My Heart insists It’s Time to Get Angry
Seth drives his car through the parking lot at my apartment complex, and I glance at him, taking in the glasses he’s wearing as he drives. The moment I saw them, my belly tightened. He’s got this gorgeous, nerdy jock thing going, and I’m all for it. It makes me want to jump on him, mess up his hair with my hands while riding him in this car. Glasses on. It’s worse because he’s humming to the radio—a song that reminds me of high school—with a lovely melodic voice. My blood is at a rolling boil, my heart bubbling in my chest. How am I so lucky to be sitting next to him right now? How is it even fair that I would have a second chance? I suppose there wasn’t ever a first one, but this feels like another opportunity, considering we missed out on the first one.
After parking and setting the brake, he turns his head to look at me and smiles. I want to jump on him. His dimples make my heart turn in twirls of sock skating in the kitchen.
“I had fun tonight, Hannah.”
“Me too.” I don’t want the night to end. I don’t want to watch him drive away.
My feelings for Seth have exploded exponentially, reminding me of those little gifts I used to get from a vending machine as a kid. I’d take the coin treasure home and remove the tiny, dehydrated blob from the plastic bubble, plop it in a glass of water, and watch it expand into a giraffe or something recognizable.
I didn’t feel this way with Sebastian.
Taking things slow is a wise idea. Especially now, because of Sebastian. When Seth asked, I’d considered sharing everything, but held back. Afraid. Not of Seth. No. More afraid of what it would do between us. I don’t want Sebastian between us, but I can’t get his threat out of my head. And despite my best efforts to be clear about that relationship being over, I can’t seem to get him exorcized. And frankly, I’m embarrassed. Embarrassed I didn’t see the truth of who he was, who I was while I was with him.
Despite all that, I find myself asking Seth, “Would you like to come up?”
Seth taps the steering wheel with his hand. “May I walk you to your door?”
This makes me smile. “I would like that.”
He gets out of the car and meets me around the passenger side as I climb from the vehicle. I take his offered hand, and he pulls me closer than he needs to. With my hand in his, we walk side by side through the lot to my building, discussing the finer highlights of the evening, joking about puppies up the three flights of stairs and into the alcove where my apartment door is located. My heart continues its beat, stuck relaying the morse code of all the physical sensations of each second.
Jewel has left the outside light on for me.
“What kind of puppy are Jewel and her girlfriend talking about getting?” Seth asks.
“Joy? They argue about it. Joy wants a little fluffy thing. Jewels wants a pit bull.”
Seth chuckles. “What kind of puppy would we get? I mean–”
I step up to him and press my fingers to his mouth to silence him. “We’d have two dogs. A yellow lab and a dachshund.”
He smiles under my touch, his dimples deep, and my belly tightens while the rest of me melts.
“Thank you so much for tonight,” I say, releasing his mouth. I glance at the door. “Would you like to come in?”
“I don’t trust myself to be smart.” He leans forward and presses his lips to my cheek, a smidge to the right of my lips. After another kiss even closer to my mouth, he adds very quietly, as if he meant for it to stay inside his head, “I’m imagining all the things I’d like to do to you.”
My breath catches, and I grasp ahold of his jacket as I take part in imagining it. His mouth and hands. His body between my legs, filling me with his heat. Desire pools between my legs, and I take another step toward him so all that’s left between us is a breath. “I’d like you to show me.”
Seth grabs my hips and pulls me so all I feel is him, his thighs, his solidness against me. The knowledge he’s as needy as I am makes me want to drag him into the apartment like a cavewoman.
“One good night kiss for our first date,” he says with a smile and cradles the back of my head in one of his hands. When he gets close enough to kiss me, he stops and waits, his breath erratic. “Or is this the second one? Maybe the basketball game and dinner after counts?”
My breath catches. “It counts. It so counts.” I pull him to close the distance between our mouths.
We greet one another, lip to lip, and then tongue to tongue, and hands to bodies, as if reminding ourselves that we’re both really there. The kiss is a summer thunderstorm. The strong grip of his hands. The warm slick of my body, needing more friction. The depth of the rumble in my head, lost in the moment, warning me lightning is a breath away. But Seth ends the kiss. With his forehead against mine, he groans, squeezes my hips again as if conflicted, then steps back.
