“Got a different receptionist than you did, I guess. One with a lot more qualms about giving out patient info to random people over the phone. She wouldn’t tell me anything. Just kept repeating ‘I’m sorry, sir, but we cannot discuss our patients with anyone not listed in their file.’ ” He says this last part in a high-pitched nasally voice that would probably be funny if I weren’t on the brink of vomiting.
I take a deep breath, trying to navigate the tangle of relief, frustration, and disappointment resting in the pit of my stomach. Part of me wants to believe that if Elsie were already gone, the receptionist wouldn’t have bothered being such a stickler for confidentiality. But her lack of cooperation also might not mean anything at all.
Hollis’s hand closes around mine on the steering wheel. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’ll feel better once we’re on our way again.”
He nods and lets go, leaving my hand feeling cold and naked. “I’ll start the navigation. Now that you’ve finally relinquished my phone.”
The map lady in Hollis’s phone resumes telling me what to do in her commanding robot voice, and I intend to let my playlist lull me into a pleasant state of meditation that keeps me from further analyzing the receptionist’s response to Hollis, or Hollis’s confession to Connie, or his apparent genuine investment in this trip, or well, anything that isn’t Carole King’s “It’s Too Late.”
But Hollis cuts into my reverie before it can really begin. “Is it true? What Josh said in this text?”
I glance over and see his red notebook still closed on his lap. He’s staring at the phone in his hand with a mixture of anger and disbelief, as if it just sucker punched him—which is basically how I felt when I first read Josh’s messages too.
“Because I know you’re new to this sort of arrangement,” he continues, “but there’s a difference between casual sex and using someone. And I’m not okay with being used, Millicent. So if that’s what this is for you—”
“What? How could you even—” Except I know exactly how he could think that. I was all in on that Instagram post, knowing how Josh would feel about seeing his ex-girlfriend with his frenemy. “I am not having sex with you to get back at Josh,” I reassure him. Honestly it’s not even an added bonus anymore; reading those texts brought me zero joy.
“Okay,” he says. “If you say so.”
“If Isay so?”
“It’s just that you seemed pretty insistent that we make out in front of all those people at the parade. Like you knew this is what would happen.”
“Are you kidding me?Youkissedme. In fact, you started all of this with your ‘Ahh! I’m so scared of thunderstorms’ act last night.” I’m vaguely aware I’ve said something super mean, but all I can think isWow, was that really only last night?
“Go fuck yourself,” he says, turning to look out the window. The coolness of his voice is worse than if he’d yelled.
Okay. I know I went way too far. I’m still used to fighting with Josh, I guess. Going for the jugular ends the actual conflict as quickly as possible and gets to the cold-silence part, which, in my opinion, is preferable to actively arguing. The method is harsh yet efficient. But I know Hollis’s fear last night was no act, and neither of us planned for it to turn out how it did. Still, the accusation that I’m using him when he’s the one who initiated everything rankles.
Then Josh’s stupid voice pops into my head:If you’re going to be fucking weird, Millie, you should at least be fucking weird and famous again so I’m not with you for nothing.Of course. Why would Hollis choose to stay with me unless he thought he’d get something out of it? And if it isn’t my fame he wants, and it isn’t sex, what exactly is he after?
Goddamn Josh, stirring up shit. This is exactly what he wanted to happen. And yet now that we’re going down this path of anger and suspicion, it’s too easy—almost a compulsion—to keep twisting the knife. Except I’m not sure if it’s stuck in Hollis’s chest or in mine.
“I think this is what happened,” I say, my deepest insecurities wrapping around the hilt, prepared to inflict maximum damage. “Tell me if I’m close. You decided to tag along with me to find Elsie because you’re so certain you’re right, that she won’t care about Mrs. Nash anymore. And you couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be there to tell me you told me so. So you canceled withYeva, because I guess giving up your sexfest seemed like a small enough price to pay for the possibility of watching goofy, naive Millie’s heart shatter into a million pieces and rubbing the shards in her face.”
