Chapter 15 Hollis
“Let me help you in,” I say.
Larissa holds onto my arm and hums against my jacket.
Her cheeks are pink from the three glasses of wine she drank with her mother after we returned from the rooftop.
She dozed off in the car on the way back to her house, but I’m not mad about it.
I kind of like her when she’s not talking a mile a minute.
Although I missed her crazy questions.
We stumble up the sidewalk. I help her get her key in the door. She steps inside and pulls me right along with her.
“I guess I’m coming in,” I crack as I shut the door behind us.
She turns on the light, squinting when the chandelier overhead shines brightly on us. She winces as she wakes back up.
“Who let me drink this much?” she asks, pressing a hand to her stomach.
“Your mother.”
She laughs. “Figures. Are you hungry?”
I shrug noncommittally.
“Follow me,” she says.
We walk down a hallway and into the kitchen. The floors are a dark hardwood, and the cabinets a deep navy blue. The handles are some kind of copper or brass. I know from working construction all summer for the past four years that this isn’t cheap. Not in the least.
She rummages through a pantry tucked into the wall next to a Sub-Zero refrigerator.
Her dress is a bit rumpled but still beautiful despite everything.
It managed to make it through a formal dinner of halibut and prime rib, as well as cigars on the balcony with a couple of baseball players from Jack’s team who were cool as hell.
I even got on FaceTime with Crew and River so they could say hello.
I miss those fuckers.
I spent almost an hour shooting the shit with Jack and his buddy Milo. They own a bunch of ground in Ohio, near where I grew up in Indiana, and invited me to go hunting with them next fall.
Then Larissa and I spent a couple of hours of dancing to everything from The Mamas and the Papas to Post Malone—something I thought I’d never do and probably will never do again. But somehow, this girl gets me to do whatever she wants.
It’s a good thing I’m going home soon. This could be a problem.
“Bellamy ate all my Cheez-Its,” she says. “Do you like cookies or beef jerky? Or …” She reaches into the back of the cabinet and pulls out a familiar white box. “I have three Ding Dongs.”
“Ding Dongs are my favorite food.”
“Seriously?” She peers at the box. “I don’t even know why I have these. They might be expired.”
“They never expire. That’s the beauty of a Ding Dong.”
She tosses me the container. “Here. All yours.” She reaches back inside and grabs a package of chocolate chip cookies. “Let’s eat in bed.”
“Haven’t you heard the saying about eating crackers in bed?”
“Yeah,” she says as she walks by. “And the saying goes that hot guys can always eat crackers in your bed.”
“Ahhh. Excellent point. You haven’t even seen my abs yet.”
“I didn’t tell you what you had to do to get in my bed,” she jokes. I think.
I follow her back down the hallway to her bedroom. I stop in the doorway.
The wallpaper is a dark blue with the coolest design in a different shade of blue. It gives so much dimension and texture to the walls that it’s fascinating.
“Love the wallpaper,” I say, stepping fully inside. “It almost looks like velvet.”
“Right? I love it so much. Sebas… Never mind.”
“Yeah. Never mind.”
My jaw flexes at the idea of that bastard being here. Of course, he was. He was in this room, this house … in her.
I have to shove the thought out of my head.
I take off my jacket and lay it over a chair. She disappears into what I assume is a closet. I take my shoes and socks off, grab my Ding Dongs, and climb into her bed.
The bed is huge, a king, I think, and piled with pillows of all shapes and colors. The bedding is soft as fuck—all fluffy and cloud-like. I get situated on the pillows and feel the weight of the world float away.
When Larissa comes back out, her hair is down and brushed out, and she’s wearing a long T-shirt.
I watch her move across the room like some kind of angel. I’m well aware that my mind is fucking with me, but I can’t help it.
She’s even more fucking gorgeous now than she was earlier. Who would’ve thought that was possible?
Larissa climbs into bed, and I hand her the cookies. She slips under the covers.
“So …” I say, taking a bite of a Ding Dong. “Now what?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know.” She takes a cookie from the container and nibbles along the edge. “Wanna talk?”
I lay my head back against the headboard. It hits with a thud, making her laugh.
I sort of knew this was coming. It’s what she does. Larissa asks questions. But I’ve discovered that as much as it annoys me when she does it, it annoys me less when it’s her and not someone else. And it annoys me even less when she doesn’t do it.
Maybe this is because, down deep, I kind of like her dedication to figuring me out. It might also be that I like her resiliency. No matter how hard I try to deter her, she pushes.
