Chapter 2 Holly

Chapter 2

Holly

S hirley Manson was screaming in Holly Delaney's earbuds, the lattice crust on her apple pie had turned out impeccably, and she was getting overtime for coming in on her day off to deal with pastry. She bopped on the balls of her feet as she tightened the handkerchief knotted on top of her head, then pulled the pie out of the oven and bumped the door closed with her hip.

Garbage was right in the middle of beseeching the listener to pour their misery down when they were rudely interrupted by a text notification. She ignored the noise, focusing on trying to get a tray of croissants into the oven before the lunch rush. Her phone immediately started buzzing again. It was probably a scam bot texting about her car's extended warranty, as if her beater had seen a warranty in… ever.

Just in case, she slid the oven door shut, brushed the flour off her hands, and fished it out.

Through the spiderweb cracks of her screen, her brother's name flashed, and Holly groaned.

Dustin: Mom needs to talk to you.

Holly: Has she lost the ability to text? Are you the Mom whisperer now?

Dustin: She says you never take her calls.

Holly: Correct. She only calls when I'm in the middle of work and cannot answer. But she can, and should, text! I know she knows how. She texted me a chain letter last week with some pretty wild claims about essential oils!

No one could conveniently forget your work schedule like a Midwestern mom.

Dustin: She thinks you're ignoring her, and she's heartbroken about it.

This was, unequivocally, a falsehood.

Her baby brother had moved back home recently and appointed himself their mother's knight in shining armor, a position for which she'd never advertised and didn't need filled. In theory, Holly supported anyone moving in with their parents. Considering late-stage capitalism, it made perfect sense, and it was a uniquely American idea that the nuclear family only involve a single generation in a home.

In practice, she would have an easier time supporting Dustin's life choices if he weren't such a little shit about everything.

Dustin: You can't be that busy if you have time to text me. I'm telling her you'll call her in 5 minutes.

That manipulative little punk-ass bitch.

Holly: I should have left you up that tree when you were four.

Since she had five minutes before she had to call her mom or risk her mother reporting her as a missing person, she texted her sister.

Holly: What the hell does Mom want?

Caitlin: What do you think? She wants you to come home for Christmas.

Holly: Fucckkkk

Her phone rang. So much for waiting five minutes. Or for letting Holly call.

"Mom, I'm at work," she answered, tucking the phone into her handkerchief headband so she could have her hands free.

"Your own mother doesn't get a hello? Anyway, your brother says you're not busy."

Holly bit her nails into her palms, reminding herself that she loved her mom, exactly as she was.

"Hi, Mom," Holly said, rolling her neck to relieve the beginning of the stress headache often brought on by conversations with her family. "I'm at work."

This time, her mom didn't even address the issue, simply bulldozing past it.

"You will never guess who I ran into at Rosenstein's when I was picking up some chocolate babka for Leigh's daughter's baby shower."

"Hadlee's having another baby? Didn't she just have one?" Holly knew she shouldn't engage. Any morsel of interest she showed in the gossip from her hometown would feed her mother's (wildly unfounded) hopes that Holly would, eventually, return to take part in said gossip.

Her mom tsked. "No, no, Mykylee! Won't that be wonderful? The cousins will only be six months apart."

Holly managed to bite her tongue before pointing out that Mykylee was seventeen and it was maybe not that great. Who knew, maybe it would be. Wonderful. And not a disaster.

Her mom didn't notice her lack of response. "You still haven't guessed who I ran into at the store!"

Holly was not going to get out of this, and she hated guessing games. "Why don't you tell me, Mom?"

Taking a deep breath, like an internal drumroll, her mom announced, "Ivy!"

Oof. A gut punch.

"Yay?" Holly managed with the air left in her lungs.

"She looked so great. She's finally letting her hair go back to its natural blond. You know, I always thought you two were meant to be, and you'd get back together once you got a little older."

