“I’ll make popcorn!” Hannah says, not letting our obvious disappointment get to her. I admire her tenacity. It freaks me out when Colby scowls at me like that.
I go over to Colby’s pantry to dig for snacks that would be good for movie watching. I don’t have much hope, thanks to his health-freak ways. It’s probably for the best, though, since I’m already stuffed from the mountain of wings I consumed. Hannah’s beside me, looking for popcorn. I see it on the top shelf, slightly out of her reach, and hand it to her. It’s the gross kind with no butter. What kind of fulfillment can you possibly get from plain popcorn? No number of abdominal muscles is worth that much disappointment.
“Umm, hey,” Hannah says as she tucks her hair behind her ear. “I want to apologize for being snippy with you at the library the other day. I’ve been a bit frazzled with everything going on. And thanks for caring about how I’ve been.” She scrunches up her nose in that adorable way girls do when they feel awkward. I’ve never wanted to boop a nose so bad in all my life. And I have no impulse control whatsoever, so I go right on ahead and boop her on the nose. I’m awarded with a girlish giggle. I used to hear that giggle all the time on the weekends when Colby was home from college and I’d spend the entire weekend at his house. Hannah was just a little preteen brat back then. She loved spending Colby’s weekends home finding little ways to annoy him. I would say prayers of thanks that I didn’t have a sister, but now I wonder if it was just her way of getting his attention.
Hannah has always been on the quiet, unassuming side. She wouldn’t barge into his room and demand his time and attention. She would lay her trap and wait for him to come to her. When we were younger, it drove us crazy, but as we got older, it became a hilarious game. Colby would storm into her room after finding her mischief, acting all put out, but it always ended in laughter. I would watch from the doorway, wishing I had that.
I wonder if she’s feeling like that little girl again, afraid to tell someone that what she really needs is a hug, or a listening ear, or just someone to give her their time and sit with her.
“How are you really doing?” I ask. I know if it were me whose house and belongings were just burned up before my eyes, I would be a wreck right now. My stress level would be through the roof.
“It’s not easy living in Colby’s house, but I’m okay. I’ve been better, but really, I’m fine. My parents were right. I never should have rented that house. It should have been condemned years ago. And my landlords were the worst, so good riddance,” she says. She nibbles on her bottom lip and glances around the pantry, avoiding my eyes.
“You’ll let me know if you need anything, though, right? Or I can sit and listen to you rant about Colby’s perfectionism. We can roast him together… Actually, let’s go ahead and put that on our calendars right now.”
“The man is ridiculous. I won’t even feel bad about it.”
I start to rummage through Colby’s pantry, moving things around in a desperate search for something that resembles a dessert. Is a honey bun too much to hope for? Or a prepackaged snack cake? It’s embarrassing how much I love those things.
“You know he’s going to have your head for that?” she asks. Her eyes are wide with worry as she watches me move the brown rice to the bottom shelf. He’ll really hate that. I place his protein powder in the very back of his top shelf. It’ll take him a few minutes to find it, and it’ll send him into a momentary panic. I can’t help but smile just thinking about it.
I find a bag of Reese's Pieces shoved in the back of the pantry. It says they expired almost a year ago, but those dates don’t actually mean anything, right? I shove them in my pocket, having no intention of sharing.
“What are y’all doing in there?” Colby asks, impatient to start the movie.
I walk back into the living room to hear Jameson say that Millie will be over in a few minutes. I guess guys’ night really is a bust this week. I plop down on the couch beside Jameson while Hannah sits on the loveseat by herself with a huge bowl of popcorn. Colby flips through all the movie options on Netflix. He’s only considering violent options, so I guess he wants Hannah to really suffer for her involvement tonight.
A knock on the door sounds a moment later, and Jameson hops up to let Millie in. Colby groans his displeasure. When they walk back into the living room, they stand awkwardly to the side of the couches, wondering about the seating arrangement. Right. Engaged couple. They’re glued at the hip. How would they survive without unimpeded contact with each other?
I stand from the couch and move over to the loveseat to sit by Hannah. She tucks her feet in close and fiddles with her clothes. I watch as Millie and Hannah exchange wide-eyed looks and then both glance at me. No idea what that could mean. Women are a weird, confusing species.
