Chapter 32
ANNA
I can’t remember the last time I packed this fast.
Within five minutes of deciding to leave, I had all five bags packed with minutes to spare before the bellboy arrived with a trolley. He trailed me through the lobby and out the entrance where I now wait for my ride to the airport. My driver is four minutes out.
My gaze ping-pongs between my phone and the road. I’m not looking for my driver. I’m worried Holly will arrive before I’m gone.
And, of course, she does.
She appears around the corner, running up the circular drive, and she spots me immediately. Hair flying, fanciful skirt fanning, Zoe’s urn clutched in her arm, she erratically waves with her free hand.
“Anna!” She hollers.
I involuntarily step back, bracing myself for her anger.
“Anna,” she yells again, reaching me. “Oh, my god.” She bends over, hand on her knee, breathing heavily. “I don’t think I’ve run like that since I chased a naked Quinn sprinting through the house with a piece of poop.”
My face folds in disgust. “What was he doing with a piece of poop?”
“Smearing it on the walls.”
I literally gag.
Holly laughs. It sounds manic. She wipes sweat from her brow and regains her wits. Her gaze lasers on my luggage. “Where are you going?”
“I moved up my flight.”
“You’re leaving? You can’t!”
It occurs to me she isn’t biting my head off. “What are you doing? Why were you running?”
“Because I’m an idiot and I need to talk to you. I’m sorry. I was wrong back there. I encouraged you to take pictures. I knew Zoe was on the ground. I should have been more careful. It was my fault—”
I slice a hand between us. “No—”
She motions for me to shut up. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. It was a reaction and totally unfair. I don’t blame you for losing Zoe. I’m sorry that I did.”
I look at my toes, the paint starting to chip off on my middle toe, absorbing Holly’s apology. She so rarely apologizes about anything that I question if I heard her right.
“Why?” I ask.
She heaves a big sigh. “Jack helped me see how closed off I’ve been.”
That brings out a little smile. “Jack’s a good guy.”
“He’s one hundred percent Team Anna.”
My chin snaps in. “He is?”
“Yup. He convinced me to go on this trip because… because…” She twines her hair around her finger, her gaze darting to the road when a black sedan turns into the drive. We watch the car pull around and stop in front of us.
The passenger window eases down. “Anna Fisk?” the driver asks in a heavy accent.
Before I can answer or even reach for the rear door, Holly leans her head into the window. “You can go. She doesn’t need a ride anymore.”
“I have a flight,” I object.
“You can’t go. I need you.” She fumbles for her wallet and throws a hundred at the driver. My jaw hits the pavement. “Sorry about the inconvenience,” she says, “but thanks anyways.”
The driver palms the cash, thanks her in Greek, and drives away.
“Holly! That was my ride.”
“Please stay,” she begs.
“But you hate me.” The slight tilt in my tone rips open the wound in my heart.
She shakes her head hard. “I don’t hate you. I’ve never hated you.”
“But everything you said,” I counter, unable to hide how much her words wounded me.
“I was angry. I’ve been angry for so long. I have a bad habit of holding grudges.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” I drawl, and Holly laughs. “Why do you hold grudges?”
She looks warily around with a sudden nervousness. “Can we go to the bar? I need a drink.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Drinking got us into trouble on our last trip here.
“One drink,” she says with a lift of her finger. “I’ll explain everything.”
“All right,” I reluctantly agree, looking back at my luggage.
She hasn’t left me with much of a choice.
I was already at risk of missing my flight because I’d barely given myself enough time to get to the airport.
I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I can’t deny there’s a little ribbon of optimism tying a bow around my heart.
We leave my luggage with the concierge, and it doesn’t occur to either of us to check in Zoe’s empty urn.
We’re so used to her being with us that Holly carries the capped vase to the pool bar.
We order raspberry Ouzo slushies and, because the pool area is loud and crowded, we take our cocktails to the beach.
The lounge chairs and umbrellas that are put out every morning have been stacked away for the day. We sit on the coarse sand that’s rocky under my bum. “This isn’t comfortable.” I shift around, removing a particularly sharp pebble.
“No, it isn’t,” Holly says, looking down the beach that’s dotted with bonfires. We can hear distant music from the bar, the rhythmic thrum of the waves playing tempo.
