Tessa kicks my foot under the table, and Karen covers her mouth and coughs around her mouthful of food. Everyone’s surprised when Sophia laughs. Landon looks uncomfortable, but his expression softens when he notices how hard she’s laughing.
“Who says that?” she giggles.
Landon is pathetically staring at her, and Tessa is smiling now.
“Hardin. Hardin says stuff like that.” Karen smiles, humor in her eyes.
Okay, this is weird.
“You’ll get used to him.” Landon briefly looks at me before focusing back on his new infatuation. “I mean, if you’re around a lot. Not that you will be around a lot.” His cheeks are bright red. “If you wanted to be, I mean. Not that you would want to be.”
“She gets it.” I put him out of his misery, and he looks like he’s going to piss himself.
“I do.” She smiles at Landon, and I swear his face turns from red to purple. Poor thing.
“Sophia, how long are you in town for?” Tessa chimes in, changing the subject in a sweet way to help her friend.
“Only a few more days. I leave to go back to New York this coming Monday. My roommates are dying for me to get back.”
“How many roommates do you have?” Tessa asks.
“Three, all dancers.”
I laugh.
Tessa smiles a forced smile. “Oh, wow.”
“Oh gosh! Ballet dancers, not strippers.” Sarah bursts into laughter, and I join her, only to laugh at Tessa’s relief and embarrassed expression.
Tessa carries most of the conversation, asking random shit about the woman, and I zone them both out, only focusing on the curve of Tessa’s lips as she talks. I love the way she stops every few bites and primly rubs a napkin against her lips, just in case she’s got something on her.
Dinner continues this way until I’m bored, nearly to death, and Landon’s face is only a little red.
“Hardin, have you decided on graduation? I know you declined to walk, but have you given it further thought?” Ken asks while Karen, Tessa, and Sarah clear the table.
“Nope, haven’t changed my mind.” I pick at my teeth with my fingernail. He keeps doing this, bringing this shit up in front of Tessa to bully me into walking across the stuffy auditorium where thousands of people will be crammed into bleachers, sweating profusely and howling like wild animals.
“You haven’t?” Tessa asks. I look back and forth between her and my father. “I thought maybe you would reconsider?” She knows exactly what she’s doing.
Landon is grinning like the asshole he is, and Karen and the S-girl are chatting away in the kitchen.
“I . . .” I begin. Fucking hell. Tessa’s eyes are hopeful yet edgy, almost daring me to deny the idea. “Yeah, sure, fine. I’ll fucking walk for graduation,” I huff. This is such bullshit.
“Thank you,” Ken says. As I’m about to tell him that he’s fucking welcome, I realize that he’s thanking Tessa, not me.
“You two are so . . .” I begin, but am silenced by the warning in Tessa’s expression. “You two are so wonderful,” I say instead.
You two are conniving little shits, I repeat in my head, over and over, as they share a smug grin.
Chapter sixty
TESSA
Every single time Sophia talked about New York during dinner, I began to panic. I’m the one who brought it up, I know. But I was only trying to take the attention away from Landon. I knew he was embarrassed, and I said the first thing that came to my mind. It just so happened to be the one topic that I shouldn’t have mentioned in front of Hardin.
I need to tell him tonight. I’m being a ridiculous, immature coward by keeping this from him. The progress he has made within himself will either help him handle the news well, or he will explode. I never know what to expect from him; it could go either way. But I do know both that I’m not personally responsible for his emotional reactions to things and that I owe it to him to tell him myself.
Leaning against the doorway of the dining room, standing in the hallway, I watch Karen wipe the top of the stove with a wet cloth. Ken has moved to the chair in the living room and is now asleep. Landon and Sophia are sitting at the dining-room table in silence. Landon attempts to sneak a glance at the woman, and when she looks up at him, she catches his eyes on hers and shows him her beautiful smile.
I’m not sure how I feel about this, with him so fresh out of a long-term relationship and already on to someone else. Then again, who am I to have any opinions on the relationships of others? I clearly have no freaking clue how to navigate my own.
From my vantage point here in the passway that connects the living room, dining room, and kitchen, I have the most perfect picture of the people who mean the most to me in the world. This includes the most important, Hardin, who sits quietly on the couch in the living room, staring blankly at the wall.
I smile at the idea of his walking during his graduation in June. I can’t imagine him in a cap and gown, but it’s certainly something that I am looking forward to seeing, and I know that it meant so much to Ken that he agreed to do it. Ken has made it clear on multiple occasions that he never expected Hardin to graduate from college, and now that the truth of their past is out in the open, I’m sure that Ken never expected Hardin to change his mind and go along with the typical graduation ritual. Hardin Scott is anything but typical.
I press my fingers to my forehead, willing my brain to function properly. How should I bring it up now? What if he offers to come along to New York? Would he do that? If he does offer, should I agree?