6. Holly
SIX
HOLLY
February slowly turned to March and with it, the hope of spring. Most days, I left my winter coat in the car and was able to survive with a heavy sweatshirt. Occasionally, I was carrying the sweatshirt by the afternoon and soaking in the warmth of the sun in just a T-shirt.
It had been over three weeks since that first date with Graham, and I was no longer surprised when he popped up at random times and random places, always knowing exactly where to find me.
Odd, because whenever I looked around the campus, I never saw him. He was a ghost who appeared and vanished at will, while also becoming so real to me sometimes my chest squeezed with a pain so severe I feared a heart attack.
Tracey assured me this was what happened when you started liking someone for the first time. Your brain went a little haywire, your hormones ran amok, and all the sensible and safe choices you spent your entire life making somehow started to seem too constricting.
If I could have, I would have stopped this falling for Graham train weeks ago, turned down that first date, and never stepped foot on campus again. Liking him left me feeling more self-conscious and more suspicious than I ever had in my life. Which said quite enough.
But there were flags, as I called them, popping up. He was almost always out of town on the weekends. We saw each other off campus, but aside from him randomly walking me to a class every couple of days, I never saw him. I spent one night at his apartment, one he lived in alone of all things, and after we ordered pizza and watched a movie, he walked me to my car and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Drive safe,” he’d whispered, like he wasn’t basically kicking me out of his apartment by nine o’clock on a Thursday—prime college getting ready to go out time.
There was the fact he still hadn’t told me how he got my schedule, but he somehow always had an answer when I asked and smoothly changed the subject.
And yet he texted. All the time. Morning, afternoon, night. Weekends he was out of town, where he didn’t tell me where he was except that he had things to do . One was a trip with some friends. One weekend he had to go to Raleigh, and I assumed that meant home, but then he never said anything about it except that it was good. Or exhausting.
Closet full of secrets . That’s what he called them.
Like called to like, I supposed, because I hadn’t exactly opened up to him and let him read my entire life story. Our time was spent laughing and teasing. Walking to class. All very middle-school, G-rated behavior.
And wasn’t that alone a strange thing?
Was he…just becoming my friend?
All of it left me antsy and anxious, and at the diner yesterday, I’d gotten three orders wrong. I started letting some boy into my head, and all of a sudden my critical-thinking skills were misfiring.
Which meant it was probably time to bring this ridiculousness to an end. He had to be having fun with me, playing some game.
He seemed genuine when we were together—and even through the texts—but that wasn’t enough.
It’d be simpler, easier for me for sure, and for Tracey because she wouldn’t have to hear me whine about it anymore if I just ended it.
I could block him. Clean break. That alone would tell him all he needed to know.
I was done.
Surely we hadn’t spent nearly enough time together to owe each other more explanations….
“Hey! Holly!”
I looked around, but I didn’t recognize anyone, so I turned back and kept walking.
Footsteps thundered behind me on the cement, and I straightened my back. We were on campus, and it was midday, but I still gripped the straps of my backpack in case I needed to fling it at someone.
“Hey. Holly, right? You’re Holly?”
I stopped then as a guy with labored breath slowed down as he neared me.
“Who are you?” I stopped and turned to face him.
He glanced back and forth up and down the sidewalk and shoved a hand through his chocolate brown hair. “I’m Eli. A friend of Graham’s.”
“If you’re looking for him, I don’t know where he is.”
“No, that’s not it. I just…he talks about you, you know? When we’re out of town and stuff.”
“Oh…you’re one of the guys he went on a trip with last week?”
Eli’s brows tugged low. “Trip? I mean. Yeah. We were together, but I saw you. He showed us a picture, and I guess I wanted to…shit…I don’t know. Not warn you or anything. That sounds bad, but ask for a favor, I guess?” He kicked at the cement, his unease growing.
It didn’t rival mine.
“You want me to do you a favor? A guy I don’t know? About a guy I barely know?”
