“Mmhmm.” That’s all I had to say. I was trying not to look at him. My high school crush was back with a vengeance. Except now it came with new adults-only fantasies, fantasies made more vivid by two days with a magic eReader.
Oh Max, the things we could do together, I thought. I’ve had some pretty darn good teachers these past few days.
No. I must stop this. I am not on a date.
Chapter 16
I woke up early the next morning and checked my phone for messages from Vivian, hopeful that wherever she was, she had come to her senses. No texts, no voicemails, no emails. It was only by force of habit that I brought up Facebook. I never would have expected her to contact me there, and when I saw her name in my alerts, I had to read it twice to make sure it wasn’t my imagination.
Message from Vivian Halloway.
I opened it.
Hi Holly. I want you to know I’m okay. I’m sorry I ran off with your Kindle. I guess I lost my head a bit. That thing is dangerously addictive, as you know all too well.
That’s why I’ve decided to destroy it.
“No,” I whispered.
You and I both know it had to go, her message continued. It wasn’t safe. You get inside that thing and it’s hard to come out again. You start losing track of reality. Had I kept the Kindle around, it would have destroyed us both. So this morning I set it on the ground and ran over it with my car.
“No, no, no! Vivian, why? You didn’t have to do that!”
Tears were welling in my eyes as I yelled at the screen. I felt like an unspeakable tragedy had just occurred, like I was reading the confession of a murderer.
I hope you can understand why I had to do this, Holly. I imagine you might be angry with me at the moment. I certainly have a lot of conflicting emotions. I am going to take a vacation for a while. I suggest you do the same. We don’t have to speak to each other again. Maybe it’s better if we don’t. Good luck to you, Holly. Have a nice life.
And that was it. The message was over.
My Kindle was gone. Christoph was gone.
It wasn’t just that I would never see him again—it was the thought of what it meant to Christoph and Annabelle and Blair and everyone else I met in there. They were more than characters on a page. They were living, breathing people, an entire universe of characters and places and Vivian had crunched them all under the weight of her car.
I couldn’t bear to imagine what I it was like for them. Their whole world—wiped out in an instant. They were the citizens of Pompeii, or Krakatoa, or Atlantis. If my Kindle was the planet Alderaan then Vivian’s car was the Death Star, its tire the blast ray that made millions of voices cry out in terror before they were suddenly silenced.
So what if they weren’t real? They were real to me. They were people I knew, people I was eager to see again, people I loved, and Vivian had taken them away from me forever.
I sat at my desk and sobbed for the next twenty minutes. I might have sat there all morning if it weren’t for Max, who knocked on my door at eight.
“Just a minute!” I called out. I went to the bathroom and washed off my face. My eyes were puffy and red. There was no hiding it. Max would know I’d been crying. I’d have to tell him something.
I opened the door.
“What’s going on?” Max said. “Have you been crying?”
I nodded. “I just received some really bad news,” I said.
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, no, it’s okay. I’ll be fine. Let’s just….”
Just what? What was there to do now? The hunt for my Kindle was over.
“Max, we can go home,” I said.
“Home? What about--”
“Vivian’s fine,” I said. “She sent me a message. I’m not worried about her anymore.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good news, I suppose.”
“Yes, it is. Everything is fine. I really have no reason to be upset. Let’s just go.”
“We’ll have breakfast first,” Max said.
A little laugh came out of me. It was an involuntary thing. This was the new Max. Somewhere between high school and now, he had turned into a man who told people what to do.
Not that I minded being told what to do at all this morning.
We walked around the corner of the hotel and found a cute little French café. I was still devastated about Vivian’s message, but had to put on a brave face. There was no explaining the truth to Max. There was no talking to anyone about what had just happened to me.
