Page 51 of Beauty and the Beach
My brain, my body, my heart—they all still. “I know that,”I say after a moment spent locating my voice. It’s not entirely true.
“Then why are you trying to compensate?”
She’s speaking so matter-of-factly, so dispassionately, and some part of me knows that it’s because she’s never grieved properly, never let herself think about Trev, never fully processed his death. She’s just been running from that pain.
Aren’t you tired of running, Holl?
“I’m not compensating,” I say. “Or—maybe I am, I don’t know.” I pick through my thoughts, trying to decipher them enough to string together sentences. These are not things I ever talk about to anyone other than my therapist, and my words come out stilted and clipped. “I’m not seeking absolution, and I’m not trying to bring him back. I just…want to do good things. Isn’t that allowed?”
“Of course it is,” she says quietly.
“I’ll happily put a dead fish in your mailbox or insult you until I’m blue in the face, but I won’t actually let anything happen to you,” I say. “That’s my point, all right? Now go to sleep. First thing in the morning, we’re out of here.”
She’s silent for a moment; then she speaks. “Stop saying mushy stuff. It’s weird.”
My lips twitch, but I don’t answer.
Holland
It takesme only one week of being Holland Park to discover the most fundamental flaw in my marriage to Phoenix, and it is this: I cannot be mean to him all the time.
Because the truth is, I’m not usually a mean person. And the same is true of him; he’s overbearing and overprotective and invasive, sure, but rarelymean.
Now we’re living together. We see each other in the mornings and at night. We drink from the same carton of orange juice. And no matter how we might normally treat each other, neither of us can be petty and rude and argumentative all the time. It’s too exhausting.
Which means I’m starting to see the other sides of Phoenix—the ones I’ve always ignored. And he’s seeing the same in me; I can tell by the twitch of his eyebrows when I use basic manners likepleaseandthank you.
I don’t want to be reminded of thoughtful Phoenix or dry-humor Phoenix. Idefinitelydon’t want to think about vulnerable Phoenix—the one that spoke to me in the dark of our honeymoon suite, his body wrapped around mine.
Neither of us mention the things we said or did in that suite—which sounds way more risqué than it actually is—and if his psycho family has said anything more about ourmarriage, he hasn’t told me. He doesn’t tell me anything, in fact, because we barely speak at all. I work as many shifts at the salon as humanly possible over the course of the week leading up to the Fourth, just to avoid being at home with him.
I can’t handle all those facets of his personality. And scary Phoenix? The one who swooped in and told Dot not to call me anything butHollandorma’am?
That version of Phoenix was just as devastating as vulnerable Phoenix, though in a vastly different way. I will die before I ever tell him so, but there’s something about a man defending your honor while also looking sexy in an uber-expensive suit.
I press my hand to my chest, frowning as I inhale and then exhale.
“What’s up?” Cat says from next to me, a large plate of pancakes in front of her.
“Huh? Oh,” I say, looking at my own half-eaten stack—courtesy of the Fourth of July pancake breakfast being held in the town square this morning. “Just feel a little—funny.” But something twisting and anxious is starting to squirm in the pit of my stomach.
I’m imagining things, right? My heart didn’tflutter. Not for Phoenix.
Not again.
Food poisoning, maybe, or pneumonia, or the stomach flu. It’s probably one of those.
And this is why I’ve been avoiding the house: because my heart is doing things I don’t like, randomly, and for no reason at all.
“If you get me sick and I end up throwing up all these pancakes, I’ll never forgive you,” Cat says.
“Oh, don’t talk about throwing up,” Ivy says with a groan, looking at her own pancakes. “Not while I’m trying to eat.”
“No one will be throwing up,” I say as I collect another bite and then shove the whole thing in my mouth, syrup dripping off my fork. “I don’t think I’m sick. Just a little…off.”
“Off how?” Cat says.
“I don’t even know,” I say with a sigh.