Chapter 6 Holly

Chapter 6

Holly

H ey, before we leave, can we send my mom a selfie?" Holly said. "She thinks I'm lying about spending Christmas with a girlfriend."

Tara looked at her, amused. "You are lying about spending Christmas with a girlfriend."

"Obviously. Help me make the lie more convincing?" Holly batted her eyelashes, and Tara shrugged. "Come closer so I can get us both in the picture."

When Tara leaned toward her, Holly held up her phone to get a good angle, kissed Tara on the cheek, and snapped the picture. She sent it to the family group chat.

Holly: Getting on the road with this hottie! Happy holi-gays!

Mom: She's real!

Caitlin: And she's CUTE!!!

Dad: You should bring her here instead!

Dustin: I still think you're lying.

She looked up from her phone, breathing through her lifelong instinct to strangle her brother (especially when he saw through her dissembling). "We need to talk about what the Carrigan's crew would expect me to know about you," she said, popping open a diet Red Bull.

The secret to a long-haul driving day was the most caffeine possible in the least amount of liquid so you didn't have to stop to pee. She'd perfected her road trip essentials over many years crisscrossing the country.

Tara made an interesting noise in the back of her throat, something between resignation and misery. The woman did not like talking about herself.

"Would you like to start with the basics, or should I dive right into the deep end?" Tara's posture had somehow gotten even straighter as she talked. Who drove with their seat at a ninety-degree angle?

Holly was a jump-in-feetfirst kind of girl, and she was tempted to tell Tara they should get into the good stuff right away, but she decided to take pity. "Let's do a rapid-fire of the easy stuff, and then once you're fortified with snacks and lulled by the comfort of nineties country, we can tackle the more difficult topics."

Tara nodded, the corner of her mouth twitching in what might be the start of a smile. "Okay. Uh… you know about my parents. They're the kind of people who give interviews to Garden & Gun about how their families go back to before the war of Northern aggression."

"My family is annoying, but their worst crimes are varieties of Tater Tot casserole and trying to interfere in my life." Holly laughed. If she and Tara had a fling, she'd have to ensure it was long over before she ever had to meet Tara's parents, because she would tear them apart.

"That sounds lovely, honestly," Tara said. "Should I ask what's in a Tater Tot casserole?"

"You should not. What about siblings? Did your parents make an army of evil blond minions?"

"I have an older sister who has always done everything my parents have ever wanted. Went to the right school. Pledged the right sorority. Got her MRS degree."

Holly gasped. "Tara Chadwick, are you the black sheep of your family?!"

"More like the rainbow sheep, but yes. You have no idea. I've never been good enough at being…" Tara's fingers tensed on the steering wheel, and she bit her lip.

"A manifestation of demonic energy in an overpriced dress?" Holly supplied.

Now Tara did smile. "Something like that. I went to Bryn Mawr, and then Duke Law—to the horror of my father, who is on the board at University of South Carolina School of Law. And of course, I not only failed to get my MRS but my fiancée broke up with me for a lumberjack."

"Noelle is a tree farmer." Holly laughed. "Which I know you know, because I can see you liking the Carrigan's Instagram stories."

Tara grumbled. "Yeah, yeah, she has a master's in forestry. From Yale. It hasn't stopped my family from judging me as less desirable than a woman with a collection of dungarees."

"Doesn't Miriam also have a collection of dungarees?" Holly asked. "Wait, why are we calling them dungarees? And Noelle went to Yale? That's impressive. Go Miri."

Tara glared at her, and Holly giggled.

"What else? Hobbies?" she said, since the topic of Noelle's eligibility as a spouse was obviously a little sensitive.

"I play tennis and golf well, but I hate them. I sail with Cole when he's here. I keep up with the WNBA."

"The very model of a modern rich white Southern lesbian," Holly said. She'd meant it to be teasing, but she saw Tara flinch. Maybe they didn't know each other well enough for that kind of teasing yet. Maybe Tara hated The Pirates of Penzance .

Everything about Tara's perfect exterior made Holly itch to mess her up, but she had to go slowly or Tara would bolt.

"I wasn't, always. The model of decorum. Arguably I was a very good model of the sort of harmful, reckless privilege that is so common among the children of South Carolina's old money. A lot of our set, Cole's and mine, got away with more than we ever got caught for. We never killed anyone—but we did enough."

