Chapter Text
The house is humming at standard capacity for a Friday night, people Hannah knows, vaguely recognizes, and complete strangers all streaming through in equal measure. It’s something that still takes some getting used to for her, even after all this time—the atmosphere of boundless accessibility the boys have cultivated in their home. Hannah’s opinion of whether that represents a warm demonstration of community or the complete recklessness unique to men varies by the day.
“Hey G, how did Wellsy like your big announcement?” Logan’s slightly inebriated voice cuts above the crowd.
She watches as Garrett ungracefully gestures across his throat for Logan to shut up but the damage is done. Hannah squints at him with confusion. “Announcement?”
Logan at least has the decency to look chastised as he literally reverses out of the conversation and back into the living room. Garrett gives one last death stare to the back of his head before schooling his features into nonchalance and turning back to her. “I’ll tell you later,” he reassures with an easy smile and a squeeze of her elbow.
She figures it can’t be bad, not with the way Logan proposed it, but her unease lingers for the rest of the night.
They’re picking up bottles three hours later, wordlessly working the room back into normalcy together when it comes back to her. “Oh hey, I’m still waiting to hear what this big announcement is you have for me.”
Garrett stares at her with contemplation for a beat before appearing to make up his mind, setting the trash bag full of bottles down with a heavy clink. He crosses around the island to her, reaching into his pocket for his wallet as he does.
“Alright, well I was planning something a little more festive than 3:00 a.m. during trash pickup but Logan ruined my vibe.”
Hannah is still watching with intrigue and slightly guarded suspicion. For a moment her breath catches and she contemplates if she’s about to receive a marriage proposal, but logic quickly takes over. It’s not such a bad thought for someday. But they both innately know not yet.
Instead, he pulls out a tightly folded piece of paper and slides it across the island towards her.
“I figured since neither of us were going home for Christmas, we deserved something better than sitting around campus for a week.”
Hannah tentatively unfolds the paper, ears trying to keep listening to Garrett as her eyes begin absorbing the information in front of them. Four days at an all-inclusive resort. A flight to Punta Cana. Her vision swims a bit and she looks back up at him, hoping for any further insight. He rubs a hand across the back of his neck sheepishly. He’s still smiling, still clearly excited for her to receive this surprise, but she can also see his easy confidence start to drain slightly as he awaits her response.
“We’ve had a tough semester, both of us, and I just wanted to do something special for us. Something different.” He’s still explaining, rambling slightly really, and she knows her silence is not helping.
Hannah feels like she has started this conversation a step behind, still taking in the initial information while Garrett waits for her to move on and react. But she can’t, at least not the way he wants. Because all she sees immediately are the many zeros that must be attached to the cost of this ‘something different,’ and all the money she will not be making by working over break. She turns her back to him momentarily, still staring at the itinerary and trying to formulate a response. Evidently it has now become officially too long and she can hear the apprehension in his voice.
“Can you please say something? This isn’t exactly the reaction I was expecting,” he lets out with a breathy laugh that sounds just a little too forced.
She turns back to face him, softened immediately by the vulnerability in his eyes but unable to let him off the hook just yet. Not on this. “I really wish you would’ve talked to me about this first,” is what she manages to get out. “This is kind of a big deal and it might have been nice to discuss it first.”
His brow furrows and surprise flits across his features. “I guess it is,” he begins gently, “but that’s why I wanted to surprise you with it. Just some time to ourselves, out of the cold,” he offers with persuasion. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask where you wanted to go.”
Hannah lets out a humorless laugh of disbelief. “That’s not the point of this.” She throws her hands up briefly before bringing them back down at her sides helplessly. “The point is I don’t want your money, Graham.”
The words come out harsher and sharper than she intended and she can see the immediate impact they have on him. His eyebrows shoot up, surprise and hurt taking root in his eyes.
They’re both well-attuned with each other’s last names as nicknames, but this is not that. The use of it now, totally devoid of flirtation or affection, settles low and heavy in the room.
He can’t do anything but stare back in alarm. “Well I’m not trying to ‘give you my money,’ Hannah,” he quotes with derision. “I was just trying to do a nice thing and get us a break.”
