When We're Thirty Casey Dembowski (the chimp paradox .TXT) 📖

vacation didn’t sound so bad. No parents, no work, no responsibilities. Yeah, she could definitely use a honeymoon.

The clock on her phone flashed eight, and at the same time came that distinctive knock. She should’ve recognized it on Thursday. Will had come up with a coded knock for Hannah and Kate their junior year. It let the girls know they had approximately thirty seconds to get decent before he came in. Hannah and Kate had come up with funny retorts to the knock that year, but she couldn’t remember any. She stopped in front of the door, gripping her coffee mug, and took a calming breath. If she opened the door, her path would divert from the expected. She could turn down the offer, nullify the pact, but underneath all the apprehension, a spark of excitement remained. Marriage was always a crapshoot. Maybe if more people thought it through practically instead of emotionally, fewer marriages would fail. Maybe she and Will were batshit crazy.

She shook her head, smiling. Only one way to find out.

Standing outside her door, a tray of coffees in one hand and a brown bag with what she hoped was an egg everything bagel with a veggie smear in the other, Will looked like a memory. He greeted her warmly, but the set of his shoulders, the tightness in his cheeks, and the dulling brown of his usually bright eyes showed his anxiety. Whatever Hannah felt for Will—nostalgia, love, or attraction—the rambling hello he offered as he handed her the coffee intensified those feelings. The Will she knew didn’t get rattled or nervous. Even with their former closeness, Hannah had only been granted glimpses behind the veil. But proposing couldn’t be easy, and most guys at least had years of a stable relationship backing them up. Will was flying by on his looks and the goodwill of old memories.

He stopped in the kitchen doorway, still clutching the paper bag. His eyes darted around the small space, stopping on Hannah every so often as she reached for plates and mugs. Every time their gazes met, she looked away, focusing on the plates, setting the table, or carefully pouring her coffee from the cheap paper cup into her mug. But she could still feel his gaze each time it passed over her. One of them had to say something. The conversation needed to be had, or it would be like this forever—awkward, confused, and energized. He had proposed. It should probably be him. But then again, she called him here. Hannah turned to him, ready to start the spiel she’d spent too much of the last hour going over, reminding herself that it was Will and a wedding, not peace talks between warring nations.

“You look like hell, Abbott,” he said, his true smile finally appearing. “What’s on your mind?”

She leaned across the table over the egg everything bagel with vegetable cream cheese. “Well, you see, this long-lost friend showed up at my door the other night with an engagement ring. Things got a bit murky after that.”

“Long-lost? Really?” He leaned forward as well. They mirrored each other from across the table, elbows against the hard surface, hands clasped in front of them, and expressions sarcastic.

Hannah rolled her eyes. They really were idiots. “Last time I saw you, you were dancing the horah at a wedding. If I’m not mistaken, you left with one of the bridesmaids before cake and didn’t even say goodbye.”

For a moment, his expression turned pensive, but then he smiled. “I’ll have you know I dated Valerie for three solid months.”

Hannah held up her hands. At least he knew her name. “Fine. An old friend turned up at my doorstep the other night with an engagement ring.” She toasted him with half of her bagel.

“Was it for you?”

Hannah chucked a piece of bagel at him. “Seriously, Will.”

“You’re really considering doing this?” His expression was amused yet surprised.

The hair on her arms stood up, and her shoulders tightened. “Should I not be?”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m stoked that you are considering marrying me, Abbott.”

Of course he would still call her that, a habit he’d fallen into after a frat row party two weeks into their friendship. She supposed there were worse things he could’ve called her—such as “Nana,” which was what Kate called her at her drunkest. It always started with “Hannah Banana,” but by the end of the night, she would just be “Nana”—not even the whole fruit.

“It’s just not your style,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “I expected to get laughed out of your building. Spontaneity was never your strong suit.”

Will’s definition of spontaneity fell more along the lines of spur-of-the-moment tattoos than random trips to Wawa. The muscles in her back unclenched a bit.

“You’re not a drug addict, a recovering alcoholic, or dying or anything, right?”

“We’re all dying, Abbott,” he said, his tone somber for a change. “But no, I am not actively dying. Nor am I addicted to anything harder than caffeine.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

He stood and took a lap around her small kitchen. “Now that that’s out of the way, do you have any other questions?”

The detailed mental questionnaire she had meticulously crafted disintegrated, each question dropping from her mind as she tried to recall it. Everything she wanted to know about his life in the last five years was replaced by one blinding need. “Why?”

Hannah watched Will pick at his fingernails, his eyes trained on what must have been the most interesting hangnail ever. It was becoming increasingly apparent that Hannah didn’t know this Will. He had changed since graduation, and it wasn’t simply growing up. Whatever the change was, it was rooted deep in him. There were still hints of the boy she had loved all those years ago, but there was a weariness to him too. It was as if all the fears he had and all the expectations he had to meet were crushing him.

“Why what?” he asked, leaning against the doorjamb.

There were so many whys,