“What?” Noelle protested. “You’re still my person. And Miriam is your person, and now somehow I’m Cole’s person. We’re all just each other’s people. It’s a big overly emotionally enmeshed club. If Cole falls in love, we’ll probably fold them in, too.”
“My life would have been so much easier if I could have fallen for Cole,” Hannah lamented, hopping up to sit on a worktable. “We could have wrapped it all up in a neat little bow.”
“Get your butt off my table! You know that’s unsafe woodworking protocol.” Noelle shooed her off. “I think Cole has his eye on someone else, and Iknowyou’re not ready to fall in love again. Believe me, I would be thrilled if you were.”
“What if I’m never ready? What if I never fall in love with someone else?”
Noelle looked at Hannah, who was twisting a piece of wire nervously in her hands. She didn’t want to lie to Hannah, to tell her that it would be okay eventually, to assure her that someday she’d be over Levi. Noelle couldn’t imagine ever being over Miriam, and Hannah had loved Levi a hell of a lot longer.
“Well, you will ascend to your rightful place as the Carrigan, taking on the mantle to collect a new generation of misfit toys and lure them into the mountains.”
“So in this scenario, Cass was the manifestation of some kind of ancient force, like the Morrigan?”
“Yes, but with tacky Christmas crap instead of ravens and death,” Noelle nodded.
“Into every generation, a Carrigan is born,” Hannah intoned. “I can live with that. I’ll be the Carrigan, you be the wife guy, Miriam will be the artistic genius, Cole will be the…what does Cole actually do? Hacking isn’t his official job, is it?”
Noelle shrugged. As far as she could tell, no one knew.
“We will be a happy family getting progressively weirder out here in the woods together,” Hannah finished with satisfaction. “I’ll learn to bake so that Mrs. Matthews can retire.”
“I would love to see you try to learn to bake. Or we could maybe just hire a chef.”
Hannah’s face fell, and Noelle sighed. She wished she could erase all of Hannah’s heartbreak, but she knew she wasn’t the person who could fix this mess.
“Sorry!” Hannah said. “I don’t mean for my face to do that. I’m working on it.”
“Are you okay, really?” Noelle asked. “Not about Levi, but about sharing control, and having Miriam here full-time selling art out of your carriage house? I know you’re thrilled about getting a chance to use all your galaxy brain brilliance on Carrigan’s All Year, but you did still get bulldozed into it, a little.”
“I’m thrilled about Miri being here, for the most part. I may have some residual anger about her leaving, but now that I know the whole story, that’s mostly gone. Plus, she showed up big, and her ideas are smart.” Hannah paused, thinking. “I have absolutely no qualms about Carrigan’s All Year; it’s the absolute right next step. I did kind of get steamrolled into it, but by Cass and circumstances, and I can’t really be mad at that.”
“You can be mad at Cass. I still am, sort of, even if it worked out in the end, and I’m surviving the experience. You’re allowed to be mad.”
“I can’t, NoNo.” Hannah shook her head. “If I let myself feel how mad I am, at everything, all the time, I will burn up from the inside out, and I don’t know who I’ll be on the other side.”
Noelle leaned next to her on the worktable, and Hannah rested her head on Noelle’s shoulder. They stayed there, holding each other up as they had been for so long.
“Okay, well, you would be my rage ball, and I would still love you, just so you know. I am Team Hannah until the day I die. I’m the captain,” Noelle told her.
“I know. Maybe someday I’ll let myself burn up and we’ll see who rises from the ashes. But not this week, because my schedule is extremely booked.”
Noelle nodded in faux seriousness. “Oh yeah, we need to schedule your rage meltdown in your bullet journal at least three months in advance, so we can plan events around it.”
“Stop mocking my preparedness! I am keeping this place afloat with only the power of my scheduling!” Hannah protested. “But speaking of, um, preparing for my rage, and also, everything else?”
Noelle’s stomach dropped. She knew that hesitation. Hannah was about to say something about Levi, and she knew Noelle wasn’t going to like it, which is why she was hemming around it. She raised her eyebrows at Hannah.
“I asked Cole if he could take a message to Blue for me, since he’s on that half of the globe. I asked him to come home.”
Noelle groaned, because she hated it, but she knew it was necessary.
“I had to,” Hannah supplied. “We need to know about his shares. And I can’t bar him from his home forever. His parents miss him, and I hate making them sad.”
“I know. Ugh. I’m proud of you,” Noelle said, grudgingly.
“I’m going to go now and leave you to…whatever you’re doing. Trying to woo your girlfriend who already lives with you into loving you more, or something,” Hannah said, kissing Noelle’s cheek and ruffling her hair.
“I apologized but I don’t feel like I didenough,” Noelle said, pulling at her hands with her hair. “She made me a painting!”