"I'll get it," Joanie says, abandoning the cloth she was using to wipe the table.

Hannah turns the faucet off, her heart dangling high above her.

"Oh," Joanie says, pulling the door open. "Hannah-"

Hannah walks into view of the door, and there she is, standing outside Hannah's house, her hands tucked into the back pockets of her shorts.

"Hi," Baker says.

"Hi," Hannah breathes.

Baker's eyes are nervous, but she steadies them on Hannah's face. She pulls her lips into her mouth. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other.

"Want to go for a walk?" she asks.

"Yeah," Hannah says, her heart swelling. "Joanie, can you-?"

"I'll finish the dishes," Joanie says, a smile playing on her face. "You two go walk."

The earth is buzzing when Hannah steps outside. She smells the perfume of flowers all around her, hears the trilling of insects deep in her ears. The sky is painted with the colors of dusk. She stands in front of Baker and just looks at her, and Baker lets her.

"You're here," Hannah says.

"I am," Baker says.

Hannah nods. They stand across from each other, their arms hanging at their sides, and keep looking at each other.

"Will you walk with me?" Baker asks.

They turn right onto Olive Street and pad along beneath the cover of the trees. The sunset filters through the leaves, creating latticework patches of golden light on the asphalt road. Hannah breathes in the summer air and tries to absorb the life all around her.

"How've you been?" Baker asks.

Hannah thinks about it. "I've been good," she says, and she's happy to realize she means it. "I feel-like I'm me."

Baker's eyes shine with a smile. "Good."

Hannah kicks a pebble down the street ahead of them. It skips across the pavement, the only sound in the world.

"You haven't been here," Hannah says. "Where did you go?"

Baker bites her lip. "New Orleans," she says. "I went down to stay with Nate as soon as my mom would let me."

"How was it?"

Baker nods to herself, trying to articulate her answer. "It was what I needed."

They cross over Drehr and continue down Olive, Hannah's sandals sc.r.a.ping against the asphalt, Baker's sandals making no sound with her light steps.

"Hannah..." Baker says.

"Yeah?"

"When I was there-when I was in New Orleans-I figured out a lot of things. I didn't want to just leave town without telling you, especially after everything that happened, but I felt like I had to. Like I had to escape, you know? Like I had to take myself out of here so I could step back and try to understand everything. Not just the stuff with you and me, but, like, how I feel even beyond you. About girls, and boys, and religion, and my family...and it was really hard to do. It was really hard to figure out the truth."

"Yeah," Hannah says. "I know what you mean."

"I talked to my brother. I told him the whole story."

"You did? What'd he say?"

"That it was important for me to figure out what it all meant, and that I couldn't listen to anyone but myself. And he hugged me a lot."

Hannah smiles. "I love Nate."

"He loves you, too." Baker takes a sharp breath. "I went to Confession, too."

"You did?"

She nods. "I asked for forgiveness for everything I did to you."

"What did the priest say?"

"He said a lot of things. Some of them made me feel better and some of them made me feel worse. But Han, when I was there, what I realized was-I realized I was afraid of the truth. I was scared. I felt, like-I felt like I was trapped by these feelings I didn't want to have, and I didn't want to deal with what it meant, and what people would say, and how I would negotiate with my faith...and I resented you for finding your way into my heart like you did. I was scared of you. Being around you, it was like-you were everything I wasn't supposed to want. You're-no one told me about you. When I was growing up, it was always, 'One day, when you meet a nice boy,' or, 'When you have a husband....' No one ever told me that it might be different. That it would be okay to be different. So I just-I had this deep sense of shame about myself. About the way that I felt."

"I had that, too," Hannah says. "I talked to Ms. Carpenter about it."

"I talked to my brother."

"Did it help?"

"Yeah. But mostly-I think mostly it was just talking to myself. Really forcing myself to confront the truth, you know? And praying. A lot of praying. Because-ultimately I realized something."

"What?"

"I realized...that I had to deal with it. All of it. The fear, and the guilt, and the shame...because otherwise there was no way to be with you. And I realized that's what I really want, when it comes down to it. I want to be with you. I've wanted to be with you for a while. I wish I'd realized it sooner. I wish someone had told me that it might be you. I wish someone had said, 'One day, your heart will feel a lot bigger than it was before, and that's when you know.' Because-that's how it is with you, Han. You make me feel, like-G.o.d, I don't even know. Like being with you makes me a thousand times better than I am. Like my eyes are clearer when I look at things. And when I'm not with you, it's like-like my heart can't breathe.

"I'm sorry for everything I did," she says, her eyes shining with tears. "For playing games, for hiding from you, for-for Clay-"

Hannah ducks her head.

Baker wipes at her eyes. "I know," she says, tears spilling down her face. "I'm sorry. Hannah, I'm so sorry. For that, and for the e-mail, for everything I did to you. I was scared and ashamed. I was a coward." She pauses and looks at Hannah, her eyes pleading. "But Han...I'm tired of being scared. I'm tired of being ashamed. And I'm tired of not being with you. I still might get scared sometimes, and I still might feel a little ashamed, but I want to work through it because-because all I want is to be with you. I know you might not want that anymore after everything that's happened, but I just had to tell you this because-because I love you."

Hannah stops walking. Baker stops, too. And, finally, they face each other.

"Hannah," Baker says, searching her with those deep brown eyes.

She speaks her name again, in the way that only she can do, and it rings in Hannah's head over and over. "Hannah," she says, her voice arching. "I love you. I've loved you for a while. I fought against it before, but I get it now. I get it." She shakes her head, breathing shallowly. "I love you so much."

