Chapter 7 Tara

Chapter 7

Tara

T ara had not come up with a reason for calling Cole that he would believe, but she didn't want to tell him that she'd essentially butt-dialed him.

Despite her suspicion that he didn't actually like her so much as put up with her, he was sensitive, and his feelings would be hurt. He needed to know that people thought about him, that he was taking up space in other people's heads.

She couldn't ask him what he wanted for Christmas. It was mid-December and he knew she always finished her Christmas shopping by Labor Day. She'd bought him a bottle of his outrageously expensive custom Italian cologne, because he was currently low on funds since his parents had disowned him for being gay and he was not, technically, supposed to get his trust fund until he was forty. She'd also bought him a wool fisherman's sweater embroidered with crabs in sunglasses riding surfboards. (He notoriously collected clothes covered in lobsters, dressed in beach clothes even in the dead of winter, and sailed instead of surfed. He was going to hate it so much that he'd love it.)

He'd already told them he had their rooms booked, so that was out as a conversational gambit. She could tease him about Sawyer, the hot bartender he was definitely fooling around with, but he would turn around and tease her about Holly.

While on speakerphone. With Holly in the car.

"Does Miriam need anything?" she finally settled on. "We're driving through a whole bunch of country, and I can pick something up or have something shipped. I know y'all have limited options in that backwater."

There. That was good. It made her look like she was totally over Miriam leaving her for a lumberjack and was eager to help make the wedding a success.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Holly give her a thumbs-up.

"Nah, Ziva is going full Mother of the Bride and making sure every tiny detail is taken care of. Which is making Hannah, the actual wedding planner, blow a fuse."

"What an interesting choice, considering that Ziva was barely a mother to the bride," Tara said icily.

Like Tara, Miriam had terrible parents, something that had always connected them. However, now that Miriam's mom was divorcing her shitweasel of a dad, she'd decided to try to be a good parent. Tara assumed that pigs would fly out of Satan's asshole before her own mother ever considered altering her parenting style.

"I thought that, too!" Cole agreed. "Anyway, if you have anything to distract overbearing mothers trying to make up for a lifetime of neglect by micromanaging their child's wedding, please bring it! Otherwise, just bring your beautiful selves. Drive safe, babycakes! I love you!"

He hung up.

"Why do you think that man doesn't like you?" Holly teased. "Is it the part where he sounds genuinely thrilled to hear from you? Makes sure to tell you to be safe? Tells you he loves you?"

Tara sighed. "I don't doubt that he loves me. I'm like a… branch on the tree of his life that he's always had and wouldn't know how to keep growing without." She could feel Holly's disbelieving eyes on her, but damn it, she was right about this. "I said I wasn't sure he likes me. Cole is basically a golden retriever, if golden retrievers hacked world governments for fun, so he's always thrilled to see everyone. But he's never had to decide if he would choose to have me around."

Holly made a huffing noise that Tara couldn't interpret.

"Do you like him?" she asked.

"He's my favorite person I've ever met," Tara groaned. "Never tell him I said that; it would make him insufferable."

She didn't like to think about the fact that she loved Cole best, while Cole loved Miriam best. Cole was her best friend, and she was Cole's… obligation. It would be unconscionable to admit that she was jealous of his having other friends.

So she pretended she was barely putting up with him, most of the time.

It was complicated.

Since knowing the depths of Tara's insecurity wouldn't help make Holly a better fake girlfriend, and they had limited time, she skated over that chasm. "What about you?" she asked. "Any dark secrets I should know?"

Holly gave her a sidelong glance. "I don't think it's dark secret time. I think it's lunchtime! There's a truck stop up here. You can buy me a burger."

This wasn't where Tara had planned to stop for lunch.

She didn't like to go anywhere she hadn't vetted. She could pass for straight—in fact, she usually did, whether she wanted to or not—but she could feel her stomach drop when she walked into the kind of roadside place that sold bumper stickers with the Punisher logo overlaid with the Blue Lives Matter flag, the oppressive, coiled violence waiting to erupt. It wasn't just that she didn't like to give money to places where many queer people would never feel safe stepping foot.

