Chapter 8 Holly

Chapter 8

Holly

H olly closed the bathroom door and slipped down its length to the floor.

Holy Kissing, Batman.

She'd never been kissed like that, ever, in her entire life. Her brain wasn't entirely functioning, but she wondered in a distracted way if it would look strange for her to shower again, since she'd done so a couple of hours ago.

But that was before. Actually, everything in her life was now Before. Before the ice queen of Charleston had kissed her so slowly and thoroughly that she'd melted into a literal puddle on the floor.

How had Tara walked away from that kiss? Holly couldn't even stand up!

She'd known that she wanted to get Tara in bed, had been fantasizing for months about thawing that ice, but now she was wondering if sleeping with Tara might actually kill her. Putting a hand on the sink, she hauled herself up and splashed water on her face. If sex with Tara did kill her, she would gladly face God and walk backwards into hell.

She had to talk Tara into a fling.

Tara didn't date anyone she wouldn't marry, and Holly would never marry again, and the two of them were as romantically compatible as orange juice and toothpaste, but a fling was not dating. A fling was sex with a prearranged end date.

Just when she thought she'd gotten herself together, she remembered those little ice-blue satin and white lace pajamas. Oof. She almost ended up back on the floor.

"We're going to need a plan," she told her reflection. She couldn't think of one right now; she was too full of Christmas dinner and stories about lesbian resistance movements of the 1960s, too tired from a long day of driving, and also, too horny.

"We're going to masturbate, and sleep, and then think of a plan," she amended.

The next morning, Tara shook her awake before the sun rose. "I'm so sorry, but we have to get on the road. The storm is coming in earlier than forecast."

Holly groaned and rubbed her gritty eyes. It had taken her a long, long time to fall asleep last night. Now Tara was leaning over her, and she was sorely tempted to reach up and pull her down into bed. Except Holly was fairly certain she had horrifying morning breath.

"If you acquire coffee, I'll acquire pants," she told Tara groggily.

Tara nodded, turning on her heel and exiting the room before Holly could kick off her covers. Holly needed to remember that Tara had a weakness for her legs. She wondered if she could get away with wandering around the Adirondacks in late December in denim cutoffs.

She checked her phone, which had three texts from Matt complaining that the baker hadn't shown, again, and was she sure she needed those vacation days?

Suck it, Matt. When all this was over, she was definitely getting another job. Preferably as a baker.

There were also, of course, a barrage of messages from her family.

Caitlin: I'm so mad that you're leaving me alone with these people. Mom baked a head of cauliflower in mayo, Hol.

Mom: When can we facetime with you and the new lady?! I need to know her sizes so I can knit her something.

Dad: You said Tara is a lawyer, right? You know we have lawyers in Iowa! I know how your people like to move in together. Maybe consider moving in close to me and your mom?

Dustin: It's not very responsible of you to be so far away, wandering around doing whatever you want, when Mom and Dad are getting older. They need you here to take care of them.

Ah, Dustin was obviously starting to feel the tightening bonds of family and hoping his older sister would come take over. It was cute that he made it sound like she never came home at all, when the truth was that she just didn't come home at the holidays, when her mom was at peak sentimentality, and she didn't stay indefinitely. Or for longer than a long weekend. She fell back against the pillows and closed her eyes in annoyance, until the idea of Tara living and working in small-town Iowa made her laugh so hard her stomach hurt.

No one in the whole Quad Cities could make a decent mint julep or glass of sweet tea.

When Tara returned with coffee in to-go cups and cinnamon rolls from Barb wrapped in napkins, Holly had clothes on and her hair semi-tamed into double Dutch braids.

Everything in the suite had been perfectly packed or put back in its place, including the dolls. She wondered if Tara had, in fact, smuggled one into her suitcase. Knowing Tara, she would probably write Barb a check for it. Holly had never met anyone with a more meticulous sense of fairness.

"I know you're tired," Tara said, shaking Holly out of her thoughts, "but do you have any experience driving in snow? It's not my most practiced skill."

"Tara Sloane Chadwick, there's a thing you're not good at?" Holly teased.

"I'm from Charleston," Tara said flatly. "It doesn't snow much."

Oh, Holly remembered, Tara did not like admitting when there was something she was bad at. Unlike cooking, driving in snow wasn't even a traditional Southern belle accomplishment. It was almost like Tara was worried any flaw would be used to justify returning the whole woman for a refund.

"Well, luckily, I'm a Midwestern girl, and I could drive us safely through a snowstorm, blindfolded, in my sleep."

"I don't think that will be required," Tara said, handing Holly the keys. "Just get us out of the DMV metro area in one piece."

