by Stella Rhys
“Yeah,” I muttered, suddenly hit with a montage of all the times I’d heard Jeannie Maxwell yelling in her bedroom at her husband and sometimes Holland. “The hell happened to her, really?”
The question had blurted out before I could think twice about it, but it didn’t seem to faze Holland in the least. She didn’t even look up as she sprinkled berries onto the plates.
“Well. You know the story they tell.”
“‘Adam was a bad kid,’” I repeated, having heard the line several times from both Adam and his dad to explain Jeannie’s ways.
Judging from the wry smirk on Holland’s lips, she found it just as absurd and confounding as I had.
“Yep. Five words to sum up why I had to sacrifice all sense of normalcy as a kid,” she snorted, briefly disappearing behind the counter as she bent over to grab something out of one of the paper grocery bags. “And… all of my friends by junior year of high school,” she grunted distractedly before coming up with an enormous jug of maple syrup in her hand.
She was explaining now about why she had to buy that size. Something about it being the only thing available, but I wasn’t quite processing, because my mind had yet to move on from the topic she had just been talking about.
That whole thing that had happened to her in high school.
Having stayed so often at her house, I’d picked up on a lot about Holland over the years. Her family dynamics. Her day-to-day life. All her little personality quirks and habits, both good and bad. I had most of Holland Maxwell’s puzzle pieces.
But this had always been one of the ones I’d been missing.
Something happened to her during her junior year. I knew that. I knew that things got tough at school, because her dad asked Adam to come home to visit more often. To call here and there. He said vaguely that there was trouble with friends. But Adam never asked what exactly happened, and I’d never thought it was my business to bring it up if he didn’t. Beyond everything else going on in my own life, I was in my last year of law school, and I’d told myself it was better off if I didn’t know or get invested.
The advice probably still held true today. The wise thing to do right now would be to refrain from feeding my curiosity.
But I couldn’t be bothered with that this morning.
“Can I ask what happened your junior year?” The question left my lips before I could stop it, making Holland’s eyes go so wide with surprise that I followed up with, “You don’t have to answer if you’re not comfortable.”
“No, it’s… okay,” she replied genuinely, though she was still staring somewhat stunned at me. “I’m not… not comfortable. It’s just Adam never even asked. So I guess I’m surprised you want to know.”
I was too.
I’d gone a long time being content with the picture I had of Holland Maxwell. It was by no means complete, but it was clear enough, so I never wondered at length about the missing puzzle pieces. They had never really bothered me. Until now.
“Okay, so I will happily go into that mess,” she started humorously before leaning across the counter to place my elaborately plated French toast in front of me. “But you have to take a bite of this first, because it’s still warm and it’s really good and it’s technically your birthday gift from me.”
I smiled at the look on her face—confidence mixed with excitement as she watched me take a bite.
And pause immediately, because holy shit.
I looked up at her so fast she snorted, biting her grin back as I kept my eyes on her through my second bite, trying to figure out what was so good about what I was tasting. “You changed something,” I finally said.
“Mm-hm. Still exactly the same and yet completely different, right?”
“Exactly. What did you add?”
“It’s a secret,” she grinned. “And by that I mean the answer is right in front of you. You just have to look.”
I narrowed my eyes, squinting at her then my plate. But when I looked back at her, she laughed.
“It’s okay, don’t hurt yourself,” she said, reveling in the dry look I shot her as she folded her arms and leaned against the counter. “Anyway. Getting into the story of junior year…” she started, sounding much brighter than I would have expected given the topic. “As you may know, my mom was a bit of a smotherer.”
“In an understatement.”
“Mm-hm. I definitely spent a lot of my teenaged years begging her for chances to do the same things my friends and classmates were doing. Like going to movies without parental supervision. Halloween parties. Dances. She said no to all of it, obviously, and by the end of sophomore year, I had my best friend Kelsey and her mom helping me beg my mom to let me do something special, because everyone in town knew how tight a leash she kept me on,” she said, reminding me of something Adam had once told me—that their neighbors used to call her Rapunzel for how seldom Jeannie let her out of the house.
Christ. I shook my head with fresh disbelief of her mother as Holland went on.
“So, since our family had been close to the Shaffers for like, ten years, and Mom actually liked Kelsey’s mom, we finally wore her down, and she agreed to do a mother daughter cruise with them to the Bahamas. And me, Kelsey, and Kelsey’s mom were so excited for months, but then the time came for the trip and Mom came down with some stomach bug, so she said we couldn’t go. But Dad had already paid for it so he convinced her it’d be fine. That Kelsey’s mom was just as strict. That she’d take good care of me.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Somehow I doubt that Kelsey’s mom was just as strict.”
