Chapter 28 Holly

Chapter 28

Holly

A ll the Delaneys met Holly at the airport in matching Christmas sweaters.

Her dad's hair, burnished copper with age, stood a head taller than most of the crowd, and Dustin's, equally tall, was almost radioactive in its orange. Holly snickered to herself that his hair had never chilled out, no matter how much he'd prayed as a kid. Hers was exactly the same shade, but unlike Dustin, she owned it.

Mostly. Except for when people talked about it incessantly and touched it.

Caitlin had inherited their mom's black hair, and both mom and daughter had tears in their blue eyes.

While she was struggling with her duffel (the strap of which was held on with duct tape), her dad grabbed the handle and handed her a sweater that matched the family's. It occurred to her that, to have ordered one for her, her mom must have been holding out hope she'd come home.

On the car ride home, she was stuffed between Caitlin and Dustin into the back seat of the Saturn her parents had owned for twenty years. She and Dustin immediately got into a pinching contest, trying to see who could hurt each other the most without making any noise to alert their parents.

The trailer her parents lived in could probably be seen from space, it was so lit up with decorations. Her mom fussed that the neighbor three lots down had driven one town over to the Walmart with the better inflatable Santas, but her dad assured them all they'd win next year.

Win what? It wasn't clear.

Under the tree were presents with Holly's name, and a stocking for her hung on the mantel of the faux fireplace. It didn't have the polished kitschyness of Carrigan's, but after a week with millionaires, being home was a breath of fresh, seasonal-Glade-PlugIn-scented air. She felt her shoulders relax as she followed her dad back to the room she'd grown up sharing with Caitlin, only to tense again when her mom came after them and sat on Caitlin's old bed.

She said, "So, we can't help but notice you needed an emergency plane ticket to come home, and Tara's not with you."

"Yeah, Hol, where's your rich girlfriend?" Dustin asked, leaning against the door frame. Behind him, Caitlin grabbed him by the collar and hauled him out of her way. She came through the door, then shut and locked it behind her.

He banged on it. "I can still hear you, you know! These walls are paper thin!"

Looking at them, Holly was too tired to keep lying. These people, who loved her so much they hung up her stocking even though she never came home for Christmas.

She took a deep breath, steeling herself. "She's not my girlfriend. We were pretending, because Tara needed a date to the wedding, and I needed to convince you to stop trying to play matchmaker."

"You lied to us?" her dad whispered, sounding heartbroken.

"I knew something was fishy!" Caitlin exclaimed.

"I can't believe you!" Dustin yelled through the door. "Miss Self-Righteous made up a girlfriend!"

Her mom, who had been sitting silently wringing her hands, said, "Why didn't you just tell me you didn't want to get back together with Ivy?"

"She did," Holly's dad, Caitlin, and Dustin all said in unison.

Wow, even Dustin was taking her side on that one. The same thought must have occurred to her mother, because she looked toward the locked door in surprise.

"I'm sorry, you guys. I shouldn't have lied to you. I just…"

She couldn't figure out what to say that would be a reasonable excuse.

Caitlin filled in for her. "Was afraid of getting steamrolled by Mom?"

Holly smiled a little, for the first time all day. Caitlin might give her shit, but she also understood Holly like no one else.

"Hey!" their mom objected. "I only steamroll because I love you all."

Turning to Holly, Caitlin said, "I thought you liked her."

"I do like her." Holly sniffled. "I like her so much. But she wants to change me, and she won't change."

Through tears, the whole story (minus the sex pact) poured out. By the time she finished, everyone except Dustin was somehow piled onto her bed, and she was buried in a pile of hugs.

"You should apologize," her dad said simply.

Holly shook her head. "She needs more time. If she wants to talk to me, she'll reach out."

"What I don't understand," her mom said thoughtfully, resting her chin on Holly's head, "is where you got this idea that you're inevitably going to be unkind to anyone you settle down with."

"Because she's really mean!" Dustin yelled.

Her mom threw a balled sock at the door.

"Because I was really mean to Ivy ," Holly corrected.

Caitlin scoffed. "You were a baby. You're ten years older now. Your frontal lobe is done baking."

"Cait, lots of people in their thirties are mean as snakes," Holly reminded her.

"Sure, but those people don't spend a decade arranging their whole lives so they won't be mean anymore," her sister argued. "Don't you think it's worth trying to see if you've grown?"

