I glared at him as I prepped the next ballon.
“And Hollis is… well, she’s Hollis. A girl. And Casey doesn’t get a lot of girl time.”
“She hasn’t really needed it.”
“Oh, so we’ve moved from ‘I’m gonna be a dick’ to ‘I’m gonna be a dumbass’ then? It’ll be hard to keep up if you keep this up.”
“Ass,” I said back, my flat reply practically falling on deaf ears as he continued.
“Casey’s going to be a teenager and she doesn’t have a mom. She has Gram, but Gram…” He paused.
“It’s okay, I get it.” I knotted the next filled balloon and held it out for him to tie on the ribbon.
“It’s good for her to have stability, and I don’t know about you but Hollis doesn’t strike me as someone who’s going to flit in and out of her life.”
“Did you forget that this thing between her and me is temporary?”
“Did you forget that today isn’t about you? Jesus, Adam, I know you went and became a rockstar in Colorado but I didn’t think you’d assume the rest of the world revolved around you.”
“You do a good job of humbling me, man,” I told him and prepared the next balloon. “How much helium is in there?”
“Probably enough for that whole bag, but do you think you can fit a lot more balloons in your car to take home?”
“Probably not. Maybe three more.”
We set to the task, filling the rest of the balloons. “That photo you posted is a good one,” Keane finally said. “Of you and Hollis.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying not to think about Hollis. She’d only been revolving around my thoughts for the last forty-eight hours, since she’d dropped the bombshell about her parents thinking we were in a relationship. And already, we were in a relationship. Facebook official, even.
Sarah had been blowing up my phone since last night, but I didn’t want to talk to her. She wasn’t stupid, she’d know something wasn’t as it seemed.
“You two looked totally natural together.”
“Yeah,” I said again, grabbing a handful of the balloons and moving to start tying them to the two picnic tables we’d snagged. “We’re supposed to.”
“Right.” Keane helped me tie off a couple and then said, “Except those photos weren’t posed. You didn’t know I was taking that shot.”
“I asked you to take photos.”
“You didn’t know I was taking that shot,” he repeated. “You didn’t even see me. It’s okay, I get it. You don’t want to admit you have the hots for your fake girlfriend.” He held up his hands as if he was conceding. “That’s fine.”
“I didn’t say that,” I told him, then wished I could take it back.
“So, you do have the hots for her.”
Hollis, with her dark, thick hair and wide brown eyes. With her pink lips, her long limbs, and the natural grace she exuded when she didn’t even realize it. Yeah, I had something for her. But it was purely physical, and I told Keane so.
“You weren’t looking at her like that in the pic, Adam. But whatever you say. One day, you’ll admit it. And I cannot wait for that day.” He rubbed his hands together like he was scheming.
“You’re going to eat your words,” I told him, checking my phone for a text from Keane’s mom. Casey was on her way, would be at the park in ten minutes. “Hey, I meant to ask you. Gram’s coming home next Monday. Would you mind helping me do a little furniture rearranging? We’re going to move her to the living room, so she’s nearly never alone. I don’t like the idea of her being locked away in her bedroom where we can’t easily hear her.”
Keane’s expression sobered and he nodded. “Of course.”
“I was thinking this Thursday, if that works for you?”
“Yep. I’ll bring my truck. We can move a lot more that way.”
“Good.” I nodded. “Thanks, man.”
“Look who’s here,” Keane said, and I turned. Hollis’s car pulled in and Navy popped out, skipping across the grass with bags of cheeseburgers in her hands.
“Casey loves cheeseburgers, right?” She held the bag out to me. “I figured she needed something besides just cake.”
Something I had completely spaced. I gave her a grateful smile, taking the bag and putting it beside the cake on the picnic table. Hollis followed behind, albeit at a slower pace. She carried a drink cooler in one hand and a small gift bag in the other.
“Hey, Hollis. What’s that?” Keane asked when I didn’t say anything. Hollis looked nervously at me before turning her head to him.
“It’s a punch, sort of.”