“Oh, Kelsey’s mom wasn’t strict at all,” Holland snorted. “She just used to pretend she agreed with all my mom’s ranting and raving, because that was the easy thing to do. But really, she was like everyone else in town. Thought my mom was over-the-top. Bit of a nut. She raised Kelsey with tons of freedom, so when we got on the cruise, she let us room alone and she didn’t check on us after bedtime, so of course, Kelsey decided to go out one night and meet the other young kids on the ship that we’d seen around…” Holland trailed off, cringing at herself for a second as she used her fork to cut a piece of her toast. “And I was super nervous, but I just felt like this was my one and only chance to be like every other girl my age. So basically, despite my very high discomfort levels, I followed whatever Kelsey did that night. When Kelsey flirted with a boy, I flirted with his friend. When Kelsey went to make out with the boy, I went to make out with mine. But once we were alone, it just… escalated. Fast. To a point where I couldn’t just go along with it anymore…”
She trailed off again, suddenly looking down at my chest and my arms, alerting me to the fact that my every muscle had gone rigid.
“You look like you’re going to punch a wall,” she frowned.
“I’m not. What did he do?” I asked.
“It’s not what you think,” she assured me. “He… put his fingers inside me. I yelled for him to stop, Kelsey came running, and then it was over,” she said hastily. But then she tilted her head with a bit of a wry look. “Well. I guess that was actually just the beginning.”
“Your mom found out,” I presumed.
She winced and nodded. “I was so off when I got home. And I was a terrible liar, so she knew something happened. And she went looking for my diary while I was in the shower.”
Of course she did. “I take it she went a little crazy?” I guessed as Holland popped a blueberry in her mouth.
She shook her head, taking her time to chew and swallow before she answered. “Fucking nuclear.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well.” Holland straightened up and took a deep breath, as if this part of the story took a little more out of her. “She started by telling everyone she could about what happened. Like it wouldn’t humiliate me. She was ‘warning them,’ she said. She even went to the school about it. Wanted them to know ‘what kind of person’ Kelsey’s mom was, since she was involved with all the school events and volunteering. She
sent emails. Literally sent emails detailing what happened to me on my summer vacation. To all the parents she knew,” she said, looking up at my reaction, which I assumed was the facial equivalent of Jesus fuck because she nodded as if to say yeah. “She wanted everyone to see Kelsey’s mom as a criminal. She did everything short of going door to door with flyers about how terrible the Shaffers were. Throwing around words like ‘child abuse.’ She picked me up from school one day and screamed at Kelsey in front of all our friends.”
With the last sentence, she took a pause, the memory clearly potent enough to give her a thorough shudder. But when the moment passed, she took a deep breath and went on.
“Kelsey stopped talking to me, obviously. Her mom too. Everyone treated me like a pariah. Parents, teachers, neighbors. People would literally only talk to me if they had to, for as many words as they needed to. They didn’t want to risk saying the wrong thing to me and having to deal with my mom. Kind of like Dad and Adam on a daily basis,” Holland snorted, making me frown despite the fact that she seemed genuinely entertained by the connection she made just now. “Anyway, Mom doubled down on her protectiveness after that, and I went the rest of high school without any friends,” she finished with a bitter laugh—or what I assumed was a bitter laugh, though it didn’t sound as bitter as I’d expect. Taking a bite of her toast, Holland looked at me as she chewed, waiting till she swallowed before asking, “What?”
Stunned, I blinked, needing a second to gather my thoughts and figure out which of my many reactions I wanted to express first.
“That’s… fucking rough, Holland,” I finally said, feeling like I’d had the wind knocked out of me, because I was still reeling myself from the levels of sheer self-absorbed insanity that Jeannie Maxwell could apparently reach. I’d spent years witnessing her selfish narcissism, but this had to be the worst case of her treating her daughter like a prop rather than an actual human being.
Rubbing my jaw, I tugged on my lower lip, letting the profanity for Jeannie pass before I spoke again.
“Your mother’s a piece of work,” I finally said, making Holland snort like she knew I had more colorful words in mind. “And I don’t know if I’m more confused or impressed that you can laugh as you tell this story.”
She cracked a smile. “Yeah, well. It was miserable and it was my life for so long that I didn’t think it would ever end, but it did. It’s over now. And I’m just thankful for that,” she said earnestly. “Obviously, I wish I could know everything that happened in my family before I was born. What exactly Adam did to drive my mom this level of crazy. But in twenty-two years, no one’s given me anything close to the full story and I’ve learned that if you can’t get closure from others, you just have to find it within yourself. Some way, somehow.”
My eyebrows lifted at her maturity, and I was quiet for a moment as I felt an array of ways. Proud. Perplexed. I admired Holland’s strength and her sheer force of will. Though admittedly, I didn’t understand it.
Probably because I’d foregone the idea of getting closure in my own life a long time ago. It was something I knew I’d live forever without. But I wasn’t quite as at peace with it like she was.
“You’re looking at me like I’m crazy,” Holland finally said, making me laugh.
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” I said honestly. “I’m just… amazed that you don’t hold resentment for her.”
“Oh, I do. But I don’t carry it with me on a day-to-day basis anymore. It’s just constant pain that way, and the fact of the matter is that you can’t control what other people do. You can only control how you react, and I don’t want to spend any more time reacting with hurt and anger, and feeling like this is unfair and I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t. But I don’t deserve to keep torturing myself either. To keep waiting for answers. I’m never gonna get them, and if there’s any lesson I’ve learned it’s that life is really precious,” she said with a passion so contagious I could feel it in my bones, despite the fact that at my core, I disagreed with her. “I only get one, and I just want to live it every day to the fullest. You know?”