From outside the door, Dustin said, "It sounds like she was already a total bitch to Tara. Why would Tara want to give her another chance?"

Holly hung her head. "Dustin's right." Those were the worst words she could ever utter, and saying them made her feel like she'd actually, genuinely hit rock bottom.

Her dad waved this away. "Dustin's never right. You should talk to her."

"If she calls me first," Holly said.

All the eyes in the room looked at her with disapproval.

As Valentine's came, she started to feel comfortable in a way that made her itchy. And she realized it wasn't the fault of her parents, or Davenport, or even Dustin. It was something inside her that was built for constant change. She'd thought she'd accepted that about herself long ago, but she'd kept trying to find someone or something to blame for it. No blame was needed, though, because it wasn't a flaw.

What she did need to work on was keeping friendships as her life changed. Because she'd been using her restlessness as an excuse to not get close to people, and she couldn't keep doing it.

She also realized that the idea of spending years getting comfortable with Tara didn't make her feel itchy at all, which was a truly depressing realization to have at this point in the situation. Or just in time for Valentine's Day. Especially when Tara hadn't called. And she was still too chicken to call Tara.

Her mom, God bless her, had decorated the trailer in red and pink heart bunting and hung a seasonal wreath on the door. When she was younger, she'd thought it was pathetic that her parents lived in a double-wide, but now she was proud of them. They'd looked at their options and done the best they could by their kids. They'd bought the trailer, the nicest one they could with their income, and rented a lot in a safe, quiet neighborhood park. Everyone there had known each other for decades; everyone watched out for each other.

When the kids she'd grown up running around with heard she was back, they'd brought their kids around to meet her. It was nice, and it felt like home—more than Charleston ever had. No one looked askance at the black ink covering her legs, or let their gaze linger on the holes where her dimple piercings used to be.

In fact, she went back to the kid who'd pierced them in high school, who had his own shop now, and got them put back in. Tara had said Holly wasn't afraid to be herself, but she'd been putting on a show for too long. She'd told herself that the act was to make herself safer at work, to get her more tips, to keep part of her to herself. And any of those would have been good reasons, if they were true. But, like the face Miriam put on for the Bloomers or the Perfect Debutante facade Tara wore for her parents, it was there to stop anyone from being close to her, to keep anyone at all from the real her. Including maybe herself.

She was ready to take her walls down and learn how to be close to people, but she still needed to do it somewhere that wasn't Iowa, and that wasn't going to change.

At first, when she left her parents and retrieved her car and all her shit, she thought about going to stay with Barb and offering to cook for her. But that would always be a temporary gig, and Tara's words were ringing in her ears. She was still waitressing because she was afraid to take a chance on what she wanted, in case she failed. Like she was refusing to take a chance on love because she'd failed at marriage, once, when she was twenty-two.

She was holed up in a motel outside Madison at the end of February, because she'd run out of gas while driving aimlessly around the Midwest, when she realized she needed to talk to someone who would tell her the absolute, unvarnished, ugly truth about herself.

So she called her ex-wife.

The heavy, cigarette smoke–laden curtains that maybe used to be baby-puke green gave the room an oppressive gloom, so Holly went out to sit in the pale midmorning sunlight on a crumbling lounge chair by the pool. Maybe she would buy and renovate a vintage motel, she thought idly while the phone rang, like Stevie Budd. Hannah would probably help her with a business plan, if the Carrigan's crew ever talked to her again.

"Sio? Is someone dead?" was how Ivy answered the phone, which was fair. They hadn't spoken on the phone in… probably five years, since Holly had called to say that her grandfather had died and to invite Ivy to the funeral.

"Everything's fine. Well. Everything's not fine, but no one's dead. I have to ask you a favor."

There was silence on the other end of the line. One of the things they'd fought about most, in their marriage, was that Holly never asked for help. It felt like a sort of dull cruelty to now, so many years later, be asking for help when their marriage was not only dead but also long buried, and no longer even mourned.

Ivy cleared her throat. "Who is she?"

Against her will, Holly's eyes welled up. "You will never believe this, but she's a debutante lawyer…"

She poured all of it out, the whole story, warts, wounds, terrible behavior and all. To her immense credit, Ivy gasped in horror at Aunt Cricket, got indignant about Tara trying to make Holly into someone else, and defended Holly's reaction even though it was kind of indefensible.

