Chapter 24
Thick with music, dust, and electricity, Coachella has kicked the weekend way past my expectations, into the desert skies. It’s surreal. I’m retroactively putting it on my bucket list and ticking the check mark with every buzzing atom inside me. What a human experience.
Quinn and I stand once again in front of the festival’s iconic Ferris wheel, toes pointed, peace signs, air-kisses. Posing but effortless. Cool. Only a tad millennial.
“Who poses like this?” she asks.
“We do.”
We laugh, and I keep squeezing her arm, savoring every frame of the dream.
Holden is sloppy.
All over the place.
Not to mention, buried in his phone.
Increasingly sticky, the leather-vest look is slipping quickly from hot into not. I keep trying to pull him back, to my side, to the weekend, to me, because genuinely, I am baffled.
He brought me here.
We have been communicating literally around the clock for two weeks. Painfully I admit that I have fallen into feeling something sort of meaningful for him again.
I’m both quietly fuming and not wanting to face it.
“You okay?” Quinn asks.
I jostle my head.
She cringes at Holden. “How drunk is he?”
“Very,” I say. “And it is very not cute.”
She pats my hand. “Florence will cheer you up.”
I smile. Florence and the Machine is exactly what this night has ordered. I need the dog days to be over.
“You know where we’re going, right, Holden?” I catch up to him.
He barely looks up from his phone. “Yeah, I was actually thinking, though . . . why don’t you guys go to Florence and the Machine, and I’ll meet up with you after?”
My heart hitches. “Are you serious? You love Florence.”
“I know, I do . . . but”—he pushes a hand through his hair—“an old friend just texted me. He wants to say hi. Meet up for a quick drink.” He jiggles his phone at me, but the screen is black. “I’ll come find you as soon as we’re done. I’ll catch a few songs.”
This guy needs another drink like these festival grounds need more dirt.
I circle my toe in the ground. “I heard phone service gets spotty as the crowds pick up. What if you can’t find us?”
He sets his hands on my shoulders. “I’ll find you. I promise.” He pecks my cheek, looking to Alan and Quinn. “Take care of her, all right? I’ll see you guys soon.”
As he strides away, all I can think is . . .
No.
He is not messing with me again.
“Did he seriously just walk away?” Alan asks, jerking his thumb toward Holden’s dust trail.
“He sure did,” I mumble. I look to Quinn, who I’m sure is feeling so vindicated right now.
But she just squeezes my elbow with sympathy, like a best friend.
I think fast.
“Listen,” I say. “I don’t want to lose you guys. Phones on, but worst case, meet in the VIP section for Dre and Snoop later. Okay?”
They nod nervously.
“And worst worst-case scenario—you have the house address.”
“Where are you going?” Quinn asks, voice pitched high.
“I’m going to follow that liar.” I pull her into a hug that says, I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you.
“I don’t trust that guy,” pipes up Alan.
“You know what, Alan? I don’t either.”
“Shifty,” he says. “Don’t trust a guy in a leather vest.”
I laugh and shoot him a look that says yep.
Oh, Alan.
The irony.
Leave no doubt: Holden knows where’s he’s going.
Through the mass of suede strings, bold stripes, loud florals, chain purses, boyfriend T-shirts, bangles, kimonos, and spilling cups, smoke and techno and laughter, I follow him.
Soaking in the fashion every stomp of the way, because truthfully it’s unbelievable, even where it’s a mess. I’ll never shake this core memory. It’s the essence of original, wild, and free.
But the air is hotter than fire, and Holden is fast.
Sweating through my clementine-colored crochet top, I keep a cautious distance so Holden can’t feel me on his leather tail. He’s on a mission. And not the kind Parker was on to protect me—or that Charlie was on to heal people in developing countries and learn from his past.
Parker and Charlie were men, I think to myself.
And Reid. Business. Marriage. Fatherhood. All of them, in his twenties.
Men.
After all these years, I’m forced to face that Holden might still be a boy. Much as I want to hold out hope that even Peter Pan can grow up.
Holden’s end zone isn’t anywhere close to the Florence stage, that’s for sure. We are hauling to the other side of the grounds. If I had an Apple Watch yet, my steps would be hitting five digits today. My sandaled feet are ablaze.
Finally, Holden arrives at an ivory tent.
Draped with fabric, brimming with cushioned furniture, it’s an oasis, probably for celebrities.
The setup echoes a five-star glamping safari.
Exotic, remote. Inside, guests are treated to what appears to be a buffet.
