November 22nd #3
At her slight whimper, I chuckle.
Suck her lip.
Pull away.
Peck her nose.
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Sorry,” she says with a breathy laugh. “I didn’t mean to.”
I look at her and laugh, then peck her on the mouth again. “I kissed you, Hollis.”
“Ha,” she pants. “That was—that was—that.”
My lips lift. “It was.”
“Jay,” someone shouts. “There you are.”
I give a quick smile to the man calling to me from the doorway and gesture in the air with a finger for one more minute as she and I walk toward the crowd. She’s flushed but different than usual. Not embarrassed: blissed.
As she starts toward the bar, I stop her with a hand on her arm.
“For what it’s worth,” I tell her. “The two minutes I believed you were online dating, I was jealous.”
At this, she laughs, eyes bright. “Good.”
Marv comes out of the kitchen—flannel shirt tucked into his sweatpants, hands on his hips, and a frown on his face that somehow isn’t angry. He cocks an ear as if trying to decode a secret message in the fast-paced music that’s pulling the partygoers to a small dance floor.
“Hollis.” Marv says her name like it’s an announcement. “We should dance.”
A ridiculous smile overtakes her face as he marches toward her in his sandal-covered, socked feet.
I step behind the bar, and she looks at me.
“Go,” I tell her with a lift of my chin. “It’s a Holiday Club rite of passage.”
With a grin, she does, and I can’t help but watch.
Hollis shimmies her shoulders and shakes her hips as she laughs while Marv’s fists punch into the air with a washing-machine twist of his waist. The serious expression on his face as his head bobs is at complete odds to the playful atmosphere of the rest of the room.
I pour a beer, meeting her eyes across the room, feeling the smile on her face in every cell of my body.
Watching her laugh as she dances is like watching a sunrise on new snow. Better than any gift under any tree.
I drag my attention away from her long enough to talk with people at the bar coming and going. Friends of my parents. Regulars. A girl I went to high school with and her husband. When Hollis and Marv finish dancing, they slide onto two stools, and I set two beers in front of them.
“Tonight’s payment,” I say with a wink.
Marv offers Hollis a hot pepper.
She looks at him, me, the pepper, and surprises us all when she says, “I’ve been meaning to start putting hot peppers in my beer.”
“Your life will never be the same,” Marv promises, dropping peppers into each of their glasses.
She takes a sip and makes a disappointed face.
“It tastes like regular beer.”
Marv grunts. “Government food has desensitized your taste buds, Hollis.”
Hollis simply takes another sip.
“You know about Clyde Tombaugh?” Marv asks her. When she says she does not, he launches into a very thorough explanation—which I’ve heard multiple times—of who he is and why Pluto is still a planet in a place called Streator, Illinois.
I watch the whole conversation play out while I pour beers and say goodbyes.
Marv is Marv—I appreciate that about him—but most people don’t.
Hollis, however, takes him in stride. Sees his weird and lets it go.
Even as I watch her try to wrap her brain around why anyone would give a damn about the planet status of Pluto, she doesn’t laugh—though I think she wants to—she listens.
Like a fool, she even asks follow-up questions.
When the last guests leave, I join them for a beer—complete with a hot pepper—sitting right next to Hollis, my knee touching hers. At which she stares until her cheeks flush.
“But did we ever land on the moon, Marv?” I ask over the rim of my glass with a teasing wink to Hollis.
This sends Marv on his next tirade.
Hollis smiles and nods the whole time.
“You’ve done all these things every year?” she asks when Marv finally runs out of steam.
I chuckle. “There’s been some trial and error.”
“The errors have been Jays,” Marv fills in. “One year he insisted on a bonfire and that almost burned the forest down.”
Hollis’s eyebrows raise.
“Because you insisted on using a torch,” I defend. “And gasoline. And let’s not forget the year you wanted us to go ice fishing, and the ice was so thin you fell in.”
Marv’s expression goes conspiratorial. “Notice the government-run park district did nothing to warn me about that either.”
“And you think the government wanted you to drown?” Hollis asks.
Marv gives a wordless look that conveys how true he thinks this is.
“About next week,” I say, changing the direction this is about to take. “It’s Thanksgiving. Marv and I usually—”
“I can’t be there,” she says, expression crashing a bit as she mindlessly traces her index finger along the condensation of the glass of beer in front of her.
“It’s going to be too hard, you know? It’s not just the meal.
We usually get a tree—a real tree—and decorate it at night while we eat leftovers.
Since I’m not getting one this year, I don’t think I’ll be much fun. ”
“You’re going to be alone?” Marv and I exchange a look. “On Thanksgiving?”
I might not do things the way everyone else does, but this is insanity. Her? Alone? On a major holiday?
“I have stuff to do,” she says. “Catch up with work. Clean. Online shop.” She pauses before adding, “Record dirty videos of myself to not send to internet strangers.”
If she’s trying for a joke, she fails. Even Marv doesn’t offer his two paranoid cents.
She’s upset, it’s all over her face. It’s evident how much this matters to her and how hard it is.
“Either way,” I say. “I’ll send you the plans just in case.”
She’s silent a beat then surprises me by standing. “Well, thank you for tonight,” she says with a tight smile. “This was fun. Really fun.”
She walks behind the bar to grab her jacket and purse.
“Okay.” My eyes narrow. Marv takes a long sip of his beer, eyes bouncing between her and me. “You going somewhere?”
“Yeah.” She fumbles to get her coat on. “I should. It’s late.” To Marv: “Night, Marv. Thanks for the dancing.”
He flicks her a salute as I stand and walk her to the door.
Outside on the small patio it’s frigid; she’s stunning.
And leaving.
“Why are you going?”
She laughs, adjusting her coat and retrieving her keys from her purse. “What else would I do?”
“Stay.”
Her eyes narrow. “I can’t stay.”
“Why?”
“You haven’t asked me out.”
A laugh rumbles in my chest. “So that’s what this is all about?”
“Of course it is,” she says without heat, blue eyes bright under the strings of lights above us. “You said you’ve been thinking about it, and you haven’t. I may invite myself into clubs, but I’m a woman of virtue, I don’t invite myself on dates.”
I hate that she’s leaving, but I love the smile on her face.
“Maybe I will,” I tell her, dragging knuckles across the line of her jaw before shoving my hands in the pockets of my jeans.
Even in the low lights, I see pink splash her cheeks.
“Maybe I’ll say yes.”
It hangs there. I could ask right now and she’d say yes. Instead I say nothing, her breaking the silence by saying, “Have a good Thanksgiving, Jay.”
I nod.
She leaves.
Then I stand in the parking lot, staring until she’s gone and wishing she wasn’t.