with our arms around each other.

Sammi’s been tracking all the reactions, and in these last two days it’s ranged from bets that we won’t last a month to some sophomore wearing blue eye shadow crying in the bathroom after we walked by on that first day with our arms around each other.

Bizarre.

We met between classes, used each other’s lockers, ate together, hung out together, and were pretty much inseparable. It felt amazing being able to walk into the caf and meet his gaze, to be able to write
Hanna & Seth TLF
all over my books, to be able to turn to someone and say, “Have you seen Seth?” when I was looking for him or have somebody in class nudge me and to look to the door to see him standing out in the hall, smiling and waiting on me.

On our one-week anniversary Seth bought a blue secondhand SUV. He had to get a job to pay for gas and insurance, so he’s going to be working in a bowling alley out near his house four nights a week and, unfortunately, Saturday daytime—but, we now have a place of our own where we can be alone, as long as we can find a private place to park it.

Making out in lust is great, but making out in
love
is stellar, the two of us wrapped together in the backseat, his hand slipping under my jacket, under my shirt, pushing up my bra and finally closing
around me, all the while straining against me and me against him, wanting but not taking because it wasn’t just something to do but me and him, and it mattered what we thought of each other when it was over.

At least it did to me, because what he’d said to me that day—how I knew how to play the game, how I’d been around—had never actually left me, and sometimes when I saw him smiling at other girls or walked up on him joking around with them, or he walked up on me joking with other guys, I thought about that, about the difference between a guy’s reputation and a girl’s, and yeah, it bothered me.

So even though all I really wanted to do was say I love you and rip his clothes off and let him rip mine off, I went slow, and I have to say it was a blast.

We had our first fight.

I guess it
was
my fault, because he’s right, I know how he is and I shouldn’t have come up on him and that blue-eye-shadow-wearing sophomore Lacey McMullen with such a bitch attitude, but it’s too late now.

You know how you can look at the same thing every day for weeks and think nothing of it but then all of a sudden something in your mind clicks, and you realize there’s something very wrong with this picture? Like while you were busy thinking nothing of it, your subconscious knew otherwise and was connecting dots so you would finally realize the threat?

Well, what I noticed was Lacey McMullen, with the giant, sparkling cow eyes rimmed in bright blue eye shadow, a substantial set of boobs, flushed cheeks, a perky, eager smile, and a very strange tendency to be hovering on the outskirts every time I turned around.

No, not every time
I
turned around.

Every time I was with Seth and turned around.

And the worst thing was…I knew that look.

It was anticipation, even though the odds were against you.

It was being ready and waiting for that instant, unexpected opportunity.

That did not bode well, especially after I pointed her out to Sammi, who said, Yeah, she’s the one who was crying in the bathroom when she found out you two were going out.

Great.

The only good part was that he didn’t seem to know she existed, or so I thought until I got out of gym early, walked into the caf, and saw him leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets and her standing in front of him, laughing and wrapping his necktie around her finger.

I strode over, eyebrows high and wearing a serious bitch face because flirting was one thing but touching quite another.

She saw me coming, let go of his tie, and stepped back but didn’t leave.

That irritated me even more, so I looked at him and said, “Am I interrupting something?” which turned out to be the absolute wrong thing to say.

“Well, yeah, actually you are,” he said coolly, and that was like knives in my stomach because she was still standing there soaking it all up, so I gave her a look that said,
Get the hell out of here
now.

She looked past me at him.

He nodded and said, “I’ll catch up with you later,” and
then
she sauntered off.

I couldn’t believe it. “Take a walk with me?” I said with a tight smile.

“Sure,” he said with absolutely no warmth in his voice at all and ambled out of the cafeteria after me, not even trying to catch up or hold my hand.

“So what was that all about?” I said, pushing open a door and stopping in an empty stairwell.

He shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Really,” I said and hated the shaky hurt in my voice.

He must have heard it, too, because his remote expression faded. “What do you want me to say, Hanna? Oops, you caught me talking to another girl? C’mon.” He pulled me into his arms and I went, stiffly and filled with frustration, but I went. “It was no big deal. She’s just a kid—”

“Who has a crush on you,” I mumbled, and bingo, that was another wrong thing, because he laughed and said, “Yeah, I know, but so what? That doesn’t mean I have a crush on
her.”

“Hmph,” I said, unwinding enough to put my arms around him.

“So I hang out with her sometimes, so what? It doesn’t mean anything,” he said, tilting my face up and catching sight of my tear-filled eyes. “Oh, c’mon, don’t.” He kissed me. “Shh, c’mon. Don’t you know that I love you?”

