“What are you talking about?” he said. “Of course it was a game. It was a story, a simple narrative for simple people. Something they’d understand. Do you think I would seriously parade my engagement out for the public like that? God, it’s like I said. You don’t know me at all.”
“No, I do know you.” My fingers dug into the sheets. Nothing makes me indignant like humiliation. “You’re manipulative, just like Seth said. Your own fucking brother said you’re a master manipulator, and that’s what you are, letting me and all those people think we were seriously getting married. I feel like such an idiot.”
“Don’t.” Matt leaned in swiftly. He didn’t touch me, but his breath touched my face and I froze. “Don’t bring him into this. Do you think I’m lying when I say I love you?” He sneered. “Do you think I’m lying when I say you don’t really know me? Hannah, I want things that…” He lowered his head so that he could look directly at me. I shrank beneath his frigid stare.
He wanted things that … what?
As suddenly as he’d leaned in, he withdrew. He stalked out of the room and left me shivering on our bed.
Chapter 2
MATT
Mike kept a framed picture of his family on his desk. Blonde, wife, two cherubic-looking children, and a goddamn golden retriever.
I pointed at the picture with my unlit cigarette.
No smoking allowed in my psychiatrist’s office, of course.
“The dog,” I said. “The dog is what makes this too much.”
I sat in an overstuffed armchair and Mike sat on a couch beside me, his body angled toward mine. Everything about his posture said: I am attentive to you.
Mike’s golden retriever grinned at me.
“It’s like you’re mocking me,” I said. “Mocking the poor messed-up people who must sit in this chair. With your dog. With your golden family. Do you get that?”
“You’re avoiding,” Mike said.
“Right.” I chewed my cigarette’s filter. “God, I gotta quit smoking again.”
“I could prescribe something to help with that.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I’m down to one or two a day anyway.” I rose and walked to the broad window of Mike’s high-rise office and I looked out at a sunny Denver morning. It was Monday. Hannah was at work and I was meeting with my psychiatrist for the first time in months because Hannah demanded it.
If I didn’t get regular therapy, she wouldn’t live with me.
That stipulation seemed fair enough, considering the last year.
“Let’s talk about your relationship,” Mike said. “Are congratulations in order?”
“God, not you, too,” I muttered.
My mind tracked back to Friday night, when Hannah and I had finally discussed “the proposal.” Yes, “the proposal,” which I viewed as a ploy to manipulate public opinion. It had worked, too. Thousands of previously angry readers (how dare that author fake his death and make us grieve?) took to social media in support (oh, their story is so romantic!).
“No, no fucking congratulations. It wasn’t real. That should be obvious.”
“Another hoax?” said Mike. “People will get tired of your games.”
“And I am tired of people!” I flung myself back into the armchair and resumed glaring at Mike’s perfect family. “I am tired of explaining myself, tired of having to be one thing or another, tired of making up stories to justify my life.” My head sank. I drove my fingers through my hair, short nails raking over my scalp. “Of course, Hannah thought it was real. She says she was ready. She says she believed it, that we were getting engaged.”
“Ah. So she’s tiring of your games, too.”
“I love her,” I snarled, “and that’s no fucking game.”
“But you aren’t ready to put a ring on her finger?”
“I would do it in a heartbeat, if I thought she really knew me.”
“What doesn’t she know? As far as I can tell, she’s seen you at your worst.”
“Ha! My worst…” I rolled my eyes elaborately. What did Hannah know about my worst? What did I even know? I only understood, vaguely, that my desires ran deeper than blindfolds and handcuffs, rougher than role play and spankings, stranger—
“Matthew?”
I glanced at the clock. “Hour’s up.”
“Ever vigilant. In that case”—Mike withdrew a spiral notebook from his desk drawer—“I’m giving you some homework.”
“This is more than I signed up for.”
He ignored me.
“I want you to think about your former relationships and your current relationship with Hannah. Think about your actions during those times, the books you wrote—your career—and your stability levels and sexual satisfaction. Compare and contrast.”
“I see what you’re getting at.”
“I’m not ‘getting at’ anything.” He smiled and handed the notebook to me. “You’re trying to analyze and manipulate my motives.”
“And you’re shrinking me. Stop.” I gestured with the notebook. “So what, you want me to make a Venn diagram? Be prepared for a quiz next week?”
“Actually, no. In that, I want you to write about your worst.”
“My worst,” I deadpanned.
“That’s right. Whatever it is that you feel Hannah doesn’t know about you, write it down. You need to have dialogue, if only with yourself. And I won’t ask you to share the notebook if you don’t want. That’s your personal space. No self-critique.”
“Easier said than done.” I let myself out of the office.
As I rode the elevator down to the first floor, I flipped through the notebook. Page after page of emptiness and pale blue lines provoked me. It has always been that way.
I drove back to the condo and went directly to my desk. Last Light, my work in progress, lay open before me. I frowned as I considered it, remembering Mike’s words.
Think about your actions during those times, the books you wrote—your career.
Since I’d met Hannah, I wrote only about Hannah. That beautiful woman … my sweet little bird. Love is hysteria, and summer makes it worse. Heat spreads the fever. Madness.
I pushed aside Last Light and opened my new notebook from Mike.
At the top of the page, in cramped, slanting caps, I wrote:
EXHIBITIONISM
Chapter 3
HANNAH
Pam wanted to see me after lunch.
I worried a nail as I carried my salad out of the Mediterranean deli.
If Pam wanted to see me, I’d probably done something wrong. Shit. What could it be?
I sat at the last empty table outside and started stuffing forkfuls of lettuce into my mouth. I ate mindlessly, concentrating instead on how I might have pissed off my boss. Hm. No contract negotiations were under way. We had no new authors. Was I reading too slowly? Did I discard a promising manuscript?
A shadow fell across my table.
I looked up at a pretty, petite woman with fawn brown hair.
“Oh!” she said. “You’re Hannah Catalano.”