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

“That’s adorable.”

Madison rolled back into a seated position. “You must know what it’s like. I mean, William’s kiss must have really been something for you to marry him so fast.”

Hannah blushed about five shades of red—of course Madison would fish for details. “Our first kiss was in college, but our second kiss...” Hannah paused. It was best to stick to the truth as much as possible. “It was actually kind of clunky and unexpected, but there was a spark.”

“Ah, the spark. Can’t deny it.”

“No, you can’t,” Hannah said, handing over the completed paperwork.

Madison looked over the paperwork. “You hurt your knee in a car accident, right?” Hannah nodded, and Madison wrote a few notes in the margins. “Did you know what grade the tear was?”

“Two?”

Madison scribbled another note. “Well, I think the key here is to properly build up the muscles around your knee, giving you a good foundation for healing. Since you haven’t had any official PT, we’ll start slow and see where your triggers are. We’ll meet once a week here, but you’ll have homework to do every day, and I will know if you don’t do it.”

Hannah laughed. Madison’s boss clearly wasn’t the only hard-ass on staff. “Homework. Got it.”

“All right, hop on that bike for a quick warm-up.”

Madison sat on the bike next to her, alternating between a slow cycle and resting her head against the handlebars.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Madison asked from her headrest.

“Sure.”

“I know you knew William before...” She waved at the open air in front of her. “But how did you just marry him without missing a beat?”

Hannah considered her answer. The truth and the lie, in this case, were the same—because it was Will. Will was and always had been her person. It was as simple and as complex as that.

“There was definitely a beat,” she said. “But Will and I, we had all these missed opportunities in college. Ones we didn’t even know about. Then he was there, standing in line for funnel cake, and it was like this part of myself fell back into place. And that was before it was ever romantic.”

“It couldn’t have been anything else,” Madison said, a wistful smile on her face.

Hannah shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. I mean, he was fresh off heartbreak, and I was in a relationship. It could’ve gone a different way, I suppose.”

“That didn’t scare you? His broken heart?”

Hannah had learned Madison was in love with love and fate and destiny. Otherwise, she would’ve suspected she was trying to pick apart the story, to find the flaw that would pull it all apart.

“I guess it scared me a little,” she said, glancing over at her future sister-in-law. “But we didn’t go from out-of-touch friends to lovers in an instant. And as we got closer and shared a bit more about our feelings for each other—from then and now—I knew Will could never use me as a rebound. We’re about more than that.”

“Clearly.” Madison smiled and went back to pedaling. “Pick up the pace a bit. Focus on how your knee feels.”

Hannah pedaled for a minute, training her thoughts on her injury. She hoped she remembered these answers. She’d have to fill Will in and make sure Kate understood the timeline of their supposed relationship too.

“Any pain?” Madison asked.

Hannah shook her head.

“Good. So, to be clear, you broke up with your boyfriend to be with Will?”

Hannah rolled her eyes at the intensity with which Madison had asked the question. Holding it in to focus on her job must have been killer.

“Yes and no,” Hannah said, aware she was treading a fine line and this story could go completely off the rails. “Brian and I had been ending almost since we started. When Will showed up, and I realized how I felt—how I never felt that way about Brian—it was an easy choice. And it’s not like I woke up with one boyfriend and went to bed with a different one. Even though everything happened so fast, it was still slow.”

“So, what? Like forty-eight hours before you jumped his bones?”

If only. They were closer to that in the week since they started sharing a bed. It had been agonizing. She felt every movement of his throughout the night. She woke up sweaty from vivid, mostly naked dreams to find the star of them with his arms wrapped around her, his bare chest warm against her back. The other night when he’d leaned in and kissed her goodnight, she had wanted to pull him down on top of her. He’d even lingered over the kiss, their bodies gravitating toward each other. Hannah felt her cheeks brighten at the memories. Another night, one with more drinks and less editing, and it might have gone another way. But they were carefully treading the line of uncomplicated for now.

Madison stared at her expectantly. Hannah tried to imagine their proposal in a more romantic fashion—one where it wasn’t so clearly platonic, where the lines were already blurred. They wouldn’t have waited very long, if at all. She met Madison’s gaze head-on. “Sixty-three-and-a-half hours.”

Chapter 24Hannah

The city was already awake, though the sun was barely rising on Central Park East. Hannah had gotten used to the relative quiet of Queens. She could go out for an early-morning jog, and the neighborhood would be stirring with her—teachers bustling to get to school, corporate types walking their dogs, and millennials like herself pounding the pavement. It was rarely quiet on Central Park East, but there was something nice about the scene outside her window. It was different than the one she had in Queens and different than the one she watched each night from work, and yet they all offered her the same comfort. It was her city; they were her people.

She sipped her coffee, letting the mix of vanilla and hazelnut draw her closer to being awake and warm. She burrowed deeper into her college hoodie. God, she wanted to be