Page 48 of Use Me Up

I look at my pizza, feeling sick to my stomach for my brother.

“What I can’t understand is why you’re involved in it,” says Andrew. “You’re torturing her, and you’re torturing me, and I thought you cared about us both. I thought you loved us, Hannah. I love you. I would never do this to you.”

I lift my shoulders. “Ellis is just… he’s hard to say no to.”

“But you know he’s using you,” says Andrew. “You know it.”

I don’t look at him. I look at my pizza.

“Andrew,” says Jordan quietly, “I wonder if that’s the best way to go about this?”

“He does not give a shit about you, Hannah,” says Andrew.

Same thing that Callie said.

“You know,” says Jordan, “maybe we could just get to the ask here. Andrew’s staying at your mom’s place tonight, so maybe you can come over for dinner, Hannah, and you can plan to stay, and you can have a little reset, some family time. What do you say?”

I sigh. I pick up the pizza. “I mean, dinner, okay. But sleeping over at my mother’s house because she wants to cock-block me?”

“Jesus, Hannah,” says Andrew.

“Dinner is acceptable,” says Jordan, grinning at me as if they have just scored a vital point. “We will definitely take dinner. Your mother says to come at 6:30 for drinks. Okay?”

I nod. “Yeah, okay.”

“Great,” says Jordan, still grinning.

Andrew glares at me.

ellis

I pick Hannah up from work.

It crossed my mind this morning, when she woke up in my bed, to tell her to call in sick and stay with me instead, and I think I could have convinced her to do it, but it seemed a little much. I’ve spent days with her at this point, and she does have to return to her life.

I suppose I’m afraid that if she gets out of my sight, she’ll come to her senses or something, and I suppose I’m afraid of this because deep down, I know that I am treating her badly.

She does not let me pick her up, not exactly, because she says that she can’t leave her car parked in the parking garage overnight, and that she has to get it home. But when I say I’ll follow her back to her place, she doesn’t protest.

I come up to her apartment with her, and I can’t help but touch her. I slide my hand over her waist, over her hip. I stop her as we’re going up the stairs to her place and I kiss her right there, right where anyone can see, and she just melts into me, surrendering entirely to me. When we break apart, she’s all gaspy and looking at me with this look in her eyes, like the sun rises and sets in me, and it makes something turn over in my stomach. I could get used to someone looking at me like that. She adores me.

When we get into her place, she says, “Um, I sort of agreed to go to dinner at my mother’s house tonight.”

“When?” I say.

“Soon,” she says. “I have to change and redo my makeup and leave. Drinks at 6:30. I’m sorry. I should have realized you’d want us to be doing something tonight. I can just not go. My mom is only doing it because she doesn’t want this happening with us.”

This surprises me. She’s volunteering to change her plans for me, when I haven’t even offered an alternate plan or indicated I want her to be with me that evening? “Your mother doesn’t really like me.”

“She does not,” says Hannah.

“Bring me along,” I say.

Her eyes widen.

I survey her, giving her a little mischievous grin. “Too far? Too much?”

She thinks this over. “I don’t know. My mother would be livid, but she also would be too polite to turn you away if we both showed up. I’m annoyed with her, so I don’t mind pissing her off.”