It was three in the morning, and Hannah was already awake. She'd thought of it too many times, too much. Over thinking things had often been a problem for Hannah. She couldn't just let things happen on their own time and then deal with them. So when her father passed, she couldn't be sad, she wasn't ready to be sad.
"Hannah…" I begin, in a thick, muted speech that ends on a low note that I've never heard myself. I somehow find myself in the middle of her apartment's kitchen. She's moved out and abroad, and relocated to Boston, Massachusetts. She's officially not a kid anymore but doesn't know what to do with the newfound freedom. I wince at how I'm still living only a thirty minute drive from home.
"I don't know what to do." she says, not because it's true, and not because she doesn't know what to say, but because it's the thing you say when you want to cry and be held by someone who doesn't even know why.
Hannah's head lolls as though she's just been shot and the rest of her is pinned against the wall. Her arm rests against the door frame and tears practically shoot down her face, as though on cue, as though racing. And all of a sudden it's not about what she wants, it's about what she's doing, where she is and who he is. And she can't even think about anything but about how good this feels, finally being able to cry.
And as it keeps getting better it keeps getting worse, her shoulders shake harder and sobs-actual sobs-scream out of Hannah's lungs and her chest and her soul, and pain that she didn't even know she had is not so much gone as it is leaving. I tries not to think about the fact that once this is over and Hannah tries to ignore it, it'll all still be there, as though the release had only been a dream.
Maybe she's doing this now because she knows that nobody else but myself can hear how pathetic she sounds -- how high and crackling and childish her sobs break into the air, how pathetically she coughs and sputters to keep pulling in air as her body crashes down.
My arms go around her body just as she begins to fall down. Her head on my bare chest and I'm in love for a few seconds in time when I hate everything. Her hair smells like air dried bed sheets and the loudest sob yet is directed into it, and my arm does not move from its comically relaxed position, also leaning against the doorframe. My hand smoothes her hair and she kisses my chest softly in a sad, but sweet way.
I don't think about what's going to happen when the sobbing slows down, when, in three hours, I have to get showered and get dressed and go take care of things back home. I need to go take care of things for the rest of my life, but I try not to think about it.
Hannah's hands are cold on my back, and I know that she must be cold, standing in her kitchen at four in the morning in nothing but a fitted tank top and shorts, but I can't possibly conceive it because I'm so hot. I feel my face is bright red and my body is burning. Her sudden cold hands make me shudder, but she can't tell because together we were already shaking. I mutter soft noises that can't really be called words or even sounds. They are just me, pushing Hannah to get it together, to stop being such a child and realize that you're a grown up and that shit happens, and that even if you hide how you're feeling, it doesn't make you a better person.
The sobs start to slow down, and Hannah's hands are warming up and creating hot friction on my skin. She must think I'm cold, too.
"Bright."
I don't know how she can think that, though; I'm hot, I'm so hot, the air is thick with heat and it's standing in my flesh and I feel like I'm-
"-burning up!"
I'm not completely sure of what she said, but I try to focus my bleary, watery, swollen eyes on her face, and I see that she is frowning deeply. I don't know why I was even crying. I feel her freezing cold hand against my forehead and I shake and suck in a shuddering breath.
"You're burning up, Bright, you've gotten a fever." She said, and her voice arched slightly with controlled panic. She's completely stopped sobbing by now, and she's back in guard mode now.
I feel suddenly taken off guard. I was sobbing, right here thirty seconds ago and now I'm expected to act like a normal person again? Is that how it works? Suddenly I feel so deeply, devastatingly embarrassed I can barely stand upright.
"No-no." I stutter, sniffling and rubbing the tears off my cheeks with the underside of my wrist. "It's just warm in here."
If I were her, I'd run away.
But she says, and she stares at me for a moment.
"Bright, it's freezing." she says loudly, and despite herself she signs it at the same time, because you can't break people of things, no matter how hard you try or how much things seem different.
And of course, it is freezing. Of course it is. My thermostat sets itself low at night. It always does. What's the matter with me, anyway?
Hannah begins herding me toward her bedroom, a tiny frame with expressive, over-worked, fluttering hands and miming lips.
She puts me to bed with those perfect hands and that quiet face, occasionally half-signing words to herself that it seems she forgets to say out loud. She asks me quietly if I'm alright, I laugh, embarrassed again, and nod.
She smiles. "You alright?" she asks, and I nod again, feeling tired already.
She doesn't say anything more, she doesn't do anything else. She doesn't suggest I take some aspirin and I don't ask her if she wants to talk about her father's death, and I'm not sure if it's because she knows I don't need any or because I don't need to ask.
When the alarm goes off to tell me that I have less than an hour to get over to the airport , which in itself takes up at least thirty minutes, we both jump. Quickly she gets up and collects her clothes, stands in the doorway of her room, dressed and ready. I'm almost asleep, and she smiles sympathetically or maybe sadly. She tries to help me pack.
At the airport we walk briskly, her small hand had slipped into mine, in-between them was my ticket back to Everwood. I kiss her slowly, in the crowd, like they do in the movies. It's almost like everything slows down around us. Then the loud speaker comes on and announces my flight's departure in ten miniscule minutes, and we stop. I look into her eyes, big and puffy like earlier, and try to tell her that I'll come back, that I won't wait for almost a year and a half to come back to Massachusetts for a visit. In my head I try to think positively, that I will see her tomorrow, wearing worn out jeans and a cardigan; her eyes will have no special reflection that wasn't there yesterday or the day before. And neither will mine. We're Bright and Hannah, nothing special there. We both attend some sort of schooling, and are working at being adults. We aren't perfect, but that's not what we're aiming for at this point in time.
Besides, nobody really cares about what happens in people's kitchens in the dark.
The thought is anything but comforting.
I fin /I