“Barely know? Graham says you talk all the time.” His confusion increased. It was still nowhere near mine. He shook it off quicker than I did. “Listen, then yeah…I mean, if he’s just some guy to you, I’m going to ask you to cut him loose.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s had a crap year. Worse than most. I guess my favor was going to be if you don’t like him, really like him, then bow out now before he gets hurt. I’m not sure he can handle any more and the guys…well, me… us… well, we need him healthy.”
My head spun as the guy babbled, and all those flags that had been popping lit on fire until my blood was boiling. He had a hard year? His guys needed him?
“I’m not talking about him with someone I don’t know.” I turned to head off toward class, where I should have kept going before someone started shouting at me, and how did he recognize me anyway? Questions kept coming, but the one who had the answers was busy tonight.
Like he usually was.
Unfortunately for me, Eli kept following.
“Crap, he’s going to kick my butt for this. Probably put me through hell later. I didn’t mean to make you mad. I’m just having my boy’s back, you know? Someone had to say something.”
I kept walking. Anger made my shoes slap against the pavement as I tried to put distance between Eli and me, but he was tall. Taller than Graham, and man, he had long legs. He didn’t have to hurry to catch up to me at all.
“You’re going to tell him I said this, aren’t you?”
There was something—a terror or sadness or maybe the guy was just realizing how badly he’d messed up that I paused. Looked at him. Arched my brows. Did he think I was an idiot ?
“Yeah, Eli. I’m going to tell him about some guy chasing me down on campus to tell me to stay away from him. Stop following me.”
Once I told him about this lovely, interesting conversation, I’d be getting answers.
Or my contact list would have one less number in it.
* * *
It was well after dinner. I’d worked the shift at the University bookstore before stopping by The Grille to grab dinner to go. One of the servers was sick, so I ended up staying through the dinner shift. At all points, the bookstore and then the diner, I was half-expecting Graham to appear out of nowhere, somehow knowing what his friend had said to me and wanting to make things right.
I found myself disappointed he didn’t, and then jumping and feeling my cheeks heat when my phone finally rang. Only for it to be a blocked number.
Dread settled as I debated answering and then hit the End button without bothering. My dad had once been the kind of man who picked me up from preschool and took me to get ice cream instead of real food for lunch. He sang and danced in our living room. He shouted at football games on television without them ruining his mood. He did all those things without requiring a twelve-pack at his side.
I didn’t lose my mom the day her addiction swallowed her whole and she took off in search of her next high, completely forgetting she had a husband and daughter who adored her. My dad died that day. My mom was gone , but Dad turned into a walking, drunken zombie, shriveling a little bit more right in front of me.
I was eight the first time I cleaned up his vomit. Ten when he lost his job at the city and found a part-time job doing maintenance for one of the hotels in town, one job that would lead to dozens off and on over the years. Fourteen the first time he handed me the keys and told me to drive him home from the bar. I hadn’t even taken driver’s education yet. Not like he knew or cared.
I turned twenty-one the day before he got drunk, got pissed, and then drove a small SUV off the road on the way down Crystal Mountain Highway, killing the driver, a college student at Duke. A girl my age.
He’d never apologized. Never showed remorse. He lost our home years before, and he never apologized for that, either. In all my years of living, I had a mom who abandoned me and a father who quit knowing I was alive while staring at my face daily.
That was why I despised him. It wasn’t his mistakes. It wasn’t his own grief. It was the fact that as soon as Mom left, he never saw me. When he was being taken to prison, right after his sentencing, he didn’t share fatherly advice or a hug or an apology. He glared at me and grumbled, “This is such a bunch of bullshit.”
Those were the last words my father said to me before I started getting calls demanding more money on his federal account. He left me with nothing but a run-down trailer and my plans to leave this town shriveling down to almost nothing considering the statewide news his horrible decisions made…and then decided I owed him .
And I was still the little girl who remembered her father’s booming laughter and his comforting embrace. In my weak moments, I hoped that if I gave him more than he asked for, he’d see me again. That he’d become the dad I needed for the last decade even if it was from a distance.
My phone rang again, and I went to hit End, but it wasn’t a blocked call.
It was Graham.
I debated. Thumb poised over the red circle.
And then… I answered instead. “Hey.”
