Chapter 22: Saturday Night

Hannah's POV

Jonah's house was on the edge of Pine Hollow, at the end of a street with no streetlights.

It was a small gray ranch house with a porch and a flag bracket and no flag.

He hadn't slept in it for a year.

He turned the key in the lock with a hand that wasn't steady.

Inside, the air was cold and stale.

The only furniture was a couch under a sheet and a mattress on the bedroom floor.

"I told you," he said. "I haven't been here."

"I don't care."

"There's nothing to eat."

"Jonah."

"There's a lamp. I think there's a lamp."

I shut the front door behind us and put my back against it.

I was still in the green dress and Gran's red coat.

Both smelled of perfume and the cut grass of the fairgrounds.

"Saturday," I said. "You said you'd touch me when the gala was done."

"I said I wouldn't touch you until then."

"Same thing."

"It isn't."

"Then touch me, Tierney."

He crossed the room in three steps.

I thought he would kiss me.

Instead he took the coat off my shoulders, slowly.

He laid it over the arm of the covered couch, with the sleeves hanging straight.

He did it with care, because it was Gran's.

Then he took my face in both hands and kissed me, and there was no hesitation in it at all.

"You played it," I said into his mouth.

"You nodded."

"You left yours in."

"I told you I'd never take it out."

I pulled him down the dark hall to the bedroom, and he found the lamp on the floor and switched it on.

The mattress had a gray blanket on it and one flat pillow.

It was the saddest bed I had ever seen.

I wanted him on it more than I had wanted anything in my life.

"My turn," I said.

"Hannah."

"You had the last one." I put my palms flat on his chest and pushed. "Sit down."

He sat on the edge of the mattress, and he looked up at me, and his mouth twitched.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Don't call me that."

"Yes, Hannah."

I reached behind me and drew the zipper of the green dress all the way down.

He watched it.

The dress slid off my shoulders, and I stepped out of it.

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