My Heart Insists I Understand What’s True
I scan Seth’s face. His beautiful face. The angles of his jaw. The fullness of his mouth, kissed by me but frowning. The worried shape of his amber eyes etched with dark brown flecks. The way his hair hangs around his face since he’s looking down at me.
“Afraid of what, Hannah?”
I trace the shape of his neck and his shoulders with my gaze, the planes and ridges of his chest and abdomen, the sinew of his arms holding himself up.
My breath catches at the way this feels surreal. The pleasure of it, but also the pressure. And it isn’t the pressure; it’s the possible consequences of losing something—someone—I’m realizing is so important to me.
“Hannah?”
I meet his gaze, unsure how to explain what’s going on inside me if I don’t even understand myself. “I’m not afraid of you. I’m not even afraid of sex.”
Seth moves so that he’s no longer above me, no longer poised to move forward with the act. “Talk to me,” he says and waits.
I have this horrible feeling he might think it’s because of what he’s shared, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. His willingness to be vulnerable with me makes me understand his struggle, to feel even closer to him.
Seth reaches out and smooths a lock of my hair off my face, and I turn my head to look at him. “I think I’m afraid that I’m not good enough, for this, for us. And as much as I want this—and I want it so much—I’ll ruin it somehow.”
“How could you possibly ruin it?” he asks.
I can’t find the thread, but Sebastian sitting across from me in a crowded restaurant just after Thanksgiving and saying he’d met someone else is a series of images in my mind. “Maybe you’re right.”
“About?”
“Waiting. I don’t want to lose you.”
Seth rises onto an elbow. “You’re not going to lose me, Hannah. And we don’t have to do this yet to prove that. We still have another two dates. And I can wait for you even longer than that. Five more dates. 10. A year. Whatever you need, because–” He stops, and his eyes fall away with the weight of whatever he’s left unsaid. His eyes find mine again. “I will wait for you, Hannah.”
I shiver.
“Cold?” Seth gathers me in his arms.
“No,” I say even as I shiver again.
“Shower?”
I hear the smile in his voice and nod.
Seth has left clothing for me when I climb from the shower. His clothes. I slip into them, noticing how intimate it feels, enjoying the idea of Seth’s things as if it were as concrete as a hug. I listen for him when I open the door. There’s sound coming from the kitchen, so I pad down the hallway in socks, and when I reach the living room, I follow the noise to the kitchen.
My heart is racing, more nervous now than before
Seth, his hair curly and damp, reaches for a pepper mill over a clear dish on the countertop. When he hears me, he glances up, his eyes crinkle with his smile, which broadens as he looks at me in his clothing. Those dimples. “Hey, gorgeous.”
“I look silly.” I look down at his clothes. The sweats are long, because he’s tall, but my body fills them out.
He shakes his head. “No. You look amazing.” He meets me for a kiss. “Feel better?”
“Yes. You?”
He nods, returns to the dinner, and finishes seasoning what looks like chicken slick with olive oil and sprinkled with capers, lemon, and rosemary. He picks it up and slides it into the oven, setting the timer.
“How can I help?” I ask.
“Help me with the salad?”
I sit at the bar counter, and Seth slides a cutting board, a knife, and tomatoes toward me.
“Can I ask you about something?”
“What about?”
“Something you said to Sebastian.”
“He’s taken too much room in my life.” But even as I say it, I hear the wall I’m putting up, and maybe by closing the door on it, it will continue to be a wall between us. I don’t want that.
Seth pauses, leaning toward me across the counter, his elbows holding him up, then says, “I’m hanging up on feeling like you’re facing some serious shit. That I’m powerless to help you, and I worry.” His eyes measure me for a moment. “The question isn’t about him so much, as it is about the situation.”
I set down the knife, take a sip from the cup of water he gave me, and commit to opening the door so there isn’t anything between us to ruin a possible future. “Okay. Ask.”
“I heard what you told him—at the gym. And I just wondered if you trust me to know about what’s happening in your life? You hadn’t said anything. I know that you don’t owe me anything, I just want you to know you can trust me.”
My eyes fly up to his, shocked. “I do trust you,” I say. “Completely.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
I look away from him back to the tomato under my hand and press a knife into the fruit. The red flesh splits under the knife, and the juice drains across the cutting board. When I’m able to formulate the why, I say, “I feel like if I talk about it, he becomes this mountain between us. And I don’t want him there.” I set down the knife, and add the tomato to the bowl, sprinkling it over lettuce. When I look at Seth, and his gaze jumps from the tomato to mine. “That if I keep him in my thoughts, in my mouth, he won’t ever go away. I want what’s happening here about us, and to leave that time of my life in the past.”
