Lone Star

“With Blake?” Chloe sat up. She was horrified.

“No, with Martyn.”

“Who?”

“Stop it. Be serious.”

Chloe stopped it. How to tell Hannah that she was serious? Who the heck was Martyn? She hoped her pitiable ignorance didn’t show on her face. She scrunched it up knowingly, trussed her eyebrows, nodded. “Why, um, do you have to break up with him?”

“He was going to give me money to go to Barcelona, because he knows I don’t have enough, but if Blake is going, he won’t give me any money.”

Chloe blindly navigated the maze before her, hands out in front. “So don’t tell him Blake is going.” Who the hell was Martyn?!

“Except … he was going to meet us in Barcelona for a few days.”

Chloe weighed her words. “Martyn was going to meet us in Barcelona for a few days?” As if repetition would make Hannah’s words make sense.

“I didn’t want him to, Chloe, believe me, but I don’t have enough money to go, and I thought, what’s a couple of days, when we’re going to be there two weeks, right?”

“Martyn was going to meet us in Barcelona.”

“Don’t be mad. I was going to tell you he was coming. I was just waiting for the right time. Please don’t be mad.” Hannah briefly leaned her head into Chloe’s head, and then clapped her hands business-like. “No, that’s it. I’m going to end it. It’s for the best,” she said. “He is getting too serious, anyway. We need to break up, not go on vacation.”

“Martyn was going to meet us in Barcelona.” Chloe couldn’t get past this one point.

“He doesn’t want me to go without him. He’s afraid I’m going to meet someone, have a fling. He is intensely jealous.”

“Martyn is jealous.”

“Yes, so jealous.”

“Um, does Martyn know you have a boyfriend? Maybe he can be jealous of him.” Poor Blake.

“He’s not worried about him.”

“Well, you’re not, why should he be? So this Martyn is afraid you’ll have a fling in Europe with someone other than your boyfriend?” Chloe opened her hands. “What kind of girl does he think you are?”

“Can you please, please be serious? I know I need to break up with him. But then where do I get the money to go?” She wrung her hands, twisted her sore and bitten fingers. The usually unruffled Hannah looked ruffled.

Chloe was afraid to ask the follow-up question. There were so many questions, she couldn’t sort out their order of priority. She was thinking of Barcelona. But she was also thinking about Blake. “Hannah, if you have someone else, why do you string Blake along? Why don’t you break it off with him, and do what you want?”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Chloe,” Hannah said. “Did you not hear me just now when I said I was going to end it with Martyn?”

Chloe heard all right. “Do you even still want to go to Barcelona?”

“More than anything.”

“With Blake?”

“I’d prefer to go with just you.” Hannah pulled Chloe in for a hug. “Like we planned. Do you think we can talk Blake out of going?”

Chloe shrugged. “Perhaps you can dissuade him by telling him if he goes, then your secret lover won’t give you any money for Europe.”

In a humph Hannah turned her back to Chloe.

“I thought you had money,” Chloe said quietly. “I thought we were both saving.”

“We were. We are. But Chloe, I’m not you. I can’t walk around in the same extra-large T-shirt. I need spring clothes, I need summer clothes.”

“What do you want, a new skirt or Barcelona?”

“Both.”

“You don’t have money for both. Pick.”

“Both!”

Hannah’s back curved into a ball.

Chloe sighed, kneading her comforting palm between Hannah’s shoulder blades. “Who’s this Martyn anyway?”

“Don’t joke.”

“I mean”—Chloe cleared her throat—“how come he has money to burn?”

“He’s a professor. He’s got plenty of money.”

Martyn, Martyn, Martyn. Chloe tried to remember the first names of their teachers at the Academy. In any case, Hannah said professor, not teacher. Jumping up, Hannah started to pace and talk, began to tell Chloe things she couldn’t hear. It occurred to her that perhaps this was the reason she didn’t know about Martyn. Hannah told her, but Metallica was playing and through the strands of living life their way, Chloe had missed it.

Hannah grabbed Chloe’s hands. “What am I going to do? It’ll crush him.”

“Do you want to break up with him?”

“I have to. He’s become way too emotionally involved with me.”

“What about Blake?”

“Will you forget Blake! I have a real problem and you bringing him up every five seconds is not helping me.”

Chloe tried to regroup, find something else to say that sounded less hectory. “Um, how long has the Martyn thing been going on?”

“October.”

“Last October?”

“Yes, since my college interview. Chloe, why are you being so obtuse? Is this deliberate? Is this your way of judging me? You’re making it hard to talk to you.”

Now Chloe remembered. She had driven Hannah to Bangor for her University of Maine admission interview. Chloe had been accepted without an interview so she waited outside while Hannah went in. Hannah walked out with a man, who shook her hand or, rather, took her hand and held it. Hannah introduced Chloe to a very tall, grandfatherly gentleman, soft spoken and modest in manner. Surely that wasn’t Martyn?