Chapter 67 This Episode is Sponsored by Avoidance
THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY AVOIDANCE
Holly
“Protecting myself has started looking a lot like ruining everything.”
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By the time the rehearsal room cleared out, Holly felt like her nerves had been run over and backed up on for emphasis.
Nate had waited until they were alone, offering to cover the hospital increase like it was simple.
As though loving her meant helping her carry it.
She’d said no. Of course she had. Accepting his help felt a little too much like signing up for future heartbreak, and apparently she was still majoring in Self-Sabotage with a minor in Only Child Trauma.
Dean’s List. Graduating summa cum laude in Ruining Nice Things.
So instead of driving west to her apartment and her carefully curated independence, she turned north.
Past streets that glittered on the surface but were tarnished if you looked too closely.
Past houses that smelled like cumin and somebody’s tío grilling after dark.
By the time the flickering streetlight outside her mother’s house came into view, she wasn’t even pretending she’d chosen this. Her heart had.
The second she stepped inside, the air wrapped around her.
Garlic. That same floral hand cream her mom had been using since forever.
Genuinely warm in a way LA never was. The TV hummed in the living room, violins swelling while some telenovela heroine slapped a man like it was part of her fitness routine.
And for the first time all day, Holly’s chest loosened a fraction.
Her mom was on the couch with a faded Virgen de Guadalupe throw draped over her legs, knitting meticulous.
Her reading glasses slipped down her nose while a small glass of manzanilla wine on the side table.
She looked smaller than Holly remembered.
Not breakable, just finite. Like time had finally stopped being polite about it all.
The realization landed hard, knocking the air from Holly’s lungs before she could armor up against it.
Mortality just entered the chat and didn’t ask for permission.
“Hola, mija,” her mom said softly, finishing the end of her knitting row before her eyes lifted, fixing on Holly with unnerving precision. As though she could see the invisible cracks in Holly’s composure and was deciding whether to press or let her pretend a little longer.
“Hey, Mamá.”
Holly entered the room properly, kissed her cheek, and sat down on the couch like she wasn’t one emotional gust of wind away from shattering.
She kicked off her shoes carefully and flexed her ankle, grimacing as the ache sparked.
Her mom noticed, but she didn’t comment.
She reached for the wine and took a sip.
“So,” her mom said lightly. “I saw the dance photo.”
Holly tried to lean into her usual bravado. The one with the sharp tongue and the unbothered face and the vibe of someone who didn’t cry, ever.
“The fans’ll love it,” she said breezily, like she wasn’t currently held together by denial. “Angsty Cha Cha. Public emotional mutilation. America eats that up.”
But her mom didn’t laugh or even crack a smile. She just lifted her gaze over her glasses, eyes tired and too wise for Holly’s bullshit.
Holly’s throat tightened. She looked away fast, because eye contact with your mother when she’s being quietly devastating was basically a war crime. “Mamá—”
“Don’t you Mamá me,” her mom said gently, like she was stroking a wound. “I saw your face, mi amor. You might think you’re a good actress, but you can’t hide from me.”
That landed like a slap. A soft one, but a slap nevertheless. Holly stared at the muted TV like it might offer a trapdoor out of this conversation, her chest full of too many words and none of them safe.
“I found a ring,” Holly confessed softly, because if she didn’t say it now she’d choke on it. “In his bag. In Denmark.”
Marisol’s hands stilled mid-stitch.
“A ring,” she repeated. Calm. Measured. Like she was working through the math.
Holly nodded once, sharp, like it hurt. “A ring. In a box. Like a little velvet coffin for my sanity.”
Her mom tilted her head. “Did he give it to you?”
“No,” Holly snapped, then immediately hated how defensive it sounded, like her whole nervous system had flinched. “No. He didn’t. He didn’t even know I saw it. I found it by accident. He was in the shower…” She made a helpless gesture. “There it was. Like an omen.”
Her mom’s eyes didn’t leave her face. “If he didn’t give it to you, why are you acting like he did?”
