Now I Watch Her Love Him novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Seven O'Clock

At breakfast Hannah lays down her terms: end it with Bailey to her face by Friday, six o'clock, or she tells his father herself.

At seven o'clock Hannah was standing at the kitchen island with two cups of coffee.

She had made mine the way I take it.

The index card lay between the cups, squared to the edge of the counter.

"Sit down," she said.

I sat.

My hands wanted something to do, so I held the cup and burned my palm and kept holding it.

"I can explain," I said.

"Which part?"

I had no answer to that.

She turned the card over with one fingertip.

"The Residence Inn on Dorothy Lane has a very patient front desk," she said. "They do not like questions, but they respect someone in a good coat."

"Hannah."

"How long, Dylan?"

I had been ready for her to scream.

I had not been ready for her to ask it in the voice she uses to ask whether I want the heat on.

"Four months," I said.

It had been twenty-two.

I had spent twenty-two months getting good at saying small true-sounding things, and the lie came out before I could stop it.

Hannah nodded slowly.

"Four months," she said. "Okay."

She did not blink.

She drank her coffee.

I watched her left hand rest on the counter with nothing on it.

The ring was on her right hand, where it had been for almost two years, and I still told myself it was a size thing.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm so sorry. It was stupid. It wasn't anything. It's already over in my head."

"Then it will be easy to make it over in the rest of you."

She set down the cup.

"Here is what happens," she said. "You end it with her. Not by text, and not by email, and not by sending a gift basket. You say it to her face. You do it by Friday at six o'clock."

"Hannah, I can't just..."

"If you haven't, I will tell your father myself. I'll tell him Sunday, at the lunch, with the whole family at the table."

My father has a heart condition he does not discuss and a pride he discusses constantly.

She knew that.

"Why are you doing it this way?" I said.

"What way?"

"You're not yelling. You aren't even crying. You're giving me a deadline like I'm a vendor."

She looked at me for a while.

Her eyes are gray, and in the morning they are lighter.

"I cried," she said. "It's done. I'd like to see what you do when someone gives you a choice."

"Do you want a divorce?"

"I want it done properly."

That was not a yes and it was not a no.

I stood up and went around the island, because I could not sit across from her one more minute.

She smelled like her shampoo, the green one with the pear in it.

I wanted to put my face in her hair so badly that my hands shook.

I reached for her hand on the counter.

She slid it away, not fast, just out of range, and picked up her cup.

"Don't," she said.

"Please."

"You can touch me again when you've earned it," she said. "I'm not saying that to be cruel. I'm saying it so you know there's a price."

The kitchen clock ticked over to seven fifteen.

I thought about the last time she had touched me on purpose.

I could not name the month.

"Fine," I said. "Friday at six. I'll do it."

"You'll do it before that, because you can't stand waiting."

She was right, and she knew she was right, and she did not look pleased about it.

She rinsed her cup and set it upside down in the rack.

At the door of the kitchen she stopped with one hand on the frame.

"Friday dinner is for four," she said. "Beth is coming."

"Beth hates me."

"Beth hates you a normal amount. She'll behave."

"Who is the fourth?"

"Someone you should meet."

She went upstairs to the studio, and I heard the lock turn.

I stood in my own kitchen and understood that I had just been given a test and had no idea what the answers were.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

Bailey.

Good morning. Did she say anything about last night? I can't stop smiling at what she said about me.

I looked at it for a long time.

Then I put the phone face down, the way Hannah had done, and went to find my keys.

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