When We're Thirty

by Casey Dembowski

  “Four, almost five months ago now, I found out my girlfriend was cheating on me,” Will said between beats and without inflection. Hannah paused where she stood, expecting him to say more, but he kept walking, his stride never breaking. “My dad, he likes to throw this big kickoff-to-summer party at our place in the Hamptons. It happened there in a very public manner. Life got messy after that.”

  Empathetic phrases bounced around Hannah’s head, but none seemed quite right, and she knew from experience that those well-meaning words did little. They usually made it worse. Hearing that his emotional anguish was commonplace wouldn’t help alleviate Will’s pain. “What happened?”

  “I tried to go back to work to keep up appearances, but after something like that, I just wasn’t there, you know?” he said as they sidestepped a couple and their two dogs. “I work as in-house counsel for my family’s real estate development company. There’s a lot of red tape at the start of a project. We hire consultants to do impact and site assessments and basically to tell us if the land is going to be a pain in the ass. During due diligence, I missed something. I missed it.”

  Hannah could tell that the mistake still haunted him and maybe always would, but it would also make him better at his job. Will didn’t make the same mistake twice. She remembered the night during junior year he told her that straight off a broken heart.

  “We lost in court,” he continued. “We didn’t get the permits. It cost the company a lot of money and delayed the project indefinitely.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes, stopping to take in the latest art and enjoy the view of the city whenever they caught a break in the crowd. It was nice walking the High Line with Will; he understood its pull. There was no chatter like there would have been with anyone else. Comfortable silence had always been one of the great things about their friendship. They could sprawl out on the floor of her dorm, heads touching, sharing a pair of earbuds. Hannah would be studying, with Will reading when he should’ve been studying. All of it, nearly every moment, had been set to Wilderness Weekend. They took a seat on a nearby bench with a view of the river.

  “Things have been really bad at work since then, obviously. My dad wanted me fired,” he said, worrying at that thumbnail again.

  Hannah couldn’t imagine ever working for either of her parents but tried to picture an instance where they pressed to have her fired. It sounded like Will had failed epically at his job, though given the circumstances and that he worked for his own family, maybe that was exactly why his dad wanted him fired. He still had to be accountable. Nepotism only went so far. Hannah didn’t know enough of Will’s family to say.

  “My uncle—he’s the CEO—convinced my dad and the board to give me another chance. But I need to prove to them that I have my act together, that I’m serious about my job. The thing is, I’ve been showing up in a full suit and working twelve-hour days. Nothing is working. I have practically memorized the last three reports that came in—I’m like Mike friggin’ Ross right now, minus the whole fraud thing.”

  While Hannah was always one for a good pop culture reference, Will had done a very good job of circumventing the point. A relationship gone wrong leading to a giant mistake at work didn’t add up to marriage. If anything, Hannah thought, that would make him seem impetuous, which wasn’t a word usually associated with lawyer.

  “I need them to take me seriously,” he continued.

  “But I don’t see how—”

  He held up a hand to stop her train of thought. “I know doing something crazy to make them see me as serious seems counterproductive, but at this company, only age or marriage gets you a seat at the table. At thirty, I was supposed to get a spot on the board. My dad did, my uncle did, and so did my older brother. They haven’t invited me to a meeting yet.”

  Will turned had thirty in April, apparently just before everything in his life had broken down. Hannah’s mind churned, going over his words again and again. For the first time since Will had shown up at her doorstep, Hannah could see how this might work. Will didn’t need a pretend wife or a fiancée. He needed it to be real and binding and searchable in the public domain. She’d spent much of last night worried that Will would have the same reaction as Brian to her insurance request. But since he was the one who had sought her out, Will needed her possibly more than she needed him. “So, it has to be legal?”

  “Yes, it has to be legal.”

  She laced her fingers with his, seeing how each finger fit into her own. She’d held hands with Will before; they’d had that type of friendship. There had also been that weekend he’d pretended to be her boyfriend when a particularly persistent law student wouldn’t leave her alone. Will’s hands were dry, and she felt a callus on his pinky. She wondered if he dragged his hand when he wrote. If he even wrote longhand enough for that to be possible. The texture of his hands held a story, and the longer their fingers stayed intertwined, the more she wanted to know it.

  A shiver ran through her as she brought her gaze up. His eyes studied her face, not their hands as she had expected. Unbridled longing and desire and hope stared back at her. Then with a blink, each of the emotions dimmed, settling into curiosity. Before she could overthink it, she kissed him. Their lips moved against each other, clumsy and uncertain, but she couldn’t deny the spark. It had been there eight years ago, and it was still there now. She didn’t know what that meant for them, except that kissing Will unsettled her in ways both good and bad.

  It’s not going to be forever, she reminded herself. One career saved and one knee surgery later, they’d move on with their lives, both better off.

  “What was that?” he asked after they pulled away.