He takes another fortifying breath and nods. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
I’m wrestling with need and desire and when I can formulate a thought, I say, “Text me when you’re home?”
“You got it.”
He waits until I’m inside the apartment. I lean to look out the peephole as I lock the door, and after he hears the click, he walks away. With a smile, I turn and lean against the door, and release a contented sigh.
Best date ever.
After dropping my stuff inside my room, I shower. When I open the bathroom door after I’m done, my phone in hand because Seth has texted, I’m smiling.
“Took you long enough.”
My heart jolts, and I grasp my towel at my heart, startled. “Shit! Don’t do that.”
Jewel leans against the wall opposite the bathroom door. “A little jumpy, aren’t you?” She grins and looks around me into the bathroom. “No Prince Charming inside there with you?”
“No. If he were, you would have heard it.” I stick my tongue out at her and flip the light off, casting us both in shadow.
She barks a laugh and follows me down the hall into my room, then flops on my bed.
“Where’s Joy?” I slip into the pajamas under the light of my bedside lamp casting us both in its warm glow.
“Sleeping. I heard you moving around and wanted to hear about the date. See if you brought a puppy home. Joy and I had a bet. I thought I heard claws tapping the linoleum.”
I towel dry my hair. “Who won?”
“She did.”
I press my hands to my heart. “I’m touched that she knows me.” I slip into a hoodie. “How did–”
“Seth told me.”
“I had a good time. Really good.” I smile a smile I feel inside my body.
My phone pings. It’s Seth.
Seth: Home. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
Me: Me too.
Seth: Good night.
I grin and glance at Jewel, who’s watching me with one of those shrewd looks she’s often assessing me with.
She sits up and scoots across the bed to the edge. “Good. I’m glad.” She stands and glances at my phone. “That Prince Charming?”
I wag the phone at her. “Yes. Look.”
She reads his message and smiles. Then she walks to the door and turns to look at me. “Sebastian’s over then? Right?”
I scrunch up my face and sit on the edge of the bed. “Yes! What—why would–”
Jewel shakes her head. “Good. Seth seems like a great guy. Sebastian–”
“That’s over.”
She leans against the door frame and crosses her arms. “I was thinking about my Aunt Tally.”
I nod, unsure where she’s going with her thought process but frowning at my recollection of that awful story. I consider moving closer to her, to offer her support should she need it.
She pushes away from the door. “Sebastian has ugly vibes like the dude that killed Aunty T. I’m not saying Bash is like him or anything but I’m pretty sure, because you’re you, you don’t want to think bad of him.”
“Things are over with him.”
“For you, but it’s clear he’s not getting that message.”
I hate that what she’s saying rings true. I didn’t want to think of Sebastian in that light. Our relationship hadn’t been perfect, but Sebastian had been there for me as I wallowed in my grief. I don’t deny what Jewel is saying, but I don’t reinforce it either. It’s hard to argue against it after what happened the other night.
“I think you should file a report. With campus security, or the police.”
“And say what, exactly?” I ask. “‘My ex-boyfriend showed up outside my apartment because he wanted to talk.’”
“That wasn’t talking, Han.”
I press my teeth together, look away, and stare at the lamp. “But what was it, exactly?”
“Did you feel afraid?”
My eyes flash to hers. I nod.
“That’s why. That’s what you say. Because you shouldn’t have to be afraid of someone in your life.”
My mind goes to Seth. To his dad. To what his dad did to him. I swallow and nod.
She gives me a hug. “I love you. I don’t want anything bad to happen.”
I hug her back. “I love you, too.” I squeeze her tighter. “Thank you for being here.”
“I’ll go with you to report it, if you want to me to.”
“Okay.”
She squeezes me once more before she leaves.
I crawl into bed and close my eyes, my thoughts weaving through all the variables of my life. Seth, mostly, but then there’s Sebastian and the incongruence of the way he once was with how he was the other night. I don’t think I can fix him, even if that might have been my belief system at one point in my life. There’s a part of me struggling to see Sebastian clearly, wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt. I suppose that part is trying to keep him in a neat and concise box, since it’s easier than contemplating a different alternative.
Eventually I find sleep. I dream of a field of wildflowers that stretches around my subconscious. I’m lying on my back looking up at the flowers overhead, outlined by gray sky, rather than standing up with them tickling the palms of my hands.
