Chapter 9 Holden
Nine
Holden
I strode through the house, through the yard, and past the pool to my guesthouse. Everything River and I had said and done that night chased me home. My cracked brain ripped through every memory, replaying every one of his concerned expressions as I told my story.
You don’t feel like a stranger anymore.
“Shit.”
I banged into the guesthouse, flopped on my bed, and flung my arm over my eyes.
I’d spent the better part of the night attempting to reduce River to the sum of his perfect parts, to keep my attraction to him physical, but he was a damn iceberg.
There was more to him than he revealed on the surface.
He was smarter than probably anyone knew.
Humble and kind. My stupid, shriveled little heart felt like it was reaching for everything he was… and that I was not.
“It was a mistake,” I said, echoing River’s words. They stabbed me in the chest, but he was right. It’d been a mistake to tell him about Alaska. A mistake to let him put his hand on my face and promise pain to anyone who hurt me…
That was a joke, whispered an insidious voice. He doesn’t care about you. Why would he? Why would anyone?
“Why would anyone?” I whispered, nodding.
Tears stung the corners of my eyes, but I angrily blinked them away. My hand slipped under the waistband of my pants, and I gripped myself, ready to mentally fuck River Whitmore out of my system.
I muted our intimate conversation and concentrated on the vision of him stripping out of that black tux.
I recalled every hard muscle, every sleek line of his body contoured by moonlight.
I redrew him in my memory—his chiseled jaw, the smooth planes of his chest, his torso packed with abs, and a V that directed my gaze to the impressive bulge in his underwear.
I stroked myself, hard and fast, but the spark never caught fire, and a terrible fear told me that I’d already let him in too deep.
I hate that they did that to you. I’d kill anyone who tried to do it again.
“Goddamn you, River.”
The tears threatened again, and I kept my eyes buried tight in the crook of my elbow. Nothing could happen between us or ever would. I’d been born a wreck; the conversion therapy had finished the job.
There was nothing more to know.
***
Monday morning, I dragged my hungover ass to school.
I still reeked of booze and popped an Altoid or ten for Ms. Watkins’s English lit class. She watched me take my seat with narrowed eyes, but she didn’t call me out. I made it through the hour and thought I was home free until the bell rang and she stopped me at the door.
“Holden? Can I have a word?”
“Cough syrup,” I blurted.
“Excuse me?”
“I have a cold…never mind. What did you want to see me about?”
She rifled through some papers on her desk and singled out mine. “Your essay on Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking was excellent. Truly moving and emotional for what’s essentially a book report. I’m excited to read more from you. Have you always been a writer?”
“I’ve always written. Can’t say that makes me a writer.”
“I’d have to disagree. I think this essay is one of the best things I’ve read in my fifteen years on the job.”
Christ, between her, Beatriz, and Aunt Mags, I had nice ladies coming out of my eyeballs. I itched to go.
“Have you thought about pursuing a degree, Holden?”
“No.”
“What about your parents? What do they think?”
“They don’t get a say,” I said. “And no offense, but neither do you. Can I go now?”
I hated how my words hit her. Her smile dropped, but the concern never left her eyes.
“You may go. But I’m going to be watching you closely.”
I started to tell her not to bother but nodded instead. Because maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
But any good feeling she’d cultivated died in calculus.
River and I sat as far away from each other as humanly possible while still remaining in the same room.
He didn’t look at me, and I didn’t look at him.
It was as if Saturday never happened. When class ended and he still hadn’t looked my way, it felt like we’d erased not only that night at the pool but every small moment we’d had since the day we’d met.
Now there was nothing left.
Because it was a mistake.
***
After school that day, James drove me to the Cliffs. I stumbled my way to the shack where Miller and Ronan were already there in front of a fire, Miller plucking his guitar, Ronan drinking a beer.
“What’s the story, gentlemen?” I sat down heavily in my chair. The day was overcast and cloudy, but I kept my Bulgari sunglasses on to hide my bleary eyes.
“What’s up with you?” Miller asked. His expression was as heavy and troubled as always. “You okay?”
I got drunk with River Whitmore and sucked his thumb as if it were his cock. How was your weekend?
