“I’m just saying be careful with your heart. If you don’t guard it, at least a little, it will be a lot easier to break.”
“Like yours was?”
Her words are like a sucker punch.
“Yeah, kid. Exactly like that.”
She kicks her bare feet up on the arm of the couch, “Hanna has been asking about you.”
“At school?” I ask.
“Yeah, I just told her I haven’t talked to you. Which is kind of true. You’ve been busy since you went back to the hospital.”
“Did you tell her I went back to work?”
She winces, “Is that bad?”
“Oh… No,” I sigh, “I just don’t know what I’m going to say to her. I’m surprised she hasn’t just waltzed into the hospital looking for me.”
Hanna is really good at getting her way. If she is determined to talk to me, she’ll find a way. Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s a conversation that needs to happen. I’m just not sure how I will feel when I’m staring straight at her having it.
“Why is the new girl so… I don’t know… Hush, hush?” She asks.
I falter, wondering if I should just tell her the truth. I know Lainey wouldn’t freak out over it, even though she knows it’s Hanna’s friend.
“It’s Karly, isn’t it?”
Wait? What?
“I knew it,” She quips. “She was stomping around the reception like a mad woman looking for you.”
Was it really that obvious?
I run my fingers backward through my hair, which is desperate for a cut, obviously hesitating my answer.
“You can tell me the truth,” She smirks, “It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone.”
“I was in Charleston with Karly, yes.”
“Ha!” She grins widely, her feet falling to the floor as she basically bounces on them, “I knew it. As friends?”
“Calm down, would you?” I growl, “And I don’t know. Yes, we’re friends.”
She wiggles her eyebrows, “With benefits?”
I begin to trip over my words, “It’s not like that. We didn’t mean for any of this to happen. It just… I don’t know.”
Lainey flings the towel that her hair was wrapped up in on the back of her couch, allowing her silver-dyed hair to swing down her back. “I say YOLO. I say if you like her, go for it.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that, don’t you think?”
She shrugs, “Not really. Hanna’s friend or not, you aren’t doing anything wrong. Hanna loved someone else.”
“It’s her best friend,” I argue.
“You don’t think she’d understand how you feel?”
“I don’t even know how I feel.”