Chapter 5 Tara

Chapter 5

Tara

T his was the best possible news, Tara told herself firmly, because there was no way she would be tempted to get involved with Holly now.

Not that there was a problem with not going to college or being a career waitress—or being poor, obviously. All of those things were unrelated to a person's value, worth, and character. They just made Holly off-limits because now she knew, for sure, that she could never marry her, and Tara only dated women she could marry. She needed a society wife who could fit into her social circle. They'd tolerated Miriam because of her fame but what Tara really needed was a socialite. Someone raised to the role, who would make Tara "respectable" even if she insisted on being a lesbian. Holly was amazing, free-spirited and snarky and fun, which by default meant she wasn't society wife material in the way Tara needed. Tara wasn't in the market for a fling, so they simply wouldn't get involved.

And if there was no danger of them getting involved, there was no reason not to go through with this scheme. Other than the fact that it was a terrible idea, obviously.

"Okay. I guess… Yeah, maybe we should do this?" she said, and Holly pumped a fist holding a fried oyster. "We'll have two long days of driving with a night somewhere in the middle," Tara said. "Maybe Baltimore?"

"I love Baltimore!" Holly smiled mischievously, wrapping her thick waves of red hair around her hand. "I know an incredibly posh little B and B you'll be obsessed with. No one knows about it—you have to get referred by a friend. It's the opposite of Carrigan's."

"I already love it," Tara mumbled.

She didn't hate Carrigan's Christmasland, exactly. Hating Carrigan's would make her a Scrooge who hated joy and fun. She simply didn't get Carrigan's. It didn't feel magical to her, just old and decrepit, and full of allergens. She didn't have an innate appreciation for kitsch. Antiques, yes, tasteful ones, but anything that was over-the-top on purpose gave her anxiety.

She'd been over-the-top, arguably, most of her life until she was seventeen. A rebellious, angry whirlwind doing everything she could to piss off her parents—drinking, stealing, paying her way out of trouble. If it was a cliché for a spoiled rich Southern kid, she'd done it, and dragged Cole along with her. Unlike most spoiled Southern kids, though, she hadn't been rebelling because she could, but because she hated everything her family stood for.

Then she'd nearly burned her whole life to the ground, literally, and she hadn't gone over the top since. She was very, very good at… well, not blending into the background, she definitely never did that, but standing out for being precisely what she was supposed to be. Carrigan's Christmasland was too loud, and it put her hackles up. Carrigan's rebelled against every social norm, and Tara never did, not anymore.

"Are you… okay?" Holly asked, interrupting her thoughts. "Your eyelid started twitching."

Tara shook herself. "You call the friend of a friend, or whoever it is you know, and see if they have a couple of rooms the night we need to be there, and I'll get an oil change. I guess we're taking a road trip."

"We should start posting about each other on social media. It will look weird if we're serious enough for you to be taking me to a wedding, but not serious enough to have ever mentioned each other on Instagram," Holly pointed out.

Tara took a sip of her wine, trying to figure out what about that statement freaked her out the most. "I've been taking a rather long hiatus from Instagram, personally, since that whole… business." She waved, assuming Holly knew that she meant "the business of being very publicly dumped for someone else by an influencer and having it play out all over the gay internet."

Miriam had garnered her huge online following, complete with its own fandom that was rabidly interested in her love life, by making weird upcycled antique art. Their breakup had been covered in Autostraddle.

"Also, I would rather not have to explain any of this to my parents, if I can avoid it, since that would defeat the purpose of making my life easier," Tara continued. "A lot of my life's work would be undone if certain people found out I was involved with a diner waitress. No offense."

"Oh," Holly said, "anyone who would think that is definitely the party who should be offended, by their total ethical bankruptcy. I'm thrilled to be the kind of person of whom they'd disapprove."

"As you should be. But how are we going to get Carrigan's to believe we're dating, without anyone else believing it?"

Holly tapped her chin. "Maybe I post about it, sort of coyly, like I'm seeing someone but I won't tag her because she values her privacy? I can take some pictures of our shoes together and cute shit like that."

Tara nodded. This was smart. She could do this. "Two iced coffees leaning against each other on a table."

