Left unsaid was that only a month ago, Hannah wouldn’t have been able to do that. Back then, she was still staying at Kat’s apartment, convalescing from Dallas’s attack on her on an isolated hiking trail. Her time holed up at Kat’s place had left her with what her psychiatrist, Dr. Janice Lemmon, had called mild agoraphobia.
Then, just as she was starting to feel more confident going out into the world, she, Kat, and Ryan were ambushed in Jessie and Ryan’s house by Ash Pierce. Hannah had gotten off the easiest among them, getting knocked out and suffering a concussion after Pierce hit her in the head with a police baton. By the time she came to, the violence had ended. Well, almost.
“That’s okay,” Finn told her. “I was kidding. We’re keeping the décor simple for now. Maybe a wall calendar at eye level. If we get real crazy, we might buy a plant. The goal is to make upkeep as simple as possible.”
“Okay,” Hannah said. “Is there any more unpacking to do? Dishes? Clothes? Or did your family already help out with all of that?”
“It’s all taken care of,” he said. “The goal for the semester is minimalism, so I brought as little as possible. And as you can see, the furnishings are pretty sparse so that we have wide spaces to move around.”
“In that case, do you want to go get a coffee or a snack?” she asked. “I know distances can be daunting right now, but maybe getting outside for a bit would be good for you. You look pretty pale and sickly.”
The dig was good-natured but he didn’t smile. She worried that she’d offended him.
“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I was just messing with you.”
“No, it’s not that,” he said, sounding hesitant all of a sudden. “I just have something to tell you, and I’ve been stalling.”
She felt immediately anxious, a rare emotion for her, but tried her best to talk her way out of it.
“Look, if you’re going to say that the next time I’m hanging out with someone and you warn me that they might be a secret incel planning to torture and kill me, don’t worry: I’ll listen.”
That at least got a thin smile.
“Don’t make me laugh,” he said as he moved over to one of the couches and leaned against the back of it. “Everything still hurts a little.”
“Okay,” she said, holding her hands up in surrender. “So what is it?”
He sighed and looked down at the thickly carpeted floor. Hannah assumed that was so potential falls wouldn’t be as painful. Though she wanted to press him, she stood in the doorway and waited.
“My parents gave me an ultimatum,” he said, looking up.
“Okay.”
“You know that I don’t blame you for Dallas stabbing me,” he said carefully. “I did the research on his background. I chose to confront him in that parking lot. That was all on me.”
“But?” Hannah replied expectantly.
“But my parentsdoblame you,” he said. “They’re not interested in my defenses of you. They say that all the bad stuff that happened to me wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been hanging out with you. It’s B.S. of course, but they believe it.”
Hannah wasn’t so sure itwasB.S. If the two of them had never crossed paths last year, he would not be clinging to that cane or be living in this 'special access unit' apartment. It was true that he'd made his own choices, but being in her orbit wasn't exactly a boon to his personal safety.
“So what does that mean?” she asked, though she had a creeping sense that she already knew.
“It means that they’ve forbidden me from hanging out with you.”
“They’veforbiddenyou?” she repeated, not sure she’d heard him right. Part of her wanted to remind him that he was an adult whose associations couldn’t be forbidden. But she knew it was more complicated than that.
“Basically,” he said. “They told me that if I insist on spending time in your company, that they will stop paying for me to attend UCI. They said that if they find out that Ihavebeen, they’ll pull tuition payments and only pay for me to attend a school over 200 miles away. I guess they figure that’s far enough to prevent ‘hangouts.’”
The sourness in his tone told her how he felt about the ultimatum. But she also knew that even by telling her this, it meant he’d already agreed to the demand. And she could hardly blame him.
It wasn’t like he was such an amazing student that he could reject their instructions and get a scholarship to continueattending the school without their help. More importantly, the thought of uprooting his life and attending another college he was unfamiliar with, all on principle, just so he could maintain their friendship, was probably terrifying.
Deep down, Hannah knew that Finn was conflicted for more reasons than just that. It was clear that he had once hoped, and maybe still did, that their friendship would eventually blossom into something more. At one point, so had she.
But there were too many roadblocks, many self-imposed, that made that unlikely now. So was he really going to stand up to his parents just so that he could hang out with his gal pal? It wasn’t a reasonable ask.
“I understand,” she said softly.