“Like the one we had in middle school,” Navy said excitedly, and pulled plastic cups out of a bag she carried. “With the lemon-lime soda and sherbet. So good. And fun! It was Hollis’s idea.”
“Here,” I said, taking the beverage cooler from her hand and putting it on the picnic table.
Hollis stood there, hands clutching the present as she looked at everyone except for me.
I felt Keane’s elbow in my ribs and elbowed him back before stepping toward Hollis. We hadn’t spoken since I had dropped her off at her apartment, and even then it’d been a terse goodbye. Hell, she’d been out of the car within seconds of me pulling to a stop.
“Thanks for coming,” I said to her. “Casey will be happy to see you.” I sounded robotic. “I’m glad you’re here,” I added as an aside.
“Wow, you two are a couple of teddy bears,” Keane said, wrapping an arm around Navy. “I guess I missed the part where this was a formal shindig.”
I glared at him, but the heat wasn’t really there because he was right. I turned to Hollis, to offer her a hug, but she was already moving away from me, back to the parking lot where Keane’s mom was pulling in, with Casey excitedly waving at her from the front seat.
Huh. It was a little odd to see Casey so animated for someone she didn’t know that well. But she was out of the car and hauling ass to Hollis before I could blink. And, to add to my surprise, Hollis wrapped her up like they were old friends.
Keane’s mom made her way over, a bag full of plastic silverware and napkins. More shit I had forgotten. I looked at Keane who shrugged. “I didn’t see it in the backseat, so I asked her to bring it along.”
“Hey Mrs. C,” I said, giving her a hug when she offered one. “Thanks for bringing stuff. I guess I’m not really good at this.”
She squeezed me and then let go, her hands coming to my elbows. The smile she gave me was tinged with just a bit of sadness at the corners. “You’re doing great, Adam.”
Hollis and Casey joined us, and Casey poked one of the balloons. “Wow, real balloons! With helium.”
“Yep. I have the tank, too, if you feel like making your voice sound like a thirteen-year-old boy experiencing puberty.”
“Oh, heck yeah. And burgers!” Her eyes lit up as she spied the bag. I had been so worried about the low budget party, but she was already delighted by the simplest parts of it.
“Dig in,” Navy said, sitting at the table. She patted the seat beside her and Hollis moved out of the corner of my eye toward it before Keane took the spot. Keane’s mom and Casey sat opposite of them, leaving Hollis and me to sit at the lone table next to them.
“Give me two of those,” I said to Keane as he passed out burgers.
“Oh, I’m good—I ate on the way here,” Hollis said when I had both burgers in front of me.
“That’s good, because these both were for me anyway.”
Hollis eyed me like she wasn’t sure whether to run or to laugh. Her eyes darted left and right, and from how straight she was sitting I knew she was uncomfortable. If Keane had been sitting beside me, he’d have elbowed me in the ribs again. “I was kidding,” I said to Hollis, but the humor had passed. “Are you sure you don’t want one?”
“No, but thank you.” She shook her head violently fast, so fast that her dark ponytail swung left and right like a whip. Not a hair on her head was out of place, not even one lone tendril a
cross her forehead. Was it exhausting to be that put together all the time?
I leaned forward on the table and my knees knocked with hers. We exchanged eye contact for a moment. I expected her to avert her gaze, to look away as she often did, but she didn’t. No, she held my gaze, her eyes heavy-lidded and dark, but confident.
Her knee grazed against mine, but this time it was intentional. The side of her mouth lifted, briefly.
The bite of burger lodged itself in my throat as I stared at her. Had we ever held eye contact for so long? I didn’t think so.
My gaze dipped to the charm that flashed. A rose. It suited her. Her features were classic, delicate. She seemed poised, like someone who’d been trained to balance a book atop her head. But it didn’t seem forced. It was a natural grace she carried, a quiet kind of confidence in herself. I was struck, as always, by how beautiful she was. It was no hardship to be in a relationship with her, especially when it meant being able to look at her all the time.
That didn’t mean I’d warmed up to her quite yet.