I went still and searched his gaze. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he said, laughing as I threw my arms up around his neck. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Hanna, baby. I do.”

Two nights later, parked in our spot, he slid a hand down into my jeans and put my hand into his, and it was tight maneuvering on both parts, so we actually unzipped, and I got my first real feel of him. He put his hand around my hand and showed me how to move it and then he slid his hand back down into my pants and started kissing me wildly. My hand was moving and his was moving and both of us were breathing loud and his hand hit the right spot on me in passing and I arched up into it and I guess that really made him crazy because maybe four seconds after that he totally lost it and collapsed on me, gasping and laughing. He brushed my sweaty hair from my cheeks
and looked into my eyes and said,
You’re so beautiful,
and then, with his hand still down there, said,
Now you,
but I got shy and would have said no if he hadn’t started kissing me again.

It got so hot that I actually put my hand on his and showed him where and how, and when it happened, he was exultant and said he’d never done that for anybody before.

I said,
Me neither,
and that meant we had a real first together.

My father was called back to work and my mother says that when there’s more money coming in, maybe we can start fixing up the basement so me and Seth can have a place to hang out.

Plus, my mother says Gran has discovered books on tape, and now Grandpa goes to the library for her and brings home as many audiobooks as he can check out. She’s still into books about Parkinson’s, back to the land, or homeopathy, but she’s been branching out to old-time biographies, too.

I haven’t been to see Gran in a while—too long actually—and while I’m really not into the audiobooks, she does still have bookcases full of regular novels I haven’t read yet. They’re going to come in handy, because Seth practices the guitar a lot when we’re together, so I have a feeling I’ll be reading just to pass the time.

It’s kind of cool to be that comfortable with each other so quickly.

We had Gran and Grandpa over for dinner Sunday and it was quiet as my father was tired from working overtime and my mother was concerned about Gran, who was having trouble forming words fast enough for anyone to connect them into a sentence.

Grandpa stayed close by her now, always there in case she needed him, doing some kind of stepping thing in front of her when her feet froze in position and she couldn’t make herself walk, supporting her
when she first got up because her balance was getting really bad, and the sight of her made me want to cry, which I did but not until later when I was alone.

I think I’m going to go over to Gran’s and ask her if she knows why my parents separated way back when. I mean, I get the idea that it wasn’t because of cheating, but then what else could it have been? Money? We’ve never had a lot and they worry about the bills and stuff but that doesn’t seem like such a big deal, either.

So why, then?

I called first to see if she was up for a visit and I could tell just by how long it took her to form each slurred word that it was not a good day, so when she finally said no, I was disappointed but not surprised.

“Then can I ask you a quick question?” I said, getting up off the bed and shutting my bedroom door just in case my mother came upstairs.

“Sure,” Gran said after a moment.

“Okay, well, remember back when my parents separated? Do you know why they did? I don’t need all the details or anything, but nobody ever told me
why.”
I sank to the edge of the bed and waited, gazing at my reflection in the full-length mirror on the closet door.

“Ask them,” she said after a long pause.

I shook my head. “No, I can’t. That’s, like,
never
talked about. I mean, what if I bring it up and it starts something bad all over again? I don’t want to do that. Can’t you just tell me? Please?”

“Why dig up the past?” she said finally.

“Because it’s my past, too; it’s my family history and I think I’m old enough to know,” I said promptly, because I was ready for that one.

“Then ask your mother,” she said, struggling hard with each word. “It’s not my story to tell.”

I pulled back, looked at the cell phone, and stuck it back to my ear. “What?”

“Only they know the real reason,” she said. “Do you understand?”

“No,” I said, because I couldn’t believe that out of all the stuff we’d talked about, this was the one thing she was not going to tell me. “C’mon, Gran. Please?”

“I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know.”

Oh my God. “Well, then, why do you
think
they split up? I mean, can you at least give me a clue?”

“Hanna.” She said my name on a sigh, like the conversation was ending.

“Wait,” I said frantically. “Was it because of cheating?”

“No,” she said. “Life.”

“What? What does that mean? I don’t get it.”

“Ask your mother,” she said, sounding exhausted. “I have to rest. Bye.”

“But…okay, bye. I guess.” I sat there for a long time after she hung up, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. Gran had never put me off, never not answered my questions—any question, especially an important one like that. Why had she told me to go ask my mother? I couldn’t ask my mother, it was too dangerous a subject and could cause some type of subterranean rumble beneath what had felt like pretty solid ground ever since they got back together.

I didn’t know what to do, so finally I just got up and tried to shut the closet door but it was too jammed with stuff so I gave up, leaving the door cracked open, and went downstairs to set the table for supper.