Page 36 of Breakaway Heart
I gave Hannah an awkward look as I got closer, and she bounced up to greet me before noticing my expression.
“Hey! You try and find a bar in this city that doesn’t show sports or serve nachos!” She said wearily.
“Well, at least we’re the hottest things in here, I guess,” I said.
“Yeah, and with no sports, we’ll getallthe attention.” She shot back with an amused grin. “I’ve already got my eye on Mr Patch over there, so hands off that one.”
He couldn’t have heard us, but maybe having one eye had heightened his other energetic senses, because the grizzled old man at the bar with long, greasy, grey hair down his back and an eyepatch suddenly looked over his shoulder inour direction. Just before we could lock eyes—or, more accurately, eye—he coughed and wheezed into an old hanky, then turned his attention back to just sitting, perhaps pondering the decisions that had put him there.
“Oh, he’s cute,” I said back, whispering, just in case he actually could hear us.
We sat down, and Hannah eyed me for a second.
“So, you got fired yet?”
“Fired? I don’t think Bill would do that.”
“Sort of seems like you want to be, though, Lucy.”
Hannah could be blunt as heck sometimes, but I wasn’t going to pretend with her. I knew she had my interests at heart. I just couldn’t really say exactly what was going on with me recently, because I didn’t know myself. Or maybe I did know, but I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.
“I mean, I used to like my job.”
“No. You used tohidein your job. It was like there was no room for anything else. Or at least, you used it to make sure you didn’t leave room for anything else.”
“That’s not entirely true,” I started saying weakly. But the words didn’t even sound half-convincing.
“I love you, Lucy, but c’mon. Sincehe-who-shall-not-be-mentioned,you sort of disappeared from life for a while. And then there was Mexico,” A hum of excitement rang through her voice as she said it, “And now things seem to have changed again.”
I sat back, crossing my arms defensively. Hannah was looking for some hard truths, and I knew she wouldn’t let it go.
“Okay,” I relented, “Those three days with Randall. It’s ridiculous. He’s a nightmare. But I can’t shake it. Maybe, it’s just how fucking unresolved it all was.”
“You mean, when he abandoned you?” Hannah reminded me, making me wince.
“Yeah. I deserve an answer for that, don’t I? I really want to not care. Ishouldn’teven care. But it keeps nagging at me. What happened? To be honest, I’m not sleeping well, Hannah.”
She eyed me with a concerned look and shook her head slowly, “He really got to you, didn’t he?”
“Also. Every time I see a peach… It makes me weak at the knees.”
Hannah laughed at this, and I chuckled shyly too, even though it was pretty much true.
“I can relate, sort of.” She said in a hushed voice, leaning over the table toward me. “Remember that Doctor?”
“Oh, yeah, what was it? Doctor Drool?”
“Drew. But yeah, him. He used to do this thing…”
Hannah looked over her shoulder as my intrigue began to peak, making me forget about my own feelings for a moment.
“What’s the thing?”
“So. When we were… Making love.”
“Butting uglies.”
“Doing jazz hands.”