It was that she knew, if the owners could see inside her heart, they would want her dead, and only her mask was keeping her alive.

Still, if they stopped to use the bathroom and it wasn't okay, she would simply tell Holly they needed to go. Holly would obviously understand. She didn't seem like the kind of girl to happily spend her hard-earned money on assholes. Although she might call Tara a hypocrite, considering how many genteel bigots Tara put up with in her daily life. That didn't mean she had to deal with them on vacation, or when she wasn't using them.

They wandered the aisles of the truck stop, and Holly cajoled her into trying on bedazzled cowboy hats. Tara took a selfie in one and texted it to Miriam, who immediately asked her to buy it. There were no Confederate flags in sight, and Tara slowly relaxed.

Holly turned to her, wearing a pair of giant sunglasses. "You thought this place was going to be real homophobic, huh?"

"It crossed my mind," Tara admitted grudgingly.

Twirling, Holly replaced the sunglasses and picked up a purse embroidered with a saguaro cactus in neon green. Tara tried not to ogle her ass. This place might not be homophobic, but they were still in public.

She was only marginally successful. Her hormones didn't care that they were in a truck stop; they hadn't cared about anything since seeing Holly in a towel this morning.

"I would never bring you to a place like that," Holly was assuring her while Tara was trying to shake the mental image of the towel out of her head. "Also, they have, genuinely, the best fries I've ever eaten in my life."

"Well," Tara said, taking the glasses Holly had set down and placing them on her own face, "what are we waiting for?" Taking Holly's hand, she tugged her toward the cafe tables in the back. Holly laced their fingers together, and Tara didn't pull away.

"I recommend anything but the salad," Holly said as they read the menu. "They make everything fresh in-house, but the produce tends to be, uh, a little wilted."

"How do you know so much about this place?" Tara asked, distracted, because she'd been planning on the salad and now she had to scramble for a second choice. She always ordered a chicken Caesar. While she read, she arranged the Sweet'N Low packets into a perfect line and tried not to touch the sticky yellow floral tablecloth.

Holly sipped her water through a bendy straw. It was cute, and made Tara think about her lips. Nope! We're at a diner, Sloane. "I worked here for a couple of weeks once when I was out of gas money. That's how I knew they were good people."

The waitress arrived with a plate of fries they hadn't ordered and fawned over Holly. Tara gave her order of eggs over easy—with absolutely no goopy white, but with the yolk still runny—bacon, and hash browns extra crispy (this was why she always got the salad, because she hated being Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally ), then peered at Holly over her sunglasses.

"She sounds like she hasn't heard from you since you drove away," Tara observed.

Holly stared down at her plate, pushing fries around with her fork. "Yeah, I'm not great at maintaining friendships once I leave for somewhere else. I like her, and a lot of people I've known over the years, but once I start to feel obligated… I don't know, it's like a part of my brain gets resentful, and I start picking at them until they go away and don't expect anything from me. If I ghost them, they can remember me more kindly."

Tara couldn't imagine not having obligations to anyone. Sometimes it felt like all she had were obligations. Maybe that's why she was always kind of a bitch.

Instead of digging more deeply into what Holly had said or how it made her feel, Tara steered the conversation back to the things they needed to know to lie to her friends. "So. Secrets. Spill."

"Well, as I said, I'm an open book," Holly repeated, but Tara was trained to know when people were lying to her, and it was as plain as the nose on her face that Holly was in fact the opposite of an open book. "So what do you want to know? I told you about jobs, family, school."

"Any significant exes? Best friends?" Tara asked, because she'd finally figured out what Holly had been actively avoiding bringing up. "You know all about mine."

Holly flicked her bendy straw, staring at it as if it held the secrets of the universe. "I think we can save that story for a later chapter."

Open book, my ass.

Tipping her head and stealing a french fry (She should have ordered fries. How were they this good?), Tara decided not to argue. Instead she said, "We should get back on the road if we're going to make good time to the bed-and-breakfast."

