“I have no choice if I want to be true to myself.”
“So let me fight with you. We’ll fight together.”
“You don’t understand.” Elsie’s voice was so uncharacteristically forceful that Rose flinched. She flung out her arms, gesturing to the sea, sending the boat rocking. “This is not the real world, Rose. Here, we can float along and enjoy each other, and if anyone should notice, they’ll turn a blind eye just like they did with those girls at Fort Oglethorpe. They’re too desperate to keep the manpower to go through the trouble of discharging us. But after this is over, when the Navy doesn’t need us and we’re forced back to reality, the tide is going to turn against love like ours. So if you marry Dickie, you’ll have the opportunity to live the life you always dreamed of. I cannot let you give up that opportunity. I’d rather you have happiness with someone else than be miserable with me.”
Rose wanted to argue that the only way she could ever be happy was to be with Elsie, but before she could open her mouth, Elsie pressed her cheek to Rose’s. “If he’s a good man and you have warm feelings for him, if you love him even somewhat, say yes if he asks you to marry him. I’m begging you, Rosie.”
As her lips parted to protest again, Elsie cut her off with a kiss. “You are my everything,” she whispered. “But I cannot be yours.”
14
•••••
We’re halfway back to Gadsley when Hollis’s phone rings. The number isn’t in his contacts, but when I tell him it’s an 843 number, he asks me to answer for him. It’s Connie, who found my backpack while she was cleaning our room. When I tell her we’re already on our way back to town, she insists on meeting near Florence to save us some time. She’s such a lovely, selfless woman. Although maybe not completely selfless, because she’s chosen a mall parking lot as our rendezvous point. I suspect she’ll be heading into the Belk she told us to park in front of as soon as she’s returned my bag.
“So,” I say when Hollis turns off the engine. “You hide it well, most of the time. But your accent kept slipping out in Gadsley. And you know the local area codes. You’re from around here, aren’t you?”
He sighs and rubs his hands down his thighs. “Not here exactly. A bit over an hour west. Near Columbia.”
“Do your parents still live there?”
His huff-laugh sounds less laugh and more huff this time. “No.” For a moment I think that’s all he’ll tell me, but after he runs his fingers through his hair and clears his throat, he continues. “My dad’s a lit professor. He got a new job at a university in Florida and moved there when I was thirteen. And my mom died the summer before my senior year of college.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Yeah, well.” Hollis frowns so intensely as he stares out the windshield that when a woman holding a bunch of shopping bags passes in front of us, she practically sprints past to escape his glare.
“Your parents were divorced then?”
“No. Though that certainly didn’t stop my father from acting like they were.”
I don’t get a further explanation.
“You mentioned you have a sister,” I say. “Is she still in South Carolina?”
“No. She married a Belgian guy she met while doing her PhD and moved to Bruges a couple years ago.”
“Oh. My brother’s in Europe right now too. But just until the end of summer. Study abroad—he’s in college for engineering. He’s ten years younger, so we aren’t super close.” I search for a way to further this conversation that will give me more information on Hollis without it being obvious how curious I am. “Are you close with your sister?”
“Close enough for her to guilt me into doing things I probably would never do otherwise,” Hollis says cryptically. He heads me off before I can ask what he means. “I don’t really want to talk about this right now.”
“Okay. Well, what do you want to talk about?”
“Why do we have to talk at all?” he asks, banging his headagainst the headrest. His tone comes out sharp, and he winces as if he notices. But he doesn’t apologize.
I slide off my sandals and prop my feet on the dashboard. “We don’t. Just figured it’d help pass the time.”
His eyes travel over my legs, stopping at the hem of the green dress, which Connie insisted I keep. “There are plenty of other ways to pass time that are a lot more fun than talking about my dysfunctional family,” Hollis says.
I can tell exactly what he’s thinking—there’s no mistaking that look—but decide to play coy anyway. “I guess we could play Twenty Questions. Ooh, or I Spy! I’m good at I Spy.”
“I was thinking about getting each other off, but if you’d rather play games—”
“I spy, with my little eye...” I give him my best wolfish grin as my eyes travel over his body. “Something sexy.”
“Your dirty talk needs some work,” he says. But his breath hitches when I reach over and gently run my palm over the front of his jeans.
“And yet you’re already hard as a rock and breathing like you ran a mile. How odd.” I trace the seam of his fly with my finger. “You know, I don’t think I’ve given a hand job in a borrowed car since I was in college.”
