“I just have a question,” Olivia said, tapping her pen to her lips in her signature I’m about to fuck up your whole day way that Hanna had grown to fear in their sessions.
“Hit me,” she whispered.
“Why do you keep telling yourself that interacting with this Milo guy was nothing?”
“Because it was nothing.”
Olivia scoffed. “You’ve spent the last six months lamenting the fact that you feel absolutely detached from this world, but the first time someone walks in and makes you feel anything, you’re quick to dismiss it. I find that revealing.”
Hanna chewed on the inside of her cheek. “Okay, but?—”
“I just wonder if you’re running from home, or running to someone.”
“I’m not running at all,” Hanna said quickly. “I’m temporarily relocating.”
“Hmm,” Olivia said, scribbling a sentence across her notepad. What Hanna would've paid to read through the pages upon pages of notes Olivia had taken since Hanna's mother had gotten sick. “You’re avoiding my question.”
“Can’t the answer be yes, and?”
“It can,” Olivia said. “But I worry how you’ll cope in a new city without your typical routines.”
Does it matter? Hanna thought. She’d never feel normal again, anyway. What did it matter which zipcode she was sad in?
“You do virtual sessions, right?”
Olivia gave her a half smile. That was the answer she was looking for. “Lucky for you, I’m also licensed in California.”
“I’m going to make you regret that.”
SIX
The plane had hardly taxied before Sara sent eight texts detailing how thrilled she was that Hanna had finally given in.
She'd planned a dinner for that night with her and Matty's closest friends and it took Hanna everything she had not to ask if Milo would be there.
Not that she cared.
Sara’s apartment was a twenty-five-minute Uber ride away, right in the heart of SoMa. As the car glided to a stop on Brannan Street, Sara was already firing off comms.
Hanna hauled her suitcases from the trunk and stared up at the lofts she’d toured via FaceTime two years ago. It only took a few breaths to rehydrate her sun-dried desert heart, the humidity almost instantly curling the ends of her hair.
“Hanna!” She looked to the second floor of balconies hanging over the street. “We’re coming down!”
Hanna didn’t have much time to consider that “we” might not mean her and Matty before Sara and Milo stepped off the elevator and out of the lobby. A nervous flare shot up her spine as Sara ran toward her, scooping her into an embrace.
“I cannot believe you’re actually here!”
“Me either!”
Sara released her and shoved her at Milo, who offered a tepid side hug that shut down absolutely any lingering what-ifs in her mind. At least it was quick and painless.
Milo grabbed one of her bags despite her protest and he was already calling the elevator by the time she processed his acquisition.
Sara prattled on about all the things she wanted to do that weekend once Hanna was settled in, but Hanna heard none of it. Standing beside Milo on an elevator in his home turf did something strange to her stomach.
She followed them off the elevator and down the hall where Sara stopped at unit three.
“And this is Milo’s place!”
