When I was twenty-one, and only a few short months before I met Nicholas, I ended up selling that book on Ebay for a whopping five hundred bucks (half of what it was worth) so we could make rent.
I think about that book every now and then. Wonder if it’s stuck on some snooty collector’s shelf, maybe wrapped in plastic, untouched and unread, worshipped from afar. Does the person who owns it now only care about it because of what they think it’s worth? Or do they truly understand its words, Emily Dickenson’s prose (I felt a funeral, in my brain)?
I wonder about this. Every now and then.
I wish—
Fuck.
It’s Gus’s face, his black and white freckled mug, starting up at me from the paper. I close my eyes, but when I open them, he’s still there, grinning his dopey grin. And next to his side is a little girl, with one of those smiley face stickers propped over her head for privacy. Two pigtails stick out, though, which makes what’s supposed to be innocent seem creepy as hell. The caption below the pair reads: Lost or Stolen Dog. Sizable reward promised and no questions asked. We just want our boy home. Responds to the name Gus.
Damn it. His slack-ass owners took out an ad. The dumbasses splurged for ad space in the Duluth News Tribune, yet they couldn’t spring for an actual fucking fence?
People! Unbelievable.
I rip out the incriminating page and crumple it between my fists. Once it’s nothing but a compact ball, I hop up, pace for a bit, and finally toss it in the trash. Then, looking around the kitchen, my eyes settle on the coffee maker. Lifting the lid, I grab the filter full of mushy grinds and dump it on top of the garbage. The moist, pulpy mess melds with the rumpled piece of newsprint, making it unreadable.
Gus pads into the room, senses my mood, and whimpers in concern.
“That,” I say, reaching into the cookie jar that Ford bought specifically for my canine charge, “was a close one.” Pulling out a peanut butter biscuit, I toss it in the air. The dog catches it, swallowing the entire thing in one bite.
When he looks at me for another, I slap the lid closed and brush by him.
“Jesus, Gus. Don’t be such an animal.”
The house is quiet. Lonely. So I pull the kid’s panda out from behind my pillow and curl up with it, press my nose into its fur.
It’s losing its Hollis smell.
I really need to fix that.
Marla’s texts keep coming in, one after another after another, and with each one, my irritation flares just a bit more. Despite my efforts to ignore them, the constant notifications vibrate through my phone and, as a result, through me, buzzing in my brain like a hornet’s nest.
I didn’t talk to her much after the incident yesterday. The one where I caved to a stupid higher power and rescued her sorry ass from drowning. I mean, the bitch lost me a kayak. And while that doesn’t seem like much (I can always buy another one) it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. Granted, she did serve a purpose; from the few texts I did read, she’s beside herself with worry. Not about me, though. No, not about me or my kayak or the fact that she frolics around like she’s the only goddamn person in the world, constantly making messes that others have to clean up.
Nope. None of that.
Marla is stressed about her marriage. Because, unsurprisingly, Hollis is pissed the fuck off.
And no longer is she a wishy-washy rag with no backbone. This Marla, the Marla of the past twenty-four hours, is demanding. Accusing. Downright bitchy. She wants to know what Hollis and I talked about that night on the phone, wants to know exactly what I told her husband word-for-word.
Because she’s upset, for crying out loud. And her life is falling apart.
Well, cry me a fucking river.
And I couldn’t care less. I’m done with her, have taken everything I needed from our so-called friendship. All that’s left to do now is take back what’s mine.
And realizing this, I pick up my phone and type:
You got caught in a lie, bitch. Your time’s up.
There. That should do it.
I drop the phone on the nightstand and curl back up with the bear. As much as I’m ready to reveal myself to Hollis (I am, I am, I swear I am) there’s a part of me that’s…scared.
Scared of what he’ll say, of what he’ll do.
I mean, I doubt very much he’ll respond to me the way Andy did to Marla. But what…what if he does? It’s a fear that keeps needling away at my confidence, at my image of our picture-perfect reunion. That night has been stuck in my head since it happened: the way Andy’s face shifted when he saw Marla, the undiluted hate that flared in his eyes, flooded his gaze. And actually, now that I think about it, it wasn’t hate…or it wasn’t just hate. It was worse than that; it was outright disgust. Whatever love the man felt for Marla in the past, it couldn’t break through the unfiltered abhorrence he felt for her now.
But that’s not me and Hollis.
It’s not.
It’s not.
It’s—
A shrill jingle at my back interrupts my childish chant, makes my muscles jerk in shock. Flipping over, I groan, annoyed that Marla has stepped up her game and is now harassing me with phone calls instead of mere texts. I don’t even look at the screen before I answer, because there are only three people in the world who could be calling, and with Ford up north for a shoot and Nicholas’s preferred means of communicating short and to-the-point texts, Marla’s the only one left.
I hit speaker, roll on to my back, and let loose. “Look, Marla. You made this mess, and whatever you’re dealing with now is not my problem. So leave me the fuck alone.”
There’s a pause, and in the beat of a breath, right when I’m about to hit end call, I hear, “Leave you alone? Now Becca…That’s the very last thing I want to do.”
The voice I hear is the last one I was expecting.
It’s deep, and rich, and I’d know it anywhere.
Hollis.
Stray twigs snapped underfoot like bone, and leaves crackled beneath her heels like broken cartilage. Yet still she ran for him, towards him, despite the monster he had become. Because they were eternal, and if he was going to succumb to the night, so would she.
— November’s Night, Hollis Thatcher
Hollis defied his parents every chance he got. He hated being rich almost as much as I hated being poor. Whenever he visited our tiny house with the leaky roof and creaky floors, he’d walked around with a weird smirk on his face. But it wasn’t arrogance (Hollis never judged me based on my superficial worth). Mostly, and strangely, it was an expression of respect. I only ever allowed him inside when my brother and sister were gone, and when my mom was too stoned to leave her bedroom. And even then, I’d keep the visit brief, hurrying through whatever task was making me late for our date: hair, makeup…cleaning up vomit from my mother or throwing in yet another load of laundry so my siblings would have clean clothes for school. (Sure, we were the poor kids, but I’d be damned if we were the dirty ones, too.)
Hollis liked to see every side of a story, and I suppose my living conditions gave him a glimpse into another world, provided him with a perspective he didn’t have. He’d stroll through the place while I finished what needed to be finished, sometimes kicking back in the ratty recliner or popping his head into my brother’s and sister’s rooms to snoop. It was almost like he was taking notes, jotting down details on the notebook of his brain, burning the surroundings into his memory so he could write about them later.