“What’s that?” she asked me, eyes on my bicep. “A rose?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed the bite of burger and turned my arm to show it more clearly.
“Do you … like roses?”
What a weird thing to ask. I had it tattooed on my body, hadn’t I? I thought the answer to that question was obvious. Instead, I turned it on her. “You do.” I nodded at her neck and took another bite.
She looked down, fingering the gold charm. “Yes. That’s why I noticed your tattoo. Did you get it for any reason in particular?”
What was she getting at? I felt, perhaps irrationally, that I was being tested somehow. Again, I redirected what she asked me. “All my tattoos have reasons.”
“Like your knuckle tattoos?”
My hands splayed out on the table in front of her. “Mile High, it’s the name of one of the songs we wrote.”
“After the city?”
“Yeah.” I held my right middle finger out toward her and laughed when she looked at the lone finger curiously. “No, I’m not trying to flip you off. I wanted to show you. Here,” I reached with my other hand for hers and brought her forefinger to the skin between two knuckles. “I wasn’t going to get the tattoos on my hands, but I had a little accident and had to get pins in my fingers here.” She touched the skin carefully. “I lost a lot of feeling in this finger and the scar was pretty gnarly, so I got the tattoo to cover it, but also to see if I could feel it.”
“So, you subjected yourself to pain just to see if you could still feel it?”
After a beat, I answered her. “Yes.” No one had ever put it that way, so succinctly. It struck me a little, and for the first time since I got the tattoo I wished I hadn’t regained feeling there. Because her little touches, the grazing of my skin, was starting to get to me. But I had invited it, hadn’t I? The smile that played on her lips made me feel fidgety. “What’s funny?”
“Oh.” The smile dropped from her lips. “I mean, it’s not funny per se. I just found it interesting. Because it seems like as our advancements in medical science continue, we, as a culture, are always seeking ways to eliminate pain, whether that’s physical or emotional pain. And yet there you were, seeking pain to make sure you could still feel.”
“It was just my finger. A small thing,” I said. “I’m not someone who voluntarily seeks out other kinds of pain.”
She looked me over, her eyes thoughtful. “No, I don’t suppose you are. And that’s not what I meant.” Her knees brushed mine again, and this closeness was starting to do my head in. “I just meant that I admire that. Putting yourself through pain—even a small bit, to give you the peace of mind that you can feel it.”
“You said that was your most painful tattoo,” Casey blurted out, her mouth full of burger. Keane’s mom handed her a napkin. “That’s what you told me, when I said it was cool.”
“It was my most painful tattoo,” I said, “but you’re a little kid. I’m not going to talk you into getting a tattoo.”
Casey’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not a kid. I’m thirteen. Teenager.”
“Still a kid.”
“Aww.” Hollis squeezed my hand gently. “She’s a young lady, Adam. Here’s a true test: do boys still have cooties?”
“Cooties aren’t real,” Casey said.
Hollis and I exchanged looks. “Shit,” I said.
Hollis’s touch moved up my arm, distracting me, and I felt like I had been zapped with some kind of electricity, through her. “This one is pretty,” she said, tracing its valves and curves.
I smiled. “I got that for my gram. She didn’t want me to get tattoos, so I thought if I got one for her, as my first one, she might cut me some slack.” It was an anatomical heart, with tiny teardrops for each heart surgery she’d had. “I always said she was the first woman I had ever loved.”
“And did she?” Hollis asked. Her eyes were wide, and the smile that had only been a whisper on her lips returned. “Cut you some slack?”
“Oh hell no,” Casey said, drawing all our eyes to her.
“Casey,” I admonished. “‘Hell,’ really?”
“You say it.”
“Yeah, well I also drink beer and drive a car and that doesn’t mean you can do those things.”
Casey rolled her eyes and took a big bite of her burger. “Those aren’t even the same thing. It’s just a word, Adam.”