"Ah, yes, the classic lesbian relationship soft launch." Holly nodded, mock seriously. "I'll get started on that project. It's already the fifth, and you need to be at Carrigan's, what, the twenty-second? For pre-wedding stuff?"

Tara rolled her eyes. "You underestimate the number of pre-wedding activities my beloved Hannah has planned. I plan out of anxiety, but Hannah plans out of passion." She paused. "Well, and anxiety. I shouldn't be there later than the night of the twentieth, if I want to escape her wrath."

Hannah and Tara had bonded after her breakup with Miriam because they were very similar people—intense, type A, a little bitchy—and Hannah had, at the time, been healing from a breakup of her own. Their friendship had, unexpectedly, become an important part of Tara's life. Which was why she was showing up to all of Hannah's (ridiculous) planned activities.

"Okay, so we're leaving the nineteenth. Two weeks from today. You let me know when and where you're picking me up, and I'll be there, with bells on. Maybe not literal bells, although they would probably be appreciated at Carrigan's." Holly suddenly looked panicked. "Wait, what should I wear to this wedding? Something glittery?"

"Oh God, I need to buy a dress." Tara rubbed her collarbone, trying to calm her suddenly accelerating heartbeat.

"I'm pretty sure you already own something you can wear," Holly said skeptically. "Do you want me to help you go through your closet? We can do a fashion show."

Tara shook her head, her hair swishing around her ears with the movement. She shivered. Was it cold in here? "I don't have anything appropriate for a Jewish wedding in the woods in December, and I need the, I don't know, the distraction and ceremony of a shopping quest for the exact right thing. It will be good. A new dress will be good armor." Her breath started to come back into her lungs.

"To the most lesbian road trip of all time: heading to your ex's wedding," Holly declared, holding her glass up for a toast.

Tara chinked her glass and argued, "It would be even gayer if they were both my exes."

Holly threw her head back and cackled, and the sound reverberated through the house. How did she do that? How did she just… laugh, out loud? It wasn't that Tara never laughed, but not like that, without caring how she looked or who heard her. She watched the line of Holly's neck, freckles leading down it like a trail, and felt her body heat.

How could she handle four days trapped in a car with this woman?

But no, she was perfectly capable of keeping her lust under control, no matter how good Holly's hair smelled. She was Tara Sloane Chadwick, the phoenix of Charleston. She had remade herself in an image of her choosing using only her willpower (and her family's vast resources and connections, she reminded herself). She could get through one road trip and one uncomfortable wedding without cracking her composure. She wouldn't even have to deal with moldy wallpaper!

This self-pep talk completed, she packed Holly off with a distant cheek kiss and a takeaway plate. She should make a list of everything that needed doing before they left, should go shopping, should create a document for Holly of everything she needed to know to be a convincing fake girlfriend.

She didn't do any of those things.

Instead, she put on her rattiest, most comfortable pajamas that no one ever saw, not even Cole, climbed under every blanket she owned, and put on a carefully curated playlist of X-Files episodes. Somehow this was going to be okay, but only if she could figure out how to keep cool.

In the two weeks between agreeing to pretend to be dating in front of literally all her real friends in the world and the day they actually left, Tara spent eighteen-hour days at the office trying to get ahead on work before her vacation, and rethought the plan thousands of times. If Holly were not already posting about them on her social media, Tara would absolutely have called it off at least once a day. But they were already lying, and if the truth came out, she would be even more humiliated. There was no reason now not to go through with all of it.

And, after all, she still couldn't imagine showing up to this damn wedding single.

The morning they were set to leave for the wedding, Tara pulled up to Holly's apartment complex and texted to say she was there.

HOLLY: I'm not quite ready, come up. 367, back corner apartment on the left.

Tara bristled. They had agreed, December 19, seven a.m., because they wanted to get an early start. She was prepared for a long day of driving. She wasn't prepared to see Holly's home, didn't want to see that vulnerable side of Holly.

