9. Holly
NINE
HOLLY
Chipotle came. I was only mildly embarrassed by how quickly I devoured it along with the mess I made. Considering Graham ate his burrito bowl in half the time and we both annihilated the chips, queso, and guacamole, I wasn’t overly embarrassed by my lack of manners or clean eating.
He put on a reality show where people lived on cruise ships, but most of the time, we talked. I moved us away from the loss of his friend after telling him I wasn’t leaving, and somehow, that seemed to help him relax. I asked him if he wanted to go to that hockey party, and he asked if I drank.
When I said no, he shrugged. “That answers that then.”
“I do go to parties. And we met at a bar.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t feel like going somewhere where people are already half drunk and stupid if we’re both sober, so it’s more for me.”
“But you drink,” I pointed out.
“Maybe one. Usually I sip a beer until it gets warm and then set it aside. I used to, but I think losing someone the way I have puts things in perspective. My friends know they can call me if they need rides, though.”
He was more of an open book than I would have anticipated, and he kept surprising me. It wasn’t only the kind of guy he was or how much I was learning we had in common.
To some, maybe the heavy would have been too much, but I’d lived with heavy my whole life.
Perhaps that was why my mouth opened, and I found myself saying, “My mom took off when I was seven.”
His body tensed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him slowly readjust himself, curling toward me. His arm draped over the back of the couch. I was close enough he could run his fingers through my hair, and that was exactly what he did.
“Yeah?”
I shrugged. I might as well have sliced my body open right then and bled out in front of him for as vulnerable as I was feeling. Admitting that was hard enough. The why was harder.
“That must have been hard,” Graham said, fingers still running through my hair. His touch was gentle. Soothing.
I leaned back into the couch and faced him.
His eyes were on his hand in my hair. His curls were now dry and slightly frizzy and wild. He was stretched out, legs on the coffee table, one foot over the other. But for the intense way he kept his eyes on my hair and not me, like he didn’t want me to know he was listening, I would have thought he was uncaring.
Instead, he was giving me space. Time.
“She and I were at my gymnastics class. She put me in it when I was really young, like three or something. But she’d been a gymnast through high school and loved it. It was before class, and I was warming up and begged her to show me how she did her flips.”
It was the last really good, true, and pure memory I had of my mom. When she put me in gymnastics, she’d told me someday I could be better than her, maybe go to college on a scholarship or be in the Olympics. I’d been too young to understand then what that meant, but I remembered the way her face lit up when she talked about gymnastics and how much she loved it.
“What happened?” Graham asked. He glanced at me and waited.
I readjusted on the couch, the need to protect myself was strong, so I curled my legs up. “She tumbled. She fell. Landed wrong and broke her leg. Her body went one way, her leg went the other.”
He cringed but stayed silent.
“We had to call an ambulance and everything. Her bone just snapped . I’ll never forget that sound. Or her scream.” I’d also never forget the smile she had on her face right before she agreed to try it. The way she crouched down low and kissed the tip of my nose. “Okay Holly, just for you…”
She’d taken off. Jumped. Fell. Screamed. And my life was shattered, right along with her leg.
“She had surgery,” I told him, “and apparently had some really good drugs for pain after. She couldn’t work for a while…and I don’t really know what happened next. I was so young, but eventually I realized she got hooked on those pills and then other kinds of drugs. She decided she needed to chase the high more than she needed to get clean and be a mom.”
The admission made my chest squeeze painfully tight, and all that pain rushed to my nose. My eyes. My sinuses.
“You know that’s not what she chose, right?” Graham reached out and cupped my cheek and my jaw.
One thumb swiped across my cheek to gather tears, and I leaned in closer, wanting that warm touch on my skin that felt rubbed and scraped until I bled. “People don’t choose addiction, Holly. You know that.”
Maybe. Maybe she didn’t.
“I used to hear them fight—my parents. Dad begged her to get help, and she refused. Said he wasn’t fun anymore. Said everything in her life was boring and tired and ugly and draining.”
She hadn’t specifically said me , but how could I not take it that way? She’d worked at The Grille but was always home with me. I was her life.
And I drained her.
“I’m really sorry,” Graham said. “I’m so sorry you had to hear those things. It was the drugs talking, you know that, though. Right?”
“Well, she took off one day. Just poof , gone. And none of it would have happened if I wouldn’t have been a spoiled brat and begged her to jump.”
