by Callie Henry
Her heart was so full, she felt like she was walking on air, and she could barely wait to get home, because she’d be that much closer to seeing Liam again. She couldn’t wait to introduce him to her mom. “This is Liam,” she would say, and her mother would know—from the tone of her voice and the way her eyes shined—that the whole story was this: “This is Liam…and he belongs to me.”
And that was when she realized it: Hannah Giacomina believed in love. She believed it was possible, as it had been for her mother and father. For Bree and Todd. And maybe—just maybe, someday—for her and Liam.
She smiled to herself, lacing her hands behind her back and twirling in a happy circle as she walked slowly toward the pond, considering a quick detour to the tasting room so she could throw her arms back around his neck and—
Familiar voices stopped her in her tracks.
“He’s trouble, Bree. That’s why.”
“He’s not. He’s a good kid. He’s cleaned up his life, Todd.”
“You don’t know. I’m friends with his dad. He dealt drugs.”
Bree sighed. “He told me all about what happened. It was a mistake, Todd. Not to mention, I’ve worked with him all summer. I’ve gotten to know him. I trust him.”
Hannah leaned against the wall around the corner from where her sister and Todd were arguing. She knew she should make her presence known, but once she realized they were talking about her and Liam, she couldn’t help but listen.
“You shouldn’t, Bree. Not with your little sister.”
“Come on, Todd. Don’t you believe someone that young can change? He’s straightened out. He’s on a swim team, he worked hard here all summer—”
“You’re always so eager to see the good in everyone, Bree. I love you for it, but Hannah seems so innocent. Don’t you feel like you should protect her?”
“From Liam Callahan? No. Anyway, we don’t know how serious it is. For heaven’s sake, he was just doing me a favor by looking after her to earn a little extra spending money. It’s probably nothing. A little flirtation they’ll both forget about by tomorrow.”
Wait. What? A favor? For…for spending money?
“I hope to God you’re right about him.”
“I am, Todd. Now come on. Let’s get back to the brunch, okay?”
The air leaked out of Hannah’s lungs until they burned as painfully as her eyes. He was doing Bree a favor? Bree had asked Liam to be her date and paid him for it?
You know, I think we’re the only two people here tonight under thirty. Want to be my wedding date, Hannah Giacomina?
She curled her fingers into her hands, fisting them until they hurt.
Stupid, stupid, stupid Hannah!
Of course. Why else would someone as beautiful as Liam be interested in someone as fat and boring as her?
It had all been an act. A favor to Bree. A way to earn a little spending money.
Oh, my God, Hannah…could you possibly be more stupid?
All of her insecurities and fears rose to the surface, insisting that she should have protected herself better and berating her as a fool for ever believing that his sweet words were anything more than a favor to her sister.
Hannah’s heart twisted painfully, and suddenly she couldn’t catch her breath. She pressed her palm to her chest, remembering how that palm had held his face just a few minutes ago as she stupidly kissed him, believing that he belonged to her, that love could be real. What a foolish girl. He’d just been showing her a good time as a favor to her sister.
“I have to go,” she murmured aloud, swiping at her cheeks, unable to keep the tears from falling just as Bree came walking around the corner.
“Hannah?” She took one look at Hannah’s broken face and gasped. “Oh, no! Oh, Hannah. You heard all of that? No, it’s not like we said. He seems to really—”
“You paid him?”
“It’s not like that.”
“It’s exactly like that! Your fat, awkward sister can’t get a date, so you paid someone to be my date.”
“Hannah, no!” said Bree, opening her arms and trying to pull her sister into an embrace.
Hannah sobbed, fending off Bree’s hugs and racing to the car. She wanted the earth to swallow her up so she wouldn’t have to deal with the pain and humiliation of ever seeing Liam Callahan again. If that wasn’t an option, she just wanted to get in her car and get as far away from I Tri Merli as possible. She gasped twice, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to fall in torrents.
“Wait! Hannah!” Bree ran after her. “Talk to me. Please!”
“I’m going home,” she sobbed, opening her car door and sliding inside.
As she pulled out of the I Tri Merli parking lot, she didn’t look back, her jagged sobs keeping her company all the way home.
***
Liam
Liam finished the final tasting and waved good-bye to the twelve old ladies as they climbed back aboard their “party bus,” headed to another vineyard. As he turned around to walk back into the tasting room, he found Bree and Abby standing there, stricken expressions on their faces.
“What happened?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”
Bree clutched her hands together nervously, looking like she was about to throw up. It made a chill shoot through him.
“What’s going on?”
“Um,” said Abby, “let’s sit down for a second, huh?”
And then he knew as it hit him like a sucker punch to the gut: it had to do with Hannah.
“Where’s Hannah?”
“Sh-she left,” said Bree. “Come sit down. I need to talk to you.”
Leading the way to her office, Bree closed the door once all three of them were inside. She turned to him, still wringing her hands.
“I think I really may have messed this up for you,” she said quietly.
“Messed up what?” he asked, fear and worry battling for precedence in his head and making his voice low and taut.
“Hannah.”
