We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman (read aloud txt) 📕

his proced—” I stop myself. This is none of Penny’s damn business. “So you didn’t come to check in on us?”

“Oh, Aaron, I know every move every person makes in this town, whether or not I stop into your store.” She smiles. “I stopped in for cake. I love all sweet things. Cake. Pie. Real estate acquisitions.” She gives her fingers a dainty lick. “I’ll see you December first.”

Once Penny leaves, I bound back to Hannah. “Look, Aaron, I can see this isn’t a good time.”

“It is. I swear. You have my full attention. Now, where were we?”

“You were saying you don’t care that I’m an addict and I was saying you should care.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant is . . .” I stop to gather my thoughts so I don’t mess this up again. In the silence, my phone starts ringing. It’s Bart. Shit.

“Do you need to get that?” she asks coolly.

“I’m sorry. I really should.” I pick up. Bart says he’s ready.

“This will take five minutes. Less than five,” I promise her. “Then we can get out of here, go somewhere a little less hectic.”

“Maybe we should do this later.”

“No!” My voice pitches up. I will not lose Hannah. “Everything’s fine! Just give me five more minutes.”

I race down to Bart. I charge him a flat twenty dollars apiece, even though some must be more valuable. We hide the records under the porch swing and carry them up the stairs, through the store.

“Goodbye, old friend,” Ira says to the swing in a raspy voice.

I open the door for Bart and call out to Hannah, “I’m all yours now.”

A slice of Angela Silvestri’s crumb cake sits on the railing. But Hannah? She’s gone.

Moneyball

A few hours later, Chad shows up, his mood as ebullient as mine is morose. “Oh, man. I had the best afternoon. Jax found this hiking trail that’s wheelchair accessible. I haven’t been hiking in years, and damn, my arms ache. Then we had lunch. They bake bread. And it was still warm, and we had that with some venison jerky and marionberry jam. Best meal I ever had. One of the best afternoons I’ve ever had.” He finally notices me. “And how was your day?”

“How was my day?” Where to begin. Ike mastered Gaga and now the Lumberjacks are full steam ahead on café plans, even though I have ten days to raise eleven thousand dollars and my best option is Lou’s boss, but Lou won’t answer my texts. Oh, and I probably blew it with Hannah. “My day was shit.”

“I thought you were seeing Hannah today.”

“I was. I did.”

“Did something happen?”

“She thought I was in the program.”

“What program?”

“The program.” I lower my voice to a whisper though I’m not sure why. “For addicts.”

“Oh, you mean Narcotics Anonymous.”

NA? I was hoping she was more garden-variety AA-type addict.

“Does it matter?” Chad asks.

“Sandy was in NA.”

“Yeah. And so is Jax. And about a hundred other people I know. I mean, it’s a good thing.”

No. A good thing would be if they never started using in the first place. Everyone talks about how it’s not addicts’ fault, it’s a sickness, hereditary, like diabetes. But this is such a crock. Your eye color, your height, those are hereditary. Addiction is a choice, a choice Sandy made over and over again. Hey, here’s an easy way not to become an addict. Don’t take drugs!

“And being in recovery means they’re getting better,” Chad adds. “If you’re in NA, you’re not using.”

I think of Sandy. Not always the case. In fact, almost never the case.

“Aaron, the fact that Hannah Crew is even slightly into you is like a miracle. Don’t blow it on a technicality.”

As usual, Chad’s right. “I think I already blew it.”

“So unblow it.”

“How? What do I do?”

He opens his arms wide, as if greeting the world. “Whatever it takes.”

What it takes, Hannah tells me when I call her up to apologize, is for me to go with her. To an NA meeting.

“A meeting?” I ask, trying to sound open-minded.

“I’m the lead speaker.” Her voice is steely and unreadable. “It seems like an opportune time to put all our cards on the table.”

“Aren’t NA meetings typically more of a second-date-type thing?” I joke to mask how little I want to do this. When Sandy was sober, he’d go to two, sometimes three meetings a day, spewing quotes from the Big Book like a zealot, which would have been obnoxious enough if he didn’t keep relapsing. Or if after he relapsed a few times he had the humility to at least stop proselytizing. But he didn’t.

“I don’t think anything about us so far is typical,” Hannah says, her voice warming. “And if this is gonna be my first sober relationship, I wanna do it right.”

“So we’re gonna be in a relationship, are we?”

“Slow your roll, boy,” she says, but I can hear the smile in her voice. “We can decide what we are after the meeting.”

The next morning, I do a sneak attack on Lou, calling him early, from the landline.

“Hello,” he says in a sleepy voice.

“Lou, it’s Aaron.”

“Hey.” I hear him yawn. “Didn’t recognize the number.”

“Calling on our landline.”

“People still have those?”

“You worship vinyl, so don’t judge.”

“Fair point.” He pauses. “How’d it go with Bart?”

“Good, but not good enough.”

“Okay, how short are you? I’ll send some other guys.”

“I don’t want other guys. I want one guy. Your boss.”

The line goes so quiet I think the call dropped. But then Lou whimpers a no.

“What do you have against him?”

“He’s the worst kind of vulture, swooping in to buy whatever he’s heard is cool, thereby sucking all the cool out of it. He got rich turning artists’ lofts in South Seattle into condos. Then he got richer corporatizing the weed dispensaries. And now he’s into vinyl. He’ll ruin it.”

“How can he ruin vinyl?”

“Trust me. He can.” Lou pauses. “You ever read that book Moneyball?”

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