Page 39 of Unfinished

“I can tell that Hannah means a lot to you and I’d like to meet her before the summer ends. So what if you bring her to dinner next Saturday night?”

My eyes narrowed on her, “What are you planning?”

“I’m trying to be on board with this.” I didn’t trust the innocent act that she was pulling. She was planning something, she was always planning something.

I spotted my father standing behind her and he nodded. Did he talk to her and convince her to let go of her stupid arranged marriage ideas? Was she finally giving in and letting me choose for myself?

“I’ll think about it,” I said, and walked out the front door.

I didn’t trust my mom after everything that she had pulled, but if she gave in and allowed me to choose who I married, maybe it would be a good idea for them to meet.

Even my mom would see that Hannah wasn't the gold digger she had claimed she was. Hannah was smart, independent, and wanted to make her own way. Or this dinner could be a trap my mom was setting in order to try to ruin my relationship with Hannah. Did I want to risk that?

I didn't want to accept the invitation. Instead, I wanted to protect Hannah from my mother. My mom would meet her after we announced our engagement… or maybe after we got married. I wondered if it were possible that they would never meet. Hannah didn’t need that toxicity in her life.

I pulled into Hannah’s driveway and Hannah ran out and climbed into my Jeep before I had a chance to meet her at her door like I normally do.

“Let’s go,” she said quickly. I backed out and we took off.

“What was the rush?”

“Nothing.” Something was off with her, she seemed angry.

“What’s going on?”

Hannah looked over at me and sighed. She scrunched up her nose and looked out the window. Then she rolled her lips like she was having a hard time saying what was on her mind. I stayed quiet but feared that maybe she had found out something about my family.

The Teresi family had a lot of history and some of that history was extremely public. If she Googled anything she may have questions and I had no idea how I was going to answer those questions. I couldn’t answer those questions yet.

“My mom called my dad,” she said, and I had to stop myself from breathing a sigh of relief. Despite keeping the truth about my family from Hannah, I wasn’t ready to share it all.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, it seems that every three years she wants to come into town to try to see me.”

“She’s in town?”

“Yep, except she doesn’t really want to see me and I don’t want to see her. She’s most likely here to try to convince my dad to give her money or something. So I needed to leave the house quickly.”

“Okay, do you want to go somewhere else today?” I asked.

“We have the party tonight.”

“Sure, but if you want, I’ll take us out of town right now. We’ll go up to Long Beach or something.”

“Thank you, but no. Once she realizes I’m not at the house, she’ll take off to whatever hole she crawled out of.”

“If you change your mind let me know and I’ll take us away from here for the night.” It seemed like today was the day our mothers did unexpected things and I was taking it as a sign. I wasn’t bringing Hannah over to dinner until my mom proved she was capable of behaving herself.

We got to the beach and took a dip in the water before laying out on towels. We were talking for awhile until we were interrupted by the ringing of Hannah's phone.

“Hello?” She answered and then whipped her head at me with her eyes wide and I sat up to look at her.

“Hi Mrs. Teresi, how are you?” She said with a slight nervousness in her tone, her eyebrows drew down in confusion and I wanted to grab the phone out of her hand.

“No, he hasn’t told me about the dinner yet. I’m sure he was going to a little later.” She paused to listen to whatever my mother was saying before Hannah replied, “I’ll check my schedule and talk to Liam about it.” I hated hearing one side of the conversation like this. “Thank-you Mrs. Teresi, I’ll make sure Liam lets you know.” Another pause, then, “Okay, goodbye.”

Hannah hung up the phone and looked at me and asked, “How does your mother have my phone number?”

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