Hannah’s palms were sweating and she rubbed them on her thighs. She forced herself to stop biting her bottom lip so she wouldn’t wear her scarlet lipstick off.
She thought she was going to throw up champagne and a mini beef empanada all over this nice woman’s outfit. This is why “meeting the parents” didn’t happen on the second date.
By the time she’d had enough opportunity to freak out, Jack and his mother were almost in front of her. Thankfully, he was carrying two drinks over to them, wearing a strained smile. Hannah tried to keep her attention on her date but didn’t miss the way that Jack’s mother examined her as though she was a possible acquisition for an exhibit of women not good enough to date her son. By the time Jack made the introductions, Hannah had it clear in her head that Jack’s mother’s approval would be crucial in making this fake relationship last long enough for her to secure a promotion.
The realization that Jack was putting her through some sort of test washed over her, and she felt as though someone was sticking pins and needles under her fingernails. She girded her loins for the kind of unpleasantness she’d suffered at the hands of Noah’s parents that first and only time they’d met.
To her surprise, there was none of it. After keeping her in suspense, Molly offered her a smile that seemed genuine. Even more so when Artie began regaling Jack’s mother with the tale of their night in the slammer. Although her heart had lodged somewhere in the vicinity of her throat when her friend had started telling the story and she might have punctured the skin in Artie’s forearm once she got to the part about living-nude sushi trays, Hannah’s dread vanished the second or third time Molly laughed.
By contrast, Jack’s tension ratcheted up every time his mother laughed. Hannah reacted by instinct and took his hand in hers, offering it a squeeze. The heat from his palm radiated through her body, never letting her forget the connection they shared. Their gazes met, and a spark of electricity arced between the two of them.
This was going to be fine. It was a jerk move, but maybe he hadn’t meant anything by it. Or maybe he was already so into her that he was ready to introduce her to his mother.
It was just her luck that the only guy she’d met in years whom she could actually see herself falling in love with was the one guy whose heart she was going to have to break.
Because after this was all over, and he found out that she’d been lying to him, there was no way he’d still want to be with her.
* * *
—
IF HIS BROTHER, MICHAEL, were here, he would have been making lots of derisive snorts. He’d never played along with their mother’s shift from their neighborhood, which boasted a dive bar and a church on every block, to what Chicago thought of as “high society.”
The change had made Jack twitchy at first, but he’d gotten used to it. Maybe too used to it. Not as twitchy as it was making him that his mother seemed to adore Hannah.
“Did you always want to be an event planner, Hannah?” Jack’s mother’s question bit into his gut and twisted things up. He hated that, even though she was clearly impressed, she was still interrogating Hannah. As though she would know what kind of woman would be best for him. She didn’t even know him.
This was all a huge mistake. Hannah didn’t even look pissed off. She answered his mother’s question and then complimented her on the event. His mother actually preened.
Sometimes, he had no clue how his parents had actually stayed together long enough to have three kids. They couldn’t be more dissimilar.
Sean Nolan was a man of few words and a single routine that he followed without fail. Even though it had thrown all of their lives into chaos when she’d left, Jack could understand how his mother must have felt as though she was dying a slow death eating the same meals on the same day of the week. Every week for years on end. Going to the same church service with the same priest; playing cards over beers with the same friends.
Jack remembered the first time his mother had brought him to a museum. She’d passed baby Bridget off to one of their church friends and Michael was off riding his bike with some of his buddies. So it had been just the two of them walking up the stairs of the Art Institute, past the lions and into the echoing halls. Halls filled with art from across the known world.
Before that day, he hadn’t known that his mother could truly be excited about anything. She certainly never spoke with hushed tones of wonder about any of the new meat loaf recipes she’d tried and his father had rejected. That day, Jack realized that his mother had an inner life of her very own, separate from what he and his siblings and her husband had access to. Although he could never have predicted that his mother would leave them a few years later, first to move to New York for school and then to return to Chicago with a new husband and stepkids who seemed to fit her a whole lot better than her own kids, he had kind of understood it.
But watching his mother chat with Hannah, liking her more and more and getting her to reveal things that Jack didn’t know about her, made him realize that he always chose women who were a little unknowable to him. He always tried to figure out what would make them stay, but he was never very successful at it.
“I sort of fell into it, actually.” Hannah’s voice didn’t have the high, nervous quality it had had when they’d walked in that night. He wasn’t sure if it was his mother’s warmth toward her or the champagne that had loosened her up, but this ploy—the one to get Hannah to think he was doing too much too soon—wasn’t having the intended effect. “I just realized I had a natural talent for being at the center of mayhem, I guess.”
One of the many things Jack hadn’t realized about Hannah was that—like his mother—she was friends with famous artists. The only artist being featured in this exhibit who wasn’t too infirm or too dead to show up to the show was hanging off of Hannah’s shoulder.
Something about the similarities between his mother and Hannah crawled inside him and pulled out some things that he didn’t want to feel. Hannah laughed at something his mother said, and he was transformed into a teen boy again—and not just because her laugh gave him an inappropriate hard-on. Just seeing them together made him acutely aware that Hannah was not someone he should depend on to stay in his life. She would leave, and she wasn’t going to be his person.
In a way, it made what he had to do next—sabotage this date—much easier. He’d hoped that introducing Hannah to his mother would do the trick, and that, while he was dropping her off, she would grab on to his upper arm and tell him that “things are moving too fast” and she “hoped that we can stay friends.”
He’d much rather have to convince her that he could take things slower and that she should give him another chance than have her and his mother become besties.
She might still think this was too much, but it seemed less likely now that Hannah had formed some sort of witchy triumvirate with his mother and Artemesia Valencia. Every time one of them made a joke and the other two cackled, Jack felt as though his balls were in a vise. His mother had never liked any of his real girlfriends, but she liked the one girl he was actually trying to get rid of? The irony made his stomach hurt.