“Millicent.” He says my name as if it’s a warning.
The hair on my arms stands on end, like I’m walking into an electrical storm. I trudge on ahead anyway. Too late to turn back now; the words are already lining up to march out of my mouth. “Except you didn’t even have to give up your sexfest, not really. I’m sure you could tell I was interested and figured you could still get some if you wanted, easy-peasy. Is that why you kissed me last night? God, and you were probably thinking the whole time, ‘Hey, she’s no Yeva Markarian but you can’t beat the convenience!’ I understand that sex with me was nothing but a consolation prize to you, Hollis. So don’t you dare accuseme—”
Hollis smacks his fist into his leg. The gesture is dramatic, but the sound it makes is an underwhelming, muffledthud. “Stop, dammit! Stop.” He runs his fingers through his hair and growls in that frustrated way of his that makes me want to jump his bones.
And then there’s silence between us. It stretches and stretches, lasting the entirety of ELO’s “Telephone Line.” I didn’t remember that song being five billion minutes long. Finally, Hollis’s lips part, and I ready myself for whatever he’s going to say. Which is apparently still nothing. He’s gone back to staring out the window. Cold silence with Hollis isn’t the relief it was with Josh. It feels like being slowly pecked to death by a gang of bloodthirsty crows. I try to figure out something to say, because this is killing me, but nothing feels quite right. The opening bars of “Tusk” fill the car, and I realize I’m the tiniest bit tired of that song just as Hollis reaches over and turns off the stereo. I almost object, figuring anotherargument about Fleetwood Mac might be preferable to this terrible state of ignoring each other’s existence. But then he opens his mouth again, and this time he actually speaks.
“I kissed you because I wanted to,” Hollis says with a calmness that I doubt he feels. “Because I’ve wanted to since the first moment I saw you at Cheryl Kline’s terrible poetry reading at that coffee shop in Alexandria. I wanted, more than anything in the world, to find out more about the redhead in the cobalt-blue dress who was knitting a hideous scarf and beaming while Cheryl butchered iambic pentameter.” He huffs out a laugh. “You know, despite what he thinks, I’ve never once been jealous of Josh Yaeger, never had any desire to be him. Except for that night, when he strolled in late and took his seat beside you.”
Oh. Right. I knew Josh’s book release party wasn’t mine and Hollis’s first encounter, but I had somehow forgotten about that chilly February evening in Alexandria two years earlier. It seems so strange now that I didn’t remember that Hollis was one of a group of MFA students who schlepped to Old Town to support their lovely but syllabically challenged classmate. Josh and I moved in together the month before; my new neighbor, a lively nonagenarian named Rose Nash, was teaching me how to knit. I guess the more recent and emotion-fueled memory of the night I broke up with Josh drowned it out, but now that first meeting comes rushing back with surprising clarity. Hollis’s hand might have been just another in the sea of them I shook as Josh introduced me to the other members of his cohort. Except I remember a warmth spreading up my arm as I looked into mismatched eyes, thinking “Wait a second...” And at that very moment, Hollis was wanting to kiss me? He’s been wanting to foryears?
I tuck away this development, not knowing what to do with ityet. Surely it means something—something important, maybe—but I don’t have the emotional energy to puzzle it out. I’m too baffled by the possibility that all Hollis wants from me is... me.
“It wasn’t all terrible,” I say eventually. “Cheryl’s reading, I mean. I remember liking the poem about the daffodil.”
My eyes are focused on the highway, but I suspect Hollis is raising his eyebrows as if to sayreally?His voice is soft when he speaks again. I can tell he isn’t angry anymore; his forgiveness is baffling. I’m not used to immediate de-escalation. Fights with Josh lasteddays. A week or more, on some occasions. There was one time I crashed at Mrs. Nash’s for ten nights because of a disagreement over whether the guy behind us in line at Trader Joe’s was Bernie Sanders (I swear it was).
“Sex with you is not a consolation prize,” Hollis says. “It’s not a prize at all.”
“Wow, that was unpleasantly blunt.”