  She ignored the breathiness of his voice and shrugged. “I wanted to know what I was signing up for.”

  Chapter 7

  Will

  Leave it to Hannah to make their second first kiss sloppy and confused and flavored of everything bagel. The kiss hadn’t been unpleasant—he didn’t think there was any way that kissing Hannah could be unpleasant—but it hadn’t been earth-shattering. It didn’t live up to the memory of that graduation-night kiss; it was not a kiss you told your children about. He shook his head, chiding himself for the thought. This wasn’t about that. And it might never grow into that. No matter what he had once felt for Hannah, he needed to keep his head on straight. But the little details of Hannah burned in his memory—her inquisitive golden-brown eyes when she caught him watching her, the freckle on the crest of her right cheekbone, and even the pen marks littering her right hand.

  Hannah stood and held her hand out as if the kiss hadn’t happened. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

  She chattered incessantly from the moment they got on the downtown subway until they skirted Washington Square Park. Even with the students and the tourists, the park smelled of freedom and creativity. Or maybe that was just the scent of weed wafting off half the hipsters they passed. He didn’t miss the hipsters. As Hannah led them down a side street, he could already imagine her office building—quaint, classic, full of stories waiting to be uncovered. Why Hannah wanted to show him where she worked, he wasn’t exactly sure. The magazine she worked for was small—he was ashamed to say he’d never picked it up, though he’d seen it a few times. It was unlikely they were the Google of magazine offices, but she’d insisted, and he was kind of excited to see how she lived.

  She unlocked the office doors with a key—not a swipe or fob, but a physical key. Musty, stale air, heavy with the scent of hardwood and old city brownstone, greeted them. The scent took him back to long ago production nights in the Brown House with Hannah and a mismatched group of wannabe journalists. He wondered if Hannah had felt the same way when she first walked in, if she felt it still, and if it somehow grounded her to this publication.

  She sat down at one of the smaller desks with a picture of a coworker and her girlfriend in one corner. “When I started, this was my desk.” She rubbed her thumb over a worn spot that on closer ins
pection showed her initials carved into the wood. “I’d finished my masters, and Deafening Silence was just opening in New York. It looked so much like the Brown House here, and Riley was young and broken and determined. It became like home. Five years later, I feel more like myself between these walls than I do in my apartment.”

  He waited for her to continue, to add to the end of the statement, to give it meaning. Loving your job was a privilege not afforded to many, but to love it more than your home life felt an uncomfortable balance. Even with everything that had happened these last few months and the even more tenuous ties to his family, home was still better than work.

  “There’s... I-I need health insurance,” she said after a few false starts. “My job doesn’t have benefits. I can’t afford the marketplace plans, and I have a chronic knee injury.” She grimaced at his expression. “I was in a car accident and injured my knee over a year ago, but without insurance... it’s been too long of me trying to fix the problem myself. Honestly, at this point, I probably need surgery.”

  “So, it has to be legal,” he said, parroting her words back to her.

  She nodded. “It has to be legal and include access to your health insurance, which I’m assuming you have.”

  “Yes, I have health insurance,” he said slowly. Health insurance had been on his list of reasons Hannah might agree to get married, right under his good looks, pity, and financial and criminal trouble. “My brother Daniel is also a doctor, so we can get you in fast and with some of the best if you don’t already have a preferred ortho.”

  She smiled, tentative and shy, but Will could sense the tension around her fading, an almost nervous energy radiating from her in its place. “Should we have some ground rules?”

  Will’s heart pounded in his chest, in his ears, and at the base of his wrist. Hannah had agreed to marry him in not so many words. He hoped she couldn’t see the sweat beading at his temples or the excitement oozing out of every pore. He never dreamed she would agree. Well, maybe dreamed. He pulled his thoughts back to Hannah’s actual question. Ground rules for marriage—how romantic. “Whatever you want, Abbott.”

  Chapter 8

  Hannah

  Ground Rules for Our Marriage:

  We will remain married for one year.

  We won’t be assholes about money should we get divorced.

  We may not date other people.

  Binx is allowed to sleep in the bedroom.

  Our friendship is the most important thing.

  Sometimes college seemed like ages ago, another life, or a different track that couldn’t possibly have ended up here. But then Hannah would make some joke that only Kate would get because it had to do with that one night at that one party with that one guy, and it felt present again. They’d aged out, not grown up. Sitting back in her apartment with Will, debating ground rules for their made-up marriage, she felt on the cusp of going both backward and forward. He sat contentedly on her couch, alternating between petting Binx and flipping through pages of Netflix suggestions. Simple actions, really, but Brian could never—would never—sit with Binx or scratch his ears. Binx didn’t purr often when other people were around, but he purred now, loud and deep.

  She tapped her pen against the list. Five things. That couldn’t be all there was to a marriage.

