Chapters (63)
“A little present for the birthday girl,” Sean says, handing over cash and then putting a pill in my palm. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t care because for the first time in weeks and weeks I am so, so happy. I swallow it. I watch while people come in and out of the room.
“You go to school around here, Hannah?” Sean asks, plopping down next to me.
I don’t want to be the high school kid, so I lie. “Yeah. BU.”
“Nice. Major?”
Fuck.
“English.” Safe, right?
Sean nods. “Right on. My comp class is kicking my ass. Paper on Milton due tomorrow, and that’s … not fucking happening.”
We talk. Well, he talks and I listen, or I try to. I’m already half-gone. Sean is cute. Not as cute as Drew, but cute. A guy in the corner picks up a guitar and begins softly strumming it. I close my eyes, and the sand reaches past my lips. I ride the soft Oxy wave. I forget. About the promises I’ve made to myself, my parents, all the crap at home—all of it is gone. Eddie asks if I want to leave with him, and I say no.
“Hannah.” Someone’s shaking me gently, and when I open up my eyes, a stranger is looking at me, smiling. Wait, not a stranger. Sean. Harvard Sean.
“Sorry,” I mumble, disoriented. The room is quiet. We’re alone.
“It’s okay. Just thought you might not want to sleep through your birthday.”
“This is the worst birthday ever,” I say, and the feelings come, and the sand, and I don’t want to feel, not at all, because they will bury me alive.
“Then let’s change that, shall we?” Sean holds up a pill and puts it between his lips, then leans in, so close the tip of his nose touches mine.
It has never occurred to me to have sex with someone who isn’t Micah or Drew. And I haven’t even had sex with Drew yet. But I am Hannah from BU. English major. My parents aren’t dead, and I don’t care about waves or rehab or any of it. I press my lips against his and feel Sean smile as I open my mouth to receive the pill.
Warm floating and breath and lips, another pill and I am here and not here, not anywhere, not anymore. Not. I am not.