DANI:Get it giiiiirrrlll.
DANI:How was it???
MILLIE:Sort of... amazing.
DANI:
MILLIE: Except I don’t know what to do now. I’ve never done the casual thing before.
DANI: What you do now is him, as often as possible until the end of your trip.
MILLIE: He’s on his way to have sex with someone else though.
DANI: Aren’t many of us when you truly think about it?
MILLIE: Are you high?
DANI: Extremely.
High Dani’s advice tends to be too philosophical to be immediately useful. Besides, I hear the bathroom door opening, and I don’t need Hollis to know I’m panic texting my cousin about what we did. I shove the phone under my pillow, turn onto my side, and channel all of my long-dormant acting skills to feign sleep until it actually arrives.
12
•••••
I’m alone when the alarm on my phone goes off at seven. There’s no sound from the bathroom, no sound anywhere in the room really, except for the steady hum of the air conditioner. Hollis must be elsewhere already this morning. The lace curtains do little to block out the sunlight, which floods the room and illuminates all of the Jesus paintings. Really, how the hell did we do what we did last night with all of these eyes on us? I’ve never been so retroactively thankful for a power outage.
As I sit up and stretch, I become increasingly, painfully, aware of how sore my limbs are. Not from the sex, but because I kept my body rigid as I slept, balancing on the edge of the mattress to avoid accidentally touching Hollis. The last thing I wanted was him thinking I was trying to cuddle. I might not know much about how this is supposed to work, but I know it’swham, bam, thank you ma’am, notwham, bam, thank you; now do you want to be the big spoon or the little spoon?
My phone has a handful of work emails that can wait a few days and a text notification from Dani that she sent a few hours after our brief conversation. It says:It’s only complicated if you make it complicated, cuz.Dani’s straightforward advice is so different from the way Mrs. Nash helped me navigate the gray areas of my problems that the grief that sits dormant inside my heart like a daffodil bulb in winter threatens to send up a tender green shoot. I try to conjure in my head an image of my best friend, sitting in her favorite palm tree–patterned chair by the apartment’s picture window. But while I can imagine her in perfect detail, she only smiles back at me, not saying a word. I’m as lost as I was all those times I came to her seeking advice, except now I can’t even hope that she’ll help me find my way.
I glance over at my backpack, slung across the back of the desk chair. Mrs. Nash can’t help me anymore, but I can still help her one last time. That’s why I’m going to ride two miles per hour in a convertible and wave to people later this morning. So I should probably shower now because it’s going to take a good three hours to locate an outfit worthy of a parade grand marshal.
Except I guess while I was blow-drying my hair, Hollis snuck back into the room, because there’s suddenly a Kelly green sheath dress hanging from the front of the armoire. I clutch my towel tighter around my body as I approach it. The tag inside is faded, like it might be vintage. It looks close to my size, but the only way to know is to try it. My underwear and bra are sitting on top of my suitcase where I left them before my shower, so I drop the towel and put them on. Then I gently remove the green dress from the hanger and step into it.
The door opens when the dress is covering only my bottomhalf. For a second I startle, trying to cover my chest with my arms. But Hollis appears in the doorway, leaning on the frame as his eyes sweep slowly from my bare feet up to my eyes.
“I’ve seen you naked, Millicent,” he says. “You don’t need to hide your bra from me.”
“You’vefeltme naked. You couldn’tseemuch of anything last night.”
“Semantics. The point is, I already know what’s going on under there.” He latches the door and pads over to where I’m standing by the armoire. “Turn around.”
When I do, he coaxes the dress up until my arms are through the holes. Then he zips me up. But none of it is especially sensual. His movements aren’t slow and deliberate so much as efficient. It’s more reminiscent of how one would dress a toddler than seduce a lover.
“Hollis,” I say, deciding honesty is the only way I’m going to get through this, “I don’t understand how this works.”
“It’s a dress. It covers your body. There’s not much more to it.”
“No. Not— I understand clothing, thanks. I do not understand how this works between us now.”
“Oh. I told you last night. Nothing’s changed.”
“Maybe not emotionally, butsomethinghas changed. You didn’t dress me yesterday morning.”
“I would have if you asked.”
“You know what I mean. Like you said, you know what’s going on under here.” I gesture wildly in the direction of my chest. “You stroll over and touch me in a way you never would have done before we...”