Seth moves around the counter, sliding the bowl and the cutting board away, then turning me on the stool to face him. “Except he isn’t in the past.”
I look down at my empty hands. “I want him to be.”
“Take it from me, Hannah, the past has influence on the present.”
I look up at him, understanding the risk he took to share what he did and grateful for it. His relationship with his father, the abuse, the car crash, all of it has shaped who he is now. Despite all that negativity he’s experienced, I’m staring at an amazing man.
He reaches up to move a lock of my hair from my forehead, his eyes tracking the movement. “Your experiences shape you. And I want to be here for you and help you through the shit stuff and to celebrate the good stuff.”
My heart fills, the beat slowing with the added weight, and the pleasure of, well, him. I stand and wrap my arm around his neck, pressing a quick kiss to his mouth. “I want that.”
He smiles. Leans forward to kiss me again, slow and savoring.
Later, sitting next to him at the bar top with the remnants of a wonderful meal littering the surface, the conversation between us has flowed. We’ve talked about our families, about school, about our future hopes, about silly memories from school days, nothing awkward between us even after almost sex.
“Thank you for dinner. That was amazing.” I reach for Seth’s dish and stand. “Done?”
He grabs his dish. “You’re not doing the dishes.” He twists, blocking the dish from my hand, and grins over it.
“You cooked. I clean. That’s the rule.”
“We’re making rules?” He grins. “I like it, but no.” He stands, carrying his dish around the end of the countertop to the sink. “You’re my guest, and I don’t make guests clean.”
I wrinkle my nose and chase him into the kitchen. “Seth.”
He laughs when I crash into him from behind. He turns, wrapping his arms around me, pinning me against him. “Stubborn much? Fine! We can do them together.”
I smile as he releases me and think about how sweet he is. He’s a guy my dad would have called “a good egg.” Realizing this makes me feel like the earth has started spinning in the proper direction again, only I hadn’t realized it had ever changed. I mean, sure, the grief about my dad put me in stasis, but when I met Sebastian, I think I’d thought I was finally waking up. Only, I’m realizing, maybe it was only the Shadow Hannah who had, and the real one is breaking out of her chrysalis, finally realizing how hidden she made herself.
Because of this man.
Seth scrapes the leftovers on the dishes into a bin, and I notice the way his yellow shirt shifts around his body as he moves. I imagine laying my hands against his shoulder blades so I can feel the strength of him but step up to the sink next to him instead, fitting the stopper into the drain and turning on the water.
“Where did you learn to be such an amazing person?” I ask, moving so he can get under the sink.
He grins as he puts the bin back and closes the cupboard, then offers me a side-eye. “You mean, being respectful isn’t the norm?” He picks up the soap and squeezes some into the running water.
“I think you might be an exception to the rule.” I look for the sponge in the soapy water.
“How did you learn? To be incredible,” he asks.
“I’m not an incredible person.”
“I think you are.”
His words make me feel warm in both a good way and an embarrassed way. I realize how hard it is for me to take compliments. I think there was a time in my past when it wasn’t so difficult and I wonder when that shifted—but even as I wonder it, I already know the answer. The night my dad died, and the guilt and regret I still feel about where I was when my mom and sister were trying so hard to get ahold of me. “My parents. I guess. Good friends.”
“Both are good places.”
“You dodged my question.” I smile at him and realize he does this a lot, when the questions swing around to focus on him. He deflects. I’m not sure I noticed it until now.
“I’ve had some good friends. A good therapist. Definitely not my parents,” he says.
“Feel like talking about it?”
He adds what’s leftover into a container and slips the dish into the filling sink. “Not really.”
I try not to feel hurt by this, but it pinches a little. Here he’s asked me to trust him with Sebastian but is reticent about sharing this very important part of his experience. But I don’t say anything, even if I think it. I shut off the water.
He looks at me, as if maybe he knows he has hurt me, and shakes his head. “I’m sorry. Old habits die hard sometimes.” He takes a deep breath. “I suppose I watched my dad and how he lived and warned myself not to ever be like that fucking guy. And I watched how my mom was treated and told myself to do better. To want more.”
I submerge my hands in the bubbles and scrub the first dish with a sponge. “With them as models, though, I suppose you’ve got an excuse?”
“What? To be an asshole? I don’t think anyone has an excuse to be an asshole.”
He steps behind me and reaches around me into the water. With the front of his body pressed to the back of mine, I notice three things. First, we fit together, the shape of us somehow perfect. Second, the feel of his warmth ignites a fire under my skin that makes my heart expand, heating in my chest. Third, I feel so safe. His quiet strength covers me like a cozy sweater.
Seth fits his head over my shoulder, runs his hands down my arms to my hands under water, takes both the dish and the sponge from me, and begins washing.