Even though Ernie had been incredibly generous to her, pretty much everyone in Advent (and certainly at Carrigan's) had been Team Tara. Hell, even Holly was Team Tara. And she wanted that for Tara. Tara needed a team. She'd never had one, all her life, just Cole, and she deserved it. But it was nice to have someone be fully, irrationally on Team Holly, even if it was perhaps the least likely person on earth.

"So, what do you need from me?" Ivy asked. "Do you need help with a plan to win her back? You know I'm good with a diabolical scheme."

Holly smiled. She'd forgotten that about Ivy, but it was true. In high school, she'd had the same wild child streak that Tara must have had. She would have gone right along with burning down a golf course. "I think I should probably step away from schemes, after the whole fake dating fiasco. I'm obviously not skilled at them."

"Shoulda stayed friends with me, like every other lesbian with their starter wife," Ivy told her, munching on something in the background. She was like Danny Ocean, always snacking. And she was right. Holly probably should have.

"I feel like I can't… I can't remember how to be in love. All I remember is how bad I was at it, at the end, and I'm terrified I'm not built for it," Holly said, all in a rush.

She shifted, trying to unstick her legs from the plastic of the chair, not sure if her emotions or the sagging seat were more uncomfortable. "Will you, like… I know this is such a shitty thing to ask, but will you post-game our marriage with me? Can we just talk about what the fuck happened, so I can actually figure out what to do this time? You're the only person who really knew me during that time. The only person who's known me all along."

Ivy laughed. "I actually think it's a pretty normal thing to ask, at least for us. We were each other's Day Ones, and even though we needed some space, who is going to unpack that time with us, if not each other?"

They talked for hours, through most of a day and into the night, like Max sailing to where the wild things are. Or, maybe back home, because at the end of the journey, Holly found her best friendship, like Max's supper, waiting for her, and it was still warm. Somewhere in the middle, Holly moved back into the motel room to avoid getting sunburned and lay on her back, sideways on the bed, her eyes closed, listening to the sound of Ivy's voice over the speaker.

Ivy's version of why they'd broken up was kinder than Holly's and had more room for nuance. The story she told—that they were two kids who married the first person they ever found themselves in, and then found themselves both totally incompatible and way too young to handle it well—left so much space for them both to grow, to make new and better choices. It wasn't that Ivy was unaffected by their divorce—she'd been dating the same wonderful person for several years and wanted to propose to them, but hadn't, and she couldn't quite explain why.

"You should maybe call more often," Ivy said as they were hanging up.

"Eh," Holly said, "maybe we can start by texting some GIFs? You know, ease back into it? I'm out of the habit of having friends."

The next time Shoshana Rosenstein called to offer her a job, as she'd been doing every week, Holly didn't politely put her off.

"Are you ready to come back to Davenport?!" Shoshana asked, pitching her voice like a movie announcer. "Beautiful scenery, Quad City–style pizza, and we were once voted the ninth queerest city in America!"

"That was almost ten years ago, Shoshana," Holly reminded her.

Shoshana laughed. "And it's only gotten gayer!"

"Well," Holly said, "as much as I… appreciate… the lure of my hometown, I'm not ready to move home. It turns out I like to visit but staying for more than a few weeks makes me kind of volatile. However, I have an idea. You all have been expanding into new territories, but that's a big monetary commitment, even with market data, right?"

Shoshana hmmed, sounding surprised that Holly had a brain for business as well as baking. It was the red hair, Holly thought. People were always expecting Anne Shirley, or Ariel, and were surprised when they got, well, a foul-mouthed blue-collar socialist with both feet firmly on the ground.

"What if you had a traveling storefront, with an accomplished baker, who could take Rosenstein's into places that had only ever experienced it pre-packaged and shipped?"

"So, a food truck?" Shoshana asked. "I don't hate it, but I gotta ask, how is cooking for our food truck going to help you build your own business?"

"Why would I want to?" Holly asked. "I don't want to be a business owner. There's so many taxes."

This brought more laughter. "There are. But I still would like your work, as a baker, to be recognized. Not for churning out Rosenstein recipes—that's not what I want to bring you on board for. I want your imagination."

"So, you want me to work for you, and I want to work for you, but in different positions?" Holly clarified.

"I feel like we should absolutely be able to come up with a solution that makes sense for all of us," Shoshana said. "Why don't I put my head to it, and you, too, and we'll talk next week?"

