by Paula Stokes
“Is that why you’re only eating salads at school?”
“Yeah. It’s a killer dress. I want to look good in it.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Good for who?”
“For whom,” she corrects. Then she grins and adds, “For me, of course.” She points at the next dresses. “Worst-dressed time!”
We sip into the second dresses, trying not to laugh at how ridiculous we look. Then we put on the matching dresses, which really do flatter both of us.
“We are gorgeous,” Julia declares.
“We are,” I agree, grabbing my phone and snapping a picture of the two of us in the mirror.
“Should we actually shop for other people now?” she asks.
I let out a huge sigh. “I guess . . . if we have to.”
After we leave Red Carpet, Julia drags me from the Nike store to the North Face store to the Columbia store, presumably to look for fleece gloves for her mom and “anything cool” for her dad. But it seems like in every store Julia starts out shopping for others and then gradually reverts to shopping for herself. When I see her striding toward the Columbia fitting rooms with an armful of workout pants and several colorful fleece tops, I flop down in a nearby chair and pull my phone out of my purse. This might take a while.
I tap my passcode into the screen. At some point I missed another text from Holden.
Holden: Hey. My mom’s going to be on patrol all night. Wanna come by?
Me: Why?
Holden: Er, do you want me to paint you a picture? ;)
Me: Don’t you think with everything going on, that’s probably a bad idea right now?
Holden: It was a bad idea the first time, but that didn’t stop us, did it?
I don’t respond right away. The first time Holden and I hooked up, it was sort of an accident. Well, it definitely wasn’t planned. I’d developed an awkward crush on him after I got to know him in Art Appreciation class at the start of junior year, but I convinced myself it was just a physical thing. Back then Luke was still around and I was still delusional enough to think we were going to live happily ever after. I wasn’t going to let the new kid in town mess that up. Hormones, whatever. I could handle it. Until Luke went away. Until Julia left for the summer. Until the night I couldn’t.
My mom was spending a few days as an inpatient at Tillamook General to get one of her chemo treatments back in early July when Holden ran into me walking Betsy along the beach. He and Julia had been dating since April and the three of us had hung out together multiple times. After Julia left, Holden and I had continued hanging out, though he never showed any indication he was aware of my feelings for him. I remember coiling Betsy’s leash around my palm that day while we made small talk for a few minutes. Nice day. Works sucks. Et cetera.
But then Holden reached out and touched my arm. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“My mom,” I said. The tears came from nowhere. It was like he’d snapped one of my secret inner pieces into place.
He knew my mom had cancer, that she was going to have surgery in a couple of weeks, but I never brought up the way her illness made me feel around him or Julia. I never talked about worrying obsessively that she wouldn’t get better or the way I sometimes cried in my sleep. It felt selfish for me to be such an emotional mess when my mom was keeping it together and she was the one who was actually sick. Holden didn’t even ask for details. He just wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into a hug. That was the first time I’d ever been close enough to him to smell him, that mix of deodorant, laundry detergent, and paint.
When I managed to quit crying, I tried to explain. “She’s okay. She’s just staying a couple nights in Tillamook for some chemo. But every time she goes to the hospital I feel like maybe this is the time she won’t come home.”
Holden petted my hair. “That must be so scary. I wish I knew what to say to make it better.”
“Honestly, just the fact that you’re listening makes it a little better. I normally don’t talk about this stuff with anyone, not even Julia.”
“Why not?”
I turned away from him, looked out at the ocean. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. The more serious something is, the harder it is for me to confide in anyone about it.”
“People don’t normally talk to me about serious stuff either. I mean, sometimes they do, but usually it’s just shit that doesn’t matter.”
I nodded, thinking again of my inner pieces. I could almost feel them clicking together, filling up that gap. “It’s hard to be real, to be honest. But there’s something about you that makes it a little easier.”
“Well, if you figure out what it is, let me know so I can avoid more of these awkward encounters.” Holden laughed at the look on my face. “Kidding. I’m not a total ass, I swear.”
He invited me to a Fourth of July party that was being thrown by a girl a year older than us, who lived in one of the biggest houses on Puffin Hill. Neither of us really wanted to go, but there’s not a lot to do in Three Rocks and we knew the alcohol would be flowing, so we figured it would take my mind off things.
When we got there, the house was thick with smoke and the music was cranked so loud that the floor was vibrating. I made an immediate move toward the deck at the back out the house. The sun was setting over the ocean, and I pulled out my phone to take a couple of pictures.
Holden grabbed a beer from a cooler in the kitchen and met me outside. As he held the bottle out in my direction, I turned and snapped a photo of him. It was candid, no warning. His lips were pursed in a funny way and his hair stuck up like a rooster’s feathers in the breeze. He made me show it to him and talked shit about what a bad picture it was, but I’ll never forget the look on his face right after I took it. It was surprise, mixed with . . . pleasure.
He drank from his flask while I nursed the single beer. We looked out at the ocean as darkness filtered away the remaining daylight. Our bodies edged closer to each other as people came and went. I remember making vague chitchat with him, thinking about that look on his face, thinking about how close we were. At one point his arm brushed against mine. I waited for him to move it, but he didn’t. The tiny physical connection felt enormous to me.