Bree and Abby sat down at a small conference table, but Liam didn’t want to sit down. He backed up to lean against the door instead.
Bree took a deep breath. “Todd and I were arguing outside…um, between the tasting room and the event space. He was saying that I shouldn’t have trusted you with my sister. And I…I answered that you were just doing me a favor by looking after Hannah. That I was planning to…pay you.”
It’s true that’s how things had started, but they’d changed almost as soon as Liam met Bree’s sister. He’d fallen for her almost at first sight.
“It turned into more than that,” he said.
“I can see that.”
“You didn’t pay me.”
“Not yet.”
“I don’t need any money.”
“I know,” said Bree.
“So…what’s the problem?” asked Liam, relaxing just a little. “Are you worried I won’t treat her right? Because I will. And I told her all about my past, Bree. I’m not keeping secrets from her. I think she’s amazing. I wouldn’t do anything to mess this up.”
“I know that. I—” Tears filled Bree’s eyes as her face fell. “Liam, she—she overheard us. Hannah. She overheard everything we said. About you being trouble, and how you were only hanging out with her as a favor to me. She heard me say that I was planning to pay you. She heard everything.”
“Oh, my God,” he gasped.
“I’m so, so sorry, Liam. She—she got into her car and left right away. I’ve never seen anyone so crushed in my entire life.”
“Oh, my God,” said Liam again, covering his face with his hands before running them over his hair and clasping them on top of his bristly head. “She thinks I was just doing you a favor? She thinks I was paid to hang out with her?”
Bree nodded. “I’m so sorry.”
Inside, his heart kicked up to dangerous levels of hammering. Inside, he was sweating and worried and furious. Inside, he was cutting to the chase and weighing the possibility of the most
untrusting girl he’d ever known ever trusting him again. He lived his life thankful for the grace of second chances, but this looked bad. Really bad.
“Then what?” he asked, leaning his head back against the door.
“She left,” Bree repeated in a whisper. “She was crying, and then she ran to her car and left.”
“And you let her go,” he said in a quiet, accusatory tone.
“I’m so sorry,” Bree said again, wiping away a tear that slid down her cheek.
Abby tilted her head to the side, her face worried. “Liam, surely you can explain to her that it started out as a favor to Bree but that you genuinely grew to like her and—”
“You don’t know her like I do, Abby. You don’t know how mistrusting she is. You don’t know how hard it was to get past those barriers.”
“God, Liam, I am so—”
He held up his hand, trying to maintain control over his voice when he felt like screaming. “Stop, Bree. I know you’re sorry. I know you didn’t mean to hurt her, or me, but damn it, I don’t know how to fix this, and I really—damn it, I really, really like her.”
He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, his mind a wreck. In the space of two hours, he’d gone from the euphoria of having Hannah in his life and falling head over heels for her to having her gone, with the possibility that he’d never be able to get her back. He winced. Even thinking those cold, bleak words was enough to make his fingers fist on the table. He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t.
There had to be a way to let her know that she wasn’t just some favor he was doing for Bree—sure, it might have started out that way, but in the short amount of time they’d shared together, he’d genuinely and completely fallen for her.
He took his phone out of his back pocket. He’d write her a text. He’d tell her that it had started as a favor, but—
No, that sounded terrible. She’d never believe him.
Okay. He’d go to her mom’s apartment on his way home next weekend, except—he looked down at his phone. She was supposed to text him her address, but she hadn’t yet, and he knew she wouldn’t now.
“Do you have her address, Bree?”
Bree nodded, but even as Liam walked through that plan, he had a feeling she wouldn’t see him even if he showed up at her apartment. No, she’d be way too wary, too angry and confused.
Damn it. DAMN IT. He just needed one chance to let her know—one chance to tell her how he felt, and he was pretty sure that’s all he’d get: one chance. He couldn’t mess it up. He needed to figure out a way to captivate her so that she’d be too blown away to look away.
He forced his mind to go back through their hours and hours of conversation while Bree and Abby sat silently at the table.
Meeting, discussing their future plans, their parents’ mistakes, Shakespeare, a soliloquy, a kiss under a weeping willow, nicknames, a dance, Shakespeare, a fire, more kissing, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare. He heard his own voice in his head saying, I might even be able to take you backstage. I’m sure Julia would give us a tour of the Allen Elizabethan Theatre.
A plan came alive in his mind, and he closed his eyes for a second in relief. No, it might not work, but it was his best chance.
He looked up with grim eyes. “Bree, you owe me, right?”
“Yes. A hundred percent.” Bree nodded eagerly. “I’ll do anything to make this right.”
“Okay. Listen. Get her to the Allen Elizabethan Theater next Saturday night for the eight o’clock show of Romeo and Juliet. I don’t care what you have to do. Just make sure she’s there. No matter what.”
***
Hannah
Hannah’s mother had always offered a ready shoulder for crying, and Hannah had told her everything about the weekend. How she met a boy. How she fell hard for him and thought he had for her. How it turned out he’d only been doing a favor for her half-sister.
Wendy looked helplessly and sympathetically at her daughter, asking if it was possible that Liam had started their acquaintance as a favor to Bree but ended it falling for Hannah. As much as Hannah wanted to believe that was possible, she couldn’t afford to open herself up to that sort of hope when it would probably just cause her more pain.
