“Don’t,” she says.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t try to convince me that everything’s going to be okay.”
I close my mouth. Because despite Hanna’s outsized optimism about Eden and Paul getting back together, I don’t actually think everything’s going to be okay. Even if they somehow patch up this episode of “cold feet,” Paul will always be the guy who left her at the altar and humiliated her.
Under the best of circumstances, marriages are a shit show. To start one like this…
I can’t wish it for her.
And yet I have to.
Fuuuuuuck me.
“I don’t deserve what he did to me,” she says.
“No,” I agree, before I can stop myself. “You don’t.”
I’m sorry, Hanna.
“I’m not chasing Paul so I can talk him out of his cold feet or whatever made him jilt me.”
Okay, look,I tell imaginary Hanna.Even if it turns out Paul does just have cold feet, I’m not going to be able to convince Eden to take him back. He has to do that. I need to get them face-to-face so he can realize he’s being a complete idiot.
Because let’s face it: Only a complete and total idiot would walk away from Eden Becker.
“You know what?” she says. “Let’s not talk. You don’t really want to talk to me anyway. When we get to the beach house, we’ll get the quilts and then get back in the car and drive again. That way we won’t have to force a conversation.”
“That’s very…mercenary.”
“Yeah, well, that’s me right now. Mercenary. It’s a put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other situation, and so that’s what I’m doing.”
“If not-talking is what you need, then that’s fine?—”
“It’s what you want, too,” she says. “You don’t want to talk to me and I don’t want to talk to you, so we’d better find music we can agree on.”
“I’ve got a driving playlist on my phone.” I grab it from the door’s map pocket and toss it to her. “Route 66.”
“Original,” she mutters.
A moment later the strains of Elliott Smith’s “Waltz #2” slide from the speakers.
A couple of songs later, she bursts out, “What thehellis this music? Youdriveto this? I would fall asleep and swerve off the road. Or sink into despair, U-turn, and go back to wherever I came from.”
“It’s broody indie.”
“Yeah. I get that. But how the hell is thatdrivingmusic?”
I glance over at her. “You know,” I say. “I got the impression from your divorce proceedings that you were?—”
“A doormat?” she asks, and this time when I sneak a glimpse, she’s glaring. “Meek? Weak? Pathetic?”
“I didn’t say any of that.”
“You thought it.”
“Actually,” I say, “I didn’t.”
