Chapter 13 #2
No one’s figured out Hollis’s identity yet, as far as I can tell.
I hope that means Yeva won’t see the video.
Hollis may have told me not to worry about her, but I can’t help wondering if my horniness is going to cause her distress.
I’m about to bring it up again, to ask if Hollis is sure Yeva won’t be upset, if their arrangement explicitly accommodates this sort of thing, when Hollis’s phone buzzes in my hand.
Please don’t be Yeva again. Please don’t be—
Well, it’s not Yeva. But someone’s figured out the man in the video is Hollis Hollenbeck.
JOSH YAEGER: What the hell do you think you’re doing, Hollenbeck?
Seeing my ex’s name makes my stomach dip. “Uh. Hollis. You have a text from...”
JOSH YAEGER: I know you want to be me and have whatever I have but this is taking it too far.
“From...?” Hollis coaxes.
“Josh.”
“Oh.” He huff-laughs. “What does that asshole want?”
I watch the phone’s screen, my hand trembling as I wait to see if another message will come through. “He must’ve seen the video. I think he’s pretty upset.”
“Good.”
JOSH YAEGER: If you want to stick your dick in crazy, be my guest. She’s a terrible lay anyway.
The words shoot fury into my chest at the same time they make my self-assurance feel like peeling wallpaper that could come down with one good tug.
I’ve already become so used to the way Hollis makes me lean into the strongest parts of myself that I forgot how easy it is to be stripped down to something faded and fragile.
JOSH YAEGER: You should know she’s only using you to get back at me. Must’ve heard that’s all you’re good for.
Between reading the comments about the Broccoli Festival parade video and now this, I think I’ve punished myself enough for one day.
I put Hollis’s phone in the empty cup holder and stare out the window as we travel down the highway.
Hollis is focused on the road, his exaggerated arch of a frown curving more severely as the opening notes of “Sister Golden Hair” come through the speakers.
If we weren’t in a completely different car and I didn’t now have a bruised forehead and a thorough mental map of Hollis’s naked body, it would be as if the last two days never happened.
But they did, and we’re now twenty-four hours past my original intended arrival time at the nursing facility.
We’re not even through South Carolina yet.
“Hey,” I say. “Will you do me a gigantic favor?”
“Depends,” he answers.
“On?”
“If I want to do it.”
I roll my eyes but honestly appreciate this evidence that nothing really has changed between us.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Would you call the place where Elsie is and check if she... if she’s... Would you see how she’s doing? I can’t seem to make myself do it. I’m too afraid of what they’ll say.”
“Oh,” he says. “Yeah. I can do that. Next time we stop?”
I exhale, relieved. “That’d be great. Thanks.”
We’re silent for a moment, and I can almost hear his brain formulating the question that eventually comes out of his mouth.
“What will you do if—”
“If I’m too late?” I finish.
“Yeah.”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”
“Will you still go to Key West? Or head home?”
The part of me that will be crushed will want to turn around and go home.
But the other part of me, the one that needed to take this trip in the first place, will demand I continue to Key West anyway.
Then I can at least find a place there to lay my three tablespoons of Mrs. Nash to rest. I mean, it’d be silly to take her back to DC after we’ve come so far.
“I’ll still go,” I say. “Just for a few hours. To scatter the ashes, at least.”
“And if Elsie is still around? What’s the plan then?”
“Reunite her and Mrs. Nash, of course. Talk to her, if she’s able and willing. I have so many questions. I want to hear everything about her life. I know the basics from the research I did to find her, but there’s only so much government records and a few newspaper articles can tell you.”
There were US Navy reports about what happened in Korea, though they were too official to go into detail about the situation beyond stating there was an “administrative error.” After that, Elsie Brown popped up in the Yale Daily News in an article on women students at the medical school, and then in the acknowledgments in a few surgical medicine journal articles.
From there, I figured out that she spent most of her career as a trauma surgeon at a hospital near Fort Lauderdale, and that she retired in the early ’80s.
I thought that was where the paper trail ended, and it wasn’t exactly easy to find any relatives, with her last name being so common.
Then this past Wednesday morning, I came across a brief feature in the Key West Citizen acknowledging her recent 101st birthday, which is how I learned she’s been living at The Palms at Southernmost for the last five years.
Oh my god. I think I’ve found her , I said to the box of ashes sitting beside my laptop when I got to the last line of the article. The Mrs. Nash in my head responded with a beatific smile.
“Right,” Hollis says absently as he changes lanes to pass a slow station wagon in front of us.
“But I’ll probably stay until... until the end if I can. I don’t know if she has any remaining extended family. So I want to make sure she has a friend there with her at least.”
“I’ll need to get back on the road by Saturday,” Hollis says. “I’m teaching a summer writing class that starts the next Monday.”