I wake, feeling unsettled by the dream, and reach for my phone. It has blown up with dozens of texts. When I open my messages, I see that most of them are from Sebastian. I only read the first line of the notification to know how those are going to go:
You’re a fucking slut!
My heart slams against my ribs with a punishing rhythm.
I don’t want to open those.
I open the message from my sister instead.
Rue: Guess who texted me last night?
Me: Good morning, Ruthie Rue. Nate?
The three dots pop up, so I scroll through some of my other apps until I’m notified she’s finished typing.
Rue: I wish. No. Bash.
I sit up, my heart tucking into itself, frozen. I Facetime her instead of texting. Her cute face pops up when she connects, and she smiles. “Hi!”
I want to dodge around in safe sister territory for a bit, but I can’t. “Why would Sebastian text you? Has he done that before? Isn’t that weird?”
Her smile fades, and her nose scrunches up. “I thought so. Maybe once before—needing advice for your birthday or something. But not since.”
“What did he say?”
“Get this—‘checking in with his favorite little sister,’” she says as one of her hands uses air quotes. Her nose scrunches with disgust.
“I don’t understand.” I frown. It’s true he doesn’t have little siblings. And he was always nice to Rue when we visited, but this is off.
“He asked me questions about you. It seemed like he was fishing.”
“What kinds of questions?” Now my heart unfurls with anger. The audacity of him to use my family, my sister.
“Like how you’re doing since the breakup. And I was thinking, way better now that you’re not in her life. I didn’t say that, of course. But I thought about it. Then—get this—he asked me if you were seeing anyone.” She pauses, her eyes studying me, then smiles. “Are you?”
I blush but chills race across my skin, considering what Jewel said last night.
“You are! Who is it?”
Stupid tell.
“Did you tell him anything?”
“Of course not. Who are you seeing?”
“Early days, little sister. I don’t want to jinx it.” I smile at her.
She narrows her eyes. “I’m going to text Jewel.”
I smile. “Fine. His name is Seth.”
“That name sounds familiar. Didn’t you have a classmate with that name?” She pauses, drawing from what she knows, then her eyebrows arch over her eyes as she tilts her head. “As in Seth from our high school Seth? Hottie Seth? The one who all the girls crushed on for infinity and beyond Seth? Like a fifteen on a scale of ten. The one who’s in the trophy case at school, part of the soccer team Seth? The one who’s plastered all over the bulletin board in your room? This wouldn’t be the same Seth, right?”
“Stop! Yes. Seth Peters.”
“How?!” She screeches with excitement, the camera bouncing around with her.
“He transferred to Western.”
Her eyes grow. “Fuck off, Sebastian.”
I laugh. “I’ve got to go. I have a date with Seth later.” I wiggle my eyebrows at her. “Don’t answer any more of Sebastian’s texts okay. He shouldn’t have done that.”
She salutes. “Aye, Aye, captain.”
“And if you want to talk to Nate. You text him.”
Her smile fades. “I don’t know. That sounds terrifying.”
“If there’s anything between you, he might be just as unsure as you.” I think about all the time I wasted in high school wondering about Seth. Learning he’d liked me makes me add, “If you want to know, then just do it. Then you’ll know one way or the other, right?”
“True.”
“Love you, Rue.”
“Love you too, Nanna.”
I disconnect the call and frown at the phone. What the fuck is Sebastian doing? As much as I want to discount Jewel and Seth’s warnings, now I can’t. Sebastian reaching out to my sister changes things, but I’m not sure how to measure it. How much it weighs in the how strange things have gotten.
I’m so angry, angry enough to look at the messages he’s sent and see them through an outraged lens.
What the fuck?
I told you how I felt.
You’ve thrown it in my face over and over.
You will never get anyone better than me.
I have everything, Hannah.
I heard you were with him at Tonks Brewery last night. Fuck!
What does he have?
I love you.
I told you how I felt.
Why don’t you care, Hannah?
You’re going to fuck us up like you did with that Hunter guy.
What if I died while you were fucking him? Like you did to your father.
Why do you have to be a fucking whore?
A fucking cunt!!! With the first dog that sniffs around.
With some guy who doesn’t care two shits about you.
I fucking care!
You’re mine.
I care!!!!
WTF!
Hannah. Answer me!
Where the fuck are you? You’re probably fucking him.
You’re a fucking slut!