“Of course it was about the sex. It’s always about the sex.” And it was all her fault because she’d gone boots up for Jack at the very first opportunity despite the best advice of the woman sitting across from her right now. “That’s all men ever want. I thought he was actually interested in a relationship. How dumb is that?”
“Not dumb at all.”
“You were the one telling me I was doing everything wrong.”
Sasha sighed. “I was the one who was wrong.”
“What?” Hannah wasn’t sure she was hearing her friend correctly. Sasha, who had never once admitted she was wrong about anything—especially dating stuff—despite her march of heartbreak through the past few years of app-based dating.
“I was wrong about Jack.”
“No, I think last night proves that I was right about him all along.”
“Stop lying.” She had no idea where this blunt, bold woman had come from and what she’d done with her best friend. And she liked it. Although she would like it better if her blunt boldness was directed elsewhere. “You liked him from the start, and I saw the look in your eye after I got home the first night at the speakeasy, from the first time he texted you a picture of a cute dog. Just admit it. You liked like him.”
Maybe she could admit that to herself, but she wasn’t about to swallow her pride and admit that to her friend. Not when it was too late to do anything about it. “Does it even matter now?”
“It matters.” Hannah’s eyes filled, and she looked down into her cup, hoping it would hold answers. Sasha grabbed her forearm as though she was afraid that she’d lose her attention. “It matters because it’s about how you feel, not the lies you told each other. It matters whether you liked him, because you matter.”
“He made me feel like I did.” She did not want to talk about this right now, when it felt like her chest was an open wound. “When he looked at me, I felt like he really saw me. Like he didn’t see any room for improvement.”
She hiccupped and paused, but Sasha didn’t fill the silence. Her best friend, the one who had seen her through everything, knew how big a deal it was for her to spill actual honest-to-God-romantic feelings about someone.
“It just hurt so much that it was all a lie.”
“How do you know it was a lie?”
All the confusion and pain she was feeling channeled itself into frustration. She didn’t want to yell at Sasha; she wanted to scream at Jack. But he wasn’t there, and her best friend was. At least until she finally found someone because she’d finally found her backbone and Hannah was truly alone. “He told me it was a lie! He was using me for the article!”
Hannah slammed the coffee cup on the nightstand and walked into the bathroom, not expecting Sasha to follow her. Unlike her, Sasha came from a bathroom-doors-always-closed family.
“I’m going to pee,” Hannah said, expecting her friend to leave.
Sasha just took a sip of her own coffee and stood there. “So pee.”
“You’re going to harass me about this until I agree with you?” Hannah pulled down her boxers and called her bluff.
Sasha surprised her by pointedly looking down and saying, “You never waxed.”
“Your point? Other than to harp on my grooming habits?”
“He looked at you like—I don’t know—the most wonderful thing he’d ever seen. He looked at you as though he never wanted to look at anything else.”
“You were seeing things.”
“Dammit, Hannah!” That stunned her into silence. “The problem was that you weren’t seeing things. You weren’t seeing the way he looked at you, and you weren’t there to hear him talking about you at the Halloween party.”
She wanted to ask what he’d said about her, even though she didn’t really want to know any of the things coming out of Sasha’s mouth. It would be so much easier if she could just believe that Jack was an asshole—a worse asshole than Noah had ever been. At least he’d been honest with her. It would be so much simpler if she could just continue to believe that she was broken and that no one would ever love her as she was—that she was to be used and discarded unless she kept herself aloof forever.
“I swear that I’m not seeing this through my rose-colored glasses. Those glasses are broken, I promise.” When had that happened? Before two weeks ago, Sasha had always been the most cockeyed optimist to ever look a cock in the eye. “But that man loves you.”
“Love is dead.” Hannah had said the same thing before, but there wasn’t any power behind it in that moment.
“It wasn’t before you flipped double fingers at him in front of a sitting senator.”
“Who was about to get arrested on corruption charges. And virtually every power player in Chicago.” Still, a big part of her wanted to believe Sasha. But she didn’t want to feel hope. Hope was dangerous. “I think I drowned love in the bathtub with that move.”
“What I don’t get is why you don’t feel like a guy like Jack would fall in love with you. Like, as your due?”
“No one’s ever been in love with me.”
“That you know of.”
“No. I know it.”
“And why do you think that is?”
That was a good question, one Hannah had pondered in therapy and out. But she’d never said it out loud, with Sasha in the room. Before now. “I mean, a guy like Jack is going to fall in love with someone who’s more like you than me.”
“You mean someone nice?” Sasha’s mouth quirked up at the side.
“Can you grab more coffee so that we can finish this conversation with my ass covered?”
Sasha seemed to understand that it was important, so she nodded and left the room.
When Hannah got to the kitchen, Sasha was opening a bottle of sparkling wine and pouring it into champagne flutes.
“Do we have something to celebrate?” Hannah asked. “Did I miss something important between the bathroom and the kitchen?”
“I just didn’t think scotch was a good idea as a brunch beverage.”
“Makes sense.” Hannah swiped one of the glasses off the counter after Sasha poured. “And the mimosas are always bottomless here.”
“Exactly.” Sasha grabbed her own glass; Hannah sat down and sighed. “Tell me why you don’t think Jack would ever fall for you. I guarantee that I’ll find any of your explanations stupid, but I’ll listen.”
“It’s simple really. What if it’s me? What if I’m just not enough?”