I nodded and my new friend and I made our way to Starbucks for our second caffeine boost of the day. With a red cup in hand, I made one more stop before we finally left the mall: I bought a belated Christmas gift for Hannah, determined to take my chance to give it to her.
That afternoon, when we were all shopped out and I’d spent the last year’s worth of hoarded cash, I pulled out my laptop and logged on to an LGBT based dating site I'd read about online. It was dumb luck that I saw her profile. I’d bookmarked Lavender Menace as a way to get a feel for who was part of the LGBT community in Huntington so I would know who to avoid in my efforts to keep my head down and my mouth shut for my final year of high school. After the first time that I’d gone through the profiles—and there was only a dozen or so in my age category, more female than male—it had become a habit to peruse them when I was feeling lonely. I never made a profile because I’d never planned to talk to anyone, I just wanted to bask in the excess rays of their happiness.
Something about the pictures people selected, them at their happiest, when they felt the most beautiful and confident, took my breath away. It was like being surrounded by this community of people with all this hope and even though I ridiculed myself for it, there was this part of me that thought if I kept browsing, some of that optimism would have to rub off.
Since Hannah had stormed out of my room the other day, loneliness had been a consistent force. It was a loneliness that was different than any other I’d felt because it covered me less like a blanket and more like fog, finding its way into my crevices, my lungs, my heart. When it started to feel like it might really suffocate me, like the anxiety was tightening my chest so much I couldn’t quite inhale, I logged on to get a quick fix of hope.
When I had gotten home from shopping with Lexi and Noah, something felt different about the browsing. It wasn’t a sadness killer or way to live vicariously anymore. All of a sudden browsing the profiles made me realize that this wasn’t my journey to walk alone and I didn’t have to be so damned hopeless.
Hers was the first profile I saw that afternoon and I swear to God, my heart skipped a beat. It was like fate. She’d named her profile HanHan and the picture she used for her profile showed me everything I loved about her. The wild, unruly hair blowing into her eyes, the tiny wrinkles beside her eyes as she smiled. She was like a spark, like something so alive and real that it almost burned to try to hold it in your hand.
When I looked at that picture, I flashed back to she and I in my bedroom, our legs tangled together and our lips raw from kissing. It seemed like I formed a plan right then, but honestly, I didn’t even think it through. I just knew that I had to find a way to fix what I had broken, and I had to do it before she met someone else. I would make a profile and I would woo her and then, when we met in real life, I would apologize for ever hurting her. I would tell her that hurting her even a little made me feel like absolute shit because I was pretty sure I was falling in love with her. The website prompted me to enter a name.
My name is Lennox, I’m on a Mac, all that’s left is Windows, I thought, typing Window into the rectangular box. The joke was silly and probably wouldn’t translate to anyone who was reading my profile, but it made sense to me. I could be like so many of the others online and try to make my name something profound or something clever, but in the end, fail miserably. At least mine would be something that didn’t make me cringe every time I logged on.
Was it catfishing to reach out to someone who already knew you without letting them know your identity? It felt deceptive somehow, even if it wasn’t really a lie, because to some degree I was stripping her of the choice. I told myself that it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like she had rejected me and I was finding a way to insert myself into her life against her will. If anything, it was that type of grand gesture that everyone secretly wanted, the kind that would show her how much I meant it. How ready I was to stand with her, hand in hand, in front of any crowd.
I must have typed out a dozen messages, trying them on like last year’s gloves. I tried to be funny, but wasn’t, tried to be flirty, and ended up creepy. Everything I knew about online dating told me my message had to be something that would stand out and grab her attention, that would earn me an immediate place at first in line for her affections. The message that I ended up sending wasn’t like that at all. There was no charisma or humor in it. It was just sincere: You look so thoughtful and lovely in this photo. I would love to know what (or who?) you were thinking of while you stared off into space.
I didn’t have any right to after everything, but I really hoped the who was me.
Chapter Fifteen
Hannah
As soon as I walked in the door, the smell of Grandma’s house caused serious déjà vu. It wasn’t like I’d spent a lot of time there as a kid; even before the divorce, my grandma had made it pretty clear that she didn’t approve of my agnostic, big city mom and Mom had pretty well reciprocated the lack of affection. Not that she had ever been rude; even the one time when we had finally agreed to visit on Christmas and Grandma had made so many snide comments about Mom that she had stormed off, on the whole drive home, any rude comments I made were greeted with a sharp scolding. While she was never mean, she wasn’t a pushover, either, and didn’t expect me to let others treat me badly. Mom was just of the opinion that you let things go and don’t spend a lot of time venting about the negative stuff.
After the divorce, I’d been thrilled when Mom didn’t push me to go back. I wasn’t forbidden from seeing her or anything, but the unspoken rule had pretty much been I see my dad’s family on his time and Mom’s on hers. Since Mom didn’t really have any family and Dad was absent, that had ruled out a lot of holiday travel.
None of that kept the house from being familiar to me, as if I had been there a thousand times rather than a dozen. The couch was still the first thing I noticed when I walked in, floral and overstuffed up against the back wall of the living room. The dining room was on the other side of the staircase filled foyer; the whole downstairs still felt cramped and strangely laid out. I didn’t have much time to take it all in, though, because Grandma led me straight for her blue Formica kitchen table and pulled out one of the vinyl padded seats for me to sit on.
She sat across from me and I wondered how she had gotten so old over the last six years. It took her over a minute just to sit down in the chair and it was obvious her bones ached as she leaned on the table to support her lowering body.
“Your dad doesn’t look the same as last time you saw him,” she said, and I wondered if she’d had to prepare herself for my visit. Even after one sentence, I felt like I was hearing something she’d rehearsed many times. “Then again, I guess no one in this house does.” Her mouth spread into what looked like it was trying to be a smile. I wondered if she was out of practice.
Before she could go on, I heard footsteps on the stairs. They landed heavy against the old, creaking wood. My heart quickened and I had the urge to run right back through the door I’d just entered.
My first thought when he walked into the room was that my grandma hadn’t been kidding when she said he looked different. He had lost a lot of his muscle tone and while he wasn’t fat, his body was less lean. His face, though, was completely round and I recognized it as a symptom of anti-psychotics that I’d read about while trying to learn more about what I should expect of him. The forums had called it “Moon face” and as I noticed the fullness of his cheeks and the loss of angles in his chin, I had to agree the term fit what I was seeing.