“And I didn’t escape being the asshole. I had my day, faced the consequences of it, and had to decide who I wanted to be.” He presses a kiss to my neck, then nudges me out of the way. “Dry?” He indicates the hand towel he set on the other side of the sink.
I pick up the towel. “The wreck?” I ask.
I see him swallow, thinking about it, and understand how difficult it must be to talk about. I know that facing the death of someone I love has been upending. Losing my father—someone so integral to the safety of my world, to the understanding of myself in relation to how I fit into it—has been like receding into deep space and floating in that vacuum of grief alone. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to face my own death, the reality of that. He nods but goes quiet, his thoughts slipping into the water with the dirty dishes.
“What is it?” I ask when he hands me a dish and finally meets my eyes again, as if he’s come back to the moment.
He shakes his head and offers me a smile.
No dimples.
“It was hard to share?” I guess.
He nods.
Without overthinking, which is a very non-present-day-Hannah thing to do, but something I suddenly realize was very me before my dad died, I commit to sharing with him. Trusting him. “So, about Sebastian–” I glance at him to see if he still wants to hear it. I figure changing the subject is what he needs, but I also have to be willing to demonstrate my trust.
He leans against the sink with his hip, facing me, washing the dish in his hand, and waiting with his head tilted.
I take it as a signal he wants to hear it. “I met him right after I transferred here—a year ago. I’d been working at the library, and we bumped into one another in the stacks.”
“Like us the other day?” he asks, frowning, and turns to resume washing the last of the dishes.
My skin heats remembering. “No. Not like that.” I smile and dry, stacking the dish with the others when I’m done. “It was pretty innocuous, but he asked me out. We hit it off. It kind of felt like a too-good-to-be-true kind of thing. Everything between us seemed so perfect.” I stop and look at him. “You sure you want to hear this stuff?”
“Yes.” He pulls the stopper from the sink, draining it. “I want to understand Hannah, and that means learning about everything I’ve missed.”
“I wasn’t in a very good place when I met him. With the death of my dad, and the year off school, I think I was at the lowest point in my life. I hadn’t even planned to return to school, but my mom sort of sent me a lengthy guilt trip about me being a martyr and that wasn’t what my dad would have wanted.”
“She was probably right.” He grins and wipes the counter. “And hey, we’re here right now.”
I dry the last dish, and Seth moves around me to put them away. “I’m wondering if the perfection of Sebastian was me trying to fill in the emotional gaps I had without my dad. Like if I met him now, I’m not sure I would feel the same.”
“Because you feel different.”
I nod and fold the dish towel, laying it on the counter and smoothing it with my hand. “I knew when we broke up, it was the right thing, and maybe I’d made excuses for him doing it, but I was clear enough then to know we hadn’t been well for a while.”
“Why?”
I turn to lean against the counter and cross my arms, suddenly a little cold. With a shiver, I wonder if it’s more because of the emotion of looking at this reflectively and honestly, or because of the temperature.
Seth steps in front of me and rubs my arms with his hands. “Would you like to stay here tonight?”
I smile and nod.
He takes my hand and leads me to his bedroom, and this time, I take it in. It’s neat. The bed made with a blue comforter, his laptop closed and centered on his desk, all the clothes put away. “Want a sweatshirt?” When he opens the closet, and it’s just as neat in there, and he retrieves a blue sweatshirt from the shelf on the top. I shrug into it as he sits on the bed.
After I text Jewel to let her know where I’ll be, I crawl past him and get under the covers.
He follows me in, facing me. “So, why wasn’t your relationship well?”
I roll to my back and sigh. “So many things, really. Let’s see. The laundry list–” I pause a moment, then say, “Sebastian needed my attention constantly. If I didn’t go to his games or do something he wanted to do, he’d pout. So I just relented rather than fight. Which was easier. When we fought, I found myself shutting down. And I think it’s because he’d twist things around on me and make them seem like my fault somehow, or that I was the unreasonable one. It was easier to stay quiet, instead. To keep the peace.” I stop a moment.
Seth takes a deep breath and pulls me closer.
“Then we were spending a lot more time apart, and instead of feeling upset by that and missing him, I just felt relief. We’d stopped having sex. I just couldn’t find it me to be intimate. I think that’s why when I found out he’d cheated, I wasn’t surprised, and I also wasn’t as mad as I think I should have been. It was almost like I’d expected it. I felt hurt, but it was more like I was delivered from the deep hole I’d dug to bury myself. Like I could finally climb out and walk away.”
I stop, and though I’m nervous about seeing the look on his face, I turn my head to look at Seth. A tear leaks from my eye. “Do you think I’m pathetic?”