But there was no way I was going to hit on my best friend’s guy. When Holden said he was going inside to look for a bathroom, I nodded and leaned back against the wall of the house, relieved for the opportunity to pull myself together.
I finished my beer and a guy named Thomas who I sat next to in American History offered me another. Beer Two turned into Beer Three, and as I finished that I glanced down at my phone and realized Holden had been gone for over half an hour. I sent him a text and he didn’t answer.
I checked the bathroom on the main floor of the house but it was unoccupied, so I asked a few people lurking around if they’d seen him. When they all shrugged, I continued to look for him, first downstairs and then upstairs.
When I pushed open the door to what turned out to be the master bedroom, for a second I was too shocked to speak. Holden was there all right, sprawled out on the bed, his neck tilted at a funny angle. Katrina Jensen was kneeling between his legs, the folds of her silky sundress gathering around her hips. She tugged at the button on his jeans. “Just relax,” I heard her say. Holden didn’t respond. His eyes were closed. I wanted to close mine too, but all the blood had rushed to my head and I was afraid if I did that I might fall over. I settled for training them on the plush, cream-colored carpet.
As I backed away toward the hallway, my foot hit the edge of the door frame.
I heard Holden swear under his breath. Then he said, “Embry, wait.”
I looked up. Holden was hurriedly rebuttoning his jeans.
“Sorry to interrupt.” I imagined my cheeks as two bright red circles, like the face of a doll. “I was just . . . wondering where you went. I think I’m going to go ahead and take off.”
“Embry.” Each time Holden said my name it made my insides tremble. “Wait up.
I’m coming with you.” He slid off the bed.
“Fucking figures,” Katrina said. “Rich Bitch went away but assigned you a chaperone, huh?”
“I’m not anyone’s chaperone,” I told Katrina. Without looking at either of them, I added, “I just wanted to let you know I was leaving. You can stay. I’ll be fine walking home alone.” I hurried from the room and back down the stairs, moving through the house as fast as I could without making a scene.
Holden’s feet pounded the steps behind me. He caught up to me outside in the dark, before I even made it to the black pavement of the street. He tried to grab my arm but I shook him off.
“Please. Just talk to me,” he said.
I turned and started walking down Puffin Drive, the three beers I drank feeling like both too much and not enough at the same time. Holden followed me without speaking. I kept waiting for him to say something, explain how I was wrong about what I saw.
Finally I spun around to face him. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t tell Julia.”
He had to stop short so he wouldn’t run into me. “Tell her if you want. I don’t care. Hell, I’ll tell her.”
“Then why did you come after me?”
The wind blew his hair back from his face. “Because I could see that I hurt you.”
“I’m not hurt. I’m just . . . surprised. I can’t believe you would cheat on your girlfriend.”
“Things with Julia and me are . . . complicated,” Holden said. “I’m pretty sure she’s hooking up with someone in DC.”
“No she’s not,” I said. “She would have told me.”
“The way you told her about how you were feeling earlier?” Holden arched an eyebrow.
“Screw you,” I said. “Even if she is hooking up with some dude in DC, that wouldn’t make what you did okay.”
“You’re right,” Holden said. “You’re absolutely right. But come on, Embry. She’s your best friend. Can’t you tell she’s not that into me?”
I sort of agreed with Holden here, just based on the way Julia acted when the two of them were together and on the things she said (or didn’t say) when he wasn’t around. Her initial interest came from finding out Holden was one of the smartest guys in our class and then deciding he looked like Jared Leto. (He does, sort of.) She asked him to junior prom on a whim and he agreed. I didn’t think they were going to go out again, but I guess her parents said they didn’t want her dating the Gas Station Boy, and after that she doubled down on her supposed attraction. But still.
“Does she know you’re hooking up with other girls?”
“No.” Holden coughed. “And I mean, nothing really happened in there.”
I scoffed. “Whatever you say, but I don’t think Julia would see it like that.”
“I’m not telling Julia. I’m telling you.”
“Why?”
“Your friendship means a lot to me.”
Something about that admission made my chest get all hot and tight. “Why Katrina?” I spat out, imagining her down on the beach with Luke. Did she somehow know I liked Holden? Did she do it on purpose? “I’ve never even heard you talk about her.”
“She’s in my gym class,” Holden said. “I never really took her flirting seriously until tonight.”
“And then tonight you were just all in for some reason?”
“Tonight I was half drunk and a hot girl accosted me as I was leaving the bathroom and pulled me into a bedroom and offered to blow me.”
I winced. “TMI, Holden.”
“What? It’s not like you didn’t see what was happening.”
“Trying to forget,” I muttered.
Holden pushed his hair back from his face. “Look. I was stupid. But that’s sort of a hard thing for a guy to turn down, you know?”
“Oh, I hear you. Biological urges and all that,” I said coolly. “Poor men just can’t control themselves, right?” I tried not to focus on his cheekbones. They were high and sharp—I had noticed them the first day of Art Appreciation class. He looked like one of the statues we studied.
