November 14th #2
I stare at it. Because I’m some kind of psycho, I put my hot chocolate in a cupholder and put my arm next to his, close but not touching, his stupid flexing forearm radiating a heat that’s almost magnetic.
I’m already warm in the close quarters of the vehicle, so why I’m craving this closeness to him is beyond me.
On screen, a dead body appears with a message written on it in red. Professor Snape’s character is not pleased.
I scoot my arm a fraction of an inch toward Jay’s. When they touch, I stop breathing. What am I doing?
“Hollis?” he says.
I clear my throat, eyes glued to our single line of contact. “Yes?”
“You’re staring at our arms.”
“Oh.” An embarrassed heat consumes every square inch of me.
“Am I? I was admiring this center console.” Being the idiot I am, I knock it like a door.
“This is a nice design. Solid. Sturdy. Room for snacks. And trash bags. And baby wipes.” His lips press into a tight line.
“Not that you have a baby.” My eyes ping around his virtually spotless SUV, a far cry from the crumb-covered minivan I drive. “Or trash.”
“It is a good center console,” he says, not bothering to hide his smile.
Dear Bruce Willis, please shoot me with your gun.
“You have an appeal,” I blurt, awkward. “Even though you’re opposed to marriage, I’m surprised you don’t have someone serious in your life. That’s why I was asking. About the mustache. And the dating.”
“I never said I was opposed to marriage,” Jay says, not looking at me as bullets blast across the screen. “I said I never got around to it. I had someone once. Years ago. Someone I thought I could see myself with long-term. Maybe marry.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“She couldn’t get over my career choices.” He finally looks at me. “And she married someone else.”
He’s not smug. Not amused. The look on his face is serious, vulnerable, and a little bit telling.
All I can find: “Oh.”
Marv taps on the window prompting Jay to roll it down. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker, blasts through the speakers before a loud boom rattles the whole vehicle.
“Found two dollars and forty-three cents, six bullets, and a wedding ring,” Marv says, eyes bouncing between Jay and I. “Why are you two serious?”
Jay glances at me before saying, “Hollis is looking for internet boyfriends.”
My jaw drops. Marv frowns.
“Don’t do it,” Marv says in an ominous tone. “That’s how the sleeper Soviets are gaining traction.” His eyebrows raise to his hairline. “They prey on the lonely and say all the right things before stealing your money and bugging your ballpoint pens.”
Wait—what?
With that, he’s gone, sweeping his metal detector across the ground as Jay rolls the window back up and looks at me.
“Why not date real men?” Jay asks, smug expression back in full effect.
“Real men?” I echo, annoyed. “Real men can be on the internet, first of all. But to shut you up, I’ll clarify: I am open to dating if I meet someone whom I connect with and is okay with dating someone like me. Internet or otherwise.”
Without breaking eye contact, he puts his drink in a cupholder and turns his head to fully face me, doing a villainesque stroke of his mustache with his thumb and index finger. I gift myself exactly three seconds of imagining what it would feel like dragging across my skin.
“Someone like you?”
My face heats. He does that. Takes one little piece out of a whole slew of things I say and clings to it like tinsel on a tree branch.
“I’m done talking about this,” I snap.
“Tell me,” he presses, leaning slightly into my space across the console. I back away but have nowhere to go. My head hits the passenger window. He’s close; I’m sweating.
On screen, large lights are getting shot out. I recognize one of the police officers as the dad from the show with Steve Urkel from the ’90s but keep the discovery to myself.
“Fine,” I rasp. “I’m a mom. Who—” I clear my throat and look at my hands, any confidence shot straight to shit.
“Who might not be very good at dating, as indicated by the fact my ex-husband sought out other women during our marriage. Who’s a bit bruised by the holidays and still doesn’t think Die Hard is a Christmas movie despite fully appreciating the five-star cast of side characters.
” I flick my eyes to him; his lips twitch. “I guess that’s what I would say.”
“Hm.”
There’s a long pause.
Jay raises a knuckle to my temple before dragging it gently down the side of my face, causing my breath to still.
“I would have thought you’d say something like—” He pauses, pursing his lips in playful consideration. “‘Charming but married an asshole.’ Or ‘loves Christmas but has terrible taste in movies and traditions.’”
I want to laugh, but him touching me, complimenting me, lets only a slight hum come out of my mouth.
His knuckle slips from my face to my shoulder then whispers down my arm over the fabric of my sweater until it reaches my bare hand. He traces each finger. The spaces between them.
Then.
Interlaces his hand with mine.