Holly watched her as she spoke, hands clenched so tight on the steering wheel that they might have to be pried off with a crowbar. "Were they really your set, though? I don't know you that well, but even if you've changed a lot since you were a teenager, I have trouble imagining you putting up with those people."

"That's a very kind assumption," Tara chuckled sadly. "Given the kind of people I put up with now."

She wasn't kind, but she liked Tara seeing her that way, so she didn't contradict her.

Holly decided to change the subject. Their fake relationship didn't require unpacking Tara's deep-seated feelings of guilt about her teenage years.

"What about Carrigan's? What do I need to know?"

"No one has ever been as weird about where they live as the people at Carrigan's Christmasland, to begin with. It's like they've been brainwashed into wanting to spend their lives in the freezing wilderness. They're all obsessed with the place, and I say this as a person from Charleston."

Tara's voice had dropped into her lawyer cadence, like she was arguing her case in front of a jury. Holly stuffed a chip in her mouth to stop herself from laughing.

"Also, they all have nicknames. Like Cole calls Miriam ‘Mimi.' Miriam calls Hannah ‘Nan.' Hannah calls Levi ‘Blue.' No one can just go by their name."

Holly waited a second to see if Tara was done. "Isn't Cole a nickname? Don't Southerners call grown men things like Buster? Also, I feel like it's a pretty core tenet of queer liberation that sometimes people don't go by the names their parents gave them."

Holly had never seen someone's shoulders touch their ears before.

"What about it annoys you so much?" she asked, more gently.

Tara pursed her lips. "It's so embarrassing, but I always wanted people to call me by my middle name, Sloane, and I could never make it stick."

Holly didn't mean to make a noise in her throat, but she must have, because Tara looked over quickly.

"What?" she asked.

Holly hmmed. "Did you… tell… people? That you wanted to be called Sloane?"

"Yes!" Tara said. "I mean, I didn't push. You can't push nicknames, or it's not organic!"

Holly just watched her, until Tara started to squirm.

"I obviously support anyone's right to change their name to anything that fits them best and feels good but I… resent that easy collegiality and how none of them seem to have to work at it. They all make friends like it's simple. I have Cole, and I'm not sure I can call Cole a friend. He's mostly my brother, and I don't even know if he likes me."

Tara's phone, connected to the car's Bluetooth, heard "Call Cole."

The car announced, "Calling Cole."

Tara looked at Holly with an Oh Shit face, and Holly mouthed, Oops!

"Tara Sloane Chadwick, as I live and breathe," Cole drawled over the speaker. "I was fixing to call you to make sure you got on the road okay."

"She was extremely punctual," Holly told him.

"Of course she was." His voice was thick with both amusement and affection. While his accent was the same as Tara's—they'd grown up attached at the hip, after all—somehow his invoked long, slow summer days on the water with a bourbon and a cigar, whereas hers brought to mind sweet tea so cold it crackled. "And how are you? Ready to experience the magic and splendor of a Jewish-owned Christmas tourist extravaganza?"

Even when she couldn't see him, she could see his spirit fingers.

"Surely we'll be focusing on wedding prep and will not be subjected to the full onslaught of a Carrigan's Christmas?" Tara protested, alarm in her voice.

Cole's laugh filled the car, bubbling like the tide coming in. "Oh, honey, there's no escaping Christmas at Carrigan's. The season started November first. People have been coming here for their winter vacations for generations. We couldn't tell them to go somewhere else! Miriam and Noelle invited them all to the wedding!"

Tara's eyes became huge. "Where are they sleeping?!" she demanded. "Where are we sleeping?"

"You are sleeping in the Christmasland Inn," Cole said, and Holly thought she detected a hint of smugness in his voice. What was he up to? "I booked you myself. Everyone else, you let us worry about."

"Us? Since when do you work at Carrigan's?" Holly teased.

"Once you're here, you're on the team!" he singsonged back.

"See, I told you they were in a cult," Tara grumbled.

"A very glittery cult," Cole agreed. Part of Miriam's artistic vision was to cover everything around her in glitter glue. If she were going to start a cult, it would be shiny. "It's good to hear your voice, darlin', but what did you call for?"

Holly expected Tara to seem panicked, since she hadn't meant to call him at all, but she'd obviously used the beginning of the conversation to come up with a reason.

It was weirdly hot, how smooth she was at dissembling. Holly would unpack why that was, later.