We Are Inevitable Gayle Forman (simple ebook reader TXT) 📖

Ira skip down the stairs. He has seemed happier of late, though I’m not sure whether it’s the store renovation or the meds he began taking or Bev cheering him up. Maybe all three.

“Speaking of boning, how’d it go with Hannah last night?”

“Good,” I say. “We kissed. For real.”

I expect this news to have an impact, but Chad’s attention has been diverted to his phone, which is vibrating with incoming texts. “How was it?” he asks absently as he taps a message back.

How to describe that kiss? Or the one that followed when she dropped me off? Those two kisses kept me awake most of the night.

“I mean, I’ve kissed people before, obviously, but it’s never felt like that.”

“Uh-huh,” Chad says, cracking up at his phone.

“It was like, I don’t know, we were inhabiting each other.”

“Cool, cool,” he replies, still texting.

“If you’d like to be alone with your phone, I can leave.”

“Sorry, dawg.” Chad puts down his phone. “I’m happy for you. Bring it in for a hug.”

“Uh, okay.” As I awkwardly hug Chad, I feel his phone vibrate with more incoming texts.

“Who keeps texting you?”

“Jax.”

“Oh, right. You drove back together. Was it weird?”

“Why would it be weird?”

“Because you don’t know each other very well.”

“It wasn’t weird. It was the opposite of weird. Like we just started talking and didn’t stop.”

“What’d you talk about?”

“Everything. Music. Love. Bathrooms. Sex.” Chad’s cheeks now go pink as his phone buzzes with yet another text. He reads it and literally laughs out loud. “Anyhow, we kinda went there right away. Like, I talk a lot with other paras about, you know, the sex thing, when the big head’s outa sync with the little head. Jax has had different experiences, and they had an interesting take about not trying too hard to connect one to the other. You know, letting yourself be turned on up here, or down there, and maybe it’s okay if it doesn’t happen at the same time.”

“You packed a lot into a two-hour drive.”

“So did you from the sounds of it.” Chad grins. “You and Hannah. It’s for real?”

“Yeah. Crazy as it seems, I think we’re inevitable. Like the good kind of inevitable.”

“There’s a bad kind?” Chad asks.

“Most inevitable things are bad. Death. Extinction.”

“Taxes,” Chad adds.

“Exactly.”

“Jax said Hannah hasn’t really been involved with anyone since she got sober. So she must be really into you.”

I’m so chuffed by the “involved with” and “really into you” parts that it takes a second for me to process the rest of what he said.

“Sober?”

“Oh, shit. Jax told me not to tell. They already goofed by telling me. Because it’s meant to be anonymous. It just came up because they were in rehab together.”

My ears start to ring. No. Chad must’ve got it wrong. I must have heard it wrong.

“Rehab?”

“Yeah. That’s how they met.”

The club sodas. Hannah and her Saturday meeting. The twelve-step lingo. Suddenly it all clicks into place.

Hannah is an addict.

I’ve fallen in love with an addict.

“Excuse me,” I say to Chad. I run upstairs, without thinking, straight into Sandy’s room. As if he’s going to be there. As if he’s going to tell me what to do. I take a deep breath but all I get is more silence.

Tuesdays with Morrie

“Fudge a duck on a hot sidewalk!” Ike yells as he wipes a spray of espresso grounds off his face. “Pardon my French.”

“Not sure that’s French,” Garry says.

“Gaga three, Ike nil,” Richie says.

“Gaga four,” Chad says, peering into a box of books. “Aaron, Eat, Pray, Love . . . Don’t tell me. Fiction.”

“Memoir,” I reply absently, checking out the window for Lou, who is supposed to be bringing by a couple of big spenders today.

“But it was a movie,” Chad complains.

“And before that it was a memoir,” I snap. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

“Yeesh,” Richie says. “What’s eating you?”

“He’s obsessing about his girlfriend,” Chad replies.

“I’m not obsessing, and she’s not my girlfriend,” I say. “I mean, I don’t know what we are yet.”

“Yesterday you said you were inevitable,” Chad says.

That was before I found out she was an addict. Now I need more information. For instance, what kind of addict is she? Is she the Sandy kind, which is to say cruel, manipulative, destructive? No. She can’t be. I never would have fallen in love with a Lucy.

“Dagnabbit!” Ike yells as a blast of steam hisses from the wand. He lifts his wrist, covered in angry welts, to his mouth. “This darn thing makes no sense.”

“You sure it’s not the plumbing?” Garry asks.

“The plumbing’s perfect,” Ike replies with a snarl. “It’s the darn-tootin’ machine. It’s like everything’s the reverse of where you think it should be, like how they drive on the wrong side of the road in other places.”

“Pretty sure in Italy they drive on the right side, same as us,” Garry says.

“Now how do you know that?” Ike demands.

“From The Italian Job.”

“I don’t know why you won’t watch a YouTube tutorial,” Richie says.

Ike’s look is withering. “I don’t need a computer to teach me how to work a machine.”

Chad pulls more books out of the box. “Hey, Aaron, what’s the deal with these?”

And how am I supposed to get this information? Just casually ask, Hey, Hannah, did you ruin your family’s life? Did you pull the football out from under your little brother time and time again?

“Aaron,” Chad asks. “What’s the deal with all these copies?”

And why didn’t she tell me? We made a deal not to lie to each other. Isn’t this a whopper?

“Aaron,” Chad repeats. “Why do you have so many copies of the same book?”

“Huh?”

Chad holds up a stack of Tuesdays with Morrie.

“Oh, that must be left over from when Mitch Albom did an author visit.”

“Mitch Albom was here?” Garry asks. “When?”

“Ages ago. I was a kid but apparently it was my mom’s greatest triumph. He was huge by then, and she met him at a trade show, and she just asked him if he’d come to our store. And