Chapter 23 Tara

Chapter 23

Tara

I n the barn, Sawyer was saving seats for them in a row with Ernie and Lawrence (who both gave Holly a thumbs-up), Collin from the diner and his wife Marisol, and the Greens. They slipped in, Holly's fingers loosely tangled with Tara's in a way that felt natural, as if they'd been holding hands for much longer than a long weekend. Once they were seated, Sawyer put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed, leaving it there in a casual gesture that said he assumed they were already friends and would only become closer as time went on.

Historically, Tara didn't love being touched by people she didn't know well, but this seemed right. She settled their still-laced-together hands on Holly's thigh and felt her shiver with pleasure.

When the barn doors opened, the assembled crowd turned as one to watch Noelle head to the front to stand under the chuppah, followed by Cole, then Levi and Hannah. Hannah stood on Noelle's side, with a woman Tara had been told was Noelle's AA sponsor. Cole and Levi stood on Miriam's side, their heads—one bright and one dark—bent together as Levi whispered to Cole and Cole grinned back.

They were such deeply unlikely friends, Tara thought, the two boys, yet they seemed to have come to love each other deeply in a short time.

Miriam came in then, everyone rising as she walked down the aisle. Tara watched Noelle watch Miriam and knew only joy. She'd never once looked at Miri with that light of love shining from her face, and Miri deserved that, and more. She was so grateful that, no matter how hard it had been, the universe (or Cass Carrigan) had brought Miriam here, to Noelle.

Their rabbi, Ruth, leaned on their cane with the wolf's head and gave a crooked smile to the brides in front of them. Noelle reached up to adjust her yarmulke while Miriam's hair pillowed out from her head in the most perfect cloud of almost-black curls. Time froze, this tableau of all these people connected in an interdependent web of love and faith and community, sharing a Jewish Christmas Eve wedding on a Christmas tree farm.

The ceremony was beautiful, made only more so by both of the boys crying buckets behind Miriam's back. Noelle was obviously trying very hard not to meet Levi's eye, because every time she did, her eyes got noticeably more moist. Miriam was oblivious to anyone but Noelle. After the traditional religious vows, the brides each recited their own.

Noelle quoted Andrea Gibson and bell hooks, because she was a queer literature nerd, a fact Miriam teased her about through tears.

"I was going to find you poetry," Miriam said, "but I knew I would never be able to do it better than you. So I didn't write anything! We're going to see how it goes."

Tara laughed with the crowd at Miri's chaos. "The first time I saw you, you smiled at me and I knew my life was never going to be the same. You were somehow the only color in a grayscale world, and everything you touched turned to Technicolor. Meeting you was like coming to Oz for the first time, and not even realizing I'd been in Kansas."

In theory, hearing that should have made Tara feel angry, or sad, since they'd been engaged when Miriam and Noelle had met, and she was the Kansas from which Miriam had escaped. And she was sad, but only because Miriam had left her alone, still stuck in the beginning of a movie. Trapped in the first act of her own story.

She was still stuck there, if she were honest with herself, but now she was acknowledging it. That had to count for something.

Miriam went on. "You weren't the first person who ever saw the best in me, but you were the first person I believed. When I saw myself through your eyes, I trusted that I could become the version of myself you saw. Maybe it's selfish, but even though you're handsome and funny, smart and hardworking, ethical and great in bed—"

Miriam's mom made a hilarious noise in the back of her throat.

"—the thing I love best about you is who you allow me to be."

Tara looked over at Holly, who was staring at her. They smiled a little conspiratorially, and Holly leaned her head on Tara's shoulder. A chunk of the iceberg around Tara's heart broke off and floated away, and she was afraid the melt might be permanent. That was exactly it, what she felt about Holly. She wasn't in love, not yet, but she could be. Easily.

And if she fell, she would be falling in love not just with Holly, but also with who she was when she was with Holly.

When the glass had been broken and the couple declared married in the eyes of God, their families, and the state of New York, they recessed down the aisle. As they passed, Cole caught Tara's hand and hauled her up next to him, kissing her soundly on the head before reaching past her to pull Sawyer along with him.

As they walked away, Tara whispered, "Do you think they're disappearing somewhere to make out before the reception starts?"

"Oh, they definitely are," Holly confirmed. "Should we do the same?"

"God, yes." Tara nodded and let Holly lead her past the milling guests, out of the barn, and into the back acreage, away from the inn where people were heading in anticipation of dinner.

They tried to sneak into Noelle's work shed, but she had padlocked it, probably to keep Cole and Sawyer out. Damn her brilliant foresight. Eventually, giggling and tripping over their heels in the snow, they made it all the way around the back of the building to the side door of the kitchen.

"There's a pantry in here that I know is big enough for fooling around, because Hannah tells me way too much about her sex life," Tara whispered.

Before they could get to the pantry door, Holly pushed Tara up against the kitchen island, trapping her hands on either side of her. "Hey," she said, waiting until Tara met her eyes. "Wait a second."

Tara stopped and tried to get her raging lust brain to focus. "What's up?"

Holly took a deep breath.

"Do you ever think… Did the wedding…"

She stopped and breathed again.

Then, all in a rush, she said, "Do you ever think about extending our agreement, and maybe being, uh, more-than-friends? For a little while? I know it would be bad for your career, and your mom might kill me. Actually, when she called me earlier, I thought she might actually kill—"

The maelstrom of feelings that had erupted at the beginning of Holly's sentence, a mix of joy and terror, fell silent when Tara's brain processed the rest of what she was saying.

"My mom called you." She tried to inhale past the rage flaming up inside her.

Holly shrugged. "Yeah, she told me I had to stop dating you or she would ruin me, but, like, ruin me how? I was already going to quit Emma's because Matt won't let me bake, and no one who would hire me would give a shit what Bunny Chadwick thinks."

Her mom's name wasn't Bunny, but that didn't seem like the critical point.

Tara freed a hand and grabbed Holly's chin. "I do want to keep seeing you. I have no idea how it will work, it's guaranteed to explode in our faces, and I absolutely want to do it anyway."

Holly's eyes filled with hope and tears. "Really?"

She nodded. "So much. It's all I can think about. But first, I need to call my mom and tell her to go all the way to hell on a one-way ticket."