Holly flashed Tara a smile that she knew showed her dimples. "As you wish."

"I hate that movie," Tara grumbled.

Holly gasped. "Never mind, deal's off. I cannot even pretend to date someone who hates The Princess Bride ."

"Give me twenty minutes to tell you why, and you'll hate it, too," Tara told her. "I'm a very persuasive debater."

"Don't you dare," Holly warned her. She slipped into the driver's seat, adjusting the position and mirrors, since Tara had driven the last stretch the day before. She leaned the seat waaaaay back to get it to a normal driving angle (Was it years of posture lessons? Why did Tara drive like she was wearing a boned corset? Holly quickly stopped thinking about Tara in a corset), buckled, and reached over for one of Barb's cinnamon buns, which Tara was holding primly in her lap, trying to avoid getting frosting on her dress, some sort of vintage floral skirt suit.

The dress wasn't warm enough for the weather today, much less the weather she expected they would find in Upstate New York, and she idly wondered if Tara actually hated Carrigan's, because she didn't own any warm clothes and she hated feeling like she'd dressed incorrectly for an occasion. As Holly was thinking this, Tara reached over and turned up the heat.

"These are not as good as your cinnamon rolls," Tara observed, "but they're not bad."

Holly bit into one and confirmed Tara's opinion. "The orange zest in the frosting is genius, but she's overproved her dough. I'll email her my recipe."

Pulling out onto the road, through snow that was beginning to swirl menacingly, she glanced over. "Not to blaspheme, but do you mind if we take a break from Legendary Women of Country?"

Tara startled. "Oh, of course. The driver chooses the music. I didn't mean to trap you with eight hours of country yesterday."

"Please. Linda Ronstadt's voice is a national treasure. I just think it might be time to mix it up."

Tara scrolled through her phone. "Um, I have… Beth Ditto, Hayley Kiyoko, Lil Nas X, King Princess, Janelle Monáe, Tegan and Sara, Megan Thee Stallion, Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang…"

"I'm sensing a trend." Holly laughed.

Tara shrugged primly. "I am who I am."

"Give me your best lesbian shuffle mix, bartender."

The sultry voice of k.d. lang crooning about a constant craving washed over Holly. She smiled. She remembered watching YouTube videos of k.d. singing this song, as a teenager. She slid her eyes over to Tara. "‘You Can Sleep While I Drive' might be more apt."

"Oh, don't worry, it's on here. The duet, obviously."

They were supposed to be using this time to get to know each other, but Holly found herself unwilling to break the cozy quiet of listening to gay music together, warm in a car on the highway, surrounded by snow. It was like they were in their own little lesbian snow globe music box.

Being comfortable alone was something Holly had long since gotten used to, but it was rare that she ever spent enough time with someone else to experience this kind of peace with them.

Outside of Philadelphia, the snow, which had been stalking them like a jungle cat for the past two hours, started to become too intense for even Holly's comfort.

"I hate to say this," she told Tara, "but I think we may need to hunker down for a while. Find somewhere for second breakfast, and maybe elevenses."

Tara giggled, which was incongruously cute for her, and Holly wanted to make her do it again.

"I don't know why," Tara said with a smile, "but I wouldn't have pegged you as a fan of hobbits."

"I'm a fan of Liv Tyler. I was at a very impressionable age when Fellowship of the Ring came out."

"Hmm." Tara looked like she was doing the math. "You were, what, seven?"

"Some of us have deep roots, Tara. Deep, gay roots."

"You don't have to defend your Liv love to me. I saw Empire Records young," Tara assured her. "And I have an aunt in Philly who would probably be thrilled to host us for brunch. I'll call her."

The phone rang, and a raspy Southern drawl that made Tara sound like a Canadian crackled through the car speakers. "Hello, sugar," the woman said. "It's so good of you to call."

She and Tara exchanged pleasantries, each inquiring after the health of the other's relations and offering prayers and condolences when the answers were unhappy, for a full five minutes. Holly was beginning to think they'd be through Philly by the time Tara got around to asking if they could stop.

It wasn't that Holly didn't understand Southern manners, exactly. She was Midwestern, so she was well versed in saying anything but the thing you meant and expecting the other person to understand what you were actually asking. Still, something about the way genteel Southerners circled each other made her skin itch a little.

Finally, Tara said, "Aunt Cricket, I'm driving to New York with a friend, and we happen to be about to drive through your little old town, and I thought, we can't drive right by without stopping to inquire with my favorite aunt."

Cricket snorted. "I'm sure this call has nothing to do with the storm outside and y'all needing a place to stop until it blows over."