I couldn’t stop the tears, and I closed my eyes, burrowing into a tighter ball until the weight of the couch shifted, and then Graham was tugging me closer to him. He set his hand at the back of my head, his other at my lower back, and wrapped me in arms so strong and tight I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been held like this.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he whispered as I cried. “Maybe she wouldn’t have gotten hooked on meds without that jump, but she was still your mom. She wanted you to be impressed by her. She wanted you to think she was amazing. And she loved you, I’m sure of it.”
“I’m not.”
“I am,” he stated, and I swore his lips pressed to the top of my head. I cried, embarrassed at how I’d so easily folded into him, let him hold me for so long that even after the tears dried, it was hard to face him again.
“How’d your dad handle it?” he asked. It was said quietly, almost like he was scared.
“He fell apart. Needless to say, my dad didn’t have the mindset about being partners in a marriage that yours did.” I tried to joke, but it fell flat. Cringing, I pushed off Graham and wiped my eyes with the hem of my sweater.
“I got tears all over your shirt,” I muttered.
“They’ll dry. Stay here.”
He got up, went to the bathroom, and when he returned, he had a box of tissues and some makeup remover wipes. Then he went to the kitchen and brought back another bottle of water.
“In the business of ruining women’s makeup?” I asked, holding up the pale blue plastic packet.
“No, smart aleck. I use them. They’re not so bad for a quick wash when I don’t have time.”
A guy who paid attention to his skin care?
Oddly attractive. Definitely impressive.
He gave me a few minutes to clean up, blow my nose, and was lounging on the couch like nothing happened. Like I hadn’t fallen apart in his arms.
“So, I take it your dad wasn’t so great after?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Weirdly enough, for as much as he hated my mom doing drugs and her addiction, he didn’t care or notice his own. His drug was alcohol, though…but it was what it was. He couldn’t live without her, and he collapsed.”
“You’ve been on your own a long time then, huh?”
As he asked, he reached out and covered his hand with mine. Pushing his fingers against mine, his filled the spaces between mine and then closed both of our hands into an entwined fist.
“I guess,” I whispered. The warmth from his hand holding mine spread up my arm, sent warmth to my neck, my cheeks, and down to my lower stomach. I tried to pull away, and he held on tighter.
“My mom died when I was sixteen,” he said, and it was so low I almost missed it.
“What?”
“Yeah. Cancer. She was diagnosed and then gone in six months, and it wasn’t a pretty six months, either. But that’s one of the reasons I came here for school. Her sister is the one who works on campus. She practically became my second mom after she died.”
“And yet, you’re not falling apart talking about it like I did.”
He reached up and brushed hair off my cheeks and curled his around the back of my neck. My lips parted with surprise as he tugged me closer to him, not nearly close enough to kiss, but if I scooted toward him. If I leaned to the right a bit…
“I got help and had healthy outlets to deal with it, Holly. I have a feeling you didn’t have that.”
“No,” I whispered. “I didn’t have that.”
His smile was soft, understanding. “I was also given the benefit of being able to say goodbye. To say all the things I needed to. To hear all the things she wanted to teach me. I’m sorry you haven’t gotten that, either.”
“Thank you.” More tears burned. How did he get me? How was it possible this boy I met right before I got evicted from a bar I practically lived in while my dad drank his beers and I did my schoolwork could see me so much better than anyone?
He was right about everything. I hadn’t had any of it. Caroline tried, but she and Paul had never been able to have kids, and the restaurant was her whole life. Mothering wasn’t her instinct. Cooking was.
But I had this. This moment in time where there wasn’t judgment in his eyes. Where I didn’t see pity, only the deep well of understanding that could only come from a similar pain.
And it was for that reason I opened my mouth and told him, “You should know that that girl you like really likes you back.”
“Yeah?” A corner of his mouth kicked up before he licked his bottom lip. “Then that girl should know I’m probably going to kiss her.”
I chuckled, and then I was silenced. He leaned down and pressed his mouth to mine. His lips teased mine slowly and were as warm as the rest of him. His grip on me was strong. He unlinked our hands together and cupped both of my cheeks as he kept kissing. Kept teasing.
But he didn’t push it farther. Didn’t even slip his tongue inside. Didn’t do anything more than kiss my lips and press his hands to my cheeks, and it was beautiful.
It was sincere and gentle. It was slow, and I had no doubt that while he kissed me, he wanted to do so much more but held himself back to gain my trust.
Which was probably what had me handing it to him without him even knowing.