And Hannah knows it's true, because she sees the proof in Baker's eyes: they are vulnerable, and full of wonder, and begging Hannah to love her in return. And something happens in Hannah's heart: something spreads throughout it, warm and unstoppable and steady like the sun.

She steps forward and takes Baker's hand.

"I love you, too."

Baker breathes. "Really?"

"Yeah," Hannah says, her voice wet.

Baker's mouth upturns in a smile. She pushes more tears away from her eyes. "This is-" she says. "I mean, it's like-"

"I know," Hannah laughs.

"I need to ask you something, though."

"Sure. What is it?"

Baker opens her mouth but holds the question in; she ducks her head, her hair falling over her face, and when she raises her head back up, her tears are falling fast again. She struggles for another few seconds, blinking fast through her tears. She clears her eyes and looks at Hannah. "Do you forgive me?" she asks. "For everything I did?"

Hannah inhales. "Yes," she says.

Baker's whole body seems to sigh in release. Hannah pulls Baker against her, wrapping her arms around her as tightly as she can, nudging Baker's head down onto her shoulder. She can feel Baker breathing hard against her, her tears bleeding through Hannah's tank top and into her skin; she cradles Baker's head with one hand, feeling her soft, warm hair under her palm, and secures her body with her other, spreading her fingers over the back of her shirt so that she can feel her spine and her deep, shuddering breaths.

"It's okay," Hannah promises her, kissing the side of her head. "It's okay."

Hannah holds her until her cries die away. Baker sniffles against her, swallows, breathes out. She wraps both her arms around Hannah's body, too, so that they're both holding onto each other, right there on the sidewalk on Cherokee Street.

"You okay?" Hannah whispers.

"Yeah," Baker says. She takes a few deep breaths.

Hannah draws back from her so she can see her face. Her eyes are red and her eyelashes are wet, and she wipes at her mouth and her nose, embarra.s.sed.

"You're beautiful," Hannah tells her.

Baker blushes and shakes her head, then holds her fingers up to her eyes, trying to collect the remaining tears from her lashes. "Let's keep walking," she says.

"Where do you want to go?" Hannah asks.

"Home," Baker says. "Let's just go home."

That feeling comes back into Hannah's chest, that growing, drumming feeling that warms her, and she begins to laugh, a wonderful, relieved laugh that shimmers around her in the heat. She laughs again, and it comes out mixed with a joyful cry, so that a couple of tears wind down her face and she has to wipe them away.

Baker looks over at her, and a smile breaks out on her face-a smile that's all mouth and eyes and soul.

There are so many more things Hannah wants to talk about with her, and she knows Baker wants to talk about them, too, but for tonight they simply fall onto the big couch in the family room and watch an old movie with Joanie. Joanie doesn't say anything to them, just smiles knowingly when they sit down next to her.

Baker's right side brushes up against Hannah's left, and for the first time in months Hannah feels whole.

She walks Baker out to her car when the movie ends. Baker leans against the driver-side door, her complexion flushed beneath the light from the street lamps.

"Thanks for...tonight," Baker says, her voice nervous.

"Thank you," Hannah says.

"You're the bravest person I've ever known."

"So are you."

"No," Baker says, ducking her head. "But I'm going to try to be right now when I ask you for something."

"What?"

Baker fidgets with her car keys. "Um. Can I-can I kiss you?"

And it's too perfect, and Baker is too pretty standing there against the car, and Hannah's heart is too, too full. "Are you sure?" Hannah asks, trying to fight down her silly grin. "Out here?"

Baker smiles one of the happiest smiles Hannah has ever seen. "Out here, Hannah-bear."

Hannah steps closer to her, places a hand on her hip where her halter meets her shorts, leans into her. Baker inhales quickly, like she's surprised, and her eyelids close over her eyes.

And then, with a simple touch of her lips, Baker kisses Hannah beneath the lights of a street lamp and the leaves of an oak tree.

Chapter Seventeen: In the Garden.

It's heavy, the August heat. Hannah's mom calls it "oppressive" when she comes home from work in the evenings, her forehead glistening with a light sheen of sweat. Joanie calls it "the Luzianna plague" when she and Hannah drive around in the early afternoons, their underarms sweating as they run back-to-school errands. But to Hannah, the heat feels like a blanket. Warm and secure. And lucky for her, Baker agrees.

"Can you pa.s.s me that cake pan?" Baker says, her dark chicory eyes drifting down the counter, past Hannah's hand.

They stand in Hannah's kitchen with the screen door open to the earth outside. They hear the mysteries of late summer taking place beyond the porch: the insistent nighttime crickets, the engines and wheels of the cars that drive past at this late hour. Hannah's parents are in bed, content with their air conditioning and their summer quilt. They don't know that Hannah and Baker have propped the porch door open.

"Do you think your dorm will have a kitchen?" Hannah asks.

Baker's arm, beating the brownie batter around the mixing bowl, stills for a pocket of a moment. "I hope so," she says.

"Well hey," Hannah says, trying to keep the moment light, "even if it doesn't, we'll just leave campus and come home for a night."

Baker smiles, her eyes still on the brownie batter. "Is it bad if I don't want to come home for a night? I want to have the whole weekend to ourselves when you visit. And I want to be able to, you know-" her face turns pink-"actually sleep in the same bed."

Hannah pokes at her hip. "Are you having dirty thoughts?"