Little Do We Know(3)

He flipped me onto the bed, straddled my hips, and pinned my shoulders to the mattress. “You’re the coolest girl I’ve ever known.”

I smacked his arm. “I already have my line for today. I don’t want more choices.”

“You surprise me. I’ve never dated anyone who surprised me.” He undid another button.

“See, now you’re just showing off.”

“Also, you have this insanely amazing body and I want you, like, all the time.” He popped the last button.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re going the wrong way with this. Now you just sound like every other guy.” Luke-isms were never basic.

“Hey.” He came down on his elbows so we were face-to-face. “Seriously. I love you. And you’re my best friend. You know that, right?”

I sucked in a breath. Not because of the love part—we’d said that practically every day now—but because of the best friend part. An unexpected and overwhelming wave of sadness rippled through my whole body. Without thinking, I turned my head toward Hannah’s house.

Even though she broke my heart, and pissed me off, and I wasn’t sure we’d ever find our way back to each other, Hannah had been my best friend for seventeen years. I wasn’t about to give her title to anyone else, not even Luke.

“You okay?” he asked.

I looked back at him. “Yeah.”

“You sure? You look sad.”

“I’m fine.” I took a long breath and smiled. “I love you, too.”

That one was easy to say.





I stripped off my church clothes as fast as I could and changed into my running gear. I could feel angry tears building up behind my eyes, but I pushed them down when I heard a knock on my door.

Mom opened it and poked her head inside. She took one look at my feet and said, “You’re going for a run? Now?”

“Yep.”

“But we’re in the middle of a conversation.”

“No, we’re not. You and Dad can talk all you want. I’m done.”

I jammed my foot into my running shoe and sat on the edge of my bed. I still couldn’t get my head around what they’d told me. Graduation was only three months away. Of all the things I’d had to worry about, I hadn’t thought college was one of them. Suddenly, everything was up in the air. I tried to tie my laces, but my fingers were shaking too much.

“I know you’re upset, Hannah. You have every right to be.” Mom sat next to me. She started to put her hand on my leg but thought better of it, so it kind of lingered awkwardly in the air before she rested it on the comforter between us. “Your dad was doing what he thought was best for—”

I cut her off. “You’d better not say for me. You’d better say for the school. He was doing what he thought was best for the school, like always.”

“That’s not fair, Hannah. And it’s not true. Your dad has made a lot of sacrifices for the school, but he’s made a lot for you, too. More than you’ll ever know.”

I grabbed my other shoe off the floor, slid it on my foot, and laced it as fast as I could. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. All I wanted to do was feel my feet slapping hard on the pavement and fill my lungs with air until they burned.

I didn’t say anything else, so Mom kept talking. “It was an investment. Dad thought it would have paid off by now. It will, soon, and when it does, it will benefit everyone. The school. Our family. Your future. It might not look like it on the surface, but he did do this for you, Hannah.”

It was all I could do not to laugh in her face. “He spent all my college savings, Mom. I might not be able to go to Boston University. How is that for me?”

“That’s not what we said. You’re going to BU, no question. All we’re saying is that you might have to defer for a year and go to one of the community colleges first. Lots of kids do that.”

“I worked hard in every class for four years to get into my top school. I’ve spent every second of my free time on extracurriculars and volunteering, not to mention all those hours practicing and touring with SonRise, all because you told me that a cappella choir would look good on my college applications.”

“Oh, come on…That’s not fair, Hannah. You love performing with SonRise. And I encouraged you to do it because you have a beautiful voice, not to get you into college.”

She continued. “You got into a great school. Defer for a year, give us a chance to let the investment do what we know it will do, and then transfer. Your diploma will still come from BU.”

Mom must have noticed that her words were making this sound like a done deal, when they hadn’t pitched it to me like that in the living room ten minutes earlier.

“Listen,” she said with a new, more positive lilt in her voice. “We’re not saying it’s definite. Not at all. We just thought we’d better give you a heads-up.”

A heads-up?

I couldn’t even look at her. And I knew that wasn’t entirely fair. She wasn’t in this alone. And the whole thing had to have been his idea, not hers.

“Now I’m wishing we hadn’t told you.” She punctuated the thought with an exaggerated sigh. That set me off again.

“No, you should have told me months ago! You should have told me back in December, when I got my early admissions letter. We went out to dinner to celebrate. And you and Dad knew we couldn’t afford it the entire time. How could you have done that?”