by Casey Winter
“The more I think about it, the more I wonder if what we want even factors into this,” she whispers. “Mom’s got cancer. Cancer. I can’t put her through this, not if …”
“I thought she was doing better,” I point out. “I thought the doctors were even talking remission.”
I remember how Hannah danced around the hotel suite when she told me about it. It’s early days yet, and it still might come back—cancer is a tricky enemy—but there’s hope now. She pirouetted and giggled and leapt around like an alluring ball of excitement, sweeping me along with her until I had her pressed against the window, our reflections in the night-dark glass beaming back at us, two hazy figures who were sick and tired of pretending they weren’t happy.
“They are,” she admits. “What do you think? What are you feeling?”
I wonder if she wants me to fight for her. I wonder if this is the part in the movie when I drop to my knees and beg, give her some speech about how much I love her, about how I’ll always be there for her. I wonder if I could ever be that sort of man. “Stunned,” I say. “Mostly, just stunned. Disoriented. I feel like I’ve just been hit by a flashbang grenade.”
“Is that like one of those grenades that blind you and make your head all fuzzy?”
“Pretty much.”
She laughs drily. “Then I know exactly what you mean.”
“I like Teresa,” I tell her. “I think she’s a great woman. I don’t want to put her in an unfair position. But, I don’t know, Hannah …”
“What, Luke?” she whispers, when I trail off.
“It’s like you said. Now that we know why our families really hate each other, it seems that her problem was never with me to begin with. And that my old man’s problem was never with you, either.”
“I don’t know,” she mutters. “Because, like, we can’t pick our parents, can we? Whatever happens, your dad will always be Russel, and Mom will always be Mom. They’re not going anywhere. Oh, God, I hope they’re not, anyway.”
Her voice cracks. Finally, the tears come.
I inch along the bench, my own throat getting tight, and put my arm around her. She buries her face in my chest, weeping violently, gripping me like she wants to push me away and pull me closer at the same time. I kiss her forehead and stroke my hand through her hair.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “Everything’s going to be okay, Hannah. I promise.”
“But you don’t know that,” she breaks out. The urge to push away wins. She separates. “You can’t know that. What if you’re wrong? What if Mom passes away with me putting her right in the middle of some twisted family feud? I can’t do this, Luke. Please don’t make this hard.”
“So we’re breaking up,” I say flatly. “That’s what you’re telling me.”
“Were we ever together?” she snaps, retreating to the other side of the bench. That seems like a massive distance, somehow. “I mean, you pretty much did everything in your power never to address it. You were—are—Mr. No-Labels, remember?”
I groan, looking up at the stars. The sky is clear. It’s a beautiful night. “And here’s where I’m supposed to grovel. Is that it?”
“Don’t be a jerk,” she hisses. “We can be grownup about this, you know.”
“Is that it?” I repeat, levelling my gaze at her. “Because I’ve never groveled, not for anybody, not for anything. And I’m not about to start now.”
“I’m not asking you to grovel,” she yells, leaping up, spinning away on her skates. She paces up and down in short strides. “I’m just telling you how it is.”
“What if Dad and Teresa didn’t hate each other? Would you still be doing this?”
She glares, tears clinging to her eyelashes. I stand up and walk over to her, kissing the tears from her cheeks, holding her tightly. For a few long minutes, she just lets me hold her. She heaves against me. I can feel her heartbeat, just as frantic as mine. Finally, she answers, “Of course I wouldn’t be doing this if they were best fricking friends. Jesus. I—I care about you, Luke.”
“So I guess we’ll just look back on this as the crazy summer where we had a fling,” I murmur darkly. “I guess we’ll just go on with our lives and forget about it.”
She sniffles. “I guess so.”
“And then you’ll find somebody else, some other man whose dad isn’t a damn psycho, and you’ll be with him, you’ll marry him, maybe, and have kids with him …”
Savage protectiveness enters my voice. The idea revolts me.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I can’t predict the future. Luke, will you let me go, please?”