Tara needed to be back in the car, where she could focus on the road, because sitting across from Holly, watching her close her eyes in ecstasy every time she dangled a dripping, ranch-covered fry into her mouth, was the sort of pornographic dream Tara would have said she definitely didn't have.

She didn't even like ranch.

They arrived at the B it was that she thrived on maximalism and whimsy and creativity, which were all things Tara had tried to exorcise from her life. In fact, when Miri had lived with her, Tara had never let her keep her art in the Single House.

Maybe they would have stayed together if Tara had let some of Miriam's whimsy in, instead of trying to separate the artist from the artistic temperament, but she'd been too focused on her mission, and how Miriam could aid it. She wasn't sorry they'd split up, but she regretted trying to clip Miriam's wings.

Improbably, Tara's ex-fiancée, and Tara's failures in that relationship, seemed like an emotionally safer subject than the beautiful half-naked woman in her hotel room. You have got to reexamine your life choices, Sloane.

Finally, she retreated to her room, making an excuse about having to change out of her sweaty travel clothes for dinner. She sent up a prayer of forgiveness to her poor grandmother, who must be yelling at her from heaven that a debutante never admitted she could sweat. She could if she spent several hours next to a smoking hot woman in a car with the heater turned up!

Could a debutante pass out from lust? She might be about to find out.

Dinner, they'd been informed, was a mandatory social affair for all guests. Tara felt firmly that this was not how bed-and-breakfasts operated, being a place to enjoy a bed, and then a breakfast, but she also didn't want to go out for a nice dinner alone with Holly. How many lustful thoughts, after all, could she have while drowning in dust and lace and dining on (she checked the laminated menu they'd been given, which had certainly been printed on a dot matrix) duchess potatoes and roast goose, in honor of the holiday season?

Amazingly, she could have a lot of lustful thoughts, even while three children—the offspring of, apparently, the only other guests—screamed at the top of their lungs.

Tara cleared her throat and tried to avoid Holly's eye so she wouldn't laugh. "Do you, uh, want kids?" she asked before stuffing a whole duchess potato into her mouth. It was as golden and frilly as any of the B&B's decorations and melted sensuously in her mouth. Debutantes definitely didn't eat whatever this concoction was. It was probably a sin.

Yes today, Satan.

"Oh my God, no!" Holly exclaimed, sounding horrified. Tara had to think back to remember that she was talking about wanting children. "Why would I?!"

Then she peeked furtively at the adjacent parents, who were too caught up in trying to wrangle their children to hear her. "That sounds terrible. I like children in concept but I don't ever want to live with any."

"It doesn't sound terrible to me. I also don't want any, and while I'm aware that other people do, I have trouble understanding why. Eccentric auntie is fine with me."

Holly laughed. "You're the eccentric auntie?! What are the other aunties like?"

"Haha," Tara drawled. "My sister thinks I'm basically a Riot grrrl, and if Cole ever has kids, they'll be used to all the oddballs at Carrigan's and I'll be the unusual one."

"Thanks for not thinking I'm an unfeeling monster for not wanting to be a mother," Holly said wryly.

"It's actually perfect that you don't want kids. Miriam would never believe I was headed toward marriage with someone who did."

Perfect for their charade, but less perfect for Tara's resolve to remember that Holly was un-dateable. These moments of synchronicity were bad news for her daydreams.

"Right, because you never date anyone you wouldn't marry." Holly looked like she wanted to comment on this general life philosophy, but she bit her lip instead. "Well, if we're supposed to be in love, should we practice?"

She reached over and placed her hand on Tara's, stroking one finger down the back of her hand. All of the hair on Tara's arms stood up. Holly ran a foot up the inside of Tara's leg, along her tights. Tara sucked in a breath.

"I didn't say we needed to be in love," Tara corrected in a strained voice, "just that we needed to be seriously considering marriage."

Holly trilled out a laugh, and this time the entirety of the other party looked over at her. She didn't even notice, and Tara was once again captivated by Holly's ability to let herself laugh out loud. "What's the difference?" she asked.