I had to keep River’s secret, even if it was suffocating him, but I’d kept him away from Violet. That was something.
“Peachy,” I said. “How was homecoming?”
Ronan snorted and tipped his beer. Miller gave him the finger.
“What’d I miss?” I asked.
“That asshole, Whitmore, ditched Violet at the dance.”
“You don’t say,” I said, feeling Ronan’s eyes on me. “So you swept in and rescued her and are now living happily ever after.”
“Not quite,” Miller said. “I hooked up with Amber.”
“Plot twist. Why?”
“My numbers were low, and I was drunk. It was a mistake.”
“Where have I heard that before?” I muttered.
Miller shook his head. “Anyway, that’s no excuse. What happened happened, and I’m going to make the best of it. See if there’s anything between us.”
Ronan snorted again, and Miller shot him an angry look.
“Clearly, you’ve been discussing this turn of events at length prior to my arrival,” I said. “Ronan, you don’t approve?”
He scoffed. “Amber put his dick in her mouth, so Miller thinks he owes her.”
“Fuck off, Wentz,” Miller snapped and tossed his guitar in the case and closed the lid. “I gotta go to work.”
We listened to him lock his guitar in the shack, and then he trudged out, head down, shoulders hunched.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“Just what I said,” Ronan replied. “They hooked up, and now he’s trying to do what he thinks is honorable.”
“I’m not acquainted with that word personally, but isn’t that a good thing?”
He toyed with his beer. “Where were you on homecoming night?”
“Weren’t we talking about Miller eight milliseconds ago?”
Ronan’s gaze was relentless. I started to make up a lie, but my vodka-soaked brain wasn’t cooperating.
“Running interference for Miller,” I said with a sigh. “I thought it would help. I guess not.”
Ronan’s eyebrows rose slightly—the equivalent of massive shock in anyone else. “Whitmore?”
I nodded. “I’d rather not talk about it. Except Amber’s night and mine have some surprising similarities.”
Ronan snorted a laugh and then was quiet for a minute, his eyes as gray as the ocean. “I was thinking about bringing someone here.”
I frowned. “Who do you know besides us? And Vice Principal Chouder doesn’t count.”
Chouder was in charge of student discipline. Ronan spent more time in his office than in an actual classroom.
“Shiloh Barrera.”
“Don’t know her. Or him.”
“Her.”
It was one syllable, yet the hairs on my arms stood up the way his low, rumbling voice infused it with something close to reverence.
“It’s fine by me, but do you need majority approval?”
“I haven’t asked Miller yet,” Ronan said. “I will.”
The fact that he asked me first was enough to have me reaching for my flask, but I’d emptied it before the end of the school day.
Ronan turned his head to me slowly. “If you ever want to bring—”
“No,” I said flatly. “Not going to happen. His baggage plus my baggage exceeds maximum limits.”
Ronan nodded. “If anything changes—”
“It won’t.”
“If it does,” he said, his tone hard, “bring him.”
***
Night’s shadows crept across the floor of the guesthouse. It wasn’t hot enough for a fire, but I had the fireplace going anyway while I sat at my desk, scribbling in my journal. My hand moved across the page in a blur.
River hadn’t been in class for the last two days.
His empty chair conjured all kinds of terrible metaphors. Absence. Solitude. Isolation. In the immortal words of Miss Britney, my loneliness was killing me, but at least seeing River in class once a day—even if nothing could ever happen between us—was something. Now there wasn’t even that.
A little after 1:00 a.m., I stretched my fingers as my phone chimed a text from an unfamiliar number.
Hey, it’s River.
Another text came while I panicked like a dope.
Can I call you?
You don’t feel like a stranger anymore.
I jabbed, Yes.
My phone lit up, and I played hard to get—I let it ring twice before answering.
“It’s late,” I said coldly.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
His voice sounded haggard, as if it’d been dragged through the mud, crumbling my defenses instantly.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s my mom. It’s been bad lately. It might… It might be the end. And I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t be calling you. I didn’t know who else… I don’t have anyone else I can talk to. None of the guys get it. It’s too fucking real.”
My throat suddenly felt thick. “Where are you?”
