Re: [Ren's apartment.]
She smiled when he said 'alright,' because she didn't want to keep insisting on disliking Louis, but it was really important to her that he understand that she was going to dislike Louis, and there wasn't anything at all he could do about it. And it wasn't just the beer, the buzz, the slur that made her brain feel kind of more than a little bit fuzz. It was loyalty, and Hannah was loyal to a fault, and it was just another one of those things that couldn't be shifted or changed.
And she wanted to know about the men, the boys, the people who he spent time with and who were important to him. She wanted to know he was okay, and she wanted to know he was being taken care of and cared for.
She leaned, and she took a sip of the new beer. She still wasn't very accustomed to the taste, but she liked the fizz on her tongue, and she thought she might maybe come to like the taste. She didn't think Amy liked beer, and maybe she didn't like it as a result, but she wanted to like it. It wasn't as nice as champagne, but it was golden and fizzy, and that was kind of close.
He spoke, and she thought about spotlights and stages, and she thought she could understand. Wanting something steady, something safe, something persistent, it made sense. She could see how Ren would crave that. It was really, really easy to see how he might be attracted to it. She'd learned a long, long time ago that Ren wanted normalcy. She'd never told him about herself because of that, so she understood. "Are the other men sparks and flames?" she asked, because it seemed that was the contradiction, the contrast between them and Louis, and she tipped her head to the side, thinking and curious and cornflower bright. "Do you think you were interested in Louis because he was things you want in your life? I thought attraction was this thing in your belly, this feeling where you think you can't ever get enough of someone. I thought your heart hurt with it, but it sounds like you maybe liked Louis because he was safe." She was curious about it, and even the statements had upticks at the ends, as if they were questions. "It doesn't sound like Heathcliff and Cathy," she finally said, because he would understand that. "Do you think it would've been enough?"
She put her beer back on the coffeetable. She thought there was a lot to Ren. She thought maybe there was a lot of dark, a lot he was hiding from, a lot that he hid from himself. But she wasn't sure a spotlight was what he really needed, and maybe it showed a little bit on her face. "What if you let go?"