Spencer is sitting on her Nana’s old couch at the lake house, her head in her hands. She can’t go back to the barn right now, she doesn’t want to see Caleb’s earnest concern, his eyebrows furrowing with worry over her. The first thing he’ll do is ask her what’s wrong, and that question is way too enormous right now. It’s security footage and police line ups and hospitals and threatening fucking emojis and it’s Toby and Hanna and engagement rings that reflect the light so brightly it’s as if they want to give everyone’s feelings the third degree. It’s Alison with Rollins and the way trying to be happy for them makes Emily look a hundred years old and it’s what if Aria really did murder Charlotte and she’s too tiny to survive in prison and the thought of her crying on the red line makes Spencer want to just grab her and take her back to Iceland where they can live in a wooden house by the sea where no one will ever look for them and how she can’t think about that now because Liam and Ezra and Caleb.
But most of all it’s the weight of Hanna and Emily looking at her like she’s the general again, the giver of orders, the maker of plans. Napoleon on his horse, saber poised to conquer Europe and flush out the new ‘A’ before lunch. And she can’t do this again, she just can’t, she’s not over the last time, none of them are. It will crush her, she knows it will crush her, and if she lets him help her, it’ll crush Caleb, too.
She’s a Hastings, she’s not going to cry. She leans back against the arm of the old sofa and the faint cloud of dust that’s released still smells a little bit like her Nana’s house, a mix of butterscotch and lima beans and warm hugs. Then she remembers that Hanna and Caleb have had sex on this couch, and sits upright again, feeling nauseous.
She wonders how many numbers she would have to dial to get a prescription. She scrolls down and finds Wren Kingston in her contacts. She imagines the rattle of an orange bottle in her hand. Valium to calm her down. Adderall to help sharpen her focus. Maybe some Oxy to get her to the part where it feels like it could all float away. He’d bring her the pills in person, she knows he would. Even if he’s in London at the moment, he’d get on a plane. She calls Jason instead, but he doesn’t pick up. She calls him two more times, finally leaving him a jittery message about being at the lake house and not being okay.
An hour later it’s getting dark outside, and Spencer is still sitting on the couch, not moving, not even reaching over to turn on the lights. She hears a car outside, but she can’t bother to muster the energy to turn her head.
The door opens and it isn’t Caleb or Jason, but Hanna striding towards her, arms crossed and heels clacking over the wood floor. She flips on the lights and doesn’t beat around the bush.
“What going on, Spencer?”
“How did you know I was here?”
Hanna sighs, dramatically, and sits down next to Spencer on the couch. She pulls a buzzing phone out of her purse.
“You stole Jason’s phone?” Spencer asks, impressed in spite of herself.
“Borrowed,” Hanna corrects. “It was a flirt and grab. Aria flirted, I grabbed.”
“Did you find anything?” Spencer asks. “Is he a suspect?”
“Well, I suspect him of being useless,” Hanna answers. “But he hasn’t sent any weird texts or hired a hitman or googled how to kill someone and make it look like an accident, so he’s in the clear for Charlotte. But don’t change the subject - why are you going AWOL and calling Jason like he’s your sponsor?”
Spencer doesn’t answer, but Hanna keeps looking at her, determined to wait her out. After a full five minutes, Hanna gets up and starts piling logs in the fireplace. “What?” she huffs. “I’m not going to freeze to death while I wait for you to answer me.”
Spencer rouses herself enough to get up and check the chimney flue, while Hanna lights one of the long matches and the first flames start to flicker along the bark.
“Is it - Caleb?” Hanna asks, trying way too hard to make the question sound casual. “Did you guys, like, have a fight or something?”
“No,” Spencer admits. “I just couldn’t deal with him right now. He’ll want to make tea and take deep breaths and talk about my problems.”
Hanna actually smirks a little, gets a nostalgic look on her face. “He does that,” she says. “He can’t help it. It’s like dating a mother hen.”
“Are you really going to marry Jordan?”
Hanna puts her hand out, considering her ring from a distance. “I want to. I think I want to. But honestly, the moment we got that first text message, part of me wanted to call the whole thing off.”
Spencer doesn’t bother asking why. It’s not like ‘A’ ever lets good things go unspoiled, unwrecked.
“It’s like, I told him everything,” Hanna says. “But he can’t understand. Not really. He thinks his money and his plane and his fancy lawyers are enough to keep us both safe.”
“The first rule of ‘A’,” Spencer says ruefully. “No one is safe.”
“I know,” Hanna agrees. “Jordan doesn’t understand. And Caleb understands a little too well.”
“I’m impressed you could even think about planning a wedding. I still get nervous about scheduling things a week in advance.”
“I know,” Hanna says. “It’s like, we spent so long trying to survive moment to moment, you know? Booking a venue a year in advance seems impossible. PTSD is a four letter word.”
“It’s an acronym, actually,” Spencer corrects her. “Sorry. Old habit, I guess.”
Hanna kicks off her shoes and grins, stretching her toes out towards the fire. They sit in companionable silence for a bit, until Spencer speaks up.
“Sometimes I have bad thoughts.”
“Like about pills?” Hanna asks, her voice full of concern.
