by Dee Lagasse
The very idea of his hands on her makes my skin crawl. Getting in between them was me acting on instinct and the second after I do, I regret it. Hollis will see it as me stepping in, thinking she can’t handle the situation by herself. She asked me to stay with her to act as a barrier between Noah and Davis, not because she wanted me to help her stand up to McDouchegal.
She’s stubborn about her need to take care of herself. I guess that comes with having her brother, cousins, my brother, and me in her business, trying to do our best to protect her all the time. I’ll apologize after, but there’s no fucking way I’m letting him touch her right now.
“I don't care what it meant,” she says, as she places herself at my side again. “You have your ring. I have my dignity by walking away. There’s nothing more to say, Noah.”
Thinking back to why Hollis asked me up here in the first place, I glance back. With a puffed chest and crossed arms, Davis stands a few feet behind us. Kinley’s face is full of anxiety as she holds tightly to one of his arms. It’s as if she’s keeping him in place, but she couldn’t stop Davis if Noah gets out of line. His eyes are transfixed on Noah. All it’s going to take is one wrong word, one movement that’s too assertive, for Davis to snap. If he feels like his sister is in danger, not even I’m going to be able to stop him. I’m just thankful Travis isn’t here right now too. There’s no way I’d be able to stop the two of them.
“You know, this never would have happened, if you weren't such an uptight, prude little bitch,” Noah spits when he realizes Hollis is not only not taking his bullshit, but she’s done.
As if my body is acting on its own accord, my hand forms a fist. Before anyone has the chance to stop it, my knuckles hit his cheek. Sliding over his face and finally connecting with his nose, a loud pop fills the air. Dark red blood immediately gushes from his nose as the blow of the hit sends him stumbling back.
The sound of the front door opening behind us causes every one of us to turn. Lorenzo Capparelli steps down and that’s all it takes for Noah to quickly continue in the direction of his car. I’ve never seen an angry Papa Cap, but that’s also because I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of his anger. Hollis and Davis are everything to him, and though he doesn’t have a favorite, he’s just different with Hol. Twenty-eight years old or not, that’s his “bambolina” and Noah would be smart to make his exit now.
“Fuck this,” Noah laughs menacingly, wiping his lips and spitting as the blood from his nose continues to stream down his face. “She’s all yours, bro.”
Despite knowing it’s better that he’s leaving, I don't know why I'm taken aback by his reaction. There's no way he came here thinking he could just smooth things over and everything would be fine. He might be business smart, but either he has no common sense, or he thinks so lowly of Hollis that he thought she would let it go.
“Deuces, McDouchegal,” Kinley yells from behind, her voice getting louder with each syllable.
Pushing me further from Noah’s car, and in the direction of a wide-eyed Hollis, Davis points to my truck and looks back to his dad, the sheer panic he feels emits from his presence.
“Dude, go,” he demands. “You need to get Hol the fuck out of here. She needs to leave before Noah says anything else and my dad snaps. I got Dad, just get my sister out of here.”
Grabbing her hand with one hand while I rummage through my shorts pocket for my keys, I lead Hollis to the black Silverado parked behind her Jeep. Unlocking the truck with the key fob, I open the passenger door for her. After letting go of her hand, she uses the grab handle and the frame to boost herself up and into the black leather seat.
“I’m sorry, Hurricane,” I start, stepping into the space left between the open door. “I didn't think, I just...”
“Stop,” she demands, pulling the seat belt from behind her, waving it off like I hadn’t just punched her ex in the face like a psycho. “It’s done. Just get me out of here.”
Sighing loudly, she curses under her breath and points across the street. Ethel, her 78-year-old neighbor and her grandmother’s best friend, is watching from a big bay window in her white nightgown. The base of the green landline telephone sits in the palm of her left hand as she clutches the handset with her right. When she realizes she's been spotted, she gives a quick wave to us and makes her way from the window.
“So, how does it feel knowing you're the talk of the Abbott Hills Canasta Club, right now?” I laugh, trying to make light of the situation.
