“What happens next?” I ask.
“Probably food soon. You’ve barely eaten today.”
On cue, my stomach rumbles long and loud like an oncoming avalanche.
“I gave Rhoda your phone number to pass along to Elsie’s next of kin,” he says, acknowledging what he knows I was really asking. “I told her we’d be in town for a day or two. Figured maybe we can at least meet with someone who knew Elsie, get some answers for you that way.”
“Thank you. Thanks for thinking of that. For doing that.”
I expect him to try to explain it away as another selfish action, but he doesn’t say anything except “You’re welcome.”
Like is not love, my brain reminds me. But all of this has been an awful lot to do for someone he only really likes.
“Hollis,” I whisper, tilting my face so I can see his eyes. They’re back on the TV, boyishly enthralled by another car-chase scene.
“Hmm?”
“Why are you here?”
He shifts his arms so they’re lower around my back as his gaze refocuses on me. “I’m assuming you don’t mean that in like an existential way.”
“No. Why did you come to Key West with me?”
“So you wouldn’t be alone,” he says.
“But why did you care?” I ask. The past tense feels wrong, though, considering the last few hours, so I amend it to, “Whydoyou care?”
He looks at me like I’m a particularly challenging crossword puzzle and he’s running out of easy clues so now must revisit the harder ones he’s been saving for later. The blue-gray eye looks frustrated. The brown one bemused. Taken together, though, they appear gently curious.
Maybe he won’t answer me at all. Maybe his reasons for everything he does are as selfish as he claims. But something inside me, the thing that wants to tell him that I’m falling in love with him,believes there’s more to this. More tous. And I want him to admit it.
Instead, he says, “My sister’s name is Rhiannon.”
“What?”
“My parents had a deal. Dad got to pick the first name for any boys. Mom got to pick for any girls. So, Dad named me after himself, and Mom named my sister after her favorite song.”
“Fleetwood Mac,” I whisper.
Hollis gives me a tiny smile, a new one that I can only describe as rueful. “It’s been over ten years now, and I still... Look, I don’t listen to songs that make me miss my mom, okay? I don’t talk to my father about anything except baseball and books, and I don’t have sex with anyone who wants more from me than a fun time and a superficial friendship.”
This last one feels like a rebuke. Like he can tell that I’m developing serious feelings for him and he’s pushing back against it, reminding me that was not the deal we made when we got involved. I’m just another friend he sometimes sleeps with—a less voluptuous, much paler, redheaded Yeva Markarian. “I don’t expect anything,” I say in a hurry. “I know you don’t—that you aren’t—but, Hollis, you’re right. I’ve lost so much lately, and I didn’t really deal with it. Now, soon, I’m going to lose you too, and I don’t want to pretend I don’t feel anything about that. Because if I pretend like it doesn’t hurt and bury myself in work or something, it’s only a matter of time until I completely lose my shit inside the Library of Congress, and they really frown upon wailing in the reading rooms. Wailing like crying, I mean. Not whaling like... with boats and whales, although that would also—”
“Millicent,” Hollis whispers. “Stop talking. Please.”
His lips brush over mine, once up, once down before settlingin. The kiss isn’t the cowardly kind I gave him in his childhood bedroom; it isn’t an attempt to change the subject so much as a conversation without words. But I’m not sure if my translation is accurate. Because it feels like he’s saying he understands, that he’s falling in love with me too, and that cannot be right. Hollis doesn’t do relationships. He doesn’t believe in lasting love, and nothing that’s happened over the course of this terrible day gave him any reason to reconsider that belief. And yet...I’m feeling what you’re feeling, his mouth tells me.You won’t lose me, it claims. Maybe I’m not mistranslating so much as willfully misunderstanding. Or buying into a lie. If that’s all it is, it’s extremely convincing. Then again, Hollis is a much better liar than I am.
My limbs are still wrapped around Hollis’s torso, like I’m a koala and he’s a tree. Except the koala and the tree are making out, so I guess it’s not like that much at all. His arms release me, and his hands slip between us. They slide into my robe, following my curves. His touch leaves a trail of heat, and the effect lands somewhere between comforting and sensual.
“My point is that I don’t like big feelings, Millicent,” he says. “My whole adult life—my whole personality—has been built around avoiding even the possibility of encountering them.”
I open my mouth to apologize for slathering my big, messy feelings all over him. But he presses another kiss against my lips. A preemptive shush that shows how well he knows my brain despite the short amount of time we’ve spent together. I’m tilted backward, backward, until I’m parallel with the mattress and Hollis is above me. My arms and legs give way to gravity, and I fall onto the bed. The coolness of the air conditioning blowing against my skin where the robe is open emphasizes the sudden distance between our bodies. Is this how it ends? The point where he tellsme sorry, but this is too much and not at all what he bargained for, best of luck with my future, so long?
He stares down at me with that look of sweet bewildered frustration. “But there’s no avoiding you, is there? I tried at first. I really did. I was actuallyinmy car at the airport, key in the ignition, before I had to go back inside to find you. I mean, shit, I even tried sending you off to have sex with someone else, hoping it would help me keep my distance.”
His face changes, as if the last answer has come to him and the puzzle is complete. “I’m starting to realize that you’re inevitable, Millicent. It’s like you tied my shoelaces together the moment we met and the knot’s only getting tighter the longer I try to outrun you. It’s just... I have no idea what to do with all of this intensity, this longing, this... sort of painful thing in my heart that feels like hope and fear andneed. The muscles to carry these sorts of big feelings atrophied a long time ago, and the weight of it is crushing me.”
I don’t even realize that my mouth has fallen open as I attempt to process these unexpected words until Hollis’s touch draws my attention to my bottom lip. The pad of his thumb traces the curve of it as he says, “You want to know why I’m here in Key West with you? Because watching you exist in the world, trusting and loving and beautifully strange... it makes these feelings even heavier, yet somehow easier to bear.”