“Not an excuse, Embry. I was just trying to explain. No girl has ever—actually, forget it. Let’s just leave it at I fucked up majorly.” Holden crossed his arms. “But why are you so angry?”
“I’m not angry,” I snapped.
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“Whatever. I’m out of here.” I turned away and accelerated into a jog, hoping Holden wouldn’t follow me, that he’d go back to the party and leave me alone.
But instead he caught up in about three strides and insisted on running beside me. “I thought it’d be you, you know?”
“You thought I’d be the girl who you cheated on my best friend with?”
“I thought you’d be the first girl I was, you know, close to like that. Ever since we started talking in class. To be honest, I still kind of think that.”
My jaw dropped slightly at the thought of Holden being a virgin. I knew Julia hadn’t slept with him, but he seemed so worldly and self-assured. I guess I figured he had to have more experience than did. But then I got offended again. “Why would you think that?”
“Because I know how you feel about me,” Holden said, as the two of us ran down the hill in the dark. “I’ve suspected for a while, but now I know.”
I didn’t answer him until we got to my house and he made a motion to follow me inside. “Go home, Holden,” I said.
“Say it, Embry,” he challenged. “Admit how you feel about me and I’ll leave you alone.”
My house keys shook in my hand. “I think you’re an asshole.”
“Entirely possible, but what about down on the beach? What was that bullshit about me being so easy to talk to?”
My lower lip trembled. “You are easy to talk to,” I said hoarsely. For the second time that day, the tears came. “But you’re right. You hurt me.”
“I’m sorry.” Holden brushed my tears away with his thumbs. “I’m an idiot.”
I didn’t respond. I just looked at him for a few seconds, paralyzed, voiceless.
“Tell me to leave again,” he whispered.
But I didn’t. And then he kissed me. Soft, then harder. And when I didn’t resist, he pulled me inside and pressed my body up against the wall. And then I kissed him back.
It was openmouthed and hungry, almost violent. Our teeth knocked together before we found the best angle for our lips and tongues. Kissing him was like puncturing this balloon that had been growing inside me—pain and fear and loneliness expanding and crushing my vital organs. Holden was right, and I needed a break from pretending otherwise. I needed him—all of him. I dragged him to my bedroom, where we stripped off each other’s clothes. I pushed him down on my bed. He tried to stop me because we didn’t have protection, but by that point I was beyond rational thought.
The next day, reality came crashing down. The health clinic in Tillamook was closed so Holden had to take me all the way here to Lincoln City on his motorcycle so I could get Plan B. He offered to go in with me, but I told him to wait outside while I ran into the pharmacy. I didn’t blame him for my epic stupidity, but I didn’t really want to talk to him about it either.
“For what it’s worth,” Holden told me on the ride back, as I was ignoring him and focusing intently on the coastline whipping by, “I’m not sure if I’ll ever want kids, but if I did I’d want them with someone like you.”
I tried to pretend that didn’t mean anything, but it did.
Julia called me the next day to say that Holden had broken up with her.
I tried to pretend that didn’t mean anything either, but it did.
Still, I avoided Holden for the next couple weeks, right up until the day of my mom’s surgery. He texted me on the way to the hospital. I couldn’t believe he remembered what day it was. But I ignored his text. I was 100 percent focused on my mom. Around one a.m., Holden texted me again. The nurses had let me spend the night in Mom’s room on a cot, and I was lying next to her, watching her breathe. If
Death wanted her, he was going to have to fight me for her.
Holden: Everything ok with your mom?
Me: Yeah. She’s in a lot of pain, but they think the operation went well.
Holden: Glad to hear it. I figured you’d still be awake.
Me: I might never sleep again. I’m watching her breathe, making sure she’s okay.
After a few seconds I texted again:
Me: Why are you awake?
Holden: Making sure you’re both ok.
After that I couldn’t avoid him anymore. I needed that solace, that safe place, that person I didn’t have to hide from.
I still need him, but it’s different now. Back then I felt like our relationship was one-sided—he was comforting me. Now I want to give something back, and admitting that terrifies me. Where’s the line between mutual comforting and mutual expectations?
I shift in the dressing room chair. Julia is taking forever. Glancing down, I realize I missed a second text.
Holden: Nothing to say to that, huh?
Me: I was just thinking about that night. I still can’t believe I was the first girl.
Holden: What can I say? Girls don’t exactly line up to bang the salad-eating pansy gas station boy :P
Me: Those things do not define you.
Holden: Yes they do, at least partly, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Julia pops out of a fitting room stall in flamboyant neon-green-and-pink exercise pants and a black fleece top with pink trim. “Oooh, are you messaging Luke?”
“What?” My face flushes as I slip my phone back into my purse. “No, just checking my email.”
“Bullshit,” Julia says gleefully. “You were about five seconds away from licking your phone. You guys were sexting, weren’t you?”
“Um, no,” I say. “And I don’t even know how you could joke about that right now.”
Julia shrugs. “No use crying over spilt BJ video, even if it’s not mine.”
“But doesn’t it bother you that people think—”
“Nope,” she says. “People are going to think whatever they want no matter what I do. No sense feeding into it by getting angry or defensive. And I’m sure Holden will be fine. He always lands on his feet.”