Yeah, and you’re just a kid, I thought. But she wasn’t, not like the rest of them. She was growing older every single day—obviously—but it seemed accelerated now. When I had been away, in Colorado, my memory of Casey had been of a girl with braces and unruly hair and a Tomboy streak that didn’t quit. Now, she was experimenting with makeup, she brushed her hair more regularly, and she said swear words around other adults. Where had the last three years gone?
Hollis’s knees knocked with mine under the table again. Fucking hell. It wasn’t like the rattle was jarring. Not at all. But it was the fact that Hollis and I were close enough to be knocking knees under the table, that she kept touching me like it didn’t have an immediate effect on me. Which it did.
“Can I have some cake?” Casey asked after she’d swallowed her final bite.
“Uh, sure.” I rubbed my hands on my jeans and then eyed her uncertainly. “Do you want us to sing? We have candles.”
“No, that’s okay. I just want cake.” She licked her lips and her eyes closed halfway as her smile spread. “Caaaake.”
“I brought some punch,” Hollis said, standing. “I can get everyone a cup?” She looked around for the nods, smiling at the enthusiastic one Casey gave her. When her eyes landed on me, I just shook my head. I didn’t want anything sweet right now, not when my stomach was in knots being this close to her.
I opened the lid on the cake, the smell of sweet engulfing us immediately. As I sliced the first portion, Hollis handed out cups of punch with orange and pink sherbet floating on the top. It was nostalgic, and I felt like a dick for being the only one who didn’t partake in it.
“Where are the plates?” Hollis asked, already grabbing forks.
“Oh,” I said. “Under here.”
I lifted the cake box and three things happened in quick succession:
1. A gust of wind flew through us, sending the plates up into the air and across the playground.
2. Everyone gasped or shouted as the plates rolled away, dancing in the wind and leaving us entirely plateless.
3. Hollis took off running after them.
I felt I had no choice but to follow her. We didn’t have any other plates. We had napkins, but those were sure to blow away even faster than the plates had.
“Shit, shit, shit, fuck,” I mumbled under my breath as I chased down a single plate. Hollis was several feet ahead of me, and had secured two plates. Well, at the very least we’d have to share a plate with two other people.
But she was still chasing after them, already at least a couple dozen yards away from the
gazebo. In fact, we were nearly out of sight as the plates trailed behind a giant shed that belonged to the parks department.
I watched in shock as Hollis dove over a rogue plate, landing right on top of it. She yelped in triumph and rolled to sitting, clutching the now three plates to her chest like hard-won medals. Which, I guess, in a way they were.
When I caught up to her she was laughing and her hair had come undone in the wind.
“I only rescued three,” she said, laughing. Had I seen her laugh like this? So openly, so uncontrollably? I didn’t think I had, because I’d have remembered feeling the surge of heat through my body at what that kind of laughing did to her face. The sun warmed her face, glittering off of it like it shone only for her. The tendrils of hair that whipped around her made her look like some woman on the edge of a cliff, embracing the wind that rushed around her. She was roses and cream, with dark, enticing hair—hair that made me ache to tug, to twist, to bury my face into. She was, in a word—okay, two words: fucking stunning.
I set my jaw, annoyed at myself for being so fucking turned on right then. And then I was even further annoyed with myself for being annoyed, especially when I saw the look in her eyes as she gazed at me, like she was damned delighted I had chased her.
Holding a hand out, I tried to think of something—anything—to distract me from doing what I wanted to do.
But then she took my hand and came to standing, her body bumping against mine and the loose tendrils licking both our faces and I thought, Fuck it.
I slid my hand up her arm, feeling her go still, and erased whatever distance there’d been between us as I stepped forward. She could run. She could back up. I told myself that as my hand moved further up, until I was cupping her chin, fingers splayed along her jaw.
And I did the unthinkable.
I kissed her.
18
Hollis
I wasn’t someone who said swear words all that often, but the moment Adam’s lips closed on mine at least a half-dozen swear words flitted over my mind. And then there was silence, punctuated by a persistent beat, as his hands slid into my hair and the pounding of my heart drowned out even the strongest voices in my head.
One Little Lie: a hate to love rom-com Page 17