It would only make Tara like her more, and Tara didn't have any room for that. She gritted her teeth. This was the sort of thing she liked to know beforehand, so she could have a script and an exit plan. Although, she was Holly's ride out of town, so she couldn't have an exit plan. Which was the other problem—she had a very specific schedule, and this delay was going to throw it off.

She practiced breathing techniques all the way to Holly's door, where she spent several moments trying to decide if she should knock, and, if so, should she do a standard knock or a jaunty sort of rhythm, or should she ring the doorbell. Her hairline started to sweat, which was going to ruin her blowout, so she decided on the bell.

A muffled voice yelled for her to come in. Shit.

She ordered her sweat glands to get their shit together. Just because it wasn't Done to walk into someone's home for the first time without having been met at the door didn't mean she was physically incapable of doing it. She had done, in her life, many things that Simply Weren't Done, up to and including sleeping with women, and she was still here to tell the tale. She would survive this.

God, she hated surprises. Why did this trip that she was already so freaked out about have to start with a surprise?

She stared down at her shoes, rather than around at Holly's apartment. She was intensely curious about Holly's space, but she refused to snoop. She didn't want to have any fodder for her imagination when it came to Holly's couch, or bed, or other soft horizontal surfaces.

"I'm almost ready, I swear!" Holly's voice broke through her concentration.

She glanced up to assure Holly that it was fine, although it wasn't really, and stopped mid-thought.

Holly was standing in the hallway in front of Tara, wearing a neon-pink towel with giant green flowers on it. It was not a lot of towel for a tall woman. A large expanse of Holly's muscular legs, and a significant portion of her perfect breasts, were exposed. Her hair was dripping rivulets of water down the valley of her cleavage, and when she reached up to wring it out, Tara was convinced the towel was going to hit the floor. A small, evil part of her prayed that it would.

Tara slow blinked, trying to clear her lust fog.

"Oh my God, you look so panicked!" Holly giggled. "Are you okay? Did you suddenly realize you left your Jag alone in my shitty apartment parking lot? You're welcome to wait in the car."

"I don't own a Jag," Tara said, then processed the rest of Holly's words. "And I'm not worried about my car. I expected you to be…"

"Ready?" Holly guessed.

"Dressed," Tara corrected.

Holly waved this off with one hand, and for a moment, Tara really did think the towel would slip. "I'm completely packed and ready. I literally just need to pull on some clothes. Give me five minutes!"

When they settled into the car (only ten minutes later), Holly cocked her head, her wet hair now braided down her back. How did she leave the house with wet hair? Tara's scalp itched.

"You don't drive a Jag but this is, in fact, a Benz."

"It's electric," Tara said defensively.

"Yeah, they definitely don't make midrange economy electric cars or anything. You couldn't have bought a LEAF, say," Holly teased. When Tara started to protest, Holly waved her off. "I know, I know, you can't roll up to court in a Nissan. I get it."

It was a sore spot, because she liked the LEAF better, but she'd "compromised" when her mother was horrified by the idea. Why her mother was involved in any way in the purchase of her vehicle, when she'd paid for it herself, drove it herself, and avoided driving it to her parents' home on the island if she could avoid it, was a thought that kept her up at night.

She didn't want to tell Holly any of that, because her mother was an insidious poison and made her feel like a spineless child, so she said, "It's very reliable."

Holly raised an eyebrow at her prim tone. "Are we allowed to eat in this very reliable Mercedes?"

Tara balked. "Obviously. We're going to be on the road for nine hours today. I would never tell you that you couldn't eat."

Holly grinned. "Perfect." She opened the backpack at her feet far enough to show that it was stuffed with snacks. "What's your snack profile?" she asked. "Sweet? Tart? You're a Sour Patch Kids girl, aren't you? Or maybe licorice?"

Tara felt the corner of her lip twitch into an almost-smile. "Do you have any hot lime Cheetos in there?"

"Please, I'm not a monster. Of course I do." Holly tossed her the bag.

"I'm picking the music, and when we switch, you can put on whatever you want," Tara told Holly. "I can't do highway driving without a soundtrack."

"Fine by me. Let's roll."

Tara put the car in reverse and then swung out onto the street as Mary Chapin Carpenter's voice filled the car.

"Let's roll."