Chapter 23 #2
I spin to face him and throw my hands to my sides as another guttural scream escapes through my gritted teeth.
“I am weird, Hollis. That is who I am. A weird person. And it has absolutely nothing to do with you. When I am alone, I am exactly the same. I don’t power down like some sort of toy robot, waiting until the next time you want to play with me.
I am not the quirky girl whose sole purpose is to add whimsy to the tortured writer’s sad, dull life.
I have my own shit going on, and in this story the tortured writer is the one who’s just along for the ride. ”
“Really? You’re going to claim I’m treating you like a manic pixie dream girl?” Hollis puts his fingers to his temples, like I’m giving him a headache. “Jesus Christ, stop throwing all of your Josh Yaeger baggage at me, demanding I unpack a bunch of bullshit I didn’t pack in the first place.”
Damn, he’s right. I am doing that. I’m projecting so much of my past hurt onto him.
Maybe because it’s easier to repeat something I already know I can survive than explore if this new pain might actually tear me apart.
My voice comes out as a whisper. “Like I said before, I have somewhere to be. I really have to go or I’ll be late. ”
Hollis grabs my wrist as I walk past. His hand is warm and strong, and it gently tugs me over to him like it did in a dark room at a bed-and-breakfast in South Carolina two nights ago. “Wait, Millicent. Please.”
His eyes plead with mine, and it triggers a countdown inside me.
It’s ticking along, marking the seconds until I let myself forgive this betrayal and beg him to please love me.
Don’t leave me , is what I will say. I don’t care if you’ve only been using me, as long as we can keep pretending it’s more.
It’s what I feel in some shadowy corner of myself, and I hate it.
I hate that my instinct is always to take less than I deserve.
To let a man’s inability or unwillingness to fully accept and respect me transform into a shame albatross around my neck.
How many times did I do that with Josh, not fully aware of the compromise I was making with my own pride?
No more. I can’t do that ever again. Especially not with someone who’s become so important to me in such a short time.
The countdown is in the single digits now.
I can feel my heart softening, making itself pliable, eased along by Hollis’s supplicating stare and comforting grip on my wrist. There is only one way I get out of this before it becomes too easy to stay: I’m going to have to hurt him back so he’ll want me gone.
All of those stupid fights with Josh prepared me for this moment. Go for the jugular. End it.
“Do you know what Josh said to me right before I came out of that restaurant crying that night? He said that if I was going to be fucking weird, I should at least be fucking weird and famous again so he wasn’t with me for nothing.
” The words sting even more with the realization that I was so desperate to believe Hollis could want me with no ulterior motive that I fell for the exact same tricks—the feigned kindness and affection—all over again.
“That piece of shit didn’t deserve you,” Hollis says. “But I’m not him.”
“No. You’re not. Because at least when Josh got caught screwing me over, he did me the courtesy of not pretending to be a better man than he was.”
I can almost see the moment he clocks my repackaging of the words he told me he said to his father ten years ago.
With a few more strategic sentences, I know I can tip that anger over into pain as easily as a metal spoon in an empty yogurt cup.
And if it hurts me a little too, well..
. it’s just another drop in the ocean at this point.
“Yeah, I know,” I continue, “I shouldn’t be so surprised.
Everything you do is selfish. You warned me of that from the very beginning—warned me repeatedly—and it’s my fault that I didn’t listen.
I should have taken you at face value instead of letting myself believe there was something more under the surface.
At least now I see that you are exactly who and what you’ve always claimed to be.
You’re self-serving and callous. You’re your father’s son.
You’re burnt toast with nothing under it except more burnt toast.”
Hollis’s nostrils flare as he attempts to regulate his breathing.
His eyes burn into mine—blue-gray furious, brown also furious.
It’s a relief to find our anger levels competing.
I’m not alone now in my hurt. We’re both going to leave this place a bit destroyed, and that’s perversely reassuring.
He releases my wrist, dropping it like it’s a piece of fruit he’s just realized is covered in fire ants.
“Are you coming back tonight?” he somehow manages to say with a jaw so tight that his top and bottom molars must be in danger of fusing together.
“I doubt it,” I say.
“Good. I’ll leave your suitcase at the front desk then.”
“That would be great, thanks.” I hesitate for the briefest moment when I reach for the doorknob.
Partially because I’m checking my feet to make sure I’m wearing my sandals this time, but also because I know it’s still not too late to apologize and talk this out.
There might be a way we can move forward as friends at least if not as.
.. whatever we were these last few days.
Whatever I thought we were. But I need to meet Tammy.
I don’t have time to sift through the wreckage for anything salvageable right now, and I’m not even 100 percent sure I want to anyway.
“Well, see you in the funny papers,” I say, not glancing back as I walk out the door and slam it behind me. I’m pretty sure that sentence has never been said with such rage before. It admittedly sounds pretty ridiculous, which is probably why it is not well regarded as a parting shot.
I’m halfway down the hall when I hear a door creak open behind me. I don’t turn, but I can feel Hollis’s approach. It’s a physical thing; the air becomes charged when he gets near me and all of my ions perk up.
“What do you want?” I say, whipping around. He’s so close behind me that the tail of my heavy, still-damp braid smacks him. Which, good .
“You forgot Mrs. Nash again,” he says, holding out my backpack with one hand while his other presses against the spot on his shoulder where my hair assaulted him.
“Thanks.” I instill the word with as much anger as possible, and pull my bag from his grasp with more force than is necessary. It may seem petulant, but I know I cannot give an inch or my poor, foolish heart will insist on giving him twelve hundred miles.
Hollis steps closer and frames my face in his hands.
My desire to pull away is overruled by my instinct to nuzzle into his palm.
I think he knows that my anger is like one of those fake fireplaces—a whole lot of heat but no real flame.
I can make him sweat, make him want to keep his distance.
But I won’t actually burn him if he’s brave enough to get close.
And he is. His lips press against my forehead.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry, Mill.
I know that’s probably not enough, and I understand why you don’t want to stay.
But please, at least tell me where you’re going? ”
I shake my head, and his hands fall to his sides. “You don’t get to know how this ends,” I say, and walk away.