  “The list is fine,” he said. Hannah heard the opening chords of Netflix’s creepy new show. “It’s not like we’re signing anything into law. We can always amend it.”

  “Yeah, but I have a more rigorous list of requirements for the pet sitter.” She put the pen down and noticed little blue spots dotting her palm.

  “Well, Binx is a hard-ass.” Will ran his hand down Binx’s spine, causing the cat to arch his back.

  Hannah rolled her eyes. “Clearly.”

  “I’m sure we could come up with a whole page of things to add to that if we really tried. But I do think it’s this simple. We’ll be married for at least a year—enough time to get me my board seat and secure it with a whole slate of meetings, long enough that we can handle anything that comes up regarding your knee, and long enough that no one will question the validity of the marriage. Neither of us will be a jerk, and we’ll just find our own way. I’m pretty sure most people who get married don’t have a list of rules.”

  “Yes, but they’ve usually been in a relationship for a while.”

  “We were best friends for three years. We basically lived together for a semester senior year.”

  “Will.”

  “Fine.” He picked up the pen and pulled the paper toward him.

  Hannah watched him scribble a few things, growing more incredulous by the letter. He couldn’t be serious. But he was, because he was Will.

  Ground Rules for Our Marriage:

  We will remain married for one year. We can choose to stay married for an as yet undecided period at that time.

  We won’t be assholes about money should we get divorced. What’s yours is yours and what’s mine is mine.

  We may not date other people. We can choose to date each other.

  Binx is allowed to sleep in the bedroom. In a cat bed.

  Our friendship is the most important thing. No matter what, we stay friends.

  Hannah looked up from the list. “How does that make it any better?”

  “It gives us options. And an out—‘no matter what, we stay friends.’” He gently turned her palm into his. “You might love being married to me, Abbott.”

  “Doubtful,” she said. “I remember what it was like to live with you—boxers mixed in with my clothes and your socks hanging off the television and the Christmas tree!”

  “I promise I put my socks in the hamper now,” he said with a grin.

  She met his gaze, allowing herself to get lost in it for a moment, recalling all those long-ago feelings to the surface. He was still the boy she’d loved—older and a bit more broken, but so was she. “Let’s get married.”

  His expression softened, though he clearly had questions. Hannah wondered if he was afraid to break the silence until his hand cupped hers. “Why?”

  “Because you’re sweet and I want to help you.”

  Pink spots formed on Will’s cheeks, and she knew she’d convinced him.

  “I’ve missed you, Will Thorne.”

  He smiled his real smile—the one she’d been waiting to see since he’d shown up at her door. He closed his fingers around hers and pulled them both to their feet.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as he led her behind the couch.

  He didn’t respond except to grin wider. Then after a quick search around the space, he found what he was looking for—the dimmer switch. The room fell into a golden hue of sunset lighting. He returned to her, dropping down to one knee.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered again.

  “Giving you a proper proposal.” He took the ring out of his pocket and held it out to her. “Hannah...”

  Hannah held her breath, waiting for the words every girl dreamed of hearing one day, but Will seemed frozen.

  “I don’t know your middle name,” he said with a small, uncomfortable laugh.

  “Guess we should’ve made profiles instead of rules.” She waited a few extra beats before revealing the answer. “It’s Grace.”

  “Hannah Grace Abbott.” He put extra emphasis on her middle name, and for once, she liked it. Her parents had cursed her with a monogram that read “HAG” for the first thirty years of her life—yet another marriage benefit. She should really be writing these down. Will tugged gently on her hand, and she focused back on him and the ring and the moment. “Would you do me the extraordinary honor of marrying me?”

  Her heart sped up, and despite the inauthentic circumstances of the proposal, the weight of the ring on her finger made it all the more real. Thirty years and she’d never worn a ring on that finger, and yet, as she looked down at the princess cut, the ring—which she knew must have been intended for someone else—looked like it had always belonged there.


  “Yes, I’ll marry you, William Anderson Thorne.”

  He groaned. “Only you would show me up at my own marriage proposal.”

  “I suggest you get used to it,” she said with a grin.

  Chapter 9

  Hannah

  Hannah stared at the mash of letters in her word-scramble game, swiping a random combination. The game shook, signaling an error. Frustrated, she dropped the phone onto the bed next to her. Sleep wouldn’t come, no matter how many sheep she counted or how long she played that incessant white noise app. She’d read through the latest issue of Talented—the one meant for Kate—twice already. She knew everything there was to know about Matt Czurchy’s newest role and the inspiration behind Maroon 5’s latest album. She didn’t even like Maroon 5, but it wasn’t like Talented was going to have anyone remotely indie in its pages. Turning on her side, she picked up her engagement ring. It was ostentatious and everything she thought she’d never like. But she did like it. Maybe everyone liked their engagement ring because of what it symbolized, or because of that forever memory. Or maybe she was more materialistic than she wanted to be. A ring like that said something about who she was and the company she kept.