“Garrett, I need to work when I have extra opportunities. Not to mention, I cannot possibly afford to split this with you equally or even adequately. How do you think that makes me feel?” Her throat is beginning to get tight and she can’t believe they’re having this conversation over a sea of party debris in essentially the middle of the night.
“I don’t need you to split it with me!” Indignance takes back over momentarily “It’s a gift, Hannah. Because I can and I love you and it’s our first Christmas.” His voice breaks ever so slightly at the end and her chest clenches uncomfortably.
She can’t respond, at a loss for words to make him understand her perspective on this. Everything is so simple to him—if you have money, spend it. She knows beyond a doubt that he doesn’t care about their financial imbalance. Knows without question he would never weaponize it against her or question her independence. But to Hannah, those things cannot co-exist. This kind of indulgence is not her. And it can’t be them, at least not at this stage in her life. It is not a perspective he has ever had to live with, which is the problem. And she can’t seem to make him see it.
Evidently her silence stretches on too long again because he continues. “Look, if it upsets you this much, I’ll just cancel it and we don’t have to go, okay?” She can hear an air of desperation seeping into his words. He’s in fix-it mode now, looking for an exit to backpedal through. His apathy about a several-thousand dollar purchase ignites her ire again.
“Do you hear yourself right now? You’re just going to cancel it, no big deal? I’m sure it is too late for a refund, which doesn’t seem to matter to you and is the whole problem here.”
He’s looking down at his hands and the counter, jaw flexing with tension as his mind works to slow down and rewind this conversation. “I feel like I can’t really say anything correct here,” he murmurs finally.
“Don’t do that,” she insists immediately. “Don’t act like I’m being crazy and irrational.”
“I’m not,” he presses back. “You’re not crazy and your feelings are valid. I just don’t know what to say to make this better. Apparently I’ve fucked this all up spectacularly somehow and all I was trying to do was something nice, to show you how special these have months have been to me.”
They’ve been special to her too, of course. The most special months of her life. But she doesn’t have several thousand dollars lying around to prove it. That reality sits shamefully and inescapably in her chest. She feels emotion taking over, her very rational objections suddenly being drowned out by defensiveness and impulse, but she can’t stop it.
“Yeah, I got that. But somehow it feels like all of your gestures at ‘doing something nice’ always seem to include spending obscene amounts of money.”
The room is suddenly deathly still, all the oxygen sucked out of it by her words. Garrett stares at her in stunned silence. Now hurt is definitely casting a defining pall over his face. He looks quickly down at his hands clutching the edge of the counter again. “I don’t think that’s fair,” he whispers back, though it lacks conviction even to his own ears.
It’s not, she knows deep down. Garrett does the small, thoughtful things every day to show he cares. But the gifts and “gestures” are getting out of control, too. “People do ornaments for their first Christmas, Garrett. Or carriage rides. Not 1600 mile flights.” Hannah tosses the paper back onto the counter in frustration, growing irritated with the sunny, “Where relaxation finds you!” tagline staring back at her from the heading.
“Can I ask you something?” He asks after several fraught moments pass. She meets his eyes for the first time since this spiral began, and she can see the anxiety in them now. The fear that his misstep is spiraling into something worse. Something chronic. He takes her silence as an invitation to continue.
“Were you planning for us to spend Christmas together?”
She’s taken aback by his question, by the vulnerability in it. She hasn’t gotten that far, barely able to put one foot in front of the other sometimes lately between classes, finances, work, writing, and trying to make as much time for their relationship in her days as she can. It makes sense to her that they would, in an abstract way, but there hasn’t exactly been time for daydreaming lately.
“I don’t know, Garrett,” she answers honestly and with resignation. “I honestly haven’t given it much thought.”
It’s the wrong answer, she knows immediately. One that places this trip not just in the category of decisions he shouldn’t have made, but things she possibly doesn’t want to do. That’s something very different and words that crush the last of his fight.
Garrett yanks the inflammatory sheet off the island and crumples it in his fist on his way up the stairs. “Well let me know what you decide.” It is certainly not an invitation to follow.