21. Holly
TWENTY-ONE
HOLLY
I couldn’t believe I was here. Couldn’t believe Graham was sitting across from me, prying into my life, telling me about his. I’d wanted more information from him than only if he was working. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who needed to know if the other was dating or seeing someone. Maybe he had kids of his own by now. A cute little wife who wore her baby in a carrier and cheered him on as he coached his games.
The smartest thing I could do was leave without ripping open the rest of my secrets, but I was stuck in that booth.
“He’s…what? But…”
His confusion matched the same expression I wore for the first three months of Jonah’s existence. I swear, every day I walked around the trailer, bouncing him, rocking him, crying right along with him, and thinking…what? How is he mine? How did this happen?
Graham recovered quicker than most. “Your mom…she came back?”
“A few hours after I got back from your place that last night.” I was already spilling my secrets, might as well give him the rest. “She showed up high, practically tossed him at me, and then took off.”
Tears burned my eyes, but it was no longer in anger. It was sadness. It was pain, at how she never bothered to try to learn how great her little boy was. How smart he was and how sweet he could be. He’d slept with me until he was two, even though I’d gotten a crib for him and then a toddler bed, but he went straight from my bed to a full-size bed donated by someone to the women’s center.
My mom walked away from both of her kids, and while I might have been okay, Jonah was a gift. She’d never been sober long enough to realize what she had.
I no longer hated my mom. She lost her tools to care about anything but her next high years ago, and I’d spent enough time at a local Al-Anon to forgive her. But Jonah would someday ask questions. Someday he’d know the truth, and I despised the day I became the person who made him have all the questions I’d had when it came to our mother.
Across from me, Graham gaped in silence. I’d opened the honesty valve and couldn’t seem to shut it.
“It took me a few years to be able to adopt him, but I was awarded custody immediately. I had some help with that. There’s a women’s center in town that takes donations, teaches classes, and helps women with things like pregnancy tests. Trina, the owner of it, was there for me a lot in the beginning. The court had to give Mom time to show up and reclaim him, that kind of thing, but eventually, after she never came back or reached out or anything, enough time went by, and I was able to plead for her rights to be terminated. Now he’s mine.”
Graham’s gaping silence turned him into looking like a fish out of water, like words were forming in his throat, but he couldn’t find the right ones to say, so he kept stuffing them down.
“Anyway, it was hard. I did graduate but switched to mostly online classes. Caroline and Paul helped out a lot, but then, when I wanted to leave, it was too hard. The job market wasn’t great, every place I looked at was so expensive. Daycare costs absolutely blew my mind. I hadn’t planned for those.”
“And so you stayed.”
I tore at the napkin, the paper that had been wrapped around it. Those first couple of years had been the hardest. All my dreams went up in smoke, but I’d been given something—someone—so much better than I could have ever dreamed of, too. It was the strangest thing, feeling the loss of a life you’d fought for for so long, but loving the surprise that had come into your life.
“It wasn’t only the expenses,” I told him. “Caroline had a stroke when Jonah was two. She had a long, difficult recovery and still isn’t one hundred percent.” I glanced at him and felt embarrassment creep up my neck. “I never told you this, but this restaurant is half mine.”
“Really?” Two brows rose into perfect points on his forehead.
“Yeah. My grandparents put it in their will to Caroline and my mom. Mom left, and Caroline always hoped she’d return, but well, obviously you know how that turned out. After Jonah showed up, Caroline had a lawyer change the ownership from my mom to me. I couldn’t ever figure out how to leave Caroline after her stroke, leaving her with all the work of this place. And then there was Jonah…”
It’d been a perfect storm of changes that had leveled my last remaining hopes of freedom.
“So you stayed,” Graham said again. This time he wore a soft smile full of understanding. It was a look I knew well. A look I vividly remembered.
A look I was once certain I’d never see again and wasn’t sure I was thrilled to be doing so then.
“So I stayed.”
He looked out the window and blinked, running his three main fingers back and forth across his forehead. “You were here all this time. I looked for you. I came here looking for you. For weeks after. Banged down Tracey’s door so many times she almost had me arrested.”
“I know.”
“You knew.” He laughed, but it lacked the warmth all his old laughs used to have, and I cringed.
I was the cause of it this time. That didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was the devastation stamped all over him.
“I would have helped, Holly. I would have been here for you.”
“Sophie was still between us.” I shook my head. “You wouldn’t have.”
“No…I would have. You just wouldn’t let me be there for you. You didn’t even give me the chance.”