I can’t understand why he’s telling me this unless.
.. “Oh! Don’t worry about me. I figured you’d keep Ryan’s car, take it back to Gadsley to pick up yours whenever you’re done in Miami.
I’m just going to get a rental car, then fly home as originally planned.
Easier than trying to align our itineraries, especially since I have no idea when I’m heading back.
I wouldn’t ask you to leave Yeva early or hang around extra days waiting for me. ”
“Millicent, I’m not—”
“Fuck.” The thought of Hollis with Yeva sends a little pang of jealousy through me that has me wanting to hold my backpack to my chest like a shield.
But when I search the floorboard by my feet, it isn’t there.
“Fuck,” I repeat. “I lost my backpack. I must’ve—shit.
We have to—we have to go back. I have to find it. ”
“Are you sure it’s not in the back seat, or in the trunk with the suitcases, or—”
“Yes, I’m sure. I must’ve left it at the B driving back to Gadsley, finding my backpack, and getting back to wherever we currently are is going to add over two hours to our travel today. “Dammit,” I whisper. “Dammit, dammit, dammit.”
Hollis takes the next exit and immediately gets back on the highway heading in the opposite direction. “Hey, at least you noticed now and not when we were halfway through Florida.”
My head snaps up and around to stare at this alien in the driver’s seat. His eyes shift over to glance at me for a split second before they return to the road. “Who the hell are you?” I ask. “And what did you do with my super-hot but absurdly pessimistic travel buddy?”
“Just because I usually choose not to focus on silver linings does not mean I don’t have the ability to find them when I want to.”
“Well, stop it. The role reversal’s making me uncomfortable.
” I try not to focus on how finding the silver lining to make me feel better is apparently something Hollis wants to do.
“You should be extremely annoyed with me right now. I’ve just delayed your sex appointment with Yeva by at least another two hours. ”
Hollis’s frown deepens. “Enough of this. Get my phone.”
“Why?”
“I need you to look at my texts with her. Scroll up to last night’s.”
I’ve already grabbed his phone, but now I lay it facedown on my leg; I have zero desire to see any more of Yeva than I already have. “Sorry, but I really do not want to read your sexts with another woman. I’m trying to be chill about this stuff, but I cannot be that chill.”
“Oh my god, Millicent, they aren’t—just read the damn texts.”
I sigh, brace myself for any explicit pictures that might be waiting for me, and navigate to the conversation with Yeva Markarian.
YEVA: Updated ETA?
That text arrived yesterday evening. Probably what made his phone buzz on the nightstand right as Pee-wee arrived at the Alamo. Hollis glanced at it and set it back down without responding. But apparently he did send something back eventually, because there’s a reply with a time stamp of 10:12 pm .
HOLLIS: Hey. Really sorry to do this to you, but I’m not going to make it after all.
YEVA: Everything ok?
HOLLIS: Yeah mostly. A friend has to visit someone in hospice and I’d like to be there for her.
YEVA: Oh wow all right. Sorry to hear that...
HOLLIS: Yeah. Sorry again. Hope I didn’t screw up your week.
YEVA: No worries, we’ll catch up some other time. It’s important to be there for your friend xo
HOLLIS: Thanks xo
The first thing my brain latches onto is the exchange of “xo”s and how I wish they weren’t there. But it quickly shifts to the bigger picture, that Hollis canceled his sex appointment to come with me to see Elsie. And he made that decision post– Pee-wee , pre-intercourse.
“Hollis... this is really sweet of you,” I say.
“I’m not trying to be sweet. I’m trying to get you to stop worrying about me and Yeva because there is no me and Yeva. There’s only me and you right now.”
I know he doesn’t mean anything romantic by that, but my too-soft heart does a tiny pirouette anyway. “You may not be trying to be sweet, but you’re still succeeding,” I say. “And Yeva didn’t seem all that surprised by you doing a nice thing for someone. Total secret cinnamon roll. I knew it.”
Hollis lets out a heavy sigh, and his right hand moves from the steering wheel to his earlobe. “Why did I agree to spend more time with you?”
“Because I’m delightful.”
“That’s debatable.”
“Are you sure you want to come to Key West?” I ask, wanting to give him an out in case he’s actually regretting his decision. “I’ll be okay alone if you’d rather—”
“Yes, I’m sure. I want to be there when you reunite Mrs. Nash and Elsie.”
“But why? You don’t believe in any of this lasting love stuff.” Is he really going to come to Key West with me just to rub it in my face if it turns out Elsie doesn’t care? That seems cruel, and Hollis can be a jerk for sure, but he’s given no sign of being intentionally sadistic.
He glances at me for a second, then returns his attention to the road. “Maybe I’d like to be convinced that I’m wrong.”