Chapter 14 Holly

Chapter 14

Holly

T here are so many people here.

Holly scanned the dining room the next morning, having emerged from the room only because Cole texted Tara to say they were going to miss breakfast.

They had gone down the night before to eat leftover cake and be sociable for a little while but had quickly run back to bed. Thankfully, Miriam had wanted Noelle to do "that thing I like" for her birthday, Levi and Hannah could barely keep their hands off each other (she suspected they'd had sex in every room of this hotel), and Cole and Sawyer were always sneaking away to make out, so no one was too upset when the party broke up early.

They hadn't gotten any sleep. At all.

Holly had had a lot of sex since her divorce, even if she hadn't had any relationships, and she'd never, in her life, had sex like this. It wasn't that everything was easy, or they were an immediate perfect fit. Things were still sometimes awkward, they were still learning each other's bodies. But even when they wound up in a giggling pile because something they tried had gone off the rails, Holly was still more turned on than she'd ever been. The chemistry between them was like a forest fire.

Yesterday morning, she'd thought it was hard to drag herself out of the room because of the promise of getting Tara naked. This morning, it was almost impossible because Tara was naked, and Holly wanted to trace every inch of her skin in the dawn light.

"Do you think," she'd said, leaning against the bathroom doorway, watching Tara put on her blush, "that they would deliver breakfast to our room?"

Tara winked at her. "Normally, yes. This is a full-service inn. This morning, though? No. I think Miriam will have our heads on a platter if we don't go down, and maybe Cole, too. Today is the first day of official wedding activities."

"Isn't the wedding still two days away? Tomorrow's the rehearsal dinner, and then Christmas Eve is the ceremony?"

"Hannah's an event planner," Tara reminded her. "Give her an event to plan, she's going to plan it within an inch of her life."

Holly pouted. "Why do they need us? They have a million people more important to their lives than an ex and an ex's new girlfriend. Who would even notice if we were gone?"

Even as she said it, she knew the answer. Cole would notice, because even if Tara didn't know it, there actually wasn't anyone more important than her in Cole's life. And he would always notice when she was gone.

Tara, who believed herself as tertiary to the proceedings as Holly had made her out to be, didn't argue that she was needed. Instead, she said, "It wouldn't be polite."

Groaning, Holly pulled on her own jeans and wondered how she could convince Tara that it would be more polite to go down on her for hours.

In the dining room, all Holly could process at first was that there were so many people in the room.

As she dug into a pile of perfect scrambled eggs to refuel and thought about how Mrs. Matthews was a national treasure and it must be hard on Levi that his mom was a better cook than he would ever be, she watched more people stream in without stopping.

Some she identified as Rosensteins and some must be Noelle's relatives from New Mexico, given her excited greetings. And then a number of older guests who didn't seem to be related to anyone started arriving.

"Who are all these people?" Holly whispered to Tara, gesturing at the septuagenarians hugging each other like long-lost loves.

Tara smiled. "These are Miriam's Old Ladies. She buys junk from them, for her art. Well"—she paused—"some of them are. I think some of them might be Noelle's AA friends? They seem to have put their collections together."

"I don't understand how anyone knows this many human beings," Holly said, and Tara looked at her strangely. "What?"

Tara shook her head. "I don't think I'd be happy not having a village."

Holly's hackles stood up. It was pretty rich of Tara to accuse her of not building a village, when Tara actively avoided being where her village was, in favor of burning her candle at both ends, trying to make up for one terrible teenage mistake.

"There's nothing wrong with my life, Tara."

"I didn't say there was." Tara's drawl was back, and her posture was straighter, which meant she was feeling called out. She didn't have to say that she thought there was something wrong with the way Holly lived her life. She said it with her actions.

"Tara!" cried a woman holding out hands with perfectly sculpted nails, tasteful, expensive gold bracelets clinking as she walked toward them.

"There's Ziva," Tara said flatly. She put an arm around Holly's shoulders and whispered, "Get ready."

Holly put on her waitressing smile, the one she used for men who tried to peer down her dress and women who talked to her like she was three. She knew from Tara that Ziva was on a tour of amends for allowing Miriam to grow up in an abusive home, but something about her dinged Holly's alarms. Was it the way she presented herself, the blowout and freshly microbladed eyebrows and expensive athleisure reminding Holly, fairly or not, of a Certain Kind of affluent customer who never tipped enough? Was it the knowledge that Ziva had called Tara after the breakup but before Noelle and Miriam were officially together, to apologize for Miriam's bad judgment and try to talk Tara into winning Miriam back?

Tara rose from the table and held Ziva at arm's length, air kissing both of her cheeks. "This is my girlfriend, Holly," Tara introduced them. Holly did not stand up. There were people on this earth she would pause her breakfast for, but Ziva Rosenstein-Blum wasn't one of them.