Because she just might care a little.
I take another bite of my treat, letting my head fall over so I can look at her. She watches me out of the corner of her eye and tries not to grin.
The longer we sit in silence eating our junk food, the more I feel myself giving in to her iron-clad will.
I sigh. “Fine. Three questions.”
She shimmies to sit upright. Her eyes glow. “Anything I want?”
“I reserve the right not to answer anything I don’t want to,” I say, ignoring the face she makes, “but, yes. You can ask me three things. But I get three back to you.”
She squeals. I roll my eyes.
She pretends she doesn’t already know what she’s going to ask. It’s adorable.
“Okay. First question,” she says. “What is your hidden talent?”
I fill my mouth with my cake. “Singing.”
“Singing?”
I nod.
“Okay. Sing.”
I laugh, shaking my head as I swallow. “I can’t just sing on demand.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t.”
She sticks her bottom lip out. I reach over and flip it with my thumb.
She swats my hand. “Sing your karaoke song,” she says.
“My karaoke song. What’s that?”
“The song you sing when you karaoke. Duh.”
Flashbacks of karaoke with the football team at The Truth Is Out There come rolling back through my memory. It always happens on the nights we drink—nights that don’t happen very often. Not for Crew, River, and me, anyway.
“So?” Larissa prompts.
I stick out my bottom lip. “‘Hello’ by Adele.”
“What?” She smiles broadly. “Go. Sing. Now.”
“Again, I just can’t sing when prompted. I’m not a fucking canary.”
She laughs. “Come on, Hollis. Sing for me.”
I can tell by the glimmer in her eyes that she’s not going to let it go. She’s going to hound me until I finally break down, so I might as well do it now.
I clear my throat and begin to sing the first few bars of Adele’s hit song. The smile dims on Larissa’s face as I get to the part about a million miles.
“Oh, my gosh,” she whispers. “Hollis. You’re good.”
I let the line vanish off the tip of my tongue and shrug. “I’m not good. It’s fine. It’s just my party trick.”
“No. Don’t sell yourself short. Your voice is amazing.”
I blow her off. “Okay, my turn. What’s your hidden talent?”
“You can’t ask me what I ask you.”
I grin. “Oh, I can. And I did.”
“I don’t have one.” She pops a cookie in her mouth. “I’m talentless.”
I doubt that. I turn over onto my side and watch her. “Answer it, or we’ll be here all night.”
She rolls over to face me too. “That’s fine. I live here.”
I brush a piece of cookie off her lip. “Answer. It.”
“I really don’t have any hidden talents, but I can speak English, French, and bits of Russian.”
“No shit?”
She nods. “I had to take a foreign language in school and fell in love with it. I’m learning Russian on an app on my phone.”
“Huh. That’s cool. Not what I was expecting, but I love it.”
“Great.” She smiles at me. “Question number two is one I’m just using for scientific research, okay?”
“Okay.”
“How do you feel about monogamy?”
“Interesting change of direction.”
She waits patiently for me to answer.
“I feel like if you’ve committed to someone and you’ve agreed that’s what you’re doing, then you honor that. Your word is your word,” I say.
“But do you think it’s something that can be done?”
“Of course.”
She studies me. “Is it something you do?”
I wish I had another Ding Dong at my disposal, so I didn’t have to answer this.
“Not really,” I say, watching her face fall. “I’m not against it. By all means, if you’re going to be in a relationship, monogamy would be the way to go.”
“So you don’t really do relationships?”
I wrinkle my nose at her. “Only the ones with pacts for a limited number of days. What about you?”
“I think monogamy is the only way to have a true connection with someone. I think our society undervalues it.”
“Probably true.”
Her face darkens as she prepares her third and final question. She shoves the cookies away from her and focuses squarely on my face. It makes me squirm because, while I have no idea what she’s going to say, I already know I don’t want to answer it.
“Third question—what did you mean when you told me that your mom is the one who burned you?”
I sit up. I’m acutely aware of how closely she’s observing every move I make. I also know she’s expecting an answer to this—to the one question I avoid from anyone.
My heart sinks as I think about my mom and the circumstances surrounding her leaving Harlee and me.
I don’t want to answer this. I want to avoid it like I always do because it’s not something I talk about to anyone—not even Crew and River. But, for the first time in my life, I can feel a small fissure in my heart that wants to allow some of the story to come out.