When she headed to bed that night, her spirits were low, and she was beyond exhausted. But worst of all, she was missing Liam. She didn’t know how it was possible to care for someone so intensely, so fiercely after such a short acquaintance and such a painful betrayal, but she did. She just wished she didn’t.
The truth was that something had already been irreversibly changed in Hannah.
She knew what it felt like to fall for someone—the rush, the excitement, the certainty. The way his lips caressed her skin, the hum of his voice in her ear, the teasing way he smiled at her. Even if it hadn’t been real to him, it was real to her, and it had opened a window into how love could be, how love could feel. She believed in love now. And now that she knew it, she couldn’t deny its existence. All she could do was hope it died quickly and released her from its merciless hold.
Finally she couldn’t bear it anymore, and she grabbed her phone off the bedside table in the dark and sat up, saying a quick prayer before looking for a text message from Liam. Seeing none, her eyes welled again. As she lay back down, she remembered how her day had started.
“Liam,” she said in a shattered whisper, “I look this beautiful because I’m looking at you.”
And then she turned over, buried her face in her pillow, and cried herself to sleep.
CHAPTER 8
Hannah
Monday was hell.
Hannah woke up with puffy eyes, opting to stay in bed all day and read Romeo and Juliet, occasionally checking her phone for messages from Liam, and then berating herself when there were none.
There were moments when she imagined Liam texting with his swimmer friends, telling them about this ridiculous fat girl who’d glommed onto him all weekend at her sister’s wedding. She was hurt and disappointed in herself, disgusted that she’d been so easily played. She kept up a steady stream of internal dialogue, berating herself for letting her guard down and promising herself that she’d never be so stupid again.
But there were other moments when her mother’s words circled in her head and she’d feel hope. Was it possible that Liam had started their acquaintance as a favor to Bree but ended it falling for me? Couldn’t it be possible? Oh, please, please, couldn’t it be possible?
It didn’t make any sense that he would put that much effort into getting her to go out with him, into making her feel beautiful, if he was just doing a favor for Bree. It had seemed so genuine—the way he looked at her, touched her, kissed her. A favor would have been making polite conversation and asking her to dance once or twice. What they’d shared had been special, magical—but mostly, what they’d shared had felt real.
A few minutes after self-hate and useless hope had been played out, Hannah would feel angry. Angry with Bree and Todd for ruining everything, with Liam for doing a favor for Bree, with herself for falling for him, and then with herself again for running away from I Tri Merli without talking to him and giving him a chance to explain.
And not that she’d pick up if he did, but why hadn’t he called her yet to explain? Even if she wasn’t ready to talk to him, she longed to hear his voice. And then she’d remember it had been her responsibility to text him her address, to reconfirm Saturday night, and since she hadn’t texted to reconfirm, he probably assumed she hated him.
If he was even still interested.
If he was ever actually interested.
The worst of it, though, wasn’t her embarrassment or hope or sadness or anger.
The worst thing of all was that her feelings for Liam were clarifying and solidifying every moment she spent away from him. Whatever uncertainty she’d felt on Sunday morning was long gone, because there’s no way she would be this upset about someone who was just a passing infatuation. Her feelings for him were strong, and they we
re rooting within her rather than withering away. It was as though her heart refused to let go of him, refused to believe that he’d deceived her or toyed with her. The notion of losing him was unbearable, and even though she hadn’t heard from him yet, her stupid, hopeful heart insisted that eventually she would, which is why she ended up crying herself to sleep again on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights.
By Friday, she had to face the truth: no phone calls and no texts had to mean that they were over. And her bruised heart felt utterly shattered.
When Bree called bright and early on Saturday morning to say she was home from her honeymoon in Mexico and was coming up to Brookings to check on Hannah and take her out for dinner, Hannah tried to say no.
“Forget it,” said Bree. “I won’t take no for an answer. In fact, we’re blowing off Brookings. I’m taking you out to dinner in Ashland, and I’ve already bought third-row tickets for the eight o’clock show of Romeo and Juliet. Aaaand I booked us a kickass hotel room so we don’t have to drive back to Brookings after the show. You have to come with me.”
“I don’t think so, Bree. I just—”
“I’ll pick you up at four. We’ll be in Ashland by six for dinner.”
“Bree, I’m just not up for—”
“Looking forward to it! See you later!”
Bree had hung up, and even though Hannah tried to call her back several more times throughout the day to cancel, Bree never picked up the phone. As the day wore on, Hannah’s heart twisted with sadness, missing Liam with a searing intensity, and finally she decided that if she wasn’t going to be with him tonight as planned, she may as well spend the evening with her sister. So regardless of her broken heart, she was ready to go at four o’clock when Bree arrived.
“Hey, Hannah. You look great,” said Bree, checking out Hannah’s black T-shirt and jeans as she pulled her sister into her arms.
Hannah let herself be hugged but didn’t hug Bree back. She was dressed for a funeral on purpose, and she was still angry about Bree’s part in all of this.
