Chapter 36 Holly
It’s Aunt Edna’s week to choose the game, and Twister has long been her favorite, so I should have seen this coming. Still, though, it’s hard to anticipate straddling one’s new boyfriend (can I call him that?) while my own son snakes his hand past my armpit.
Aunt Edna—always the referee these days, since she claims to be too old for such elaborate maneuvers—spins.
“Right foot, red!” she calls out with sadistic glee.
Why couldn’t it have been Peter’s turn to choose the game? We’d all be gathered around the breakfast table, sipping on good bourbon, and crafting esoteric Scrabble words. Sure, I’d almost definitely lose. But a loss at Scrabble is infinitely less humiliating than these acrobatics.
Joel and Hugh, partners competing against Aidan and me, easily shift into place, which elicits an exuberant cheer from Aunt Edna and Peter, this round’s observers.
Aidan and I, in something of a pickle, crane our necks to look at each other, dismayed. Sure, Aidan’s a long, bendy nineteen-year-old, but still, the only red dot available to him seems an impossible reach.
“Let’s just go for it,” I sigh, signaling for him to make his move.
Peter and Aunt Edna watch, with matching evil grins, as we simultaneously lift our right feet. I lose my balance, causing all four players to tumble into a tangle of arms and legs.
“Sweet victory!” Joel exclaims, while Hugh laughs warmly, then gently extracts his elbow from my cleavage.
That’s when the doorbell rings insistently, not once, but six times.
My first reaction is profound relief that attention has been drawn away from my cheeks, bright red with embarrassment.
My second is a slightly irrational fear that the gig is finally up, and the cops are coming to arrest me for pawning a stolen sapphire bracelet.
Joel throws open the door to reveal Byron, Justine, and Irma bearing a couple dozen balloons and what appears to be a cake box.
“Whose birthday is it?” Hugh asks, bewildered, just as my three co-workers call out a simultaneous “Congratulations!”
They tumble inside and, just as I get to my feet, crush me into a group hug.
“She got the GM job,” Justine exclaims, squeezing me tight.
I wonder for the briefest of moments how they found out so quickly.
I haven’t even had the chance to tell Aidan about Griggs’s pending meeting with the dean.
He came straight here from an all-day jam session with his friends Jay and Nikki, and I couldn’t figure out a way for the two of us to talk alone.
It felt somehow wrong to burst into game night with exciting news when I know that—despite the promotion—there’s little to celebrate.
So, this afternoon, I made a plan: Try to enjoy game night, then talk with Aidan, and tomorrow somehow figure out a way to let everyone know about the promotion.
Okay, yes, a loose plan, but still. I thought it would work.
I wish I could talk to Luisa and Eli—they’re the only people who would understand the untenable situation I find myself in.
But Luisa’s still ignoring me, and Eli—thank God!
—got released from jail this morning. He texted to let me know the charges are being dropped, and he’s on his way back to Westlake, where he plans to spend a quiet evening with his sister.
Not a word about Luisa, which makes me very nervous.
I hope she didn’t torpedo the whole thing with Eli, but I have a sneaking suspicion that she did.
I’ll get the story from Eli tomorrow. I don’t want to interrupt his time with Pearl.
“I knew good fortune was coming your way,” Irma pulls back from the group hug to tell me. “Jupiter just entered your eleventh house.”
How can I possibly begin to explain that none of this feels exactly like good fortune—though, admittedly, the raise will help, for as long as I’m able to stay in the job.
I’ll just have to figure out how to keep avoiding Griggs.
Or, who knows? Maybe once the truth about Aidan’s crime is revealed, I’ll find the courage to go ahead and sue Griggs’s ass for harassment.
In which case, I’ll definitely lose my job.
Strangely, the prospect is both terrifying and exhilarating.
Could I be ready for something new? Maybe start my own business, as Luisa suggested?
Byron brushes Irma off with a wave. “Don’t you dare go giving credit to some distant planet,” he chastises. “Holly earned this one all on her own.” Dear Byron always seems to know the right thing to say. I did earn it—this much is true.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell us?” Joel says, trying to act stern, but instead sounding utterly delighted. “We should have been the very first to know!”
“No one knows,” I say, brushing him off. “I haven’t even signed the contract.”