I’m hugging the armrest, and my body is as tense as a viper ready to snap. Hannah is an inch away from me, and I’m telling you, if she so much as brushes up against me, I’ll be out of here faster than lightning. And for crying out loud, who invented loveseats? And why do people actually buy these things? Just get two normal-sized couches so people like me won’t have to endure this kind of torment. She’s twenty-three. She’s like your baby sister, I remind myself over and over again.
I force my attention to the movie. I don’t even know what it is, but there’s some crazy car chase going on, and people are shooting at each other with no regard for the innocent civilians just trying to get to work or go to the grocery store. Think about the poor grandmas on the road! Movies like this drive me crazy, but I will put up with it for tonight if that means I’m not thinking about the pretty woman next to me.
My attention is drawn away from the movie just a minute later, because Hannah decides to lie down. Her legs are draped over the arm of the tiny couch, and her head is almost in my lap. She’s lying on her back, and she looks up at me with wide eyes and asks if it’s okay.
“Uhh…umm…” I mutter. Come on, man. Say something. Anything.
“Oh, sorry,” she says as she starts to sit back up, assuming that I don’t want her head on my lap. When my brain processes what is happening, my hand takes over without my consent. I place my palm on her forehead and push her head back down, actually onto my lap this time. Her eyes widen with shock, and my heart pounds out of my chest. Did I really just do that? Could I be any more of a caveman? I really thought I had evolved more than this, but apparently not.
“Are you okay, Seth?” Hannah whispers. I put my face in the palm of my hand and nod my head. I’m too busy dying inside to say anything further. I glue my eyes to the movie without registering anything that is happening. All of my focus goes toward not looking at Hannah. My muscles are tense, and I feel like I’ve swallowed a ten-pound weight. I’d bounce my knee, but then Hannah would move. This is torture, and I never want it to stop.
Once I get past my embarrassment, I allow myself to glance down at Hannah and see that she has fallen asleep. Her face is calm and peaceful, and her hair is all over my lap. I run my fingers through it and wrap it around my index finger. She rolls onto her side and nuzzles herself closer to my thigh. I freeze for a moment and listen for her breathing to even out again. When it does, I continue feeling her soft, silky strands of blonde hair on my fingers. She sighs contentedly, and I think that this is exactly how life should be.
Suddenly, the lights are flipped on. I look at the TV and see the credits rolling on the movie. I paid attention to approximately two minutes of it. I notice Colby standing by the light switch, watching me with my hands in his sister’s hair. His eyes look awfully twitchy. Not good. Abort mission. “What are you doing, Seth?” he asks.
“Oh, my sweet sleeping angel,” I hear Millie say from the other couch. “Has she always fallen asleep everywhere like she does now?”
“Oh yeah, it’s a long-running joke,” Jameson answers.
The caveman that lives inside me and my will to live to see another day take over again, and I unwind my fingers from her hair and push her off of me. Unfortunately, one finger is wrapped up tightly, and a chunk of her hair gets pulled out as she tumbles to the floor.
“Ouch!” she cries out in a sleepy haze. She sits up and rubs her head while looking around to see what’s going on.
“Seth, what are you doing?” Colby asks. I jump up from the couch to help Hannah up from the floor.
“I’m so sorry. I thought your brother was about to throw daggers at me,” I mumble.
I look over to see Millie and Jameson barely containing their laughter from the couch. “Well, this has been…interesting. I think we’re gonna go now,” Millie says as she stands and stretches. Jameson stands from the couch, and the two of them leave quickly, but not before Hannah and Millie exchange more weird glances. They have to mean something. Probably some form of girl code that they hide from the men folk.
“Alright, well, thanks for the food and movie and stuff,” I say while gathering my things and refusing to make eye contact with Hannah or Colby. I gotta get out of here before I do more stupid stuff. “I’ll see y’all later.”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Seth,” Colby says. I don’t miss the pointed way he says that statement. I am in for an earful tomorrow. I should’ve stuck to my guns and high-tailed it out of here when she laid down. But gosh, as much as I hate to admit it, I liked having her close for that short while.