The question was so simple, so quiet, so unreasonable in how accurate it was, that Holly’s mouth opened and no sound came out. Her heart thudded hard once, like it was trying to knock on the inside of her ribs for help.
She tried to shrug, to keep it surface-level. “Because rings are… you know. Rings.”
Her mom set her knitting down carefully on the coffee table like she was placing down a weapon. She turned fully toward Holly, and in that moment Holly was eight years old again, knees scraped, hands shaking, trying not to cry because crying made her dad call her dramatic.
“So you didn’t run because he hurt you. You ran because he didn’t.”
Holly inhaled sharply, a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and wasn’t quite a sob.
There it was.
The truth. Clean, brutal, and impossible to dodge.
Holly stared down at her hands like she didn’t recognize herself anymore.
How do you explain to someone that their gentleness is what scares you most?
That a man who actually stays, somehow feels like a trap?
Like a miracle you don’t deserve. As though the universe will take it away the second you admit you want it.
Holly swallowed, but it didn’t help. There was a pressure building behind her eyes, behind her throat, behind her sternum.
“I don’t… I don’t know how to do this,” she whispered, voice cracking on the last word like it was made of glass. “I don’t know how to have something good without waiting for it to turn into something that ruins me.”
Marisol sighed and then reached for her daughter’s hand. “Mija…”
Holly’s composure lasted three more seconds. Maybe four. She tried to blink it back, tried to do the thing where she turns pain into a joke and tucks it into her pocket like spare change. Then her mind betrayed her with a highlight reel she didn’t ask for.
Nate tying her skates. Nate kissing her temple in the ambulance. Nate carrying her off the stage like she weighed nothing. Nate looking at her on the bench at Tivoli like she was everything he’d ever wanted and he didn’t know how to keep her.
Then the promo shoot. How he’d stood next to her like he was bracing for impact, eyes hollow with longing. The way she’d made him a stranger when he’d been trying so hard to still be hers.
Holly’s lower lip trembled, and then she broke.
It wasn’t pretty crying. It was the crying that came from a place so deep and full of grief it didn’t even make a sound at first, just a violent shudder that ripped through her chest. Tears spilled hot and humiliating down her cheeks.
She tried to wipe them away angrily, like she could erase the fact she was losing control, but that just made it worse, because then she was crying and smearing her mascara like a tragic raccoon.
“I’m so tired,” she choked, voice collapsing.
“I’m so fucking tired, Mamá. I keep trying to be smart.
I keep trying to be strong. I keep trying to make the right decision.
” She sucked in a breath that tasted like salty regret.
“It’s like I can’t tell if I’m protecting myself or just fucking myself over on repeat. ”
Marisol didn’t lecture, because the time for lecturing had passed.
She just moved over to the couch and folded her tiny frame around her daughter.
Holly, who hadn’t let anyone hold her properly since Lars left her bleeding on a bench like she was disposable, crawled across the couch on her bad ankle and collapsed into her mother’s embrace.
“Shh, mi amor.” Her mom cradled her like she was little again, rocking slightly, palm stroking her back in slow circles. “It’s okay,” she murmured.
Holly clung like a lifeline, face pressed into that familiar shoulder, and let herself fall apart completely because there was nowhere safer to break than in the arms of the woman who had rebuilt her a hundred times already.
“But it’s not okay Mamá,” she sobbed, the full weight of exactly what she’d done finally settling on her. “I’ve ruined everything!”
“Sí mija,” Marisol croons, having never been the type to sugarcoat. “You did a pretty good job of it, too.”
There was a beat where Holly felt her mom’s hand on her back slow down, and when she finally pulled back, cheeks wet, eyes swollen, her mom kissed her forehead like a blessing, and then smiled gently.
“He loves you, mi amor,” she said, like it was gospel. “He’ll help you put it all back together again. Love isn’t supposed to feel like a war you fight alone.”
Outside, LA kept glittering like nothing mattered. Like people didn’t fall apart on their childhood couches in their mothers’ arms. But in this small warm living room, Holly realized she didn’t want to fight alone anymore. She just needed to figure out how to let Nate stand by her side.