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

Probably staying out of the way while my mother cooks.”

“Can you hang out for a while?”

“You want to fool around on FaceTime at ten in the morning?”

“Definitely.” I pause. “But I thought today we could hang in person.”

The line goes quiet. In the background the coffee maker gurgles and hisses. “Where are you?” she asks.

“In Phoenix.”

“You flew to Arizona?”

“Drove, actually.”

“Why?

“To see you.” In the ensuing silence, my phone beeps with two new incoming texts. I flick them away without looking. “So when can I see you?”

“Aaron,” she says in a measured tone. “I’ll be home in three days.”

“I know, but I’m here. I want to see you. Don’t you want to see me?”

“I do want to see you. But back at home.”

“Hannah, I drove thirty hours to see you.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“I know! But I’m here. Surprise!”

Hannah sighs.

“I really want to see you.” I try to sound bouncy, a guy in love doing something romantic and spontaneous. But I can’t even convince myself, let alone her. “I need to see you,” I add, voice breaking, unmasking my desperation.

Another sigh. But then:

“Come on over.”

I get lost on the way to Hannah’s house, which is in some gated community. I mistakenly pull into Desert Pines Estates and Sandpiper Estates before I finally see Hannah waiting at the gates of Mirage Estates. The guard lifts the rail and Hannah slides into the seat next to me, but when I turn to kiss her, she is saying something in Spanish to the guard and so I wind up kissing mostly hair.

“I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” I say.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“That’s why I’m here.” I paste over the awkward silence that follows with a jolly “Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Thanksgiving is tomorrow.”

“Happy early Thanksgiving. Here.” I grab a melting maple bar I bought at an earlier pit stop.

She shoves the candy into her hoodie pocket and looks into the back seat.

“What is all that?”

“Oh, nothing. I mean, it’s our old porch swing.”

“You drove your porch swing down to Phoenix?”

“It was sitting by the side of the road and I couldn’t leave it there, so here it is . . .” I trail off. “Do you want it?”

“No,” she says. “But I do want to know what you’re doing here.”

“I told you. I came to see you.”

“You drove a thousand miles to see me?”

“Fifteen hundred, but who’s counting?”

“Why?”

“Do I need a reason?”

“Yeah, you kind of do. This is weird, Aaron. I’ve been gone two days. And I’ll be home in three.”

“Look. I know it’s spur-of-the-moment, but my family doesn’t really do Thanksgiving anymore and I had a few days to kill and I thought I’d come down here and see you. So we could get to know each other more. I could see where you grew up. Where you went to school. That kind of thing.”

“You drove down here to get to know me better?”

“Yeah!”

She mulls this for a bit. “Okay,” she says. “Pull a U-turn and go back out the way you came.”

“I thought you lived here?”

“No, Aaron. I live in Washington. My parents live here.”

Right. They probably don’t know Hannah is involved with me yet. I hadn’t thought about that.

“Anyhow, you came down here to get to know me, so that’s what we’ll do. Go out to the street and turn right.”

I do as she says and we’re back on the wide boulevard full of landscapers trimming the flowering hedges. Her tape is still playing on the stereo but suddenly I’m a little embarrassed, so I turn it off and we drive in silence past several more gated communities, past several more strip malls, until she tells me to slow down. “See that?” Hannah points to an anonymous storefront. “That’s where I did modeling class when I was younger.”

“You took modeling classes?”

“For six years. It taught me good posture, how to saunter down a catwalk, and which diuretics will help keep your goal weight.”

The edge in her voice is subtle but unmistakable. “Are you mad at me?”

“Take a left at the light,” she says, ignoring the question. We drive in silence, my mind spinning with what to say to make it better.

Hannah points to an adobe building with a massive parking lot and a marquee reading HILLSDALE LIONS. “This is where I went to high school.” She points to the football field. “That’s the field where I cheered at games.” She points to an adjacent cinder-block building. “And there’s the locker room where I gave my first blow job to my boyfriend, who was, naturally, on the football team. He told all his friends and that got me the nickname Hannah Blew. Which I pretended to be cool with. I still run into guys in town who call me Hannah Blew. Good times. Okay, now follow the signs for 101.” She points to a highway entrance.

“You are mad at me,” I say as I merge onto the highway.

“Why would I be mad at you? You came here to get to know me, so I’m giving you the super cuts of my life.”

We drive a few miles in silence, then she guides me off a ramp and down a dusty road full of mature oak trees. “See that one?” she says, pointing to a tree indistinguishable from the rest. “I wrapped my dad’s car around that tree.”

“I thought your accident was on the way home from a ski trip,” I say.

“The accident where I shattered my hip was on a drive home from Taos. This is when I crashed my father’s car while high on Adderall.”

“Oh,” I say, swallowing. “I didn’t realize you had two accidents.”

“I’m not sure why,” Hannah replies coolly. “I told you about it at the NA meeting. Were you even listening?”

“Of course I was.”

“What did I say?”

“I didn’t memorize it.”

“I don’t need it verbatim, Aaron, but what was the gist of it?”

I scramble to come up with something that will appease her, that will undo the damage I’ve seemingly done. But I can’t remember anything. It’s