Something about that willingness to live in the gray area spoke to Holly, on more than just a career level. She'd been so sure, with Tara, that there was no gray area. And there wasn't one when it came to Tara's racist, elitist, homophobic family. But maybe there was when it came to Tara's career, which she loved.

She'd wanted Tara to open up, let down her walls, and become a softer, more vulnerable version of herself, but then she'd proven herself someone who couldn't be trusted with that kind of vulnerability. Even if Tara never gave her another chance, she wanted to show that she'd been wrong. Tara deserved that. But even if Holly didn't have a right to ask, she did hope Tara gave her another chance.

She wanted to be able to go to Tara and show her that she'd listened. She understood that Tara loved the South, and being a part of the fight for its soul. That the place Tara'd grown in could still nourish her roots, even if Holly didn't fully understand that concept. She also wanted to apologize in a way that was meaningful. Not an empty gesture, but something that showed she was committed to learning to fight kindly, to sit in discomfort and nuance, and to take a risk again.

"Holly? You still there?" Shoshana asked, and Holly came back to the present.

"Yeah, I'm in. Let's find a compromise."

They did find a compromise: Holly would get the food truck she'd dreamed of, and Shoshana (or, more accurately, Shoshana's accountant and lawyer) would take care of the taxes and business licenses. Holly would go into new markets to introduce people to the genius of Rosenstein's Bread and Pastries baked fresh, but she would also offer a new product line, under their umbrella. A line of reimagined, updated versions of the most classic vintage Rosenstein's recipes.

They roped Miriam in to design the logo, only after Holly assured her, at length, that she was going to make real amends with Tara, to make things right. And even then, Miriam was skeptical of her.

"I'm doing this under duress," Miriam said, "because my friend is sad. But if you make her sadder, I won't come after you. Cole will."

Once they had a mock-up of everything, the first product off the line went not to Rosenstein's home office, but to New York.

A pink and green box with a starburst sticker reading Siobhan it meant she wasn't wearing any of her armor. There was no reason for Tara to be showing her that vulnerability now, but she wasn't going to argue.

"It's not a business! Exactly," Holly protested. On the other end of the line, Tara was silent. "Yes. I named it Siobhan and Sloane. I thought, even if you didn't ever talk to me again, I wanted to honor that you pushed me out of my comfort zone and inspired me to do all this."

"You thought I would never talk to you again?" Tara asked, her voice squeaking in a way Holly had never heard. "I thought you would never talk to me again."

"Tara, I was so mean to you I got kicked out of Carrigan's. Carrigan's! The Jewish Hotel California!" Holly cried. "The place no one else ever leaves! I said horrifying things to you, things that keep me up all night, hearing them in my head, over and over."

Tara laughed, and it was the most beautiful sound Holly had ever heard. "You were mean. So was I, for that matter, and I'm so sorry. And people had been trying to shake me out of my misery the nice way for a lot of years, and nothing worked."

"Oh no. Just because it worked out in the end does not mean we're going to push my behavior under the rug. I care about you, and I don't tear down people I care about."

Well, she didn't want to anymore. It turned out that with the right motivation, a person could change a hell of a lot of their behavior. For Holly, the combination of Tara and feeling like a total asshole who didn't want to look herself in the mirror was enough motivation.

She still held on to a tiny seed of hope that maybe, someday, they would be able to start something new, and they couldn't do it with the shadow of Holly's unkindness between them.

"Thank you for the apology," Tara said soberly. "I was an asshole, and I'm sorry for making you feel like you weren't good enough exactly as you are. For not listening to you or trusting that you knew what was best for yourself."

"I mean, I don't know what's best for me," Holly said ruefully. "I thought I did. I was so sure that I had my life all figured out, and only you needed to change. It turns out I was as lost as you were. I could ignore that while I was focusing on you. But maybe I'm starting to get… unlost? Found. I think I'm starting to be found."

"The magic of Carrigan's?" Tara guessed.

Holly scoffed. "The magic of Tara Sloane Chadwick."

"Holly, tell me you didn't get a corporate job just to somehow apologize to me," Tara said. "You hate capitalism. You could have called and said, ‘Can we talk?'"

It sounded so simple when Tara put it that way.

"I was hoping the job would be a gesture to show you I was serious, so you would take my call for me to tell you I was sorry. Which I am. Incredibly, immensely sorry. I'm figuring myself out, so I don't keep repeating this pattern." All of this came out in a rush, and Tara was quiet again, so Holly kept going, trying to fill the silence.