“Why?” I growl.
“Because I won’t be able to do this if you keep holding onto me. And I have to do this. For Mom. I’m sorry.”
I step back. “I’m sorry, too,” I say. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you put a label on us. For what it’s worth, Hannah, I wish I could turn back time and make you my girlfriend after that night at Sugar Lake. I think I knew, then, how much I cared about you. But like I said, I’ll never grovel. It’s just not who I am.”
“And like I said,” she mutters testily. “I never asked you to.”
“Fine, then at least we agree about something,” I sigh, turning away. “Have a nice life, I guess. See you around, twinkle toes.”
“Is that really how you want to leave things?” she calls after me.
I stop walking for a second, thinking about turning back.
“No,” I’d tell her. “I didn’t want to leave things at all. I wanted to fight for us, as crazy as that is. Because I don’t give a damn if my old man is the biggest cantankerous old bastard I’ve ever met. That’s what tonight has shown me, Hannah. I just care about you, about us, about the life we could build together.”
But, instead, I just keep walking. At the exit to the park, I look back. Maybe she’s still standing at the bench, waiting for me. I could go back and we could part on better terms. But she’s gone.
The only person left is William Jackson Henry, who’s probably witnessed dozens of scenes like this over the years. He’s probably bored of them by now.
I get into my Chevy.
—
When I get back to the motel room, I can’t sleep. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It was only because of Hannah that I was able to sleep so well this past week, holding her in my arms and closing my eyes, feeling like I’d been drugged as I sank into the mattress. It was almost like coming back after a gunfight, the way I’d collapse with her.
Being with her gets my heart pounding just as much as bullets pounding all around me. She gives me that same singleness of focus that obliterates everything else.
I laugh grimly as I pace around my room, wondering if that’s the sort of stuff women like to hear. Hey, babe, I love you as much as a gunfight. I’m seething, unable to settle.
She ended things. But then, she’s right, I never let anything properly begin. I stopped her at every point where our relationship might’ve become … A relationship. Instead, whenever she brought it up, I became distant, evasive.
I remember one time when we were lying in bed in the suite, the sheets tangled around us, both of us panting and sweaty. “What are we, Luke?” she asked sleepily. “Like, I’m not your girlfriend, am I?”
I felt myself tense up, as if my body was rebelling against the very idea. Reflecting on it now, guilt moves through me painfully. “I don’t know,” I whispered after a long, long, long-ass pause. “I don’t see how putting a label on it helps anything.”
She huffed. “Maybe it would help me to know what exactly’s going on here.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t want anybody to know about us,” I pointed out. I tickled her, trying to make it fun, lighthearted. “If I had my way, I’d walk up to your door like a proper gentleman, hat in hand, and solemnly ask Miss Ortiz if she’d do me the honor of allowing me to take her daughter on a date.”
But she was having none of it. She rolled away slightly, but still within touching
distance, our hands linked. That seems to be where we’re destined to exist. That not-really-sure place.
“I don’t see how us discussing what’s going on here has anything to do with that,” she muttered.
“You don’t?” I asked seriously. “If I told you right now that you’re my girlfriend, Hannah, what would it even mean if nobody knew?”
She snorted. “I didn’t take you for that kinda guy, frogman.”
“What kind?”
“The kind who doesn’t think anything’s official until it’s on Facebook.”
“I don’t have Facebook,” I said.
“I know,” she snapped. “But you get the point. So, basically, your answer is: Stop all this talking, Hannah, just bend over and let me screw you for as long as I want?”
I grinned, kissing her. “That’s not fair. I’ll let you go on top, too.”
She slapped me, smiling despite herself. “Such a dick,” she sighed. “Fine, I guess we’re putting a pin in this, yeah?”