Seth reaches out, cradles my cheek in his palm, and swipes the tear with his thumb. “Not all, Hannah. Not in the slightest.” He leans forward and presses his lips to the place he’s wiped the tear away, then gathers me in his arms. “I’m so glad you’re here now. With me. Thank you, for trusting me.”
I tighten my arms around him, so grateful this is the present.
When I open my eyes to the twilight of morning, I don’t remember falling asleep. I remember talking. I remember the eventual brushing of teeth, of turning out the light, of making out, the heavy want sitting in my body, but the way waiting to have sex now seems more like an important act of getting it emotionally right. The sounds of Trace coming home and his crew coming over to play video games. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sleep, but somehow fell into its abyss.
Seth reaches for me, mumbles something, and pulls me against him. “Good morning.”
“Morning.”
“I like waking up with you.” His arms tighten around me.
I smile, warm and glowing, and cuddle in closer. “I like this too. Maybe too much.”
“Why too much?” he asks, his voice filled with sleep, and it’s sexy.
I think about it. “Because it’s addicting and I’m going to want it all the time, until it’s something I need to survive rather than just want.”
He moans and pulls me tighter, fitting his head into the space where my neck meets my shoulder. We lay together like that for a while, and I think I might even drift back into a morning nap, until Seth gets up, and I feel the cold of the loss.
“Coffee?”
I roll and look at him. His shorts are askew, and he covers his groin with his hands, which makes me smile. His brown hair sticks up around his head, and I don’t think he’s ever looked sexier. Okay, maybe naked with me, our bodies sliding against one another. I press my thighs together. “Yes, please.”
He smiles as if he can read my mind and leans forward to kiss my cheek. “I’ll bring you some.” Then he disappears out the door, shutting it behind him.
Instead of lying there, I get up and put on Seth’s sweatpants and the sweatshirt over the t-shirt I slept in the night before. After making the bed, I pad down the hallway through the living room past a smattering of sleeping men on the couches like blankets thrown haphazardly across its surface.
Seth is waiting for the coffee, which has already started brewing. When I walk into the kitchen, he turns and smiles, his eyes drifting over me, then returning to my face. “I love seeing you like this,” he whispers.
“How’s this?”
He opens his arms, and I step into them. “In the morning. Here. In my clothes. Is it weird it turns me on?”
I giggle. “I will never be giving them back.”
His arms tighten around me.
“Oh. Shit. Morning.”
I turn my head and see Trace standing at the end of the counter. He rubs his eyes.
Seth tightens his hold as if anticipating me pulling away. I relax against him, smiling at his territorial declaration.
“I wasn’t expecting that. Sorry.” Trace grins. “S’up, Hannah.”
“Good morning.”
“Coffee?” he asks, flicking his hair with a shake of his head, and it bounces back into place.
“Brewing,” Seth says. “You guys were up late.”
“Yeah. Played a quick tourney.”
“Who won?” Seth asks.
Trace grins. “Do you even doubt it?”
Seth chuckles, and the vibration of his laugh inside his chest moves through me.
“Did we keep you up?” Trace lifts an eyebrow, and I know what he’s thinking.
“Nope. All good,” Seth says at the same time the coffee pot sputters and beeps. He turns and withdraws three cups, fills them all, then pulls some creamer from the fridge, which he presents to me.
I add a dollop to mine and hold it out to Trace.
“Thanks.”
There’s an awkwardness that drifts around us, and I know it isn’t between Trace and Seth. It’s because of me. Because I’m Sebastian’s ex-girlfriend, and Trace is a football player. He’s probably wondering where his allegiances lie: with his roommate or with his teammate? I don’t like that, but I also know this isn’t something I can control. This will get back to Sebastian. We go to a tiny school, where everyone knows everyone else. The thought would have made me anxious a few weeks ago, but now, I’m over it.
Marco sits up on the couch, his black hair exploding around his head, and walks into the kitchen. He takes a second look at me. “Hey Hannah.” I hear the surprise in his voice, but he recovers. “I thought I smelled coffee.”
I look over the rim of my coffee cup at Seth, who’s chatting with Trace and Marco about Trace’s trip home, then the video game tournament. He glances at me and smiles. Dimples. The amber of his eyes glow, making my heart flutter. I know without a doubt these feelings pulsing through me like electricity are so much larger than just infatuation or attraction. This is deeper, layered in the fact that I’m infatuated with someone who is a friend, someone I have known most of my life, and who has suddenly become so very important in my day-to-day that the thought of him not being in it makes my heart constrict with fear.
That’s not how I ever felt about Sebastian, and it hits me—I never loved Sebastian.
What’s moving through my body for Seth is most definitely love.