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” she retorts, shaking her head. “I’ll be hearing from Nonna within the hour. Can we go eat s'mores and get drunk now?”
Chapter Five
Hollis
My mind is going in a million different directions as Chase settles into his seat. The sound of his seat belt clicking and the roar of his truck starting are just muffled background noise to my thoughts. Chase’s hand on my thigh causes me to jump and stops me from thinking about how I'm going to explain to my family on Sunday that there will be no wedding next Spring.
“Hey. Earth to Hollis,” Chase chuckles as he takes his hand off my thigh and waves it in front of my face. “Did you hear anything I just said?”
“I'm sorry. Got a little lost in my head for a sec,” I apologize. “What's up?”
“I said, No One Else Knows?”
A small smile escapes me when he mentions the game we started playing together the summer between our sophomore and junior years of high school. Kinley, Ellis, and Cole convinced me to go to a house party on the lake, even though I didn’t really want to. At that point, I wasn’t drinking yet and I didn’t hook up with guys, so those parties had no appeal to me. Ellis was trying to get the attention of one of the guys on the football team, so she had begged me to go under the argument that there’s no way she’d be able to handle our brothers in her business all night.
So, I went as her wing-woman and I regretted it about a half hour into being there. She found the guy she was looking for and managed to disappear when Davis and Travis were playing beer pong. A house full of jocks drunkenly hitting on anything with vagina had irritated me a lot sooner than I had imagined.
Knowing that none of my cousins, friends, or my brother would want to leave after being there for less than an hour, I snuck out the back door. After a few minutes of aimless wandering, I found an empty boat dock and took a seat. I was only there for five minutes tops when Chase sat down next to me and said, “Tell me something no one else knows.”
After that night, we played every time we found ourselves in a situation where one or both of us needed a distraction, to tell each other a secret or to brace each other for a serious talk. He told me he was retiring from the NFL by starting a conversation like that. I told him my mom left like that…
“You first.”
“Okay,” he starts, “No one else knows, I'm glad you realized Noah is a scum bag. I knew it, but I had nothing to stand on and didn't want to be that asshole friend.”
My rebuttal is easy.
“No one else knows, I'm glad Noah is a scum bag too. It’s been pretty awful for a while now, Chase. Halfway into my drive to Boston, I decided I was going to end things with him when I got to his office. I don’t even know why I still brought the cupcakes in with me. Like, hi, I’m here to break up with you, but here, have some cupcakes.”
“Hold that thought,” he says as he pulls into Dunkin Donuts. “We’re definitely coming back to that.”
Our game of truths is put on hold as he stops at the menu and the little speaker box to place your order. Raising his eyebrow like he’s working hard to think of whatever he’s about to say, he recites my coffee order the way I’ve been drinking it since high school. Giving him a little round of applause and nod of approval, I try not to show how impressed I am right now.
A snappy woman takes our coffee order and Chase pulls up to the window. Lifting my ass up off the seat, I stretch just enough to reach into my back pocket for the cash I had shoved in there just in ca
se we grabbed food or chose to venture out for drinks. Just as I hold out the folded bills to pay for our coffee, Chase pulls out his credit card from his wallet and hands it to the cashier inside the window. She's maybe sixteen and makes no attempt to hide the fact she’s checking him out. A snort escapes me as she giggles when he says, “thank you, ma'am” after she hands him our coffees.
Not that I blame her though.
Because no else knows I've been slightly jealous of every single girl that's held Chase's attention since I was fifteen.
As he cuts the wheel to pull out of the drive-through, he stops, waiting for a clearing in the oncoming traffic. “So, back to ‘things have been awful for a long time?’ Awful, how? And, why is this the first time I’m hearing about it?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly, because the truth is, I wanted to talk to him about it so many times. There were so many times I picked up my phone to call him and texts that went unsent because I needed my best friend, but I didn’t feel like I had the right to ask for his help anymore. I chose to push him away when Noah made it clear that he didn’t like the closeness between me and Chase.