Tara tried to shrug nonchalantly, although she was intensely self-conscious about being judged for this. The truth was, she and Miriam had been in an engagement of convenience, and she had no regrets about that. Miriam had realized she wanted to be in a love story, and eventually she and Tara would have been unhappy because of it. (If she hadn't already been unhappy, because of the whole wings-clipping thing.)

Tara's best-case scenario would be to find someone else who actually was interested in a business marriage. Preferably someone without an artistic temperament. But people tended to respond to that proposal with horror.

"I don't enjoy being in love. It's messy, and I need to be married, for my social standing," she explained. "Hence, I would actually rather not be in love, if I'm getting married."

"That's wild," Holly said, but her voice wasn't censorious, and she hadn't taken her hand off Tara's. "I think I'll play it like I'm desperately in love and trying to hide it from you. I'll make moon eyes at you behind your back and sigh as you walk by."

"I'm sure everyone will absolutely buy that and won't at all wonder what a woman like you would be doing sighing after me," Tara joked. Even if Holly wanted her, the idea that she might fall for a woman like Tara was hilarious. No one ever fell for her. There wasn't anything to fall for, just ice walls to slip down.

"Hmm," Holly said, watching her. "Why wouldn't a woman like me sigh over you? Because I'm too low class to breathe your rarified air?"

She sounded like she was joking, but Tara sensed a sharpness underneath the words.

"Not at all. Because you're vibrant and stunning and kind, and I'm an uptight bitchy lawyer with social anxiety?"

Holly's body relaxed, but she cocked her head.

"How can you be both the rainbow sheep of your family and too boring for a girl to have a crush on you?" She laughed, shaking her head. It was sort of gratifying that she didn't take it as a given that no one would ever have a crush on Tara. She probably hadn't known Tara long enough.

"I can be too much for my family while also being not enough for everyone else," Tara explained. "My family's expectations of decorum are very high—I could be too much by being beige instead of ecru."

Wow, that was way too much information. She pushed her wineglass away. "Sorry. You didn't ask for me to dump that on you."

"I literally did ask, Tara," Holly said, squeezing her hand. "You don't have to apologize."

She had to change the subject. Or eat more potatoes. She could not keep talking about herself. "I think it's time I asked you some questions. You know about me, but I still need to be able to convincingly fake that we're serious."

"I told you I'm an open book," Holly said, spreading her hands. "Shoot."

There was that open book line again. It was a good tactic, saying a lie so many times that people started to believe it. It had worked wonders for George W. Bush. Holly had a sly way of deflecting attention away from deeper interrogation. To get answers, Tara would have to ask something that would catch Holly off-guard. "What are you afraid of?"

"Like, existentially?" Holly asked.

Tara laughed. "No, like, spiders, heights, talking animal animatronics…"

"That's a very specific one."

"They're terrifying. Have you ever been in a Chuck E. Cheese?" Tara demanded. "And you're not getting out of answering this question."

Holly groaned, running her hands through her hair. "I don't like eels."

"Like, existentially?" Tara teased.

"Moray eels grow to ten feet long and attack people." Holly shuddered. "Also, their mouths do not open in a natural way."

Tara stared at her.

"I think I might have watched The Princess Bride too many times as a child."

"That's wild, you know that, right?" Tara turned Holly's words around on her again.

Holly grinned. "I do know that."

"When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

"Rich," Holly said easily. "But I also wanted to work for Rosenstein's because we lived near the home office, where the flagship store started, and it was a point of hometown pride. I thought if I worked there, I would get to eat all the hamantaschen I wanted."

Tara nodded. "Sure. Some people dream of being rich in love, others of being rich in hat-shaped cookies."

"Oh no, let me be very clear," Holly said, pointing a fork full of goose at Tara, "I wanted to be rich in cash money. Because then I could buy hat-shaped cookies, and also, like, health insurance."

