Purposefully Accidental

Chapter Forty-six

On the dance floor, I rest my arms around Freddie's neck, already lightly swaying to the string quartet's rendition of I Wanna Dance With Somebody. And as Freddie places his hands on my hips, I reach around to discreetly tug on his ear, hard.

"Ow!" Freddie yelps in pain, and covers it with a cough. "What the hell?"

"You're a fucking asshole."

"Me? What did I do? Okay, okay, stop that. You know I'm ticklish. Hannah!" he hisses as I flutter my fingers over the nape of his neck, knowing full well it's his biggest weakness. "Whatever it is I'm sorry please before I pee in my pants."

I keep a content smile on my face as I ask him threateningly, "How come you didn't tell me?"

"Tell you what? Please, I'm not kidding, I've had I don't know how many glasses of champagne tonight and zero bathroom break I'm gonna piss myself if you don't stop," he gasps out and I finally stop tickling him. "You're a menace."

I narrow my eyes at him. "You deserve that and more."

"Okay, what did I do?" he whines as he sways us along with the beat of the song. The music is loud enough to drown out our conversation from curious ears. "I thought you'd be happy tonight but you seem angry at me and what did I do?"

"Well, that's exactly what! You knew Jonah was gonna be here."

"... Yes?"

"And you didn't tell me!"

He looks bewildered. "What—I thought you knew?"

I pull my head back in confusion. "How would I know that he was gonna be here?"

He widens his eyes in a What-The-Hell-Are-You-Talking-About? expression. "You guys have been... communicating, so to speak. You're telling me he didn't tell you that he was gonna be here tonight?"

I'm getting a headache. "Okay. Alright. I'm gonna rewind everything from the start." I catch Harvey's eyes, a few feet away from us, and press myself closer to Freddie in a pretend embrace. I lower my voice. "You met Jonah. The day that I visited you at your office."

"I did."

I glare at his easy admission. "You never told me that."

"... Didn't I?" He pauses to think. "I could have sworn we talked about it."

"No. We didn't."

"Didn't we have a talk about Code Indigo? That was right after you had a... date with him, right?" he says, saying the word "date" pointedly as if it were in quotation marks.

"Yes. But I never told you that my Code Indigo was Jonah. Because I didn't have any idea that you guys already met in the first place."

"Huh." He looks deep in thought. "Really?"

"Yes!" Oh my god. So he's known that I've been with Jonah all this time? What the hell?

"I'm sorry. I've just had a lot in my mind these past few months. I swear I thought we already talked about him."

"I never mentioned his name."

Freddie closes his eyes, thinking it over. "Okay. So maybe I just immediately—and accurately—assumed that you had a date with Jonah. Even though you never actually told me that. And I completely imagined a conversation between us about it... which never actually happened."

I drop my aching head to his shoulder.

"So you didn't know that I knew that you guys have been... reconnecting," he concludes. I nod against his shoulder. "And you also didn't know that he knew that you and I are... well, married."