Now, I walk into the bathroom, replaying that moment and several others on a loop in my mind. I think about what I said, what I could’ve said, what I might’ve said if I wasn’t Luke Nelson and she wasn’t Hannah Coleman-Ortiz.
I stare about myself in the mirror, partly hating the emotional twist to my lips, the pain in my eyes. But part of me likes it, too, because I look human.
For the first time since I almost died in Helmand, lying on my back and staring up at the ceiling of that abandoned hut, I look like somebody who might actually live a normal life.
I never knew I wanted a normal life.
Until Hannah.
I know I have a warrior’s temper. I try and keep myself calm most of the time. But right now, my face in the mirror just pisses me off.
I punch it until the glass shatters and warps my reflection.
I punch it until my knuckles bleed and pain shoots up my arm.
Crunch-bang-thud.
And then the unit falls from the wall, lying ruined, and my reflection is just a shattered spider-web pattern.
I go into the bedroom and grab my wallet and the motel keys. I need to clear my head. I need to walk. I need to disappear into the forest and hope I come out feeling like a new man.
The girl at the desk glances up from her Kindle as I approach, eyes moving to my grazed and bloody knuckles. I take out a wad of cash and place it on the desk.
“What’s that for?” she mutters.
“The mirror,” I grunt, turning for the door.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hannah
I haven’t seen Luke in a week.
Since our talk in the park, he’s disappeared. Well, I’m guessing he’s still at Family Roller, but I haven’t been there. He’s definitely not staying at his dad’s house anymore. His Chevy isn’t parked out front, even if sometimes I glance out the window late at night and think I can see its shadow.
I have to remind myself that I’m the one who ended things. I have to remind myself of the reasons: Mom, the past, our families.
I spend most of my time skating (but not at Roller), hanging out with Mom and Alejandra and Penny, or sketching.
One week since our talk, and I keep going over and over it in my mind, dreaming up different ways it could’ve gone. I think about Luke pulling me into his lap when I sprang up, telling me firmly that we would make this work, making the choice for me.
My head is all over the place, scattered in a bajillion different directions. My thoughts are like a skater on Adderall, hopping here and there, darting off before I can catch them.
One week.
But it feels like a year.
When Saturday comes and I look down at my phone calendar, sitting cross-legged in bed at eight in the morning, I can hardly believe this feeling of emptiness in my belly. It’s like something’s been physically removed.
I didn’t even feel like this after the abortion. And that’s saying a lot.
I spend a whole heap of time cleaning my skates this morning, taking them apart piece by piece. I lay the wheels and the bearings and the frame and the liner and the laces on a towel on the floor, staring down at them.
As I look down at them, I can’t help but think this is what Luke did to me. He took me apart, piece by piece, breaking down the barriers I’d built around myself until I was completely open to him. But he didn’t put me back together. Maybe he didn’t know how to. He didn’t have the tools.
But then, is that fair? I’m the one who ended things. But what did I end, really? Or is this whole label obsession really just an excuse? Fine, we didn’t label it, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something there—wasn’t something there. Or is there, still?
My mind is confuuusssedddd.
I focus on the skates instead, cleaning each bearing individually, wiping down the boot, cleaning the frame, even getting a cotton bud and cleaning the inside of the screws axles. I move the wheels around so that they’re facing the other way, to make sure they’re wearing down evenly.
When they’re done, I sit with them in my lap, the same way I did as a little girl when Mom bought me my first proper pair.
I find myself wondering what life would’ve been like if Luke and I were the same age: if it was Luke I’d fallen for as a little kid, if he was my childhood sweetheart, not Noah. Of course, it never could have worked in reality, the five-year age gap making it impossible.
But what if …
I know Luke wouldn’t have forced me to get the abortion. Maybe I would have kept the baby. Maybe we would’ve gotten married. Maybe we’d have several children now.
But then I never would have gone into the world and made my mark, gotten sponsors, competed in competitions, became respected by the inline skating community. Sure, skating isn’t exactly the most popular thing in the world, but it’s the most important thing in my world—apart from the obvious—and I did it. I went out there and I did it. I take pride in that. I wouldn’t change anything.
