Chapter 26 #2
I began this trip as a skeptic, and I will end it as a skeptic.
Four days of domestic travel—even ones as eventful as ours have been—cannot change anyone so completely that they are no longer the fundamental thing that they were before.
I’m grateful for that. I am grateful that, when we return to DC, Millicent will still be a person who believes in things like lasting love, no matter the disappointment we’ve found in Key West. Me, though, I will still be somebody who needs proof in order to let myself embrace such a terrifying and wonderful possibility.
But now, as I look over at Millicent, asleep beside me in this hotel room, I realize that proof won’t be found at the end of someone else’s story; I’m going to find it in ours, and in every moment of every day I manage to spend by her side.
“Hollis...” I say, my voice trailing off as I realize I have no actual response.
“I wrote that right before I left to pick up dinner. The guilt of what I did, of keeping it from you, was starting to eat me alive. So I planned to tell you everything and give you the notebook tonight. Then—assuming you forgave me—in forty, fifty, eighty years, we wouldn’t have to send some poor woman to Key West in search of reassurance that she isn’t a fool to believe that love can last a lifetime.
She could just stay home and read about the happy, frustrating decades I spent with you, compiling my proof. ”
Did he just say “decades”? Hollis wants to spend decades with me.
That’s like, multiple tens in a row. My heartbeat thumps extra fast, as if it’s trying to add up how many days and nights and smiles and orgasms we can fit into that much time.
How many parties will end with me not in tears, but with Hollis still taking me home.
“I came here to find you because if all of this has taught me anything, it’s that we are lucky to have a choice, Millicent.
We can still decide whether this is a beginning or an ending,” he says.
“And maybe it’s just me being selfish again, but I want a beginning.
I want you. I want us.” He runs one hand through his hair and stares at the notebook.
“But you were right. Even though I realized early on that I can’t publish this, it’s still a huge violation of your trust that I wrote about the stories you told me and the things we did without your permission.
And I’m sure you’ve realized I went through your backpack Friday morning while you were in the shower and read the letters Elsie sent Mrs. Nash, which is another massive breach of your privacy.
” Hollis slowly gets to his feet. “I am so incredibly sorry, Mill. And here is the only way I can think of to prove that.” He grabs the notebook from my lap, raises it over his head, swings his arm back, takes a few gigantic steps forward, and chucks the damn thing into the ocean .
“What did you do that for!” I shout, springing up.
He tilts his head and looks at me like the answer is obvious. “I might be selfish, but I don’t want you to ever think I care more about myself and my career than I care about you. And you didn’t want me to publish it, so now you don’t have to worry—”
“But you just spent all this time convincing me it was actually a romantic gesture! You made me want to keep it and then you threw it into the goddamn ocean !”
“Oh. Right. Shit. Fuck. Maybe I can—” Hollis is out of his clothes in what must be a world record. He and his gorgeous bare ass run into the water, aiming approximately where the notebook landed.
“Wait!” I yell as he dives under and disappears. He doesn’t resurface. “Hollis!” I call out over the water.
Goddammit. If he dies trying to recover that stupid notebook that he hurled into the ocean like a freaking Olympic discus thrower I am going to be so mad at him.
My sand-filled sandals come off, then my dress, underwear, and bra.
I toss them on top of my backpack. If all those people with such strong opinions on Penelope in her yellow bikini could see me now.
Thank you, approaching dark, for masking all my jiggling as I run into the water.
The sea is a shock to my landlubber system at first—it’s been years since I swam in anything but a heavily chlorinated pool.
But I soon adjust to the way the waves playfully push me around, and make my way out as far as I can go while still able to bounce along the sandy bottom on my tiptoes.
“Hollis!” I yell again. “Hollis! Where are you?”
Something splashes and brushes past my legs. Oh god. This is it. Somehow I always knew I would die at the hands (or rather, fins) of a shallow-dwelling, embarrassingly small shark. Except this shark has strong man arms and is hugging me against his wet chest?
“Can’t find it,” the shark says into my ear. “I’m sorry.”
(Hollis is the shark.)
“Why the hell did you do that?”
“I don’t know! It was impulsive and I just wanted you to know that I was sorry.” He groans. “I hate this. Loving you is making me so damn stupid.”
I turn in his arms to face him, and I can almost taste the briny air with my mouth hanging open like this. “Sorry, what? What is making you stupid?”
“Loving you,” he says, sounding super frustrated about it.
“Loving me.”
“Yes. If it isn’t extremely obvious by now, I’m in love with you, Millicent.”
“You’re in love with me.”
“Yes,” he says. “I love you. I know that sounds ridiculous after four days but—”
“Two years,” I correct, even though I’m probably focusing on the wrong part of this declaration. “We’ve known each other for two years.”
“You don’t even remember meeting me at the poetry reading.”
“I do. I remember getting a little lost in your eyes when we shook hands. Which is more than you remember about me from Josh’s book release party.”
“I remember everything about you from that night. Which is why when I saw you at the airport I pretended I didn’t remember you at all.”
“Mm, yeah, I think we’re going to have to unpack the logic behind that later. But the point is, two years,” I say. “We’ve technically known each other for two years. So it’s not too soon.”
His fingers run through his wet hair, brushing it back and out of his face. “However you count it, it was only over the last four days that I realized I love you.”
I laugh at the way he says it as if it’s a huge inconvenience. “You don’t have to sound so annoyed about it.”
“I am annoyed about it, though. Because if you love me back, my life is going to be awful. You’re going to drag me to record stores on the weekends, and I’m going to have to keep pretending I only kind of like Hall that is a great line. But before I can respond, a wave crashes something into my hip. “Ow, what the hell?”
Then I see what it is. Hollis’s red notebook.
It starts to float away, but Hollis grabs it by its metal spiral binding just in time.
We look at each other as if both wondering if Mrs. Nash and Elsie had something to do with this immense stroke of luck.
I flip it open and, well, if Mrs. Nash and Elsie did somehow summon this back to us, they did it for laughs because it’s absolutely soaked through and the ink has bled so much that the words are illegible.
“I knew that was too good to be true.” I sigh. “And I barely even got to read any of it.”
He kisses a drop of water off my shoulder. “Maybe I’ll write it again for you,” he says. “You’ll have to be patient, though. It might take a while.”
Oh, right. Hollis is no closer to a finished manuscript for his second book than he was when we ran into each other at the airport. “I guess you need to get working on something new now that this turned out to be a bust, huh?”
“Well, yeah. But I mostly meant that I don’t foresee our story ending anytime soon.”
The sweetness is almost too much to bear. So I kiss him on the tip of his nose, which I can tell he secretly loves, and say, “I know you are, but what am I?”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” he says.
“I know you are, but what am I?”
He growls in that way that makes me feel like my body is made up of butterflies. “Millicent, if you’re going to quote Pee-wee, it should at least—”
I stare into those mismatched eyes and give him a daring smile. “I know you are. But. What. Am. I?”
“Getting thrown into the ocean like that damn notebook,” he says, lifting me high against him.
My laughter turns to an embarrassing screech as he moves like he might actually toss me into the waves. But instead I’m held tighter, and kissed everywhere that isn’t currently underwater, and I know, I already know: Annoying him forever is going to be so much fun.