It was, no question, absolutely wonderful that her Irish Midwest mom was so very supportive of her lesbian daughter, and always had been. Unfortunately, that meant Holly wasn't exempt from her mom's extreme matchmaking.

"Ivy's with someone else, Mom," she pointed out patiently. "Remember Wren?"

She did not say, "Remember how things ended with Ivy? Remember how I was so mean to her, and she blocked my calls, and I spent years avoiding getting involved with anyone else because I didn't want to treat them the way I treated her?" Her mom wasn't great at hearing things she didn't want to.

"Oh, sure, but how serious can they be?" Her mom brushed this off. "They've been together for years, and they're still not married?"

The stress headache was unavoidable at this point. "Maybe Ivy doesn't want to jump into marriage." The "again" was silent, but they both heard it loud and clear. "People don't get back together after almost a decade, Mom. You've been reading too many romance novels."

There was a hmmm noise that Holly knew well. It meant her mom was ignoring her. "Well, all I know is, she said she'd love to stop in for coffee for the holidays, and if you happened to be there…"

"Ope! I hear Matt calling from the front. He needs me to take a table!" Holly said. She should have just hung up, but if she hung up on her mother, she would still be hearing about it in the afterlife.

"You haven't been home for Christmas in five years, Holly Siobhan." Ah, the guilt trip was right on time.

Holly needed a distraction. "Is Dustin bringing a girlfriend to Christmas? I thought he told me he was seeing someone. You should ask him."

This lure proved too much for her mother to ignore, and Holly finally got off the phone.

Christ on a cracker. What was her mom thinking? Trying to get her and Ivy back together? She was going to need a good excuse for not going home, immediately. "Matt, if my mom calls the cafe phone, I'm swamped with tables, okay?"

"She must have riled you up." The manager gave a half-smile. "You sound like you just got off the bus from Fargo all of a sudden."

This earned the middle finger it deserved. As if Iowa and North Dakota accents sounded anything alike.

"If you feel compelled to actually do some work," Matt said, chuckling, "Tara's out there."

"For what it's worth, I was working. I was saving your ass by getting all the baking done. I'm not even supposed to be here today," Holly grumbled. "You could, I don't know, make me a full-time baker, and then you wouldn't have to call me in on my day off when your baker no call no shows again."

Matt laughed at her, which was what he always did when they had this conversation. It was unbelievably frustrating. "You're too good a waitress, Holly. No matter how delicious your coconut cake is."

That was always the answer. "Can't pay you to do what you love, Holly. You're too skilled at something else that happens to pay less—oh, but we can still have you do the thing you love, at your lower salary, once in a while."

She liked this place, but not enough to stay if she was going to be taken advantage of. Charleston was hot, and sticky, and full of rich assholes, and maybe it was about time she moved on. The only thing keeping her from picking up her last check and using it to fill up the tank in her held-together-with-zip-ties 1979 Subaru Brat was the beautiful woman currently in the dining area, waiting for a cup of coffee.

Tara was her favorite (and hottest) customer, a perfect blond Southern ice queen. When they'd first met, Tara had been engaged. Holly liked Tara's ex, Miriam, a great deal, and missed her now that she'd left to go live out a Hallmark movie plot. Since Tara wasn't engaged anymore, Holly had been flirting hard. She hadn't had any luck so far, but hope sprang eternal. And every time she thought about leaving Charleston without tasting those lips, something stopped her.

She peeked out the round port window in the swinging kitchen door, to where Tara was sitting in her normal spot. Somehow, her perfectly flat-ironed hair looked droopy, her shoulders hunched up several degrees past power pose. Most worryingly, she seemed to be in her house clothes with no eyeliner on, which meant she'd gone out in public without her full armor. It appeared they were both having difficult days.

Holly didn't know how she would thaw Tara's ice long enough to get her in bed, when no amount of flirting had worked, but as for how to fix a Southern girl's terrible day?

She had that covered.