But Luke wouldn’t have made me quit my passion, would he? He wouldn’t have tried to box me in like Noah did. Luke is different. Oh, God, Luke is different.
And I miss him so fricking much right now.
—
People say that time waits for no man, but it turns out that time waits for no woman, either. Saturday becomes Sunday, Sunday becomes Monday, and before I know it, it’s Wednesday and I still haven’t seen Luke.
I fill my time. I don’t sit at the window as it rains, listening to sad music on my laptop, fighting back tears. Okay, I’ve done that a couple of times, but only after a few glasses of wine, never sober. Is that a victory of sorts? Or more like a shameful admission?
I. Don’t. Know.
I push those thoughts away and finish getting ready.
Tonight, Penny and Alejandra are coming around for dinner. Since Mom is doing so much better now, she’s making one of her elaborate three-course meals. Garlic mushrooms to start, a lamb Thanksgiving-type meal for main, and then a homemade banoffee pie for dessert.
Alejandra arrives early, taking her usual chair and starting on her knitting. She goes into the kitchen now and then to see if Mom wants any help, but Mom has turned fierce and proud lately, encouraged by how much better she’s been feeling. She’ll handle this alone.
I meet Penny at the door. We hug, and then she leans back, studying me.
“Is this the part where you tell me I look like crap?” I joke.
“Never,” she cries. “But not because you don’t. But it’s a cliché, and I think a writer’s sole job is to avoid clichés.”
“I thought it was a writer’s sole job to finish books,” I tease.
She giggles. “Oh, yeah, that too. But, seriously, have you been sleeping?”
“Like a baby,” I lie.
Following me into the living room, she says, “So, what, you wake up every few hours in tears?”
I laugh, loving her wicked sense of humor. It takes a bulletproof friendship to be able to joke like this. �
�Yeah, that’s about right.”
As Penny and Alejandra hug hello, Alejandra’s hand snakes up and fiddles with the pencil in Penny’s hair. “And what is this, may I ask?” she says, wiggling it. “You do know they make special things to hold up your hair, girl? Is this the fashion now? Next it will be, oh, rulers. Or protractors. Or erasers.”
“How would that work?” Penny says, smiling as she sits down. “Pretty sure an eraser would just fall out.”
Alejandra grins wolfishly. “Now, tell me about this horrid book you are writing, my girl. Does it have lots of murder and sex, yes?”
“Some,” Penny admits. “But I changed project again.”
Alejandra and I sigh at the same time.
“Are you going to tell her, or shall I?” she asks me.
“You can do it, Grandma,” I say, which I like to call her sometimes even if we’re not blood-related.
Alejandra wheels on Penny, eyes piercing through her spectacles. “You have talent, girl. I remember those little stories you used to write about the turtle who grew wings. Do you remember those, Hannah? Oh, they were delightful. The turtle grows wings and spends his nights flying, forgetting who he is, and then when he comes back to the sea, nobody wants to be friends with him.
“At first he sulks. But then he teaches them how to fly … or, as best as he can. He teaches them how to leap higher and higher. And he takes the little ones for flights. It was beautiful.”
“It was, Penny,” I say sincerely. “It was amazing.”
“So you have talent,” Alejandra says. “But talent is nothing without dedication.”
“I know.” Penny groans, taking it all with an easy expression. We’ve been through this before. “But you don’t get it, this time I’m really onto something.”
“Do you want a glass of wine?” I ask.
“Sure, Banana,” she says. “That’d be nice.”
“Alejandra?”
“Ooh, tea’s strong enough for me, gracias.”
I go into the kitchen to get the wine and glasses, finding Mom glazing the mushrooms with the same care she applies to her artwork. Her face is fuller and her figure is curvier. She looks healthy and strong. “Is Penny here?” she asks.