She said that to me a lot. You know? And I never knew. But this time, thanks to the little sparkle in her eyes and that perfect little grin on her lips, I wished I did.
She laughed as I looked at her.
“Yeah… you think I’m crazy,” she nodded.
“Only a little,” I lied for the fun of it.
“Well, If you keep looking at me like that, you can think I’m crazy all you want,” she smirked, her eyes still glimmering as our gazes stayed locked for a few moments of peace that I ruined with a question I didn’t even realize was brewing in my head.
“How did you get there?”
“Where?”
I stared, taking a moment to figure out what the hell I was even talking about. “The place where you weren’t angry anymore,” I finally said.
She smiled as if to say gotcha. “Me time,” she answered, and so smugly I had to laugh. “I mean it. My ritual. My things. Making a habit of it. I know I sound like an informercial, but it works,” she said. “I mean, yes, it’s definitely hard to get to this place, but you owe it to yourself. Just so you can have a fighting chance at being happy. You know?”
I nodded, once again struck by those two words.
They were seemingly innocent, but the way she said them this time made me feel like she was talking to me. About me.
And suddenly, I considered that she had pieces to my puzzle too. That she’d overheard things growing up. Knew more about me than I ever would’ve thought. And considering how vigilantly I guarded my past from almost everyone I knew, I should’ve been displeased. Unhappy about this.
But I wasn’t feeling any of the things I was supposed to feel today.
Including a need to go to work. To do the things I normally did on Sundays.
I hadn’t necessarily known I’d be taking the entire weekend after flying back from Boston yesterday morning, but as Holland and I cleaned up the kitchen after breakfast—as she whipped off her juice-soaked T-shirt and forced me to watch her rinse dishes in just her panties—I decided to say fuck it and let myself keep enjoying the day. I took work calls when they came, but I found myself unable to give quite as many fucks as usual, and I knew why that was.
Because slowly but surely, Holland Maxwell was unraveling me.
And the only thing more concerning than that was the fact that I was powerless to stop it.
22
HOLLAND
I didn’t have work clothes to change into, so I wound up going home from Iain’s on Sunday night.
Which was hard.
Because since the moment he’d surprised me at the bar to the moment he’d said bye to me last night—kissing me so deeply against the wall that the elevator had opened and closed and left without me—the weekend had felt like a whirlwind within a whirlwind. A dream within a dream that I needed at least another day to recover from. Just the thought of having to wake up in the morning and get on the subway to go to work made me whine to myself while alone in my apartment.
I wasn’t quite ready to return to reality.
But as if the universe had been looking out for me, the office was in party mode when I got in on Monday.
At least my department was, because apparently my boss, Freya, was transferring to the Minx headquarters in Milan in two weeks, which meant it was celebration time. Despite the fact that it was 9AM, the store design team snuck into the conference room where we secretly popped two bottles and drank to Freya while the copy, design and print departments continued working outside.
It was a fun and inspiring celebration full of long, sometimes emotional toasts, but once it all died down and everyone fell into individual chatter, I found the time to quietly swoon over Iain by revisiting the two-word text he sent me this morning.
Reheats well.
Accompanied by a picture of my French toast on his kitchen counter.
He had even topped it with some berri
es and the maple syrup I left with him, which made my heart flutter, because sure, he did staunchly refuse to see the merit in regular weekends and me time, but at least he was taking a moment from his morning to treat himself to my labor of love—which hopefully, felt like a bit of a sweet escape before he started his very busy day of work.
I was still smiling to myself as I reread the texts I sent back.
ME: Perfect way to start the morning! But bad news. I’ve decided that birthday toast doesn’t actually count as celebrating your birthday
ME: Mostly because I just thought of a great idea for your actual birthday this weekend (P.S you should take off this weekend)
It had been sent hours ago, before I even got into work.
He’d yet to text back, but I didn’t take offense since I knew the week he had ahead of him. He’d dubbed it “hell week,” and it apparently consisted of tons of meeting and fires to put out, thanks partly to some endorsement deal drama, but mostly to trade deadline drama. But there was also something about a “very important project” he’d been working toward for over a year now.
Basically, he was swamped. So swamped that we weren’t even scheduled to see each other again till Wednesday, which sucked, but I comforted myself by knowing that I could always sext him to ensure that he was beyond ready for our time together.
“Ugh. How cute is this one?” Freya asked the team, nudging me with her elbow before tossing back the last of her champagne. “She’s got a little fling going on with a boy,” she winked to the rest of the table, making me laugh to myself at the word “boy.”
And as everyone prodded me for details and offered their even steeper senior employee discount to buy some new lingerie—which I happily accepted—I found myself getting so swept up in the conversation that of course, my subconscious forced me to pump the brakes for a second.
Specifically with the memory of an odd moment last night.
I had tried to ignore it by telling myself I had no right to be upset, because I wasn’t dating Iain. As much as I’d consider it—okay, be totally into it—we had never even agreed to sleep with only each other.
