by Tracy Ewens
She was going to be sick if she didn’t stop. She’d stopped thinking about all of this years ago for a reason because when she allowed any of it in, she realized she was a monster.
Hollis parked on the dirt road behind Vern’s Crabs and walked toward the marina. Most of the boats were already out for the day and the seagulls began circling in anticipation of visitors. The tears had let up as she finished shoving each moment back where it belonged, but her heart kept telling her to get back in the car and crawl back into bed with him. She had never been more full of feeling and empty at the same time. Hollis wiped her eyes and then felt him at her back.
“Is that a Mercedes?”
Somehow, often when she was so mad and didn’t want him to, Matt managed to make her laugh. She looked over her shoulder. He kissed her on the top of her head and sat next to her on the bench.
She’d been crying, and Matt didn’t know how to make the feelings racing through him stop. When she’d snuck out of bed, he had let her go, once again not knowing why she was leaving and still no closer on how to make her stay. They sat on the bench side by side and watched the sun greet the harbor.
“Talk to me, Holls,” he said at last, his voice sounding scratchy even to his own ears.
“I would have had an abortion.”
After all the time they’d spent together, not much that Hollis said set him back on his heels, but that did. They hadn’t talked about her pregnancy except for the early morning when she took the test, a few cursory conversations before she left, and a less than five-minute conversation after she’d had a miscarriage. They’d never discussed what they were going to do now that she was pregnant. He’d intended to ask her to marry him then spend the rest of his life with her, making babies and feeling like the luckiest man ever.
Hollis had different plans and three weeks after they’d taken the test, so had Mother Nature. Matt knew it was selfish, but he’d been disappointed when she’d called. He should have been relieved. They were young and had no business having a baby. They would never have planned to have a child while still in school, Hollis certainly would not have. But when that pink cross appeared in the small window of the test all three times, Matt would have never said it to her stricken face, but part of him had been excited. Hollis was his person, there was not a doubt in his mind. He saw the pregnancy as simply speeding up the inevitable while Hollis saw it as— hell, he had no idea how she felt back then, but the look on her face now suggested he was about to find out.
“Okay. I’m not sure you know that for sure, but okay.” Matt tried to sound unfazed.
“I do know. I researched clinics and—” She started to cry and right when he thought she’d broken his heart into hundreds of pieces, she found some random piece still intact and broke that.
“This is another hypothetical. What, are you going to blame yourself for decisions you might have made, but didn’t? You need more guilt or misery? Why?”
Nothing. She sat next to him and sobbed. He wanted to put his arm around her, comfort her, but he knew Hollis all too well. She didn’t want his pity or his comfort, not right now anyway. She was in “give me some space while I figure this out” mode. He’d first seen this side of her when they were eleven years old and her dog’s paw was caught in some wire. By the time Matt had run home and returned with wire clippers, she was sitting with Pilot, petting him and talking to him. He’d presented the wire cutters to her as if he had saved the day, only to have her brush them away. For the next hour, he sat shifting the cutters from one hand to the other while she carefully unwrapped Pilot from a snarl of wire with no visible beginning or end. She patiently lifted, bent, and twisted Pilot free and was rewarded with a big kiss across her face before he ran off to find trouble again.
His eleven-year-old mind hadn’t known it yet, but that one moment said so much about the woman she would become. Hollis Jeffries didn’t want the easy way or to be rescued. She wanted space to make her way, to find an answer that was true for her. He’d thought it cool at the time, fascinating as they became older and grew into adults, but eventually, he realized that in giving her that space, in letting “Hollis be Hollis,” as her father often said, there somehow wasn’t any room at all. Not for him anyway.
Hollis stopped crying, sniffled, and wiped her eyes. “I should have asked you. At least listened to your feelings, and I didn’t. I don’t know, there were too many things in my head and all I knew was I wanted it to all go away.”
“And it did, all on its own. Nature, God, whatever you want to call it, had a different plan. I don’t know why that’s not enough for you. What, are you pissed off you didn’t get to make the decision?”
“Yes.”
Matt turned to meet her eyes. “Seriously?”
She nodded. “I think that’s part of it. Someone or something snatched that choice away from me and I felt powerless.”
“Welcome to the human experience, Holls. I mean there’s all sorts of crap we have no control over, didn’t you know that?”
“Not when I was that age.”
They stared out over the water, the street behind them silent except for the squawk of the occasional seagull.
“I didn’t want any of it after I… lost it.”
“I know.”
“How could I have turned like that? Turned away from something that felt like everything.”
“You were scared.”
“Were you scared?”
“No, but I didn’t have as many things I needed to do. My life plan was a little less ambitious.”
Hollis nodded.
“And, I wasn’t the one who was pregnant. It was our baby, but it was your body. I was happy. I wanted to marry you anyway at that point, so moving that up was no big deal for me.”
She turned to him.
