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“What do you think?” she asked, and Sam glanced up from her phone immediately. It was an utterly innocuous thing to say while standing in front of a fitting room mirror, but there was something in Hannah’s tone; her voice had turned low at its edges in a verbal frown, an audible testament to her anxiety, and beneath it, all of it, there was the start of a waver.
Sam couldn’t let that stand.
“Ow owww!” she teased, scrunching her nose and managing her cheesiest grin. “Hottie with a body alert!”
Instantly, the crease between Hannah’s eyebrows smoothed out. Her eyes flit from her reflection, to middle space, to Sam behind her, and while it took her expression a second to buffer, her shock quickly gave way to red-faced delight. “Oh my God, shut up,” she said, laughing that time, and when she turned back to the mirror, smoothing the dress over her sides, her posture was different.
That was that. Sam went back to her phone. No big deal, she thought to herself, it’s what any good friend would do.
***
“Do you think I should get a tattoo?” It had come out of nowhere, shocking her out of her concentration. The room had been silent up until then, only the rustle of pages flipping or the occasional exasperated sigh serving as proof of life. Her brain had been so fixated on finals, on passing her horrendous chemistry class, that it wasn’t until Hannah spoke up again that she was able to make sense of what she’d heard. “I mean, they’re cool, right? Rebellious?”
Sam glanced up from her textbook, eyebrows high as they could go. Hannah wasn’t looking her way, though, leaving her with little more than a profile view as she poked and prodded at the skin of her arm. Her lips were pursed, but her gaze was focused, imagining something that wasn’t there. She’d already decided—Sam could see that plain as day—she just hadn’t realized it yet.
“I don’t know…” she sighed, drawing her words out and out and out to make Hannah turn. “Not really fair to the rest of us, is it? I mean, if you’re the one with the brains, the brawn, the stunning good looks, and the tattoo, think about how lame the rest of us look in comparison!”
“Oh please.” Hannah snorted a surprised little laugh, and the next thing she knew, there was a pillow being tossed her way.
“I’m being so serious,” she said as she snatched it out of the air, keeping it from toppling her stack of notes. “You have too many natural advantages. If you make yourself any cooler, I’m doomed—do you get that? I am doomed.”
She meant it too, she realized as she lowered her eyes to her book again, tucking the pillow beneath her elbows as she did; the thing was, she was only starting to understand how much she meant it.
***
“He’s never going to look at me like that, is he?” And though it broke her heart to hear the way Hannah’s voice shook, Sam had to admit the tiny sliver of rage in her voice came as a relief after all that sobbing. Her face was red and patchy with tears, her makeup staining her cheeks (not to mention Sam’s sleeve), but at least her eyes were open again, and at least it seemed her breathing was beginning to even out. “I’m just, like, embarrassing myself, aren’t I? Over and over and over…”
Spoke too soon. Her body heaved like she was about to be sick, and then she folded back into her arm, her breath hot on her skin; her tears somehow hotter.
Sam exhaled hard through her nose, rocking slightly as she held her weight and cradled the back of her head, trying not to let herself feel as scooped out and raw as she did. She wasn’t the one whose heart had been broken tonight, after all. She wasn’t the one who’d come to Prom with dreams of Mike Munroe sweeping her off her feet only to catch him cupping Emily’s face in his hands, a lazy—if wolfish—smirk twisting his lips.
Without having to look, she reached up behind her, grabbing a wad of paper towels from the bathroom dispenser. Fixing makeup wasn’t her forte, but she’d been known to mop a face or two in her time, so that’s what she set about doing, drying her cheeks and patting dry her chin.
“The only one who should be embarrassed is him,” she heard herself saying, though there must’ve been something wrong with the acoustics in the bathroom because she never let herself speak with that much anger. “I mean it, Hannah. If he’d rather keep beating his head against the wall, getting in the same arguments and breaking up every two weeks, then that’s on him, not you. You’re smart, you’re kind, you’re gorgeous, and if he can’t see that, then he’s either blind or the stupidest person on Earth. You don’t need that, either way. You’re better than that.” She exhaled hard through her nose. Again. “You’re so much better than that.”
Hannah swallowed hard enough that she could hear her throat click. She took a shaky breath, tried to nod, then threw her arms around her and simply held tight.
Sam hugged her back, of course she did, but as she set her head against the mirror and caught sight of their reflections, she caught sight of something else, too. The color in her own cheeks. The drawn lines of her own expression. The truth.
***
“I’m just swearing love off forever, that’s what I’m going to do,” she said, sprawled starfish-style on the bed, her glasses off and her eyes a million miles away. Sam didn’t buy it, not for one single second, but in that moment, it sure seemed like Hannah did, and that was what mattered. “I’m just done. Done, done, done. I can’t take it anymore. I’m just going to be alone forever, and then I’ll die.”
Tying her hair back with one final twist of her wrist, Sam let out a snort of laughter. “Glad you’re not being dramatic about it or anything,” she teased, sitting on the edge of the bed as she picked a piece of lint from her pajama pants. “Here I was, dreading the worst, but nope, you’re being super normal.” There she reached over, playfully poking Hannah’s cheek. “Proud of you!”
She swatted her away, groaning and moaning and lolling her head back until it hung halfway over the side of the bed, like sending all the blood rushing there would somehow ease the sting of her heartbreak. “I’m so serious, Sam.”
“I see that.”
“Maybe I’ll just…run away.”
“Original.”
“Into the woods.”
“Rustic.”
“Where no one will ever find me again.”
“Orrr…” she said, flopping over until they were lying side by side, “you can stay right here, sleep it off, and stuff yourself with my special banana pancakes in the morning.”
For a long, long time, Hannah was quiet. Then, as she knew she would, she propped herself up on her elbows, turning her grief-stricken (if hopeful) gaze on her. “Will there be strawberries to go on top?”
Sam nudged her, set her head on her shoulder. “There will be strawberries to go on top.” Hannah smiled, small but unmistakable, and that was enough. That was all it took. The knot that had been weighing her stomach down for the past who-knew-how-long began to lessen as Sam smiled back, and the two of them rested against one another, comfortable and warm.
“I love you,” Hannah sighed, snuggling closer, and what else was there to say?
“I love you too,” Sam admitted, closing her eyes to focus on her other senses, the smell and feel and warmth of her.
“I know,” she said, but she didn’t. She didn’t have the first idea. Not really.
But that’s okay, Sam thought to herself, smiling through the ache bruising her own heart, it’s what any good friend would do.