Ziva scanned Holly up and down, holding out a hand. Holly shook it, refusing to react when Ziva squeezed a little too hard. Then she sat down in the empty chair next to Tara without being asked, effectively forcing Tara to turn her back to Holly if Tara wanted to look at Ziva while she talked, which Tara was too polite not to do.

"So you're not here to dramatically object in the middle of the wedding and win back the love of your life?" Ziva asked, her tone joking, although Holly was sure she heard a little bit of disappointment.

"Fortunately for all of us, Miriam was never the love of my life, and I could not be more glad that she is the love of Noelle's life," Tara said in that syrupy, slow drawl she used to tell people they had crossed a line. The "Bless Your Heart" was silent but implied.

Ziva tittered and turned to Holly. "So, what do you do?"

Before she could answer, Tara said, "Holly is an amazing baker, and she actually grew up right near the Rosenstein's flagship store."

Apparently "waitress" would have been too embarrassing an answer for Tara.

Ziva clasped her hands together. "Oh, so you grew up eating our products."

"Our" seemed like a stretch, given that, as far as Holly knew, Ziva was in no way involved in the family business and hadn't been since she'd married Richard Blum, to whom the family had objected because he was, well, a dick.

She didn't say this to Ziva.

Instead, she said, "I would die for the hamantaschen!"

This had the benefit of being true, so she could say it with real enthusiasm.

"I have to introduce you to some friends who work at the home office," Ziva told her. "You'll have so much to talk about."

Standing up, she pulled Holly to her feet and began dragging her to a nearby table as Holly glanced longingly at her unfinished eggs. It was clear that it had never occurred to Ziva that Holly might not follow along. Ziva seemed very skilled at moving social situations so that people couldn't object to whatever she wanted without appearing rude. It was equal parts impressive and appalling.

Holly looked over her shoulder at Tara, whose face, to her credit, was sheepish. She wanted to hang back and remind Tara that she'd known all along that Holly was a career waitress but had agreed to have Holly come along on this fake girlfriend farce anyway. Remind her that Holly didn't give a shit if her life was impressive to someone like Ziva. If Tara'd wanted Holly to pretend to be someone else, she should have said so.

Actually, she should have gotten someone else to do this. Pretending to be the kind of woman who would date someone who was ashamed of her really chapped her ass.

Instead of getting into that argument, she let herself be dragged off by Ziva, who introduced her to a lot of people whose names Holly wouldn't remember. The cousins who were close to her age exchanged details of what high schools they'd gone to and played the game of trying to figure out who they knew in common. One of the cousins had spent a summer working with Caitlin at a movie theater, so they took a selfie and sent it to her.

"Holly is an incredible baker," Miriam supplied when she joined the group. "Her coconut cake blew me out of the water the first time I had it."

This brought on a chorus of oohs, requests for recipes, and a discussion of the difficulties that Miriam had experienced when adjusting to baking at such a different altitude, here in the Adirondacks, than she was used to in Charleston.

When Holly looked away from the bright, laughing group toward Tara, she saw that she was now sitting alone, her hands clasped and her face in the polite mask that meant she was wildly uncomfortable. She touched Miriam on the shoulder and subtly nodded in her direction. Miriam nodded back and gave a tiny wave to Cole, who was busy snuggling with Sawyer and systematically shoving turkey bacon into his mouth.

Once she caught his eye, Holly watched her gesture toward Tara, all small enough that Tara, who was staring into her coffee, wouldn't notice. Cole casually steered Sawyer over to Tara's table and drew her into a conversation with Esther Matthews and Gavi, who were sitting nearby.

"You watch out for her," Miriam observed, pulling Holly into a corner, outside of the earshot of the crowd.

"So do you," Holly said.

Miriam smiled. "We might have broken up, but Tara and I were good friends for a long time. She took care of me, when I was still in shell shock from being estranged from everyone. She was gentle, and kind. I mean, you know, also kind of cold, but she always made sure I had what I needed. She financed the launching of my art career, and when I up and left to become a tree farmer's wife, she never asked for a single cent back. In fact, she bought a lot of Miriam Blum originals to help save the farm when we almost lost it."

Why did that make Holly's heart melt?

She chewed on her lip, watching Tara and Cole with their blond heads bent together. "Does she ever stop trying to save people, and worry about saving herself?"

"I think she thinks she has to," Miriam said. "Save everyone, I mean." She paused to take a sip of coffee and leaned against the wall behind them. "I never understood why, because she didn't tell me about the fire. Neither of them told me. I didn't find out until a year ago, and it made a lot of puzzle pieces fall into place."

"How so?" Holly asked.

Miriam cocked her head, giant mane of wild brown curls bouncing as she did. Holly was going to have to ask her about her conditioner. "Well, they went in opposite directions after, didn't they? Tara trying to fit in every box so she never lit anything on fire again, literally or metaphorically. Cole beginning a life of crime. Tara cutting off all her emotional ties, and Cole finding and clinging to me because he'd been cut off from the person he needed most."