“Yeah, I know I had no clue how to live that life so young, but I’m telling you how I felt at the time. I guess I see how it’s different, though. I could still do what I wanted and come home to a sweet baby. You would have had to go through the pregnancy, give birth to her. It wasn’t part of your life plan, and that scared you. I get that now.”
“Her?” Pain filled her eyes.
“I don’t know why, but when I think about the pregnancy, it’s a her. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. I never thought about it. ‘It.’ I guess the baby was an ‘it’ to me. What is wrong with me?”
“Nothing. You were young. We both were and at the same time, I thought having a baby would be fun. You saw it as a trap. Maybe we were both wrong. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle.”
She took a deep breath, and he hoped she felt the same lift he was feeling. It helped that they could talk about it now, that almost like a release valve, the ache was eased by the truth.
“Why didn’t your marriage work?” Hollis asked.
Matt knew then that she must feel some relief because her thoughts were moving on. His answer was something he’d only recently figured out.
“Because I was broken. I had no business getting married.”
“That’s insightful.”
Matt laughed and when Hollis turned to him, her smile almost reached her blotchy and somehow still stunning eyes.
“Yeah, well I realized since you had an action plan and all that, I should probably figure my life out too.”
They sat listening to the water lap against the scattered boats and in the spirit of honesty and huge mistakes, Matt let the memory in as he attempted to explain to Hollis where his marriage went wrong without sharing with her exactly what his “programming job” was. There was no point in sharing that piece of his success while she was at such a low point.
Matt married Stacey Kempley the week after he turned twenty-five. When he quit Stanford, he found a job with a company called Four Blades. Their logo was four green bars like blades of grass. He was a zombie back then, but it was nice to be out and free from the classroom. He’d convinced himself that the outpaced coding he was learning at school was g
oing to be all but obsolete by the time he graduated and tried to find a job. Leaving, moving to Silicon Valley, the great Oz of the tech world, would put him on the fast track. And he supposed he was lucky because it did.
Hindsight tended to be smarter and more critical. Matt saw now what he’d been doing. As long as he kept moving, he could fix it all, or so he thought. Stacey was a year older than him, and she worked in implementation. Four Blades mainly developed back-office applications, so she brought new products on board and trained client staff. On their first date, she gave him a slice of banana bread she’d made.
“I made too many, so I thought you might want one,” she’d said when she handed him the block wrapped in tin foil.
She had two older brothers, parents were divorced, and she loved sports. She was one of the kindest people he had ever known. He said that when she told him she wanted to write their own vows.
“Stacey is the kindest woman I’ve ever known.” And like that, he’d stood in front of their family and friends and told her she was… kind. When they separated, her brother had told him he was a “complete tool.” He’d been right.
When Matt had asked her to marry him, it was almost an afterthought. They had been to Coronado Island with her parents and on the flight home, she had been talking about houses. Flipping through a magazine and telling him she wanted a house with a wraparound porch and lots of grass for kids. Three. She wanted three kids and a porch. When the captain turned off the “fasten seatbelt” sign, Matt had twisted his drink straw into a ring and dropped to one knee in the aisle. He’d mumbled something about getting her that house, and the entire plane cheered and the flight attendant bought them both another drink. The story was told over and over again at parties, when they went to drinks with friends, and anytime Matt was introduced to another new family member.
“So romantic.” That was the town response and each time, his stomach turned. He’d been drunk and stupid, but they couldn’t see that. Eight months later he had bought her a proper engagement ring and married her at a country club in the Pacific Palisades. Matt left his job and struck out on his own with Bradley Parker. They’d met at Stanford, reconnected through a mutual friend of Stacey’s, and together they developed “Call Ahead,” an app that allowed customers to preorder coffee shop drinks and pastries. Basically, anything the store offered could be selected on their app, sent to the store, and would be ready for pickup when the person arrived. They sold it to Starbucks for millions right around the time Stacey started talking about wanting to have a baby.
He and Bradley formed Pilot Programs two months after the sale, and that was the beginning of the end. Matt was never home. The morning Stacey left her wedding ring on their bathroom counter, Matt had had an early meeting. He had not even noticed it was there until he arrived home sometime in the wee hours of the next morning and she was gone. Her trip back to pack up the rest of her things had ended in an argument and before she slammed the door, she said, “You never loved me!” and she had been right. Stacey was the kindest woman he had ever met; Matt simply didn’t have a heart to give her in return.
When he was finished giving Hollis the short version, they sat listening to the water lap against the shore and the rhythmic slapping of loose rigging against the boat masts bobbing in the harbor.
“Huh, well it would be silly for me to say I’m sorry you’re divorced, but I will say that I’m sorry you had to go through that. I guess it was your own doing and at the same time she should have—”
“Holls?”
“Yes.”
Matt stood up and took her hand. “I think we’ve covered enough for one morning.”
“Are you hungry?”
Matt nodded, opening the door of his car. “You?”