Maybe it’ll help lighten my load. Maybe I won’t feel so … alone.
My heart pounds in my chest as I try to figure out where to start and how much to tell her.
The beauty of telling her is that it won’t matter. I can walk out of here tonight and never see her again.
That’s supposed to make me feel better. It doesn’t.
“Hollis?” she asks softly.
“The last time I saw my mother, I was sixteen,” I tell her.
It seems like enough to see how she reacts. Surprisingly, she reaches out and touches my arm.
“I’m sorry. That must be hard. What happened to her?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
My heart sinks as I say the words out loud. I don’t know what happened to my mother.
I could try to figure it out, I’m sure. One night, River looked her up but couldn’t find anything. I figure she’s in jail somewhere, rotting away for some misdeed.
“I was six when she lost custody of Harlee and me the first time,” I say, staring at the wall ahead of me.
“We left for school, and Child Protective Services picked us up around lunchtime. Apparently, our parents had a meth lab in the basement, and they got hauled off to jail as one does when things like that happen.”
She squeaks a gasp. “I’m so sorry, Hollis.”
I can feel Larissa’s gaze on my cheek, but I don’t look at her. I’m afraid of what I might see.
“My sister and I got split up,” I say. “We stayed in touch for a few years, but after that, we lost contact. I have no idea what happened to her.”
“I can’t imagine. I wish I could … help. But … Hollis. I’m so sorry.”
I nod. I get it. But there’s nothing she can do.
“I bounced around from foster family to foster family,” I continue for some strange reason. “In their defense, I wasn’t an easy kid to take care of. I had a ton of energy and a chip on my shoulder, and I ran away from most of them at the first opportunity.”
“That must have been awful for you,” Larissa says. “I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
I look down at her and hold my breath, expecting to see pity. Instead, I see something else—something warm and kind and hopeful.
I don’t know what to make of that, but it makes me want to keep talking.
“When I was fourteen, my mom got custody back,” I say, my voice staying surprisingly steady. “She didn’t get Harlee, just me. Dad was still in prison, so it was just the two of us.”
My jaw clenches as I remember leaving the foster home I was in and moving back in with her. I didn’t know her anymore and had only seen her a few times at visitation. She didn’t look like the mom I recalled, and I didn’t feel like I knew her—or her me—at all.
“We did okay for the first few months. But then shit got hard, and she lost her job, and we couldn’t afford food. We were going to get evicted. So she got back into her old clique …” Tears sting the corners of my eyes. “And I sold my first bit of dope for her. I was sixteen.”
“Hollis,” Larissa whispers, her voice clearly in shock. “Oh, my gosh.”
I run my tongue over my teeth as I think about how badly all of that could’ve turned out.
“I know,” I say. “She got picked up again a few months after, and I went back into foster care. Stayed with a couple named Philip and Kim, who were too nice to the kid I was back then.”
“Thank God, you found them.”
I nod. “Except they ended up leaving. Philip got transferred a few months before I turned eighteen, so I landed in a group home again until I graduated and could go down to Braxton.”
I think of their warm home and the way they always had a ton of food in the fridge that you could just walk up to and take whatever you wanted. They never got mad at me when I pulled my shit—not mad like they should’ve.
“Are they in your life now?” she asks me.
I shake my head. “My car? That was Philip’s. He gave it to me as a going-away present.”
“So they just left you? Alone? With a car?”
“I wasn’t theirs.”
Her brows furrow. “I don’t understand.”
“They’ve tried to call me and write letters, but I just … I can’t.”
A lump forms in my throat as I remember the two people who have been more like a family to me than anyone and how much it hurts when I get a message from them. Because I know they went on with their lives, without me.
My brain automatically thinks of Judy and her proclamation that I was hers now. If only I wasn’t leaving because she just might mean what she said.
I gaze into the distance. I’ve never told anyone these things. Never wanted to. Never thought it was necessary or that it mattered. But an unexpected lightness exists in my chest now that I’ve told Larissa some of my story.
I look at her and smile.
Even though tears well in her eyes, and I feel a little raw and a lot vulnerable, this is where I want to be right now.
She’s nestled down in her blankets, her hair splayed against her pillows. She looks cozy and warm, and something about it pulls at me.
“My turn,” I say. “Do you mind if I stay here tonight?”
She grins. “I hoped you would.”
I hop up and turn off the light. Then I climb into bed with her.
And just like we’ve done it before, she curls up against me and falls asleep.