“In the hospital. She has some kind of infection…spiked a fever. I’m in a hallway somewhere. I didn’t know what else to do. I feel like I’m losing it.”
River’s words tapered to a whisper, and I could see him in a cold hospital hallway, maybe leaning against the wall, letting it prop him up.
I hated that he was alone.
He came back on the line, his voice breathy and tight.
“Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing,” I said softly, and another image came to me, one of River reaching out in the dark, grasping for something—someone—to hold on to.
I scoured my collection of therapy sessions for something that would help him.
But none of it helped me, because no one asked the one question I’d been begging someone to ask.
“River.”
“Yeah?”
“What do you need?”
I held my breath until I heard him exhale his. When he spoke again, the pain had loosened its grip on him a little.
“I don’t know. Just talk to me. I need to get out of my head for a minute. I’m so fucking scared. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, and I’m having a thousand terrible thoughts, one right after the other.”
“Pick one.”
“What?”
“Pick one terrible thought. Grab it out of the air.”
“Okay.”
“Now tell me what it is.”
“I…I hate that she’s suffering,” he said, his voice cracking. “And I can’t take it from her. But I would. I’d take all of it.”
And this time, he broke. I heard his sobs, muffled and low.
“I’m here,” I said. “I’m here, okay?”
After a few moments, he inhaled deep and let it out on a shaky exhale. “Thanks, that helped. It helped to get some of it out.”
“I’ll have to try it sometime.”
A silence descended, and Saturday night at the pool slowly crept in between everything we weren’t saying.
“Holden…”
“Don’t.”
“I want to. To apologize.”
“I told you, I’m not asking anything of you.”
“I know but… I’ve been a dick in class, and now I’m calling you up in the middle of the night and dumping my shit in your lap.
Things are just so fucked up right now. Like trying to steer a sinking ship.
My dad’s kind of falling apart, and my sister barely talks.
It’s just not a good time for me to…upheave everything.
The other night… That can’t happen again. It won’t. I was drunk…”
I gritted my teeth. “You’ve made that abundantly clear.”
“But that doesn’t change what I said.”
I’d kill them…anyone who tried to do it again…
“You said a lot of things. I don’t even remember—”
“Yes, you do.” River’s voice grew deep and solid now. “What they did to you was fucking wrong, and it means something that you told me. I just want you to know that.”
For the first time in years, my whirring, chirping brain had nothing to say. No witty comeback or barb to deflect how his words hit me hard and then sank in softly.
River mistook my silence and gusted a sigh. “Okay. So that’s all I wanted to say. Thanks for listening and…everything else. That night was just like you said. A time-out. And I needed it.”
“Will you be back at school tomorrow?” I asked and cringed at the pathetic hope in my voice.
“I don’t think so. Just trying to make it through the night.”
“The reason I ask is that you’ve missed a lot of calculus,” I added quickly. “If you want me to tutor you, just say so. No need for drama.”
He laughed a little. “Glad to hear that offer still stands.”
“Always.”
“Okay, well…good night, Holden.”
“Good night, River.”
The line went quiet, and I stared at the phone in my hand for long moments, then climbed into bed.
It can’t happen again.
There it was. The official end to whatever the hell happened on Saturday night. Just another painful moment like every other painful moment in my life, a teetering stack my sanity tap-danced on. One day, it would come crashing down.
In the meantime…
I wasn’t a praying person by nature, mostly because when I’d needed help, there was only cold silence.
But that night, I prayed to whatever God or gods might be listening to give River and his mom a little more time.
Another day at least. Let whatever needed to happen happen when the sun was shining and not in the black, indifferent night.
The next morning, a text was waiting for me.
She made it. They’re even talking about letting her go home this afternoon. This is heavier shit than you need to be dealing with, but it didn’t feel real until I told you. Thank you.–R
I held the phone to my chest, almost hugging it. A knock came at my door a moment later.
“Mr. Holden?” Beatriz called. “Venha comer. Você vai se atrasar para a escola.”
Come eat. You will be late for school.
I squeezed my eyes shut as a small smile spread across my lips against my will.
“Mr. Holden? Você tá bem?”
Are you okay?
“T? bem,” I called back. “Today, I am okay.”