Opening the flood gates, I tell him how Noah and I haven’t been much of a couple for the last year, that every time we got together I was hoping we would break up, even admitting that it’s been months since I’ve had sex, which gets him to turn to me, shocked.
“What?” I ask. “Does it blow your mind that sweet little Hollis actually has sex? And oh my God, actually misses it when she doesn’t?”
“I wouldn’t go as far as calling you sweet, Hol. You forget I know you better than anyone,” he winks, taking a long sip of his iced coffee. “But it’s not like your sex life is a typical topic of conversation for us.”
Before it gets awkward, I decide to change the subject by continuing our game of No One Else Knows, admitting, “So, no one else knows I stood next to Noah's car in the parking garage and I seriously toyed with slicing his tires after I walked out of his office. I had my knife in my hand. The only thing that stopped me was noticing the stupid security cameras.”
With that, Chase laughs, shaking his head in disbelief. “Hollis Grace! Remind me never to get on your bad side. And do I even want to know why you have a knife with you?”
“You could never,” I assure him before explaining that when I started closing the bar at Capparelli & Co., my father had given me a small knife to keep in my purse. “I have a pepper spray key chain from Davis, too.”
Nodding in silent approval, he doesn’t say anything as he turns onto Spear Circle—the cul-de-sac both he and my brother live on—pulling into the driveway of the only detached condo on the loop. Why Chase decided to take the only three-bedroom single family home on the street is a mystery to me.
After a career-ending football injury he came back to Abbott Hills, and I think I'm the only one that knows he’s only touched his signing bonus to buy the condominium outright. He said that the moment he saw the navy-blue shutters on the cream-colored house, he just knew it was “home.”
Six months after Chase moved in, the left side of the split townhome next to Chase's went up for sale. My brother and Kinley put in an offer the day it went on the market and moved in less than three months later.
Carelessly whacking the garage door opener on his visor, Chase pulls into the garage and puts his truck in park.
“I’m going to go grab my mail,” he says as he hops out of the truck. “Just walk in through the white door. It’s unlocked.”
Unbuckling my seat belt, I jump out of Chase’s truck and let myself into his house. The moment I step foot inside, I'm awestruck. Noah hadn't “felt comfortable” with Chase and me being so close. So even though we never stopped talking and I had spent plenty of time next door at my brother's house, I hadn't been inside Chase's house since shortly after he moved in two years ago. There hadn't even been furniture at that point.
“Make yourself comfortable, I’m going to go change really quick,” Chase says from behind me. Goose bumps travel all over my arms as he places his fingertips on my hips, gently moving me to the right and dropping his mail on the kitchen counter, before disappearing into a hallway off the room. Shaking off a shiver, I step all the way into the kitchen, twisting and turning to take it all in.
Matching stainless-steel appliances and marble countertops shine in the light. My eyes pause when I see the enormous fridge covered in pages torn from coloring books. My heart stops when I see a candid, Polaroid photo of me and Chase in the corner. Taken at his mom's house, a tall Christmas tree sits behind us. My hands are full of ornaments and my body is wrapped in white tree lights, courtesy of Chase. We’re young. Maybe seventeen or eighteen. But we’re happy. Genuine, unmistakable joy is written across my face as Chase looks at me with a goofy, amused grin on his own.
“My mom found that about a year ago. I just didn't know if it was appropriate to show you, you know, given the circumstances. I figured it was safe up there.”
The sound of Chase's voice next to me startles me. As I turn to profusely apologize for letting things get weird between us while I was with Noah, I find myself staring at the man in front of me. How is it possible that he never looks unattractive? How had I pushed aside noticing for so long? And why the eff am I noticing it now? I've only been single for a few hours. And I would never make a move on Chase. Because, no. For so many reasons, I just couldn't.
Words fail me as I gawk at him standing there. All he did was change out his mascara-stained white t-shirt for a plain black one and his plaid shorts for a loose pair of Adidas basketball shorts.