"Okay, yes, I hate capitalism, but I also hate being on my feet for eight hours a day and getting my ass slapped by customers, and my tips shorted by asshole rich bros. Besides, Rosenstein's is a legacy family business. It's not like I'm answering phones at Haliburton."

Biting her lip, Holly continued. "I wanted to show you that I was serious about us, and I felt like I needed to prove that I was willing to compromise…"

"Oh, Holly." Tara sighed. "I would never want you to give up something that matters so much to you. That's not a responsible way for us to start something."

"You quit your job!" Holly protested. She knew this from Ernie, who kept her updated on the comings and goings of the Carrigan's crew, even though she said Holly should "probably talk to them herself." "Was that some kind of ‘Gift of the Magi' thing? I can't decide you were right, but you can decide I was?"

"I didn't quit my job so we could be together someday," Tara argued. "Honestly, I didn't think we ever could be together someday. I quit my job because I really, really needed to, and because I decided if I ever let myself fall all the way in love, I wanted to be ready."

"Well, I didn't quit my job for us, either. I did it for me." Then, what Tara had said sunk in. "All the way?" Holly asked, holding her breath. "Did you fall… part of the way in love with me?"

"I know, it doesn't make any sense," Tara said, sounding embarrassed.

Holly shook her head and laughed a sad little laugh. "No, no, I mean, yes, it doesn't make sense, but I started to fall, too. I'm glad I wasn't alone. But what do we do now? Did we screw it up forever?"

This time, when there was silence, she let it stretch. Somehow she knew it was a different kind of a quiet, and she needed to give Tara time to say whatever she was going to say. Even if Holly held her breath the whole time.

"I want to jump in," Tara said. "I want to say it's all okay. You apologized. You named a line of pastry after me! And I owe you so much for showing me that I wanted more out of life. I want you in my life. Hell, I might need you in my life."

Holly scoffed. "Sloane, you have Cole and the Carrigan's crew. You have everyone you've ever needed."

"I don't think that's true," Tara argued. "Do you know the story of the Snow Queen? Not the Elsa version, but the Hans Christian Andersen one?"

"Sure, trolls make a mirror that distorts peoples' perceptions, it shatters, gets in a kid's eye, he becomes a grumpy little snot," Holly said. "The library has a lot of fairy-tale audiobooks available on their app. I spend a lot of time in the car."

She almost made a self-deprecating comment about being poorly educated but well-read, but she bit her tongue. Tara knew she hadn't gone to college, and Holly was going to believe her when she said it didn't bother her.

"Well, I think I sort of had a shard in my eye. Some ice inside me made it impossible for me to see love when it was given to me. No one managed to melt that in me. Not Cole or Miriam. You showed up, and in a week all my walls fell, when Cole had been laying siege to them for years. I want to see what that means, because I'm pretty sure it's something extraordinary. You're extraordinary."

"But?" Holly asked, her heart in her throat. After a speech like that, why did it still sound like there was a "but" at the end?

"Well, first, it's going to take time for me to learn how to let myself be happy, again. To learn to stop punishing myself and calling it restitution. Also, I feel like… maybe we should get to know each other? No fake dating, no Shenanigans—"

" No Shenanigans?!" Holly interrupted, a little appalled.

"Minimal Shenanigans," Tara amended.

Thank God.

Holly thought about this. "What would that look like?"

"Texts? Video calls? Emails? I don't know, some kind of slow dating that's not just jumping all in and hoping everything works out?" Tara said.

It seemed kind of like shutting the barn door after the horses got out, but Holly didn't say that. It was more than she'd hoped Tara would be willing to give her, and she was more than happy to take it slow if it meant she got to take it anywhere at all.

"I'm not moving to the South," Holly said. "Or to Carrigan's, for that matter. I don't have some deep-seated trauma to unpack, and it's weird that the magic cat keeps collecting people."

"I know," Tara agreed. "Right at this instant, I'm also not moving back to the South. I'm taking an enforced hiatus above the Mason-Dixon while I find myself or whatever. Someday I'll go back. But in the meantime, your job is mobile and I'd like to see more of the country, so I figure we can see each other in all kinds of cool places. After all, no self-respecting lesbians would let a little thing like distance get in the way of being together. I'd like to try, if you would."

"I'd like that," Holly said.