But who am I kidding? Obviously, Janey found out, and then she told, well, everyone. Everyone but Joel, it seems. He’s probably got a string of texts from Janey awaiting him on the phone he judiciously set aside for Twister.
The entire room begins to barrage me with simultaneous praise and questions, while Hugh stands aside and looks on, smiling warmly. It strikes me that all the most important people in my world are right here, in Peter and Joel’s living room, together. Well, almost all of them.
How did it happen so fast? How did Luisa and Eli become my friends, my confidants, my real-life partners in crime, and then disappear, just like that?
I wonder where Eli will go now that he’s been released and absolved.
I wonder what Luisa plans to do, now that her big story will never break.
Will I ever know? Or are we completely over?
I push aside the ache, and instead watch the glorious chaos unfolding around me.
Justine tugs an elaborately iced cake from the box, while Irma traps Hugh in a corner, deep in conversation (no doubt asking the exact time, date, and location of his birth so that she can determine whether our stars align).
Byron is wrestling too many helium balloons around the grand piano, trying to stabilize them with Peter’s prized bust of Shakespeare.
Aidan does his best to assist, hugging pink, yellow, and purple balloons to his chest as he shimmies past a piano bench.
Joel comes rushing in with a sterling silver cake knife, and Peter follows along with a stack of crystal plates.
“Hold on, people,” I call out. “No reason to work yourselves into a tizzy. I’m just the interim.”
“Hogwash,” Aunt Edna exclaims, waving her bejeweled cane energetically. “You know they’ll keep you. How could they not?”
And watching my beloved aunt Edna make that pronouncement, I decide not to protest, not to resist this moment, even though I know it’s utterly fleeting.
I’m not going to think about Griggs right now, because when life brings us joy, even for a few moments, and especially when surrounded by the people we love, we have no choice but to lean into it.
“I’ll go down to the cellar and get a few bottles of chilled Dom Perignon,” Peter announces. “We’ve got some serious celebrating to do!”
Two hours and two bottles of Dom Perignon later, Aidan and I finally find ourselves alone in Peter and Joel’s kitchen.
They wandered up to bed, and Aunt Edna followed close behind them, as soon as Byron, Irma, and Justine took their leave.
Hugh had to sneak out early, since he’s catching a red-eye to Los Angeles tonight to give a keynote at a linguistics conference.
I managed to slip away with him, for at least a few moments.
We made out under the moonlight, champagne lingering on our breaths, pressed against his Honda.
It felt delicious and a little silly—two full-on adults sucking face against a parked car, especially since—soon enough—at least a half dozen spectators were observing not-at-all discreetly through the living room window.
Joel even had the audacity to applaud when I came back inside.
Now I’m elbow-deep in foamy water, washing champagne flutes.
Aidan, standing beside me, carefully dries them as he listens to the explanation I’ve been spooling out for several minutes: Dennis’s surprise departure, Griggs’s terrible advances, my reaction and the threats that ensued.
By the time I get to Griggs’s upcoming meeting with the dean, I’m starting to worry that he’s gone catatonic.
“You okay, Aidan?” I pause to ask him, wiping my hands with a dish towel. “I know this is a whole lot to process all at once.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” he asks, his voice filled with hurt.
“I thought I could handle it,” I say, putting down the tea towel and turning to face him.
“It just kills me that—”
“That I kept a secret from you?” I interject. “I’m so sorry—”
“No, Ma. That you’ve had to go through all of this alone. I would have been there for you if I’d known.”
It dawns on me that I wasn’t alone at all. In fact, I felt deeply supported and sustained through those many ups and downs by two people who were strangers to me before this all began.
“So, about that,” I begin, and then I muster the courage to tell him about Luisa and Eli, and the completely nutty plan that we tried to execute. Remarkably, he doesn’t berate or scold me. Instead, he just throws his head back and laughs, so hard that his Adam’s apple bobs wildly.
“That’s amazing,” he says, once he’s caught his breath. “I can’t wait to meet those guys.”
“I’m not sure you will,” I say, feeling the sadness well up in my chest. “It didn’t end so great between us.”
“Maybe just give it time,” he says. “Sounds like y’all went through a lot together. That kind of thing has a way of bonding people. You know?”