"Aunt Cricket!" Tara exclaimed, feigning indignation. "You know I adore you. I would never dream of imposing on your hospitality on account of some snow!"

"Well, I sure wouldn't want you driving in it. Your sainted mother would never let me hear the end of it, if something happened to you. Y'all better come by."

Tara blew out a breath as she hung up and reset the GPS with her aunt Cricket's address.

"Your sainted mother?" Holly asked, amused. "Isn't your mother…"

"Awful?" Tara finished for her. "Yes. Genuinely insufferable. So is Aunt Cricket, for that matter. I hate that old woman with the fire of a thousand suns."

"Why are we going to her house, then?!" Holly asked, aghast. "We could have stopped in a Waffle House."

Tara groaned. "I wish. I would kill for some cheese eggs. But if my mother found out I stopped in Philadelphia and didn't go to Cricket's, there would be hell to pay."

"What kind of hell, Tara? You're thirty-six years old. You're independently wealthy. You don't have to listen to an old woman yell at you for the way you live your life. You could just, I don't know, not talk to your mother."

Sometimes, listening to Tara talk about her family was like watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers . One minute, she was the smartest, wittiest, most interesting woman Holly had ever met, and the next, a switch flipped and she was robotically spouting total nonsense.

Tara turned her body in the passenger seat to look at Holly, although Holly was keeping her eyes on the road due to the limited visibility. In her peripheral vision, she saw Tara's face tighten.

"The kind of hell where I stop being invited to parties, or golf, or polo weekends, and lose the opportunity to chat up the people in those spaces, to make under-the-table deals before we go before the judge so that my client has the best shot possible at trial. The kind of hell where my law firm suddenly realizes that they don't need a lesbian firecracker junior partner who defends clients they see as disposable."

Holly raised an eyebrow. "All for not stopping to see your aunt? What, did she give your mom a kidney? Save her childhood dog from a burning building?"

"It's not about my aunt," Tara told her. "She's not actually my aunt, by the way. She's my grandmother's sorority sister's daughter."

"Oh, of course, the traditional definition of an aunt. Do they make a Hallmark card for that relationship?" Holly joked, and she snuck a fast glance to see a corner of Tara's mouth quirk up. "So is it about control, then? Live your life the way we say, or it's over?"

Tara made a skeptical sound. "They hold access hostage if I don't do things the Right Way. Besides, if I'm doing things the Right Way, things are less likely to light on fire."

Holly sort of thought Tara's relationship with her family could use some lighting on fire.

"Is the access you get worth the hoops you need to jump through?" Holly would cut her own mother off for good if those kinds of machinations were normal.

Tara hugged her knees to herself. "The work needs to be done, and I love it."

Holly digested that.

"The other thing," Tara said quietly, after a long silence, although Holly wasn't sure what the first thing was, "is that we can't pretend to be dating with my aunt Cricket. Actually, we can't pretend to be anything. And there's a non-zero possibility she'll go on a homophobic rant about Cole. Don't stab her with a salad fork, no matter how much you want to."

Holly cleared her throat. Stay patient. "Does your aunt Cricket not… know? I thought you were out to your family."

"Oh, I am, and she does. She just enjoys pretending I'm not, to get under my skin."

Here were the body snatchers again—why was Tara putting up with family (or barely-counted-as-acquaintances that her parents called family) who were this toxic? She ground her teeth in exasperation.

"I can hear you judging me," Tara said. "You're not wrong, but it's not that simple."

It seemed pretty damned simple to Holly.

"You don't have to go in with me." Tara sighed. "In fact, your life will probably be immeasurably improved if you don't. You don't need to be subjected to that."

No way was Holly letting Tara go into that lion's den alone.

"And stay out in the snow?" Holly scoffed. "I'd much rather watch the storm with you."

When they arrived at Cricket's row house, an actual butler was waiting for them on the sidewalk, holding an ineffectual umbrella. He offered to take the car and park it, and Holly looked to Tara for confirmation. Tara nodded, so Holly handed him the key fob.

As their coats were taken by a maid and they were seated in a glass-ceilinged atrium to await Cricket, Holly peered around cautiously.

"Have you ever seen Suddenly, Last Summer ?" she asked Tara quietly.

"I'm gay and Southern, Holly," Tara whispered, sounding amused. "I am intimately acquainted with all the works of Tennessee Williams."

"This looks like the kind of garden where a woman would find out her son had been eaten alive as penance for his sins," Holly hissed, pulling at the neck of her sweater. In the humid heat of the atrium, she suddenly felt suffocated.

"The Venus flytrap, a devouring organism, aptly named for the Goddess of Love," drawled a voice behind her, quoting the play.