There was a time in Tara's life when she would have told Holly that being rich was overrated. When she was young, and desperate to be anything her parents weren't. When she was at boarding school her senior year with a bunch of senators' daughters. When, her first year out of law school, she'd been a divorce attorney for her parents' friends, watching them tear each other to shreds over who got which vacation home.

Having spent years in the criminal justice system and working closely with prison reform activists, she would never, ever say that now.

The B&B owner, Barb, bustled over to make sure they were enjoying their meal. She was round and glowing, a mother from a Renoir painting come to life. Her radiant smile when Tara praised the goose made Tara feel guilty about how harshly she'd been judging the decor. Perhaps this floral fantasia brought her great peace.

"I'm so glad you girls called me to stay. I don't know why you asked for two bedrooms, though. You look at each other the way my Dotty used to watch me when we were courting."

"You never know," Holly said gently, before Tara could object, "when you'll need to keep up appearances. For safety."

Barb nodded gravely. "Back when we were meeting with the Daughters of Bilitis, we thought by now the young girls would be able to woo each other in public, but for all the rainbows in the Targets, it's dangerous as hell out there. Still, as long as you're here, you don't have to hide. You know that, Holly. You were here when Dotty was still alive."

"I was so sorry to hear of her passing," Holly said softly, reaching out to squeeze Barb's arm. "She was a force."

Barb nodded. "I miss her every day. Although, you'll notice now that she's gone, I'm able to decorate this place the way I always wanted to."

Holly grinned. "I like it. And I'm glad to hear we can indulge in a little PDA while we're here." She leaned over and kissed Tara. It was a peck, the most fleeting glance of lips against lips, but the touch electrified Tara down to her toes. Barb smiled at them indulgently.

"I'm so interested in your time with the Daughters of Bilitis," Tara choked out, trying to seem cool even while her whole body was on fire. "Will you tell me a little about it?"

The Daughters of Bilitis was a lesbian organization founded in the fifties that had played a huge role in the early gay rights movement.

"Well, you know, Phyllis and Del…" Barb started, and Tara settled in, because she actually was deeply fascinated by that time in queer history, when the movement had been split between people who wanted to appear respectable to get access to rights and revolutionaries who wanted queer liberation.

Tara often felt that she, herself, was torn in two by those opposing instincts.

After dinner, they had intended to take a walk, but the temperature plummeted fast, keeping them inside. It was going to begin snowing tomorrow, so they'd have to get out of Maryland early if they wanted to stay ahead of the storm. Otherwise, they would be spending Christmas here with Barb instead of at Carrigan's.

As Tara carefully applied her series of serums, Holly stood in the bathroom door, watching her.

"You know"—she smirked—"if you're going to blush up to your roots when I kiss you, everyone's going to know we aren't accustomed to it. We might need to practice some before we get to the Christmasland."

Holly bit her lip and batted her eyelashes, just a little. Tara gave her a glance that she hoped was more withering than panicked. "Holly, I think I can manage to kiss a pretty girl convincingly."

"Can you?" Holly asked, a dare in her voice.

Carefully, Tara replaced the lid on her La Mer eye cream and set the jar down. She pivoted to face Holly, who was wearing an oversized T-shirt and, it appeared, nothing else. Tara felt overdressed in her satin and lace cami and short set, but she'd learned from the cradle that you never slept in clothes you wouldn't want the firefighters to see.

She moved the two steps to the doorway and bracketed Holly with her arms. Holly was taller, her legs as long as a July day, but Tara almost made up the difference in height with impeccable posture and a lawyer stare that made everyone else shrink several inches.

Holly's back slid down the door frame until their heads were even. Tara leaned over slowly, their eyes locked together. Carefully, deliberately, she placed her lips over Holly's.

Holly brought one hand behind Tara's neck to pull her in tighter, and Tara murmured, "Uh-uh," against her mouth. She stopped the kiss from becoming more frantic, letting their mouths slowly get to know one another, holding her body slightly away from Holly's and resisting Holly's attempts to press into her.

When Tara finally pulled away with a last nip of Holly's lower lip, she said, "I don't need to practice. The bathroom's all yours."

She walked away, refusing to show that her knees were weak.