Chapter 3 Tara

Chapter 3

Tara

O h, Lord," Holly said, setting down a carafe of coffee. "You look like you've seen a ghost. I'm bringing cake."

Tara was, temporarily, distracted from her panic about the whole "I made up a girlfriend" thing by how hot Holly looked in ripped up jeans and a skeleton tank, her long red hair in a messy bun, a green shamrock bandanna tied at the top in a bow like an emo Rosie the Riveter. When she was working, Holly dressed in fit-and-flare dresses and rockabilly hair, but Tara had noticed that on her days off, she was more punk than pinup.

"That obvious, huh?" It shouldn't matter that Holly was seeing her at full freak-out. Holly had seen her at her worst. Holly was one of the only people on earth Tara didn't need to act for, and all of the rest of them were currently up in the Adirondacks in a godforsaken moldy hotel in the middle of the woods. And while she might be Tara's favorite waitress and secret crush, she might be tall and willowy with waves of red hair and green eyes and legs for days, she was not for Tara.

So Tara didn't need to impress her. Even if she wanted to.

There was a clunk, and a plate landed in front of her with the biggest slice of coconut cake she'd ever seen. She almost cried. God bless Holly for knowing just by looking at her that this was not only a cake emergency, but a coconut cake emergency. For a girl born and raised in South Carolina, some occasions could not be gotten through without it.

"Girl, if you're going to cry into the cake, I'm going to put you in a corner booth where no one can see your mascara run," Holly said, sliding in across from her. This was new. Holly never sat down, was always on the move serving tables.

Tara looked around, to find that the place was mostly empty.

"I have some time to sit," Holly said, like she knew what Tara was thinking. She probably did—apparently, she could read Tara's face. After a decade in front of juries, Tara wasn't used to anyone being able to read her unless she let them. "You wanna talk about it?"

Tara almost dropped her head on the table, but her training was too strong.

"I got an invitation to Miriam's wedding," she began, and everything came pouring out. Her panic at having to show her face, single, at the wedding of her ex and the girl her ex left her for. Her sudden unwillingness to be the odd one out in a group of her coupled friends. (If Cole wasn't secretly making out with the hot bartender, she would eat her best Sunday hat.)

Holly listened, the dimple in her cheek telling Tara that she was trying not to laugh. That was fine, Tara would be laughing at herself, too, if she hadn't just told all her friends that she was bringing a date to a wedding that she categorically didn't have a date for.

"How am I going to find a girlfriend by Christmas? It's already December third."

"This is easy," Holly said, taking a bite of Tara's cake. "I'll go. I'd love to see Carrigan's, I love Miriam, it'll be great."

"But I told them I was dating someone," Tara reiterated.

Holly shrugged. "You can pretend to be dating me for the week. I'd be a good fake girlfriend: I look fantastic dolled up for a wedding, I smile at strangers for my job, and I have good stories."

Tara couldn't tell if she was serious. "Wait, what? Why would you spend your Christmas pretending to be my girlfriend?" Somehow, even though Tara had gotten herself into this, Holly actually offering to pretend to be her date made her fully process what a wild idea it was.

Truly, it was top-tier terrible.

Even leaving aside the basic premise of "maybe don't lie to your best friends," Miriam knew Holly and knew the two of them could never date. On the other hand, Miriam knew that Tara wanted Holly and had been pining after her for most of a year. Miri would be so excited that Tara was dating seriously, and so distracted by the wedding, that she might not ask too many questions. There was a slim possibility that Tara could go to this wedding with a beautiful woman, who would be a buffer from the overwhelming energy at Carrigan's, and keep her friends from worrying about her.

Except for Cole.

She looked down at her vibrating phone. Cole was another story that she needed to figure out how to deal with, right now.

Tara grimaced. "Want to say hi to Cole?"

"Cole!" Holly cried happily as Tara answered and put him on speaker. "My favorite Yacht Bro Felon!"

"I've never been convicted of a felony," Cole said breezily. "Hi, Holly. WAIT. Holly?!" His voice was getting louder and screechier. "What is Holly doing with you? Is Holly the person you're secretly dating? That you're bringing to the wedding?!"

Holly raised an eyebrow at Tara across the booth, silently asking what Tara wanted to do. She didn't want to do anything. She wanted to go back in time and tell Hannah that she was coming as Cole's plus-one, assuming he wasn't bringing Hot Bartender, or that she was going to be out of the country that week so she had to send her regrets, or… anything other than what she'd said.

The silence stretched as their eyes caught, the phone between them.

"Tara Sloane Chadwick, tell me the truth," Cole demanded, his voice dropping into a serious register.

This was the quintessential problem with Nicholas Jedediah Fraser III. He could command she tell him the truth, and she would. Because once you'd committed felony arson with someone—whether you were charged or not—they had certain privileges.

"I am bringing Holly to the wedding. Maybe," she said, and waited for him to stop yelling on the other end of the phone. It was a good thing the cafe was mostly empty and that all the staff knew Cole. "But we're not actually dating. I just didn't want to come alone. And I haven't even decided if she's coming. You cannot tell Miri, though. Or anyone."

Tara waited, her leg bouncing under the table despite her ordering it to stop. She waited for Cole's judgment, or for Holly to rescind her offer, or for her brain to stop whirring long enough to be able to make a sound decision. Holly reached over to squeeze her hand, and the touch of their fingers was electric. Maybe she didn't want to make a sound decision, her brain whispered. Maybe she wanted to make an absolutely ridiculous one.

All Cole said was, "I can't keep secrets from Miriam! It goes against my character!"

Of course he wouldn't be the voice of reason on this—Cole was basically five to seven bad ideas in a pair of lobster-embroidered shorts. He wasn't worried that she was planning to keep secrets, only about his ability to be a useful accomplice.

"What do you do for a living, Nicholas?" Tara asked in her best criminal defense lawyer voice. Because whatever it was, he was absolutely keeping it a secret from Miriam.

"So, if Holly comes, are you… pretending she's your girlfriend?" Cole asked, sounding both skeptical and thrilled. The man did love a hijink.

That was the question, wasn't it? Were they actually going to go through with an absurd deception so Tara didn't have to feel embarrassed? "I don't know yet, but it's not off the table, so try not to confirm or deny anything."

His sigh could have powered wind turbines. "I hate you very much and I will keep your secret and I will see you up here for the wedding, but you will owe me for this. Also, you should probably date Holly for real."

"She's out of my league," Tara deadpanned, although she wasn't kidding. She would be terrible for Holly. Holly would probably be great for her, emotionally, but terrible for her life plan.

The justice system of South Carolina was deeply corrupt, and she came from a family deeply embedded in, and benefiting unfairly from, said system. She couldn't dismantle the system—no single person could. A robust, well-organized movement was working on that. So she gave them a lot of money, showed up and did the work they needed done, and tried to not take up too much space.

Miriam had once quoted the Talmud to her: "it is not up to you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it." That quote had embedded itself in her heart, and led her steps in her career. Had led her, specifically, to leave divorce law and use her privilege by offering representation, pro bono, to clients in need of a good defense attorney.

It wasn't world-changing work, but she loved it, and until the system was toppled, it helped even the playing field in the courts just a fraction.

However, because she was a lesbian with a, well, colorful past, she had to walk a careful line in order to maintain proximity to the Old Boys network she was currently exploiting. If she got involved with someone who was not just a Yankee, but also a waitress, she would lose access—or Holly would pretend to be someone she wasn't and the Old Boys would still be horrifying to her. There was no way Tara would get entangled with anyone who wasn't trained to be a society wife. It wouldn't be fair to them.

She liked Holly far too much to ask her to put on that cursed mask.