My eyes search for something in the room to comment on, to break the silence and get my feelings back on track. I find a framed photo sitting on one of the shelves in front of me. It’s of a middle-aged man and a young woman. The man is definitely Hollis’s father; they look almost identical except for his father’s hair being a handsome salt-and-pepper instead of dark chocolate, and his eyes are both identical in color—the blue-gray of Hollis’s right one. “Who’s this?” I ask, pointing to the frame. “Your dad and your sister?”
“No, that’s Fiancée Number Four. Madison, I think her name is.”
“Oh. She’s... um... young.”
“Twenty-three.” In this position, Hollis’s breath tickles my earlobe as he talks. “My father ages, but his girlfriends never seem to.”
“Oh. Well. She looks... nice.”
“She probably is. I haven’t met this one yet. Dad didn’t start seeing her until after I was here for Christmas, and then he proposed a few weeks ago.”
I turn my head to try to meet Hollis’s eyes, but instead wind up almost headbutting him. “They got engaged after dating less than five months?”
“It was a record for Dad. Three months from first date to proposal is his usual modus operandi. Guess he’s getting more circumspect in his old age.” There’s a twinge of bitterness in Hollis’s sarcasm that I’m tempted to press him on, but I don’t get a chance before he says, “Come on, let’s get a load of laundry started so we can go to bed.”
He slides his hand to my lower back and guides me down a hallway. We stop at a door that looks like it’ll open to a linen closet but actually holds a stacked washer and dryer. Hollis fishes my bag of dirty clothes from my suitcase and empties it into the machine, then adds his own collection from his duffel.
“Strip,” he orders.
The idea of getting completely naked in the hallway of a stranger’s house makes me pause for a moment. What if Hollis’s dad isn’t in Paris, France, but in like, Paris, Mississippi, and he decides to come home early? But once Hollis is standing in front of me with nothing on except his glasses and watch, it feels almost more uncomfortable not to undress. Walking in on your son and his friend naked might be awkward, but finding him naked and the friend still fully clothed probably raises more questions.
“I need help with my dress,” I say.
He pulls the zipper down, his breath warm against my neck but his mouth never touching the skin there. I recall earlier in the morning when he trailed kisses over my shoulders and ran his hands over my body as the dress slipped to the floor, and I’m slightly disappointed he’s not initiating a repeat performance. Then again, two orgasms in the last twenty-four hours is already an extremely admirable quantity.
Should I be worried that Hollis somehow makes me go withsuch speed from shy about undressing in his dad’s house to wanting him to take me on the floor?
The dress turns out to be dry-clean-only (no wonder Connie didn’t mind getting rid of it), so I shove it into my suitcase while my bra and dogs-with-sunglasses underwear get thrown into the washer. Hollis adds some detergent and presses the button to start the cycle.
“Onward and upward,” he says, guiding me down the hall, his hand returning to the small of my now-naked back. His touch makes my spine feel like undercooked spaghetti. At the end of the hallway, we climb a small staircase, which leads to a bedroom. By the angle of the ceiling, I can tell we’re over the garage.
“This was my bedroom over summers and holidays,” Hollis says. “And during college, whenever my roommate’s long-distance girlfriend came to visit. She snored like a freaking buzz saw.”
The room is clean despite its disuse; the bed is made, the dust is minimal, and there aren’t any funky smells. But otherwise it’s a time capsule. A museum diorama with an interpretive sign reading:Male Teenager’s Room, mid-aughts.
“This is a nice space. I’m surprised your dad didn’t turn it into a guest suite or a library or something by now. It looks like he hasn’t touched a thing in here.” I shuffle through a stack of video game cases. “Oh shit, you have a PS2? I’m super good at Guitar Hero.”
“I would absolutely obliterate you,” he says. It’s not a very menacing threat since he sounds like he might fall asleep at any second.
My attention jumps to a framed high school diploma. “ ‘This certifies that Frederick Hollis Hollenbeck has completed’— Wait.Frederick?”
“Yep. Named after my father.”
“You’re a junior?”
He throws himself onto the full-sized bed in the corner. “No. We have different middle names.”
“You’re telling me this whole time I could’ve been calling you Freddie? Or Fred? Oooh. That’s even better.”
“I am very muchnottelling you that.”
My fingers sweep over the spines of the books on a narrow shelf beside his ancient CRT TV.To Kill a Mockingbird,1984,The Catcher in the Rye. Probably his assigned reading for high school English. I spot a few textbooks from college science gen eds, some of Shakespeare’s greatest hits, a worn copy of the New Testament. It’s interesting seeing what was deemed unworthy of the thousand-mile journey to the bookshelves in his studio in Arlington.
“Stop caressing my books,” Hollis says. He has his arms folded over his chest, and with him naked and relaxed on the bed, he looks like he’s posing for a life drawing class.
“Jealous?” I ask, yawning halfway through the word. My suitcase is on the end of the bed, and I move toward it to search for my toiletries bag.
I find it but get distracted again before I make it to the bathroom. There’s just so much interesting stuff in this room. Little League trophy. Blue and orange CO2dragster. Picture of a teenaged Hollis in a baseball uniform (shaggy hair, grimacing, awkwardly cute).