“I’m gonna kill him,” Graham said in lieu of the appropriate greeting. Like hello or hey, back. “You’ve gotta be pissed, and I wish you would have texted me when it happened.”
I had to give him credit for not hesitating to jump right in. “I didn’t think your friend would tell you, and I didn’t want to cause problems.”
“You wouldn’t cause a problem. Eli caused a problem, and it was ridiculous because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“No? Because he seemed pretty certain he did.”
You’re not the only one with a closet full of secrets…
I’ve had a bad year…
“Yeah, well, you’re not exactly an open book either. Did you consider I needed time to warm up to tell you stuff, too?”
“So this is my fault?” Oh, that was definite sass in my tone and not the fun kind. But if he thought for a second that I could be approached by a strange guy on campus warning me away from his friend and then blame me for it…
“No. Sorry. That’s not what I meant. I’m ticked at Eli and had a crap night because of it. So I’m sorry. Really. I just…I don’t talk about it, but I know I haven’t been honest with you about things.”
“Like how you got my schedule?”
It seemed easier to tease him about something trivial. If he started being honest, he might demand the same from me, and all of a sudden, with thoughts of my dad and his phone call on my mind, I was staring at a door I was asking him to open, but I wasn’t ready to give the same back.
“My aunt Denise works in the campus career center. I told her if she gave me your schedule, I’d commit to having six Sunday dinners with her.”
The truth spilled from him so easily, I wished we were on a FaceTime call so I could see his face. Sure, he could be lying, but…why?
“Denise?” I asked.
“Denise Campbell. My mom’s sister. It’s only one of the reasons I chose NCWU, because I like being close to family. You can go say hi to her if you want. I’m sure she’s curious to know why I asked her for it.”
“Well, aren’t you just turning into being super honest tonight, but I think I’ll pass.” I tried to laugh it off, but a heavy sigh came from his side of the phone.
All the secrets of my own I was hiding came back to me, and now that we were talking, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know his.
My phone buzzed, and before I could look, Graham asked, “Need to take that?”
He’d clearly heard the pause through the phone.
“No.”
I didn’t bother peeking. Dad’s habit was to call at least three times before giving up on me. If he paid for the call himself with my money instead of expecting me to pay more than double for it to call collect, he’d be able to leave a voicemail.
“I am sorry about Eli, Holly. He spoke when he shouldn’t have.”
“He sounded like a friend concerned, that’s not a bad thing to have.”
There was the heavy beat of silence before he cleared his throat. “I went through a hard year. Last spring was especially tough.”
We actually had that in common. We also both had aunts we liked. And we both had secrets.
Maybe we had more in common than I originally thought.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said. “Because it’s none of my business, but I do have to admit that you worry me.”
He chuckled, almost in surprise. “I worry you ?”
“Yeah…you’re gone on the weekends, you show up at random times when you know where I’ll be, but I never see you, and when we’re together, you don’t…”
That cheek kiss outside his apartment came back to me, but I couldn’t finish it.
“I don’t what? Show you how much I want you? How much I think about you and like being around you?”
When he put it like that…
“Yeah, kind of.”
“I do,” he whispered. My heart leaped straight into my throat, making it difficult to breathe and to think clearly. “I do like you, but I didn’t want to scare you off. Figured if I did, that’d definitely send you running.”
Once again, silence stole my thoughts. I wasn’t prepared for this. I wasn’t prepared to meet someone who did these things to me. Made me feel something.
Made me hope.
Graham was becoming more dangerous by the minute.
“How about this?” he asked, and that teasing tone was back in his voice.
“What?” I couldn’t help it. He teased me, and I fell for it. He was pulling me in when I should have been showing him my back.
“Friday, you’ll have to come find me.”
“And how do I do that?”
“I’ll give you a clue. Later.”
“That’s it?” I laughed. “A clue?”
“You’re a smart girl, you’ll figure it out. Are we okay?”
He’d managed to be honest without telling me everything, or much at all. Which was okay because I wasn’t ready to give him everything of me. But he was trying.
Maybe it was time I started thinking about doing the same.
“We’ll see.”