“Okay.” I put my hands over Winnie’s ears. “Children are listening.”
“Make up what?” she asks far too loudly.
“Add that to the grown-up conversation list, okay?”
“How long is that list getting?” Rhett asks, pulling Lauren into his side and kissing her cheek.
“Because of you two? Impressively long.”
“Make out?” Winnie asks, well, yells. Her voice is loud enough to compensate for the fact that my hands are still covering her ears. “Is that what they are going to do? Like you and Tanner make out?”
Everyone in the room freezes and wide eyes land on us. I almost sense a flash of a smile in Tanner’s eyes across the way, but it’s gone as quickly as it appears.
The one that got away.That’s what he’s telling his farm hand. He’s talking to the farm hand, but not to me.
“You,” I push her gently, “may go get in the car. We have to pack a bag to stay at Aunt Laurey’s tonight.”
She happily leads me out to the van and yanks at the handle until I unlock it and let her in.
“Hannah.” Tanner comes out just as I close Winnie’s door, and whatever words he was going to say falter on his lips.
“We were still friends,” I snap at him quietly, so Winnie doesn’t hear. The sting of the loss of his friendships has been sitting deep in my gut. I feel it all the time. When I’m not sleeping or when my eyes linger a little too long across the parking lot. “In these rooms where we should have been at each other’s side, I’ve had to fight to get you to even speak to me.” The sting is laced in my words. “Iwarnedyou. I told you this was why I couldn’t get close, because you would change your mind and I would lose you.”
“You’re the one leaving, Hannah!” I don’t think I have ever heard his voice at this volume. Or at this level of desperation.
I can’t help but laugh. Not a funny laugh. There’s nothing funny about this.
“And look how hard you’re fighting me on that.” I shake myhead. “I’m not pregnant by the way. So, you’re in the clear. You’re getting the clean break you wanted.”
I turn and slide into my car and steal one glance back at him.Beg for me,I think, I will it in my heart. Instead, he stands there, slack-jawed and watching me drive away.
When my period came, I shocked myself with how disappointed I was. Things were already over with Tanner and there I was, crying because Iwasn’tpregnant. It felt like when I got that positive pregnancy test back in college. But this time, that deep-gut disappointment was because it was negative. And somehow it was so much more heartbreaking.
Lauren, Winnie and I are sitting on Lauren’s couch, each with a spoon in hand, eating straight out of a carton of ice cream.
“I am so nervous for tomorrow,” Lauren admits.
“Don’t be nervous,” Winnie says with her mouth full of ice cream. “At least you don’t have to walkandthrow flowers. Grampy basically walks you all the way.”
Lauren’s eyes widen and then she bursts into laughter. “You’re absolutely right.”
“Does the baby like ice cream?” Winnie asks.
“I think so. Because the baby makes me want ice cream pretty much all the time now.”
“Then I must have a baby in my belly, because my belly makes me want ice cream too.”
A knock on the door makes us all freeze from our laughter.
It’s before midnight, only barely, but Lauren swings open the door, and Rhett is standing there.
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” she snaps at him.
“I meant to give you this,” he says, handing her something small. “And I just wanted to see you one more time.”
He kisses her and Winnie sticks her tongue out quietly to me before Lauren finally pushes him away and waves him out the door.
“Bye Tanner!” she calls out to the truck I see through the front window.