His hair is tousled and messy from being inside the hat he was wearing. The sleeves of his shirt are wrapped tightly around his biceps, which, I swear are as big as my head. Oh my God. I need to stop. Hoping I haven’t been caught, I quickly avert my eyes to Chase's face.
I’m greeted with a knowing, cocky half smile and curious, raised eyebrows. It’s the exact same expression he gave me the first day we met. I couldn’t keep my eyes off his arms that day either. I never knew arms could be sexy until the day Chase came strolling into that gymnasium, and the reminder, right in my face, catches me off guard.
Fuck. Before he can say anything about my gawking, his phone rings from the pocket of his shorts. A few “okays,” a “that sucks,” a “well, tell her I hope she feels better. I got Hol tonight,” and a “no problem man, talk to you later,” grab my attention. He’s talking to my brother. His words are so calm as he responds to Davis on the other line, but the look in his eyes as he watches me is so intense that I need to look away before I let myself get caught up in a non-existent moment.
Ending the call, he says, “I’m sure you figured out that was Davis. I guess Kinley isn’t feeling well. She started feeling sick on the ride over. Davis thinks that it’s anxiety, she thinks it’s the sushi she had at lunch. So, Plan B? We can totally still have s’mores and get drunk, but what do you think about a Chase and Hollis movie night? You can even pick where we get food from and crash in the guest room for old times’ sake.”
Chase and Hollis movie nights had become a thing when Chase was playing football professionally. His training was rigorous, and he wanted to do everything he could to avoid getting his face plastered in the media for being out drunk and partying. So every Friday night, I would drive the little over an hour down to his house in Foxborough, Massachusetts. We ordered a ton of takeout and watched whatever movie was newest On Demand. It was usually late when we finished and there was usually alcohol—at least for me—so most Fridays I just crashed in his guest room.
Once I started dating Noah, we began making plans together and my Friday movie nights with Chase became more sporadic, until they became non-existent. And then, when things with Noah became non-existent, I started picking up the Friday night bartending shift at my grandparents’ restaurant.
Chase was right. It had been a long time. And we were way overdue.
“Okay,” I start. “But, I’ll need to
borrow a pair of sweats. I didn’t plan on staying over and I figured if we did drink too much and I absolutely had to, I could go next door and steal something from Kinley. But I don’t want to bother her if she doesn’t feel good though. And, I want food from La Mesa.”
We had driven by my favorite Mexican restaurant on the way here and my stomach had grumbled at the thought of tacos and chimichangas.
Without skipping a beat, he says, “My bedroom is upstairs, last door to the left. Sweatpants are in the bottom drawer. You can grab whatever you want, whenever you want to change. And I am always down for Mexican food. I think I have tequila and mixer. We can make margaritas before the food gets here.”
“Margaritas sound amazing,” I sigh, happily. I feel… content? Safe? I don’t know. I can’t place it, but it’s something I haven’t felt in a long time. “Why don’t you show me around a little before we order food?”
Leading the way, I step over the threshold into the dining room. The open concept of having the two rooms connected feels so homey. It reminds me of movies and TV shows when the mom character is in the kitchen making dinner or cookies for her kids, talking to them about their day while they sit at the dinner table doing their homework. Something I was always so envious of.
Pushing my mommy issues aside, I make my way to the floor-to-ceiling French doors overlooking a fenced-in patio and a huge yard. Swooping in beside me, Chase opens the door that I’m not standing in front of, holding it open for me to walk out ahead of him.
“Chase, this is gorgeous,” I gasp as I step onto the blue stone patio.
He doesn't say a word as I run my hands over the four oversized wicker chairs sitting in front of a built-in stone fireplace. Weaving in between two of the chairs, pausing to admire the small cedar table sitting in the center of the chairs, I take it all in. Sitting on the table are navy blue coasters that match the cushions on the chairs, a citronella candle, and a small box of matches.