Tara stood, running her hands down her impeccably neat skirt to smooth an invisible wrinkle.

"Aunt Cricket, I'm so pleased you were available to host us. It's so gracious of you, especially on such short notice." She was putting on a brand-new voice, one Holly had never heard before.

There was the icy deep Southern politeness she used when she was uncomfortable, and a terse brevity when she liked you enough to not waste your time (ironically, this was her more relaxed voice). This, though, was syrup sweet and full of poison, designed to tell the listener exactly what you thought of them without ever crossing a single social boundary.

It was the Charleston version of Midwestern Nice, and it made Holly glad she wasn't on the wrong end of it.

Tara gestured to her, and she also rose. "Cricket Bailey, this is my friend Holly Delaney."

Aunt Cricket stared at her so long and witheringly, Holly expected her to pull out a monocle. "Delaney. Irish, are you? Explains that whorish shade of hair."

Ah, outdated ideas about redheads on top of everything else. How tired.

The question seemed rhetorical, so Holly didn't bother to respond, though she considered mentioning that we called them sex workers now. She didn't think Cricket would appreciate it.

Eventually, Cricket turned to Tara without acknowledging Holly's outstretched hand. Holly had been in the South long enough to know that whoever annoyed another person into breaking with hospitality rules automatically won a standoff. Score one for Tara.

"Your mother tells me you're skipping Christmas with the family to attend the sinful nuptials of that woman ." Something about the way Cricket said woman led Holly to believe that she really meant a slur of some kind. Whether one about bisexuals, Jews, or women Cricket viewed as loose, Holly didn't know.

Perhaps all three.

"God will never acknowledge their union, you know," Cricket went on.

"Bless your heart," Tara said, the cruelest thing one Southern woman could say to another, "it's so kind of you to worry about her eternal soul, but I think I'll leave her relationship with God between her and her rabbi."

She smiled up at the servant who was bringing in finger sandwiches, nodding politely in response to the silent offer of shrimp salad. It would have been seasonally inappropriate except that Cricket seemed to keep her house in a state of perpetual South Carolina summer. Like the Snow Queen in Narnia, but with more carnivorous plant life.

Holly didn't understand how Tara could be so totally unbothered by Cricket's hatred. Holly herself was half tempted to turn the table over and dump her sweet tea on Cricket's helmet of hair, throwing Tara over her shoulder as she ran out the door, snow be damned.

Under the table, Tara dug the nails of her free hand into Holly's thigh, and Holly realized Tara didn't need a white knight—she needed backup.

"How did you end up in Pennsylvania, Miss Bailey? Surely they must miss you below the Mason-Dixon," she asked instead of throwing anything. She may have emphasized the Miss in Miss Bailey extra hard, since women like this often had sore spots about being spinsters (instead of all the other things they ought to have sore spots about, since spinsters were amazing, but bigots less so).

Holly was also certain no one had ever missed Cricket Bailey a day in her life.

Cricket turned to Holly. The corners of her mouth turned up in something that she certainly thought resembled a smile, although the fact that no other part of her face moved ruined the effect. It was a little uncanny valley, like someone had programmed an android to smile but had forgotten to code for the muscles above the nose.

"Well, Holly, was it? That's a very interesting story."

She went on to tell them a very long story that was not, in fact, even the tiniest bit interesting and somehow made Holly hate her even more. She paused only for dramatic effect when she wanted her audience to react, and to chide Tara for eating so much, reminding her that she was going to get fat.

At this, Holly shoved her mouth completely full of petit fours.

By the time the butler arrived to inform them that the snow had abated, Holly had moved from wanting to stab Cricket to wanting to stab herself, so that she could be rushed to the hospital and escape this greenhouse of genteel horrors.

Back in the car, Tara shook silently, grasping her hands together to presumably stop her reaction from being noticeable—but Holly noticed.

She wanted to hold Tara, or kidnap her and take her somewhere she would never have to talk to her family again, but most of all, she never ever wanted to get involved with her romantically.

Not that she ever wanted to get involved with anyone romantically, long-term, but if she did, hypothetically, it would be someone who didn't constantly subject themselves to the worst people in the world. Even if Tara hated these people, she'd chosen to stay close to them.

Holly couldn't imagine a life where she had to make nice with any of them, ever again.

She heard They Might Be Giants in her head, singing "Your Racist Friend." Sure, these people would never accept her, and even if she did get involved with Tara, they would make it their sworn duty to tear her to pieces like they'd obviously tried to do to Miriam, but that wasn't the problem.

The problem was, Holly would never accept being in a room with disgusting bigots for any reason, even for Tara.