After a few minutes laughing over tea and croissants, I found the sadness slipping away. Max had a strange way of captivating me, keeping me interested with clever quips, funny stories, and most of all, his unwavering stare. He looked like he was memorizing my face, every freckle and eyelash, every expression. It was unnerving, and exciting. His scrutiny came with his wide smile. The one that made little wrinkles appear at the corner of his eyes. The one that showed off his beautiful, white teeth, including that slightly crooked one on the bottom. Man, that smile took me back. Every time I saw it in high school it made me melt, and it never got old. Now he was here, gazing at me and smiling like he won the lottery. Butterflies danced in my stomach, and the horror of Vivian’s deed started to fade.
After breakfast, Max suggested we go find an adventure. I wasn’t sure what adventure could await us in this little town in the middle of the summer, but I was up for anything. Walking down the street, we passed a vendor setup with brochures and promises of a wild, wet adventure. Whitewater rafting. Max was immediately sold on the idea, and grabbed my hand as I tried to walk away from the kiosk, my heart hammering at the prospect of hurdling down the rapids in an inflatable raft.
“Oh, come on, Holly! It’ll be a blast! This guy says the water is perfect. They’ll teach us what to do, right?” He looked up expectantly at the 20-something hippie peddling the trips.
“Totally,” the man said, his blonde dreadlocks seeming to nod in agreement.
“Max, I’m not sure this is up my alley. Can’t we just, I dunno, go shopping? Or see a movie?”
“Nope. We’re doing this. Holly, we are going to have so much fun. This is just what we needed – to let loose, have a ‘wild, wet ride’.” I wasn’t sure but he almost made that sound sexual. “Besides, I’ll be right beside you. I won’t let anything bad happen. I’ll keep you safe. Please? ”The puppy eyes were too much. And how did my hand get in his? My heart was hammering now for an entirely different reason, and I knew that I couldn’t say no to this man.
“Okay.” I swallowed, hoping that I’d live to tell my friends back home about this wild adventure.
“Excellent!”
Max and Dreadlocks negotiated the price, we got our instructions, and we signed a waiver.
“The van’s leaving in an hour, so you’ll want to get going soon,” Dreadlocks said, smiling at me in some sort of truce. I think he could see the fear radiating off me.
Next Max took me to a clothing boutique, where he bought me a new tanktop and cut-off shorts. I remember telling Max I could pay for my own clothes and having him turn me down. I remember wondering why he was Mr. Moneybags all of a sudden.
I remember letting these thoughts float from my mind, some voice in my brain that wasn’t entirely my own telling me it didn’t matter.
Max dragged me back to the hotel, his warm hand still tightly wrapped around mine, and told me to change. I went to my room in a daze, flexing my fingers and trying to remember all the ways Max’s hand felt. The rough pads of his fingers, the firmness of his grasp. I changed into my new clothes, laced up my sneakers, and wished I had a swimsuit I could put on underneath it all.
Ah well…it’s not like whitewater rafting was on my radar when we headed out on this trip.
I found Max in the lobby looking positively giddy. I took a minute to watch him before he saw me. There was no denying it. I was totally into this guy. Funny how an old crush could come to life after so long. Fu
nny how he got even better with age.
Funny how I was perfectly willing to allow these thoughts this morning, how I didn’t care if he and Vivian had been living together until yesterday or that he stood me up once or that we hadn’t spoken in ten years. Funny how none of that mattered to me at all when I saw him standing there waiting for me.
He was a catch, for sure, but I wasn’t sure how he felt about me. Or what would happen after we left Durango. He checked the time on his phone, looked over his shoulder, and found me. I got another smile. The perfect smile, and headed over to face my fear of water, adrenalin and boats. This was going to be a disaster.
“Let’s go!” His energy was palpable and a little contagious. “You ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I mumbled, staring at the carpet. “You promise I won’t die?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Yes, Holly, I promise. I would never let anything happen to you. I mean it.” He grabbed my hand again, and pulled me toward the door. Suddenly, the prospect of hours on a boat next to him, his hand in mine, sounded like the best day ever.
The rafting company had an old 15-passenger van, dinged and rusty in places. The logo was fading on the side panel, and an elderly man approached us as we got out of the car.