“Yeah,” Spencer says. “Or, I don’t know. Other stuff. Setting my whole life on fire myself, just to deny ‘A’ the pleasure.”
“I have those thoughts all the time,” Hanna assures her. “I used to imagine pelting my boss with jelly donuts. Or taking a knife and slashing the really ugly dresses before a big show.”
“I saw last year’s line,” Spencer deadpans. “Slashing might have improved some of them.”
“Right?” Hanna huffs. “Or with Jordan, I think about doing something so awful he won’t want to marry me. Like leaving the keys in his favorite Lexus so it’ll get stolen. Or telling his Aunt Rosemund that she needs to get her stache bleached.”
“Or fucking someone else,” Spencer says quietly. “I mean, it’s horrible. I’m horrible. But I think about it sometimes.”
Hanna nods with a complete lack of judgement. “That, too.” She pauses, hesitates, then continues. “Honestly, if you want to get rid of Caleb, it’s probably the only way. He’s not going to let you just push him away. He’ll keep snapping back, like a rubber band.”
“I don’t even know if I want to get rid of him,” Spencer admits. “I mean, I don’t. Not really. He’s perfect. He’s this totally supportive, understanding, grown up partner. But if he stays with me -”
“He’s going to get hurt,” Hanna finishes.
Spencer thinks about the scar on Caleb’s abdomen, from when he got shot trying to save Emily. She thinks about how it feels to run her fingers over the jagged line where the sucres were, how he had to be sewed back together for helping them once before.
“I can’t stand the thought of losing him,” she tells Hanna. “But when I think about something happening to him, it’s like - I can’t breathe.”
Hanna thinks about Jordan, his toothy grin, the muscles of his stomach as he does crunches at the foot of the bed every night, the sheen of sweat on his unmarked body. She loves that about him, how he’s a blank page, a story that hasn’t been written yet. One that might still have a happy ending.
“Would it be Toby?” Hanna asks.
“Toby would be way too complicated,” Spencer answers. “Earlier, I was - god, I was actually thinking about calling Wren.”
“Lucas,” Hanna responds, pointing at herself. “Or Mona.”
“Or,” Spencer says, raising an eyebrow.
“Or?” Hanna asks, her eyes on Spencer’s face.
“I have a really terrible idea,” Spencer whispers.
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” Hanna quips, but she doesn’t move away as Spencer leans in and kisses her. She tangles her fingers in Spencer’s hair, kisses her back with wild desperation. Spencer’s mouth tastes dark and bitter, a mix of industrial strength coffee and adrenaline.
Spencer pulls Hanna close, presses their bodies together. One hand is tugging at Hanna’s shirt while the other gropes blindly at any part of Hanna she can reach. Hanna’s tongue darts into her mouth and there’s something about the way she kisses that still carries a hint of Caleb like a ghostly aftertaste, and Spencer kisses her hungrily because Hanna tastes like the answer, the one thing he’ll never be able to forgive.
It doesn’t matter, Hanna tells herself. Nothing matters anymore. Better for Jordan to hate her and be safe than the other way around. Then she remembers that Caleb said those exact words to her once, and she feels tears in her eyes at the memory. She sucks on Spencer’s bottom lip and thinks this is as close as she’ll ever get to kissing Caleb again, imagines this kiss as a new necklace tossed into an already tangled pile.
Hanna doesn’t realize she’s crying in earnest until Spencer pulls away, runs a thumb along Hanna’s cheek, her eyes a little glazed but still with that same old penetrating look.
“Is this - is it not okay?” Spencer asks.
“Nothing is okay,” Hanna says tiredly, sitting up and running a hand through her hair. “But maybe I’m not ready to damn the torpedos and wave the white flag yet.”
“You’re mixing your metaphors,” Spencer says. “I feel like we’ve been underwater since the new ‘A’ showed up.”
“Maybe we are,” Hanna admits. “But this isn’t the time to give up. It’s the time to make a new plan, do more investigating, turn over more rocks. And you love Caleb, Spencer. You don’t really want to do this to him.”
“I haven’t even told him, yet,” Spencer says quietly.
“He’s Caleb,” Hanna assures her. “He like, knew when I was about to start getting cramps and would make sure I had chocolate. He probably figured out how you felt before you did. He’s just waiting for you to let him know.”
“I’m scared,” Spencer says.
“So am I,” Hanna tells her. “It’s smart to be scared. But we don’t need to do ‘A’ is for Asswipe’s work for him. We have to believe we deserve good things. Or, that’s what my therapist says, anyway.”
“Mine, too.”
“So maybe it won’t be a shipwreck, okay? Maybe it won’t be like Titanic where the divers are excavating our love stories after everybody drowned.”
“Like, it’s not a salvage operation yet?” Spencer asks, considering.
“Not today,” Hanna says. “Maybe not tomorrow either.”
“But if it comes to it?” Spencer asks.
“We’ll go down together, I promise.”
Spencer smirks a little, feeling better. “You’re a really good friend, you know that?”
Hanna smiles back. “I love you, too, Spence.”
Spencer straightens her clothes. Starts gathering her things, dumping sand on the fire to extinguish it. Hanna takes her hand as they lock up, walk back towards their cars, prepare to go back and fight another day.