Holly watched as Cole casually put an arm around Tara's shoulders, and she let her body relax in a way she never did, even during sex.

"But the Tara who wants to blow things up is still under all those layers," Holly said.

Miriam laughed. "Yeah, I'm not sure you can take the arsonist out of the girl, in this case. No matter how hard she tries to be The Perfect Lesbian Debutante, underneath she's the biggest hooligan of us all. So she has to keep her lid on super tight."

"I'm afraid she's going to explode," Holly said. "Like a pressure cooker."

Nodding, Miriam said, "I'm glad she has you now. It's hard on her, all of us falling in love like dominoes. She hates to feel left out."

Internally, Holly winced. Had she made things worse for Tara by agreeing to this? Now her friends weren't worried about her, but maybe they should be. Actually, she was certain they should be—Tara worked too hard, hated half the things she was doing with her life, never slept, lived on sweet tea, and instead of using her broken engagement as an opportunity to reflect on her choices, she was planning to find another woman to enter into a marriage of convenience with her.

Holly was worried about Tara, and she barely knew her.

"We really do want her to move up here, you know," Miriam said, as if she could hear Holly's thoughts. "We'd all love to have her living close by. If you wanted to come, too, there's lots of opportunities for bakers, especially since the Matthewses are talking about retiring."

It didn't seem worth pointing out that it would be weird to move in with Tara this early in their supposed relationship, especially since Miriam had lived with Noelle since before they started dating.

Also, it had to be said, they were lesbians. It made sense that Miriam assumed she would U-Haul it to wherever Tara was.

"She's dead set on staying in the South, but you should keep asking her. I think moving up here would be so good for her that it scares her," Holly said. "You'd probably have to tell her the farm was failing and only she could save it, if you wanted to convince her."

"I'm not above that," Miriam deadpanned.

"Tell me about your Old Ladies," Holly said, turning the conversation from Tara because she suddenly realized Tara would be mortified by all her friends discussing her behind her back.

Besides, Holly was curious about this ability Miriam had to keep friends all over the country, whom she rarely saw. Could I have built and maintained friendships with all those line cooks and fellow waitresses I left behind? Should I have? It wasn't something Holly had ever wondered, assuming that seeing the world meant, by necessity, being a lone wolf.

While she listened with half an ear, part of her was watching Tara.

Although they'd been acquaintances for years, she'd really only known Tara for a few days, but she missed her. Missed her now, across a crowded room. Her life, with Tara in it, felt like she was driving into range of a radio station after miles of static, to find her favorite song playing. What was it going to be like when they went back to being friends, and Holly moved away? Would she just always miss Tara?

On the table in front of her, her phone buzzed with a text from her sister.

Caitlin: I need a million more details about this magical Christmas tree farm

Caitlin: Also are you really not coming home, even after Christmas?

Caitlin: Is it because Dustin is here? Because I can lock him in a closet for a few days.

Holly did not want to explain any of this to her family, who tended to view her with loving and supportive yet overbearing bafflement. When she'd gotten married at eighteen, they'd helped hot-glue dollar store flowers to a plastic garden arch Ivy found on Craigslist. When she'd gotten divorced at twenty-two, they'd come over to help her pack and given her zero lectures about familial responsibility. No one had even said I told you so.

When she didn't make it home for holidays, year after year, her mom wrapped her presents in perfectly folded corners and big coordinating bows and carefully packed them with packing peanuts, shipping them to wherever she was.

Apparently, she'd hit the limit of Christmases she could miss before her mom ran out of patience. Maybe it was because both of her siblings were home now, or because Dustin was whispering in their ears like Littlefinger that it was Holly's duty as the youngest daughter to take care of them. Maybe her mom's biological clock was starting to tick on Holly's behalf now that she was firmly in her thirties.

They knew she wasn't running from them, specifically. Just from… turning out like them. Rational or not, it felt like going home for Christmas was a trap, and she would find herself drawn back into the comfort of the known. She'd end up spending Wednesday nights in the bar down the street with people she'd gone to elementary school with, in the kind of job that you couldn't skip out on to have an adventure without getting fired and being late on rent, and then she'd get mean. At least with her life right now, when she got fired and couldn't make rent, she could get in the car and drive.

She should call her family, but she was having too much fun at Carrigan's, and she didn't want to feel guilty about it.

She turned her phone over.

"Ooh," Levi said, looking over her shoulder, "who are we avoiding?"

"My sister," Holly said.

He nodded. "Sisters are complicated. Why are you avoiding yours?"

"You remind me of Cole," she said, hoping to distract him into dropping the subject, because she didn't know the answer herself. "You both have no idea where the boundary of ‘not your business' is."

He threw back his head and laughed. "Welcome to Carrigan's," he said. "But also, touché. Shall I escort you back to your beautiful girlfriend so you can stop being assaulted by my various in-laws?"

She nodded enthusiastically, and she had to remind the butterflies in her stomach that she didn't actually have a beautiful girlfriend.