“You folks ready for some fun?” He practically shouted.
Max nodded his head enthusiastically.
“Alright then, pile in.”
We joined a half-dozen others in the worn seats, everyone bubbling with excitement over how high the river was, and how the rapids were looking particularly good. I wasn’t sure that my good and their good meant the same thing. I was hoping for more of a lazy river experience. My van mates seemed more in the mood for a white-knuckled rollercoaster.
*******
The yellow raft bobbed in the calm pool of water near our drop-off point. The guides leading the tour instructed us on rowing, floating, avoiding rocks and a dozen other things I didn’t understand and wouldn’t remember. I focused solely on making sure my life vest was painfully tight and securing the straps on my helmet. Max asked if I had any questions, if I was ready, if I knew what to do. I nodded but the truth was I had no idea what we were doing. I couldn’t hear anyone over the banging beat of my heart. All I knew was that I could float, and that I should be able to avoid serious head trauma. Max grabbed my hand to help me in the raft and held it until it was time to push off into the rushing water a few yards away.
We headed out at a steady clip, Max rowing on one side, and one of the other tourists manning another oar. The tour guide shouted instructions over the din. The river was loud. Really loud. Waves crashed over rocks and the current sped by at an alarming pace. I had my hand clamped on a small rope that looped around the perimeter of the raft. I heard the guide shout out a warning about an upcoming rock formation jutting from the spray. Max and the rowers yelled at each other as they argued about how to get round the rocks. Watching this play out, I may have slipped into a daydream about Max the salty sea captain, and I may have been painfully unaware of my surroundings at the moment the raft hit a particularly steep drop.
We landed hard on the waves. Hard enough to bounce me like a tennis ball. Next thing I knew I was all flailing arms and legs, and then I was underwater.
Even though the current threw me about like a ragdoll, it was strangely quiet down there. I thought of a poem by Emily Dickinson, and a scene from Superman 2.
I heard a fly buzz when I died
Lois, grab the log, Lois!
I surfaced, sputtering and coughing. I flew down the river, the waves much stronger than my attempts to swim. I heard shouts and a familiar voice. The raft was only a few yards away, and Max was screaming at me to put my feet up and float. The entire group was trying to pull the raft my way, but our paths continued to diverge as a new outcropping of rocks appeared ahead. I put my feet up and tried to move my upper torso in the opposite direction of the rocks. I slipped down a steep slope, safely past the rock, and watched as the raft passed on the other side, now headed directly toward me. Before the raft could reach me, Max jumped into the water and grabbed me hand. He looked at me, confidence in his eyes, and told me to hang on. We rounded a bend in the river to a lull in the rapids and caught up with the raft. The guide helped haul me, none too delicately, back into the raft. Max followed. After we were assessed and deemed fine to continue on, the guide pushed back into the river.
“Oh my god, Holly, are you okay? I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have made you do this.”
There was so much compassion in his voice. So much concern. We had a story to tell now. We had lived through this together.
And he had saved me.
With both hands, Max grabbed my life vest and pulled me close, planting a big, wet kiss on my lips. Before I could react, the guide screamed, “hold on, another big one!” With one hand I grabbed the rope. With the other, I grabbed onto Max. And we laughed as we continued our wet and wild adventure.
Chapter 17
“We need to get you warmed up,” Max said, draping his arm over my shoulder.
Good Lord he felt good. My teeth were chattering as we rode back to town in the air conditioned van. My wet clothes clung to me and the towel the tour guide loaned me did little to warm me up. But Max’s body was warm. Warm and welcoming.
“You can take a hot shower when you get back to the hotel,” Max said. “Then you can meet me down in the lobby. We leave for our next adventure in an hour and thirty minutes.”
“Our next adventure? What exactly do you have planned?”
God, I hope it involves more kissing.
“It’s a secret.”
“A secret? This isn’t anything fancy, right? The only clothes I have--”
“I know. Neither of us packed anything. I’ll have a little something for you to wear when we get there,” Max said.