It is embarrassingly innocent, but the connection of our palms is enough to cause a full body ache.
I haven’t been touched in such a purposefully tender way in a long time.
I haven’t held a hand besides a child’s in years.
Maybe that’s what happened to Ryan and I: We stopped holding hands and our marriage went to hell.
“We’re holding hands,” I say, stating the obvious. Delighted as I am dumbfounded.
“We are.” He squeezes my hand with his. “How do you feel about that?”
I clear my throat. “Um.”
My um means one thing: I am so thirsty I would climb into the back seat with him and strip naked.
“I’m fine with it. It’s good. Warm. You have warm hands. Big ones. Which means . . .” I squeeze my eyes shut, cringing at how badly this is going. “Big gloves.”
He laughs softly, bending our elbows and angling his head so he has a clear view of where our palms connect. “See how they fit?”
The curves of our two palms mold toward each other like a river to its bank.
He hooks his eyes onto mine. “I don’t know if you’re going to find that on the internet, Hollis. A fit like this.”
Wait—what?
The rapid-fire Tat! Tat! Tat! Tat! of machine gun blasts through the speakers. Jay squeezes my hand before releasing it to retrieve his mug and sink back into his seat.
“This is the best part,” he says, eyes on the screen.
While Bruce Willis saves Christmas, I cannot breathe.
My entire body heats like it’s been blasted with a blowtorch, and my heart is pounding like it is actively trying to escape my body.
“What just happened?” I ask, higher pitch to my voice than usual. “Was that—was that something? The hand holding—were you—I don’t know—” I can’t bring myself to say flirting.
“You said you were going to date men on the internet, and I had the urge to know if our hands fit together before you do. They do. Now you’ll know.”
“I’ll know?”
He shrugs, smirks, and barely pulls his attention from the movie as he says, “Looks like it.”
At once, I’m annoyed. “Why do I need to know that?”
“Maybe you didn’t.”
I scoff. “So why do it? Why-why-why even—”
“I don’t want you to date internet men,” he says casually, flicking his eyes from the screen to me.
What?
His calmness amplifies my panic. I press the back of my hand to my face: hot.
Dammit.
“Why not?” I demand, at once pissed at him and how flustered he’s making me. “What does what you want have to do with anything?”
I drink my hot chocolate in gulps for the whiskey alone. When my mug is empty, I drink it straight from the thermos, burning my tongue and making him chuckle. This SUV is too small. I roll the window down, blast of cool air barely helping.
He tosses more popcorn into his mouth. “I’m thinking of asking you out.”
I suck in a sharp breath. “Asking me out?”
I can’t breathe. I’m trapped. I peel off my sweater, revealing the tank top I’m wearing beneath it.
Once again, he looks at me, smirks, and says, “Thinking about it, yeah.”
“Thinking about it?” I demand. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He brushes the crumbs off his hands and wads the popcorn bag into a ball. “It means I’m feeling things out and thinking about it.” He flicks his gaze to mine. “A lot.”
“You can’t do that, you arrogant ass.” I am fully outraged. “You can’t just tell me that. Hold my hand and look at me and say all those things and have some kind of convoluted thinking about it mindset. What if I meet someone? What if I don’t want to go out with you?”
He pins me with a knowing look as the credits start to roll and lets out a small sigh. “Well, if you meet someone, then I guess I have my answer, but for now”—he shrugs—“I’m waiting.”
“Waiting?” I repeat. “What the hell for?”
“For you to be ready.” He starts the ignition, using one hand to wave to Marv as he gets into his truck, metal detector in tow. “That was a good movie, right?”
He’s completely nonchalant.
Like he didn’t just say all that.
Like he hasn’t made me dizzy with the thought of someone like him with someone like me.
“No, I hated it,” I snap. “What does all that mean? What do I need to be ready for?”
He looks at me, amused tilt to his lips as he drives out of the lot. “Lots.”
“Lots?” I echo, irritated.
I ignore whatever he says next, refusing to talk to him the whole drive home.
He wants to ask me out? Who tells someone that? Aren’t you supposed to simply say the words with a firm date: Let’s have dinner this Friday at 7 p.m.?
Whatever this sort of fuckery is he’s playing, payback will be severe. I will crush him. I will pull a page from the book of Bruce Willis and physically destroy him, shoes or no shoes.
“Hollis,” he calls as I’m walking up my front steps, still muttering swears under my breath. I turn and look. “For what it’s worth, I love watching movies with you.”
I stare at him; he drives away.
I wonder if he’s smiling as big as I am.