OOM: Acknowledgement
When you send a guy an e-mail that basically, for all intents and purposes, asks him out, Hannah thinks it's not exactly unreasonable to expect a response. Even if the guy in question is in Kansas over the holidays. (But surely they have the internet in Kansas by now.)
Even if you don't get an answer, it seems like you should get an acknowledgment.
So, going on four days with no reply of any sort, Hannah's not quite sure what to think. Maybe the message got lost in the ether of the world wide web. Maybe it's not the sort of thing you put in an e-mail. Maybe the internet hasn't reached Kansas, after all.
Maybe he's just not that into her any more.
She's spent the afternoon at the desk in her room, supposedly finishing up her over break assignments, but actually trying to figure out what the hell she's supposed to say -- or not say -- to Sam tomorrow when she gets back to school.
At 7:30 her father sticks his head in her room and asks if she wants to go for ice cream. It's a tradition going back to kindergarten, ice cream on the night before going back to school, but they haven't observed it in a few years.
Amy's is crowded, and busy, and that's normal for a Sunday night. Hannah and her father are near the door, waiting for seats, when Sam and his brothers come in. And since Hannah, for all her thought on the subject, hasn't come up with anything to say to Sam, and since manners would seem to dictate that she say something, she manages, "Hey."
It's Lucas, the more outgoing of the twins, who answers her, "Hi, Hannah. Happy New Year!"
"Happy New Year, Luke," she says. And then, because it's easier to continue the conversation with him than figure out what to say to his older brother, she continues, "Did you have a good time in Kansas?"
Or, at least, that's what she starts to say. She only gets as far as "good" before Sam interrupts. "Excuse me," he says, and "sorry," and just when Hannah thinks he's about to leave, he picks her up off the ground and kisses her.
It's . . . it's like . . . running. For however long it lasts, Hannah's just not worried about things like what she was going to say, or the fact that Sam has chosen to do this in front of his little brothers and her father and enough of their classmates that she probably has no more than six minutes until Emily calls. She is, from the moment her feet leave the floor to the moment they touch it again, aware of exactly two things.
This kiss was a long time coming, and it was so very much worth the wait.
When her feet are back on the floor, she's aware of a little more, like just how blue Sam's eyes are. (Did she know they were that blue before? Were they that blue before?)
And that the way her father has just cleared his throat means he's done it at least twice already. "Hannah?"
"Oh. Um, Daddy, this is Sam Keith, and his brothers, Jonathan and Lucas. Sam, this is my father."
"It's nice to meet you, Dr. Griffith," says Sam, extending his right hand to her father, but not quite taking the left off Hannah's waist.
"And you, Sam," says Tom, taking the offered hand but keeping an eye on the other. "I think we'll have a few things to discuss in the not too distant future," he adds, with a hint of a threat but no real animosity.
Hannah suspects she and her father will be having a few things to discuss even sooner than that, but she's less worried about that than she would have been five months ago.
"I'll look forward to it, sir," Sam says.
Jonathan tugs on Hannah's sleeve. "Does this mean you're going out with Sam?"
"Yeah," says Hannah, looking back at Sam with a smile that's not like any he's seen from her before but which he can expect to see a lot of in the future. "It absolutely does."