the grace and humility she’d come to expect, and an uneasy longing to know the person Wyatt had become, the man he’d grown into. Wondering how different he was from the boy she had known.
After that first day at the pool, Hannah and Julia had ridden into town every day, parked their bikes outside the diner, chained them to a light post, and walked with bathing suits, towels, and beach bags to the pool (Wyatt’s pool, as Hannah had come to think of it). Julia dropped her stuff in a heap and wandered off to find her friends, leaving Hannah to set up.
Hannah felt bereft at her sister’s sudden disinterest in her but also a building excitement at her own secret budding friendship with the redheaded boy in the refreshment stand. Her sister and her newfound friends wouldn’t touch french fries with a ten-foot pole, so it was easy to keep their meetings clandestine. She hadn’t pinpointed why she thought Julia would disapprove; Hannah just knew that she would. He was older, seventeen, she’d learned. But their friendship was so weightless, easy. The age gap felt like nothing. Julia wouldn’t treat it like nothing—she treated everything like something, especially when it came to Hannah. Even when Hannah had brought home a D on an algebra test, it wasn’t their mother who pitched a fit; it was Julia, ranting around her room. “A D! Do you know you need GOOD GRADES to get into college, and you need COLLEGE to be able to leave this dump of a town? I can’t take care of you forever. Get your head out of your ass, Hannah Marie.” Their mother had pressed her fingers down on the test on the table, tapping the red circled letter a few times, and said simply, “I want more for you, Hannah.” She’d pointed to her PJ Whelihan’s uniform, her name tag. “You are better than me. Don’t do this.” And then a crash from upstairs sent her scurrying up to Wes, who had fallen in the bathroom. His forehead spurted blood on the white linoleum while Hannah stood in the doorway, stunned at both the bright red against the dingy white floor and the idea that her mother could move so fast. She remembered wondering, in that moment, if her mother loved her stepfather or just felt obligated to keep him from killing himself.
Which was why when Wyatt kissed Hannah against the back of the concession stand in her new pink bikini, the lifted wood of the weathered boards digging into her bare back, the straps of her bathing suit snagging on the splinters, and he pulled her against him until their midsections met and she felt his skin against hers, a feeling wholly new and terrifying and exhilarating, and it took her breath away to feel the dampness of his sweat mixing with hers in the hot August sun, she vowed to never, ever live without this. Without the dizzying breathlessness of world-rocking lust. That if she was going to clean up blood from the bathroom floor, it was going to be for someone who made her vision swim, who made her feel like the earth was tilted, ever so slightly, off its axis and only they could feel it, wrong footed and off balance with love. She’d never do that for Wes, whom she’d never seen her mother look at with anything other than disgust.
Years later, when she met Huck, when she called the number on the business card, he made her laugh. They went to a chain restaurant for their first date (practical, quick, and no, not PJ Whelihan’s). He made her feel like an adult. She’d been looking for a job in marketing, a real job, not a bartending or waitressing job, and striking out. She had felt despair at falling behind, at having no real income, no career, while all her friends pursued advanced degrees, coveted externships. Huck offered a glimpse of adulthood—with a side of kindness, laughter. Later, after they moved in together (practical, like a trial marriage!), they talked about money, shared goals, starting a family. They talked about whether the carpeting in the living room needed to be replaced and whether the water heater had another year. He never made her dizzy with lust. He was a proper grown-up in the way men almost never were. After all, Hannah and Julia had a biological father they’d never met, a stepfather who was nothing but a drain. Huck felt like