•••••
The thing that wakes me is the lack of noise. No humming engine, no whooshing of passing cars. No radio on or road-trip playlist picking out banger after banger. There’s only Hollis’s breathing in the driver’s seat.
“What’s going on?” I ask, my words stretching along with my body.
He pulls the key from the ignition and clutches it in his palm. “We’re stopping for the night.”
“What? No. Hollis, we can’t—”
Hollis takes my hands in his. At first I think it’s sweet until I realize it’s just to keep me from continuing to flail around in panic. He ensures I’m looking him straight in the eyes before he speaks. “Listen, Millicent. We have a while to go still before we reach Key West. If we keep driving tonight, we’re going to arrive at four something in the morning. But if we stop here, we can get some sleep, do a load of laundry, and still leave early enough to be at the nursing facility soon after visiting hours start.”
My brain flitters awake enough to notice that we’re parked in a residential driveway in front of a white stucco ranch with a Spanish-style clay roof that’s flat except for a steep diagonal over the two-car garage. “Where are we?”
“Boca Raton. Come on.” Hollis gets out of the car before I have the opportunity to request he be more specific. He grabs our bags from the trunk and heads to the wooden double doors, my legs too stiff from several hours of upright sleep to follow with any haste.
“Wait,” I say, these events proceeding too quickly for me in my still-drowsy state.
Hollis fiddles with an outdoor thermometer mounted near the door. It pops open to reveal a key.
“Are we breaking and entering?” I whisper.
“Just entering. No breaking required,” he says, gesturing to the way the key turns into the lock and the door cracks open.
I cross the threshold into a large room with a tiled floor. When Hollis flips on the overhead light, I can see that we’ve entered a living room decorated in beige and chocolate brown with pops of butterscotch yellow. We slip off our shoes before going any farther, and the cool tile feels nice against the bare soles of my feet. “Is this an Airbnb?” I ask.
“No, it’s my dad’s house,” he says, setting our bags on the floor.
“He isn’t here?”
“He’s at a conference in Paris.”
“And he doesn’t mind us staying overnight?”
Hollis shakes his head. “Nah. I texted him when we stopped for gas to see if we could crash if needed. He said we should make ourselves at home.”
I walk over to a built-in bookcase and run my fingers over the leather-bound tomes lining the shelves. The gilt letters on their spines appear to be Cyrillic. “Is this Russian?”
“Yeah. My dad specializes in Russian lit. He’s one of the foremost Dostoyevsky experts in the United States.”
“Bet he loved Josh’s book then.”
“Huh?”
“Josh’s book. It’s supposed to be some sort of modern take onNotes from Underground.”
“Oh. Is that what he was going for? I thought it was just a lot of navel-gazing through the perspective of a horny, depressed accountant.”
A laugh originates deep inside my stomach, weaves over and under my ribs, and barges out of my mouth.
Hollis looks perturbed by the sound I’m making; it must seem to him like an absolutely bonkers amount of laughter in response to what he’s said. “What?”
How many times did Josh claim I just didn’tunderstandhis work? But Hollis can see through his bullshit, which means I’m not alone. That’s what I like best about Hollis: He makes me feel like there’s nothing wrong with me. For all his fussing about my perhaps worryingly high tolerance for risk, he makes me feel like I can trust myself. And maybe I didn’t realize it until he made me start again, but that’s something I haven’t been doing nearly as often in the last few months.
“That made me very happy is all,” I say. My grin is beginning to hurt my cheeks, but it refuses to fade. Something deep inside me feels like it’s glowing, and this goofy smile seems to be the only way to safely let out some of the light and heat before I burst.
Hollis stares at me like a cat sizing up a mouse. He stalks overand wraps his arms around me from behind. He’s never touched me like this. Then again, he’s only been doing it at all for a couple days, so there still must be countless ways he hasn’t touched me.
The intimacy between us is dialed way up again, not only physical but something else I can’t name as well, and that glow inside me is growing with the encouragement of his warmth—both literal and metaphorical. Then it fizzles out as I remember that we’re just friends. Friends who have had sex and may continue to. But still just friends and nothing more. Like is not love. I can’t let myself forget that.