An hour and a half later I was showered and back in yesterday’s clothes. Max was driving us north on the freeway. I couldn’t stop the volley of yawns coming from my mouth. The rafting really took it out of me, and the excitement of whatever Max had planned was no match for my exhaustion.
“Put your seat back and take a nap,” Max said, turning down the radio.
“Nah, it’s okay,” I smiled at him. I didn’t want to miss a minute of this surreal trip, even if it meant sleeping with my eyes open.
“Holly, put your seat back and sleep,” he said, his voice now stern and serious. Bossy Max was back.
I decided not to argue. I was tired. He told me we were hours from our destination. And it’s not like we could make out while he drove, and that’s what I really wanted for our adventure. I grumbled a little as I pressed the lever on the side of my seat and promptly passed out, lulled by the smooth motion of the car and the quiet music playing.
I dreamed that I was Lois Lane, floating down the rapids in Superman 2. When I looked up to the shore, sometimes I saw Max, sometimes I saw Christopher Reeve, sometimes I saw Robert Pattinson.
Or was it Christoph?
I felt myself returning to consciousness, my eyelids too heavy to open, but my mind starting to recognize the surroundings. I was in a car. With Max. We were driving somewhere, unknown to me, but a part of Max’s plan. I stretched, feeling the cramps in my neck and legs from sleeping in a car for who knows how many hours. The car was going slower, navigating side streets and off the freeway.
Max looked down at me and smiled. “We’re almost here, sleeping beauty.”
“How long was I out?” I asked.
I put the seat back up and tried to subtly wipe the drool that had collected on my cheek. I hope I wasn’t snoring the whole time, or worse yet, talking in my sleep.
“The whole drive,” he said. “I’m glad you got some rest. You’ll want to be awake for the fun we’re having tonight.”
I looked out the window as we pulled up to a huge building. Cars were everywhere, lined up to get into parking lots on every side of the intersection.
“Pe
psi Center? Wait, Max, are we..”
I didn’t finish the question because it was too ridiculous to even ask. This could not be happening. No, really, it couldn’t. This was the NBA Finals. This was Lebron Freaking James. There was no way Max had tickets to Nuggets vs. Heat game 2. How could he?
“We are. Courtside seats,” he said. He pulled two tickets off the console and handed me one. Who was this man? I screamed, bobbing up and down in the seat.
“Max, I’m a huge fan! Did you know? But how could you? We never talked about this?”
“I know plenty about you, Holly, and I know this will make you happy. I want to make you happy.”
“I can’t believe this!” I squealed.
We parked and started the long trek to the stadium. I was jumping and skipping and hanging on to the tickets like they might disappear if I wasn’t careful enough. Max smiled and laughed at my antics, and then he did it again. He grabbed my hand, and pulled me close for a kiss. We were in line to enter the stadium. I wanted this memory burned into my brain for all my life. This sexy, generous man, kissing me outside Pepsi Center. Surely I was dreaming.
He pulled back before the kiss intensified and leaned to whisper in my ear. “There’ll be more of that later, but now, it’s time for LeBron.” I gave him my megawatt smile, kissing his knuckles interlaced with my own.
“Thank you, Max, thank you so much. You don’t even know….”
“I would do anything to make you smile like that. I’m glad you’re happy. Come on, let’s go get some gear.”
After spending a small fortune on me at the pro shop, we headed to our seats. Despite my loyalty to Lebron, on this night, with my souvenirs coming from the pro shop at the Pepsi Center, I had to dress like a Nuggets fan, and I didn’t care. I found an old school Alex English jersey and held it up for Max to see.
“How funny!” Max said. “You’re an English teacher, and now you’ll have a jersey that says English.”
“Isn’t it perfect?” I said. “It doesn’t hurt that he’s also the greatest Nugget of all-time. Look how cool their uniforms used to be. I loved watching the Nuggets when I was a kid because they were dressed like rainbows.”
Holly and Her Naughty eReader Page 12