Sadness crept into my bones and my veins, making me cold. He was still so naive, but he hadn’t lived a life with whispers and gossip and people looking at you with disgust. Like you were poisoned because of who you came from. Those were mostly gone now. Enough time had passed that most locals seemed to have forgotten why I was alone in the first place, but there were a few that remained.
“I did what I thought was right at the time. You would have still left eventually, and I needed to learn how to do it on my own. And I did have help. Tracey and Caroline were lifesavers.”
Along with Trina and Cole. Their friends Sarah and Robbie were foster parents and frequently had kids of all ages in their home, so they were prepared for everything. We were friends now, and Jonah enjoyed playing with Cole’s girls, Ella and June, from his first marriage.
Others in town had come around to help too, some from the church I grew up in, some were older women from Caroline’s occasional sewing club.
“You were here, though. And maybe you had help, but I know how the people treated you.”
He sounded so broken, and that empathetic part of him broke me a little.
“People change and grow, Graham. It hasn’t been all bad. In fact, most of it’s been pretty great considering how wonderful Jonah is.”
His fingers tapped on the table, and his jaw worked back and forth.
Food would be ready any minute knowing Jonah and Caroline, and I’d have to get up and get working. “Tell me more about you, Graham. What have you been up to?”
“There’s not a lot to say. I teach, I coach. I try to get to Tanner’s games every once in a while.”
“He’s doing well, it sounds like.”
“You’ve heard?” It took him a beat, and then he sighed. “Tracey. They still keep in touch.”
“Yeah. She lets it slip every so often.”
He sighed and dropped his head. “I was hoping I could come tonight and see you and realize we had nothing in common and realize that everything I once felt for you was gone, but you’re making it really damn hard, Holly.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
He lifted his head, and his eyes pierced mine, and not for the first time, it seemed like he saw straight into my soul. “You’re being you, and that’s always been enough.”
My heart stuttered in my chest, and my cheeks burned. “Graham?—“
“Onion strings!” Jonah shouted. Behind him, Caroline pushed through the doors with the plate of onion rings piled high and three glasses of water.
“Onion strings,” Graham muttered. “Kid’s cute.”
“He’s the best thing to ever happen to me.”
Caroline delivered the dish and drinks without asking Graham if he wanted anything else and left us alone.
It hurt, only a little, when Jonah shoved his little body into Graham’s side of the booth instead of mine and dug into the onion rings like I hadn’t fed him for days.
“Try one!” Jonah practically shoved the onion into Graham’s face.
He scanned the table. “No mustard?”
Man, he really had remembered so much. “Not with the onions. I save that masterpiece for the fries.”
“I think it’s gross,” Jonah said, munching on a mouthful of snacks. “Ketchup is the bestest.”
“I agree, Jonah,” Graham said. “Mustard on fries is gross.”
I resisted the urge to toss an onion at his face and dug into the plate.
I didn’t stay because I still had that comfortable feeling around him.
I didn’t stay because the thought of walking away again hurt.
I stayed because it was rare I got to see Jonah interact with many good men, and I wanted to soak it up for as long as he was allowed to have it.
* * *
“I should get going.” Graham was at the hostess stand.
Behind him was a buzz of activity. I’d sat with them for as long as I could, loath to walk away, but in the end, customers started coming in, and I needed to get to work. I stopped by and checked on them when time allowed, eventually bringing Graham a French dip sandwich and Jonah a bowl of ice cream, but it was late. My feet and lower back ached, Jonah was restless, and our nighttime servers were here to handle the late-night crowd and close up.
When I started working with Caroline, that was one of the things I insisted on. I handled mornings and would happily stay through dinner, but neither of us was going to kill ourselves working fourteen-hour days again. Not after her stroke.
She was already gone, trusting me and the assistant night manager, Cain, to take care of the rest.
“Heading home tomorrow?” I asked.
“Camp’s done, so yeah, I was planning on it.”
He stressed the was like maybe now he had options. I had to ensure one of those wouldn’t be me. “Okay.”
He shuffled on his feet and didn’t take his eyes off mine. “I’m finding it hard to think about leaving, Holly.”
“Don’t, Graham…” I shook my head. “We saw each other, we got caught up. Leave it at that.”
“I should. Shouldn’t I?” He tapped the side of his wallet onto the stand before slipping it into his back pocket. “The problem is walking away from you isn’t something that’s ever come easy for me, even when I know I should.”
I pressed my lips together harshly to stave off the sob clawing its way up my throat. This wasn’t fair. Not to me or to Jonah.
