“Do those grant absolution?”
“No, but they do wear coveralls. I think you would look really good in those.”
Hollis shakes his head, a small smile at the corner of his mouth. “Such a weirdo,” he says with the same affection I used to hear in Mrs. Nash’s voice whenever she called me asilly thing.
“You know you love me,” I counter without thinking. An awkward silence descends. I reach to turn on the radio, hoping to find a way out of it, but the new classic rock station Hollis found us when we lost the last one is currently playing an endless queue of commercials. “So... late-stage capitalism. Not great, huh?” I say, grabbing onto the first change of subject that pops into my head.
A small huff-laugh comes out through Hollis’s nostrils. “I bet you’re great at parties.”
“I am. I am great at parties.” If I wasn’t sitting, I would put my hands on my hips. “I’ll have you know, most people find me charming.”
“I’m sure they do. Why are you assuming I was being sarcastic?”
“Because you have two modes, Hollis: sarcastic and Cormac McCarthy.”
“I think I’m supposed to be offended,” he says. “But I’m going to choose to take that as a compliment.”
Yet another commercial—this one for a car dealership in Miami—prompts Hollis to reach over and turn the volume down.
His eyes dart over to me for the briefest moment. Oh no. Hewants to talk about something; I can tell by the way he bites his cheek. I really hope it isn’t my “You love me” comment. There’s really no need to emphasize that he doesn’t.
“I’d like to ask you something personal,” he says. “You don’t have to answer.”
“Oh. Um. Okay?” I say.
“Josh Yaeger. Why?”
“You mean like why did I date him?”
“Date him, share a bed with him, move in with him. Yes. All of that. Why?”
Given what I’ve said about Josh’s and my relationship, I can see why someone would question the appeal of a sneaky, self-serving asshole who couldn’t even get me off most of the time. And yet the question hurts. It feels like Hollis is asking how I could have been so stupid. While I have to admit I asked myself that same thing a million times after the breakup, it has a different sting when it comes from him.
“He wasn’t always such a douchecanoe, you know,” I say, unable to keep the defensiveness from my voice. “It’s not like I met him as he currently is and was like, wow, what a catch. He used to be...” My lips purse and shift to the side as I try to remember the good times. The breakfasts in bed and the surprise trip to New York City to see Dani and celebrate me finishing my master’s (or was that all just for Instagram too?). “He was handsome. Ambitious. A little uptight, yeah, but in a charming, starchy way. It was fun to unravel him a bit. Keep him from taking himself too seriously. But then during the second semester of the MFA he won an award for a short story, and some big-deal author he met at a conference blew smoke up his ass about how he could be the next great American novelist. That’s when he changed. His ambitionstopped being attractive. He became obsessed with success and people thinking he’s brilliant and—well, you know what he’s like now. Other people are either competition or a means to an end.”
Hollis doesn’t say anything as he reaches for my hand. His thumb brushes back and forth over my open palm. The motion grounds me while also sending sparks of pleasure into my bloodstream.
“Josh told me once that the reason he loved me was because I could always rescue him from the dark moods he fell into while writing. That I reminded him of the importance of living in the light. I thought it was romantic. I didn’t realize until the end that he was justGarden State–ing me.”
Hollis removes his hand from mine so he can navigate around a pokey RV, and I miss the contact immediately. This is going to be such a problem if I have to quit him cold turkey.
“So you were his manic pixie dream girl?” he asks.
“Yeah. Hey, you understood that.”
“It helps that sleeping in my old bedroom apparently pushed your references into the current century.”
“Eh, don’t get used to it,” I warn.
“Right. The early aughts are much too recent for an old soul like you.”
“Blech.” I stick my tongue out.
“What?”
“The term ‘old soul.’ Almost every person who has ever called me that was a man twice my age trying to explain why it wasn’t actually creepy that he wanted to get in my pants.”
Hollis’s frown stretches. “Noted.”