I hold her drink as she wiggles the urn into the sand so the vase stays upright.
“So…” I begin, returning her drink, unsure of what’s on her mind. “What did you want to talk about?”
Holly folds her legs and adjusts her skirt over her knees. “I don’t think I ever told you about Kimmie Walker.”
I shake my head. Great, another secret to be uncorked.
“We were best friends in middle school. She’s the reason I’m so… uptight?” Holly twirls a hand, sips her drink. “Let me start over. She’s the reason I allowed myself to become the way I am today.”
“A control freak?” I can’t resist.
She makes a face. “I was going to say rigid.”
“Stubborn? Unbendable?”
Holly drops her head into her hands and groans. “All of the above. Kimmie was my best friend until she wasn’t.”
“What happened?” I ask.
Holly takes a breath and launches into a story about the betrayal of a childhood best friend. A betrayal that made trusting in friendships a risk she didn’t know how to take.
“I stuffed the real me so far in the back of the closet that no one would ever make fun of her again. I resolved then and there to protect myself above anything else.”
She inhales deeply and blows out a breath. The hair over her brow lifts and lowers with the exhale. She then takes a long slurp from her slushie. “Anyways, that’s when rigid Holly showed up.”
And why she obsessively tries to control her environment and holds grudges for eternity. I can see why Holly’s never forgiven me. She’d already been burned by a best friend before Anna-gate.
But I can also see something else.
“I’ve seen glimpses of that Holly, the quirky one,” I say.
“Not intentionally.”
“No.” I smile softly. “But I think she wants to come out.”
Her face snaps toward me. “You did not just make a joke about—” She whips her hands between us. “I’m not going to say it.”
I bump shoulders with her. “I think quirky Holly wants out of the closet.”
She palms her face. “You’re ridiculous.” Her hand falls into her lap, and a beat later she says, resigned, “I think so, too.”
“And speaking of closets. There’s a whimsical dress in our hotel room closet that would look dazzling on you—the quirky, new and improved Holly.”
“Holly wants to wear that dress. And why are we talking about me in the third person?” She tosses up her hands and I’m reminded how dunce I was about the fallout after Anna-gate.
“Holly,” I shift awkwardly to face her more. “I didn’t realize how much damage my post had done. I mean, I knew, I just didn’t want to own up to how poorly I’d handled myself. From the bottom of my heart, I am genuinely sorry for all the trouble I caused you.”
Holly meets my eyes. “I know you didn’t do it on purpose. I forgive you.”
I blink, unable to move. I even hold my breath. I’ve been waiting so long to hear those words that they don’t seem real.
Holly makes eye contact. “I forgive you.”
I blink rapidly, suddenly teary-eyed, words failing me for once.
“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to say that. My stubbornness ended up blowing this out of proportion. I’ve made it a bigger deal than it really was.”
Holy Ouzo, Holly forgives me.
I squeal, setting aside my slushie, and throw my arms around her. “Does this mean we’re best friends again?” I ask through my tears.
“It means we’ve always been best friends. We were just in a time-out.”
I laugh. Only mama-bear Holly would make a kid joke.
We hug, wipe our tears, and toast to a friendship that can survive anything. We toast to Zoe.
Holly lifts her glass toward heaven. “We did it, Z.”
“I’m glad you didn’t leave,” she says to me after a quiet moment of listening to the waves as we imagine Zoe’s smug pleasure. I can almost picture her saying, “I told you that you’d make up.”
An attendant from the hotel approaches and asks if we want a bonfire lit in the pit beside us. I look at Holly, who’s yawning. She shakes her head.
“No thanks. We’ve got an early morning.”
He leaves us and I pat Zoe’s urn, worry churning my stomach. We still have another mountain to tackle. “What are we going to tell the Whitmores?”
“Have you texted Leo yet?”
“Are you kidding? I haven’t mentioned a thing.” The very thought of confessing what we did makes me want to hurl. “They aren’t going to be happy with us.”
“No, they’re not,” she says, glancing down the beach again. Her eyes slowly widen and snap to mine. “What if we don’t have to tell them?”
“How? They’re going to notice there’s nothing left of her.”
Holly’s eyes glint in the low light. “I have an idea.”