“Yes.” Hollis walked to her car.
“You could come with me and we can get your car later.” Matt smiled because suddenly standing in an empty parking lot with two cars felt like one of the overarching metaphors his English teacher tried to explain when they read Hemingway his senior year in high school.
“How about I drive my car now and meet you at Mitch’s for cinnamon buns?”
“Jesus, can you say cinnamon buns more often? That was sexy.”
Hollis laughed and shook her head. “Get in your car, Locke-ness.”
“You should come with me. I bet you I’ll get there before you.”
“Oh, you’re on.” Hollis opened her door.
“Hey, Holls.”
She looked up.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too. I’ll still beat you to Mitch’s, but I love you.”
Matt laughed and jumped in his car. Hollis pulled out first but pulled into Mitch’s last.
She bought breakfast.
Chapter Twenty-One
After another Tuesday morning teleconference during which yet another consultant droned on about the dire situation Pretty Boys had found themselves in, Hollis felt the end was near. She’d called Zeke, who had returned from Mexico, and again listened to his voice mail, if the greeting that played in her ear even qualified as voice mail.
“If you’re not plugged in, you don’t count.” That was all it said and then a beep. Jesus Christ, she should simply march right into Dobbins and declare she’d invested millions of their dollars in a figment of everyone’s imagination. There was no way this guy was a functioning adult who went to the grocery store and picked up his dry cleaning like the rest of the world. He was a mirage and a good one at that, because in less than two weeks he was going to destroy her, bring her career to a screeching halt, and embarrass her beyond what she thought imaginable a few months ago. This was a train wreck. It was a matter of time now and she needed to start preparing for impact.
She was in her swimsuit because prior to the “emergency meeting” text she received, she had planned on asking Matt if he wanted to try the paddleboard yoga. After the meeting, she needed a nap, so she crashed on the couch outside her uncle’s office while he finished scanning his receipts. Hollis didn’t know how long she’d been asleep when she woke up with her face smushed against one of the perfumed-over-mildew cushions, but she rolled onto her back. Half-asleep, she found herself in a memory so vivid it was as if she were that person again—young and fearless.
Her parents bought her a used white Honda for her sixteenth birthday. She’d wanted a Jeep, but she learned quickly that any car was better than no car. The Honda brought her the one thing she could recall craving since birth—independence. In the flash of blowing out candles and trip to the DMV, Hollis was no longer at the mercy of the schedule or the whim of someone else. She’d become her own person, able to go her own way—that’s how she saw it. Short of landing her first job at Dairy Queen, her Honda was “that moment.”
Once Hollis started making money and could go where she wanted to, her mind began spinning with endless possibilities. As she grew older, it slowed a little bit, but for the most part, she’d chased off nearly every boyfriend she’d ever had because like something battery operated, Hollis didn’t slow down. She’d wanted to make her way, make her parents proud for as far back as her memories could take her. She’d never been sure if the activities she chose were hers, or cleverly planted by her parents, but the day Hollis walked on the Stanford campus, none of it mattered. In her eyes, she had arrived. Dipping cones while her friends were at the beach and driving that Honda to the library or guest lectures even after the air conditioning went out had all paid off. She had followed the rules and been given the cookie, the gold star.
She and Matt had dated on and off throughout high school, but most of their time together was summertime at the cove. Even though they both lived in the San Francisco area, Matt lived in the city and Hollis lived in the suburbs. She went to a private high school and he went to public. Hollis had gone to one of his proms but missed her own because she was in Washington DC that weekend for a competition with DECA. They were both busy even though Matt never came across as much more than casual. Ho
llis took two prep classes and scored 1520 out of 1600 on her SAT the first time. She graduated from high school a semester early and was accepted to Stanford. Matt took the SAT twice, scored less than 1300 on the second try, but wrote an incredible essay and joined her at Stanford the following semester.
Hollis was happy they had both been accepted but would later realize she resented Matt getting the same cookie she did for less work. She spent a few months with a therapist after the miscarriage dissecting and, for the most part, dismantling what the therapist coined “the cookie theory.”
“There are no guarantees in life,” she’d said. “Just because you follow all the rules, you can’t expect to be given this cookie. Life doesn’t work that way.”
At the time, Hollis thought that sucked, but it had been years now and she was an adult, one who rarely craved cookies anymore.
Hollis sat up, her neck sweating from the afternoon sun, and checked her phone. It was after one and she’d slept for almost two hours. The cushions left a maze of marks on her bare legs. She went to check on Mitch’s progress and found him sitting in his standard position, legs propped up with the scanner on his knees as he fed it narrow strips of paper.
As she entered, he looked over his glasses at her. “Thank God, someone has come to rescue me. Is it lunchtime?” His chair let out a moan as he set the scanner on the desk, brought his feet to the ground, and stood before Hollis had a chance to answer. He was still wearing red-white-and-blue shorts even though the Fourth of July had come and gone last week.