It definitely wasn’t fair to Graham.
“I think maybe it’s time you try a little bit harder,” I told him honestly. “I’m not at that place to give you anything.”
He frowned, taking it as the rejection it was intended to be. “Can I at least have a hug goodbye this time, then?”
I shook my head again. I couldn’t. If he had his arms around me, it was possible I could cave, let him draw me in all over again, and this time, the stakes were much higher. “I don’t think so.”
“All right then.” He sighed and glanced around the restaurant. “Place looks really good. Not sure if I said that yet, but to me it looks like a really nice life you’re building, Holly. I’m glad you have that.”
“Thanks,” I said, as tears swam in my eyes. I couldn’t even blink them back. “You should go.”
He saw the tears. He opened his mouth and then thought better of it. “Take care, Holly.”
“Bye, Graham.”
The sad smile he gave me as he turned and left the restaurant was a look I wouldn’t forget anytime soon.
It hurt almost as much as the last time he left, but just like last time, I was still confident it was the right decision.
* * *
“You good, little man?”
Jonah dragged his hockey bag out of my Honda Pilot, an upgrade from my Jimmy by twelve years, and dumped it on the garage floor. He had to walk over it to get into the house, and tomorrow, he’d still probably forget where he put it.
“Tired,” he grumbled. “So tired my eyes hurt.”
“We’ll get you in bed as soon as you get a bath.”
“Ugh. A bath?” His little body shivered with revulsion, and I opened the door to the house.
The trailer was gone, and we now lived in a small, three-bedroom townhome. The small neighborhood had a pool for summers and a playground where dozens of kids could always be found. It was tucked back off the main roads and far enough away there weren’t many tourists outside the two or three townhomes that went up for winter rentals, but even then it usually attracted families with small kids.
I suppose it was better for me as well, too. I had a nice home that I gave Jonah entirely on my own, but there were days I missed the quiet land around the trailer and the peace that came from seclusion…something I never thought I’d say, but I’d started finally falling in love with my run-down trailer when it was the place Jonah crawled for the first time and took his first steps.
His sudden arrival in my life flipped a switch, and my entire life perspective afterward changed. Where I’d once despised the rundown trailer, I started looking forward to cooking healthy meals in it. I smiled as I paced back and forth on the worn carpeting, rocking him while he cried himself to sleep. I smiled and felt a peace the first two years I decorated for Christmas, and then Jonah was old enough to help hang ornaments on the lowest branches.
The townhome was safer and cleaner and larger and newer and everything a parent wanted to provide for their kids, but when I looked back on the days he and I spent learning how to do this life thing together, my heart ached at the memories we’d created there.
“Come on.” I dropped my purse onto my kitchen island, scowled at the breakfast mess I’d left on the counter, and guided Jonah upstairs to his bathroom.
I started the water, grabbed him a fresh towel out of his bathroom closet, and set it on the counter. “Shout if you need help.”
I grabbed his dirty clothes and towels and dumped them on the floor of the laundry room at the top of the stairs right outside all three bedrooms.
Laundry. Between the two of us, it was somehow never-ending. Along with sweeping and vacuuming and cleaning the kitchen. Had I known the majority of my days would be spent thinking about meals and cleaning after meals and planning for the next meal and writing grocery lists for more meals outside what I already thought of for the restaurant, I wasn’t always sure I would have agreed to keep him.
But then he smiled or caught a baseball. He learned to skate and scored his first goal or read a book all on his own, and every painful amount of energy that went into thinking about food vanished.
I kept the bathroom door open for Jonah while he bathed and busied myself in my bedroom. I put away clothes, started a load of laundry, and cleaned up my own bathroom counter, and when I couldn’t find anything else to do to keep busy while he bathed, I plopped down on my bed and dropped my head into my hands.
Graham Marchese. Time had only made him more attractive. His hair was shorter but still had that curl to it, and his eyes bore the same intensity they used to when he focused on me. He still had the body of a college athlete, not surprising given that he was a coach, but man…
I shook my head and blew out a breath. What a day. What a wild freaking day.
If I were a different woman, with smaller problems and fewer complications, I would have taken that hug from him. Who was I kidding?
I would have taken everything he had to give me.
But I wasn’t. I wasn’t that woman. Which meant for the second time in my life, I had to figure out a way to forget Graham and move on.
“Mom! I’m done!”
I shoved off the bed, blew out another breath, and got back to my life.
One where Graham didn’t fit. He never had and never would.
Just my luck.