This is no grimy food truck. I spy crab cakes and ahi tartare. We’ve reached the highest level of VIP.
Elite Coachella.
I scan around for Kendall and Kylie Jenner, who would fit right in here starting about this year. I pat the ticket in my back pocket, hoping it gets me in.
Hanging back for a minute, I hover behind some trash cans as crowds flow by. I watch Holden approach a zebra-clad blonde guarding the entrance. It takes zero convincing. She giggles and waves him right in.
Of course she does.
I grit my teeth.
Once he’s gone so far into the tent that I can no longer see him, I’m ready to make my move.
I walk right up to the Zebra Girl.
“Hi!” I say, flashing my ticket. “VIP?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, harsh features, black lipstick, pierced nose, not looking sorry at all. “Those don’t work here. Do you have a name?”
Peering over her shoulder, I freeze.
Time stops.
The whole kaleidoscope stills.
At the far end of the tent, Holden has taken a seat—a horizontal seat—on one of the bed-like white couches.
With his friend, a gorgeous brunette in a floral tube top and white denim shorts with tanned legs as tall as the Ferris wheel. Her teeth are a blinking white flash from here. Her pretty head is tossed back in a giggle.
Well, he’s wasting no time, is he?
At least you could call him efficient.
I watch as Holden grabs her hand.
Friends grab hands, right?
He brings it to his lips.
Friends kiss hands, right?
He puckers on her knuckles, one at a time, before hooking her chin with a finger. He tilts it up before leaning in for the kiss.
As their mouths melt together, my insides spin.
I’m annoyed for me and sad for the girl. But mostly, fear twists in my chest. Fear? Yes. I’m frightened of Holden, of people like him. What possesses someone to weave a whole plot like this weekend? Is he just that cruel? That delusional?
Actually kind of insane?
I’m perplexed, but you know what? No longer invested enough to spend one more second of my precious time here excavating what is possibly wrong with this person.
“Excuse me,” I say to Zebra Girl, my eyes still fixed masochistically on the make-out session. “I’m so sorry.”
Not sorry at all.
Without permission, I shoot past her, weaving through the posh desert lounge. When I reach the far side, I stop in front of Holden and the brunette, and just stand there, unmoving—as awkward as I can possibly be.
I own the awkwardness. Marinate in it. Just wait for him to notice me.
Finally, they stop canoodling.
Holden looks up at me in his periphery before finally turning his head. But even then? He doesn’t scramble to sit. Instead, his eyes glint.
There it is.
There’s the flash.
“Did you follow me here?” His tone is clipped and defensive. Offended, even.
Familiar.
Feels appropriate that he lives in the Gaslamp Quarter now, I realize, because he is the gaslighting mayor.
I fold my arms, knowing even in this moment of broiling betrayal that this is not about me.
I realize now: It never was.
I know I look my best. That I am my best. Bright and free and beautiful—a desert rose, really.
I know I always gave him my best as well.
I know it’s on me, fully and completely, for falling into his trap again.
I know my tendency to believe the best of people like him—so broken, so fixable! —has sometimes been to my detriment.
I also know I’m not giving him anything else of mine, except for one last observation.
Taking him in, one final time—this love of my youth, this bruise on my past, this achingly broken boy—I decide it’s time to let him go.
For real and for good.
Never another thought.
“You don’t change, you know,” I say to him.
“Some people change. They really do. As they grow. As they get older. They do the work. For themselves. For others. For the world. But not you.” I tilt my head.
“You stay exactly the same. Have a good life, Holden. We’ll pack up first thing in the morning. ”
I storm off.
Strangely I don’t have tears for this moment, this humiliation in the middle of Indio. Just a hollow ache. A dull, open sadness for twenty-year-old me—for what this boy took from her.
But you know what?
Stomping through crowds, I think of Young Me—marveling that she did it. Like Taylor darn Swift of old and new, she did it with a broken heart. She put one Rainbow sandal in front of the other, marched on. She met a man, she had his babies, she made herself a whole life.
I’m admittedly disappointed in my “mature” self over this whole debacle.
I knew better.
I know better.
Part of me wanted to rage at Holden, I’m too old for this!
But that wasn’t the whole truth, was it?
Are we ever too old to get hurt? To get stabbed from behind by someone we gave our trust to? Our body, our heart?
Dazed and done, I’m hit out of nowhere with how badly I need a bathroom. I scan my eyes and move my feet and at last find the row of porta-potties.
Guess this will have to do.
I step into a long line.
Looks like it might be a minute.