Chili’s is a touch less depressing tonight. Instead of the post-divorce clientele, it’s filled with little dancers still in their hair sprayed updos and sequined dresses. Tanner finds a seat across from me and somehow, I feel like a sixteen-year-old having her first date chaperoned by her entire family. He answers all my parent’s questions while Winnie watches him from across the table like she isn’t quite sure what to make of him.
At one point she tosses a French fry across the table to Rhett who narrowly catches it in his mouth.
“Winnie.” I tip my head but the two of them are pink cheeked and giggling.
“It’s his fault,” Tanner chimes in, pointing at Rhett. “She’s innocent.”
“What does that mean?” Winnie asks him.
“It means you didn’t commit the crime.”
She stops and thinks about it for a moment and then her eyes brighten. “Mommy went through a red light because she had to go pee the other day. Is that a crime?”
Tanner's eyes meet mine and a giddy smile is all over his face.
“A cold hardened criminal.” He shakes his head. “Who would have thought?”
“We had been at dance all day, nobody was at the light, and it was taking forever to turn. I was literally going to pee my pants if I didn’t get home.”
Tanner laughs and leans forward. He slides my glass of water away from me and drinks it himself. “We may need to keep a closer eye on you. This is an accessory to the crime.”
“I’ve been trying to warn y’all she was trouble.” Paul adds.
Everyone laughs and Tanner is still looking at me like I am the only person in this room.
“Can I go with Grampy and Nan?” Winnie asks once we get to the parking lot, already pulling on the locked handle to their car.
“I don’t mind if they don’t mind,” I tell her.
As if Paul would ever mind. I hear them hatching a plan to eat popcorn and watch more Bluey as the car door closes and they drive away.I know he would pack her in his suitcase to bring her with them to Florida in the morning if he could.
Everyone else makes quick goodbyes, leaving Tanner and I alone under the bug swarmed streetlights. He takes a step forward and wraps his arms around my shoulders because there really aren’t any words. With my arms wrapped around his waist, feeling his heart beating as quickly as mine, I take in the smell of him. The smell of a shower and rain and the woods.
When I woke up this morning, I had no idea when I was goingto see Tanner next. It’s been over six months since I visited Lauren in Green Branch and saw him last. But now, here he is, in my arms.
“I have something for you,” he says into my hair, before stepping away to his truck just a few spots away. A dark green thing from what I'm sure is the early nineties with rusted wheel wells and a dented back panel.
He reaches into the back space behind his seat and pulls out another bouquet of flowers. Pink peonies. The milky pink color is almost white and nothing like the bright eye-catching bouquet like he had for Winnie.
“Tanner—” I begin to say but I'm not even sure what I’m going to say.
“These ones are yours.” He hands them to me. “I didn’t want to take away from Winnie's big moment, so I kept them out here for you. They reminded me of you.”
“I love them,” I say and wonder just where the hell he has been hiding my whole life. Why did he have to live so far away and why did we have to meet too late? “You’re making it hard to be just friends.”
“You’ve never made it easy for me.” He leans back onto my driver side door.
I sneak a glance up at him. His hair has now lost some of its structure and a piece is hanging over his forehead. It’s never quite brown and never quite blond, either. It lives somewhere in the middle. Like spring. Inconsistent but beautiful all the same.
I brush the loose strand back, then hold my palm against his cheek. I want to memorize the way his eyebrows knit together as he thinks. Or the way his eyes flick down to my lips then back to my eyes just as quickly. Him being handsome is no mystery, but up close, where you expect to find the flaws, all I can find are smile lines, and sun freckles across his nose.There is warmth and kindness and something deeper I can’t name in his eyes.
“I wish things were different.” I admit as he takes the flowers and sets them on the hood of my car, and pulls me back into him.
When I expect him to agree, he doesn’t. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I'm here, and you’re there. And I have baggage and it’s just complicated.”
“Hannah,” he whispers into my hair.
