She closed her eyes and turned the door handle, pulling it open. He left, and the tears spilled out, the dam holding them back finally breaking. He managed to control himself by the time he got to his truck, stopping at a liquor store on the way home, needing more than the three beers left in the fridge. He came home with a bottle of cheap tequila and drank until he could barely stand, stumbled into his bedroom, and passed out face down on top of the blankets.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Hannah?” Elena’s voice reached her in the bathroom, where she sat on the floor scrubbing at the baseboards.
“In here!” She didn’t stop, even when Elena’s shoes came into her peripheral vision in the doorway.
“What are you doing? You do realize our lease isn’t up for months, right? We don’t need to do a move-out cleaning any time soon.”
Hannah sat back, blew a strand of hair out of her face, and looked up at her roommate. “It’ll make it easier then if we keep up with it now.”
Elena stepped past her, sitting down on the lid of the toilet, chewing on her lower lip, her eyebrows creased with concern. “What happened?”
“What do you mean?” Hannah turned, closing the door and attacking the corner behind it with the old toothbrush in her hand, scrubbing away the accumulation of eight months of dust and gunk from the baseboards in the bathroom. “Dammit! Hand me a paper towel, would you?”
Elena grabbed the roll of paper towels off the counter and handed it to Hannah. “Why are you cleaning the baseboards? You barely keep up with the dishes and day to day stuff. Our apartment is spotless. I didn’t even expect you to be home. Where’s Matt?”
Trying to seem casual, Hannah shrugged and kept her attention on scrubbing the baseboard. It didn’t need it anymore, but she didn’t want to look at Elena right now, knowing the pain from the question was written on her face. “We broke up.”
She heard Elena suck in a breath. She stilled, waiting for whatever Elena would say next.
“Shit. I’m sorry, Hannah. I was really hoping things would work out this time.”
Hannah’s shoulders slumped, and she stopped scrubbing. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pushed her palms against her eyelids, trying to will the tears to stay inside. She’d cried enough over the last several days. She didn’t want to do it anymore. And when relief hit her at Elena’s words, she realized she’d been waiting for her friend to say, “I told you so,” or something along those lines. The compassion she offered instead brought out Hannah’s tears. Again.
Arms slipped around Hannah’s shoulders, squeezing her tight, and she turned into Elena’s arms and let go. She cried for the girl she’d been when she’d met Matt the first time, for the way he’d broken her heart then, and the way he’d broken her heart again. She’d been afraid going into this that it would happen again. And she’d been right. She cried for that, too. And for the many times she’d been tempted to call him, tempted to agree to turn down the summer internship, wanting him so badly, but unable to bring herself to go through with it. Each time she thought about what he’d said, what she’d decided, the pain lanced through her again. She let it all wash over her and cried until she couldn’t anymore.
When she stopped, she determined that this would be the last time. She wouldn’t cry for Matt anymore. Standing up, she wiped the tears off her cheeks.
Elena stood too. “Better?”
Hannah nodded and gave her the best smile she could.
“Good. Now, do you need me to go cut his balls off?”
Hannah let out an unexpected laugh, and Elena smiled at her. “Seriously, though. What happened? You guys were supposed to spend the week together. It seemed like everything was going well. I don’t get it.”
With a sigh, Hannah looked around the bathroom. “Can we talk about this in a different room? Maybe the living room, or the kitchen?”
Elena chuckled. “Of course. Come into the kitchen. I’ll make you some breakup pie, and you can tell me all about what happened.” Elena made pies when she was stressed or working through something in her head, so they always had ingredients on hand in the apartment.
So while she mixed together a pastry crust and found some berries in the freezer for filling, Hannah filled her in on the disaster that happened at dinner on Monday evening. Elena made appropriate sympathetic noises, and when Hannah finished telling her about their conversation on Tuesday, Elena looked thoughtful. After creating the lattice crust for the top of the pie in silence and putting it in the oven, she washed her hands and turned back to Hannah. “That really sucks, Han. I’m sorry. How are you doing?”
Hannah blinked away the tears that threatened to fall again. She gave Elena a pathetic smile, but it was the best she could do. “Not great. I’ve cried every day since then. Like a lot. But I’m trying to stop. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. He obviously doesn’t care enough about me to be willing to work things out except by telling me that I have to give up on my life goals. Because keeping a job he barely tolerates is clearly more important than me having the chance to do something I love.” She shook her head, bringing her voice back to normal. “But whatever.” She pulled her shoulders back and straightened her spine. “I’m going to focus on myself and going after my goals. And I’m going to put myself out there more to meet someone new. It’s past time, don’t you think?”
Elena opened
