by Caisey Quinn
I shake my head. “I didn’t…”
Addi. I texted Addi.
I nearly collapse under the weight of his glare.
“I texted Addi on my way here last night. Just to, um, check in. I don’t think I said much about the group home, just that I’d helped you out and—”
“Addi,” he sneers. “As in Addi who told your brother about the boutique you took me to for your little ‘meeting.’ As in Addi, who obviously can’t hold water. That’s just fucking great, Hollis.”
His words are harsh but it’s the tone striking me in the chest. Direct hit.
The closeness our sexual encounter brought us, the easy laughter and playfulness is gone, replaced by a raw vulnerability I do not care for.
Note to self, sleeping with someone gives them the power to grip your heart in their hands and destroy it.
This is the other reason I waited so long to let someone in this way. To bare my body and soul to another human being. It makes you vulnerable. My raw exposed nerves feel as if they’re being severed with a rusty blade.
“A reporter was already there this morning,” Jonah informs me. “Sniffing around, asking questions about me, how much I donate and why.” He shakes his head. “I try to protect them. I try so hard to keep them from the bullshit associated with me.”
“Jonah, I am so sorry. Tell me what I can do.”
Besides kill Addi, which I am definitely going to do. I don’t know who she would’ve told but it’s true, she doesn’t keep secrets so well and she does seem to know everyone in the tri-state area.
“Just go, Hollis. I’m going to call the reporter and do what damage control I can. Probably just bribe him to keep his damn mouth shut.”
That fist he has around my heart squeezes tightly.
I panic, looking around for my things.
My thoughts scatter like the sprinkles in the floor last night. I can’t remember what I had when I came here.
Elf outfit. Gingerbread houses. My purse and phone.
I gather up what I can, avoiding where Jonah sits on the edge of his couch facing away from me. Ever since he hung up with Miss Nancy and then told me to leave, he’s been on his phone, speaking sternly to someone.
He hangs up and it rings again. He silences the call only for another one to come through a moment later.
This time he lets it ring. Once, twice, a third time, while he stares at it.
He looks ten years older when he finally glances over at me.
I stand with my hand on the doorknob, wondering what the next step is. Are we done with one another for good? Does he hate me? Am I fired?
“I’m so sorry, Jonah. I didn’t think.”
He nods curtly. “Neither did I. Goodbye, Hollis.”
With that, I leave.
Carrying my silly elf costume, a bag full of broken gingerbread, and my battered heart with me.
Mikey and Addi don’t live far from my parents’ house so I stop by there on my way home.
After I beat on the door for five solid minutes, Addi whips it open, standing disheveled in her bathrobe, looking like she just rolled out of bed.
“Jesus, Hollis. You knock like the damn Fire Department.”
I blow into the house past her.
“Addi, who did you tell about last night? I need to know right now.”
She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Feels like I might have. “What are you even talking about?”
“About me helping Jonah out at the group home. Who did you tell?”
Her face scrunches as if she’s smelling something unpleasant. “No one. Your brother got home late. I haven’t even told him. What you do with your boss is your business, Hollis. I learned my lesson after he went all Rocky Balboa at the boutique. I promise I didn’t say anything to anyone.”
“Addi, seriously. Think. Did you talk to anyone or text anyone at all?”
Now she looks annoyed. “Hollis, I love you, but I promise, your life isn’t exactly late breaking news. I know they gossip at the bar, but I don’t.”
I wring my hands, trying to figure out what might’ve happened.
She moves closer to me, her voice softening. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
I glance up, wondering if she can see it—the change in me. I’m different. I can feel it.
Her eyes widen. “You slept with him.”
So she can see it too, then.
“That’s not even the point right now.” I sigh. “The group home we volunteered at last night…” I don’t know what I should or shouldn’t say. The last thing I want to do is make things worse. “Jonah has history there and now some reporter is snooping around, asking personal questions about his past. You know how he likes to stay out of the spotlight.”
Addi nods. “I swear, I haven’t even spoken to anyone since your text last night. After Mikey finally made it home, I passed out cold.”
This I believe. She always waits up for him, says she can’t sleep until she hears him coming home safely every night.
I know how she feels because I used to be the same way with my dad before he retired from the force.
“Well someone talked.” I lower myself onto their couch and pull my knees to my chest. I’m still wearing Jonah’s clothes. I can still smell him on me. “And he thinks it was me and he’s irate.”
Addi’s forehead creases. “Well, tell him he’s wrong.”
I glance out the window at the snow falling to the ground. A fresh blanket covering the ground, like a blank slate covering the messy footprints from the past.
“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.”
Nothing with Jonah ever was.
15
JONAH
OUR FINEST GIFTS WE BRING
Monday morning the week of Christmas, the reporter who left his card with Miss Nancy meets me at a bar down the street from my office.
Dave Whitmeyer is a weasel of a thing I’m tempted to put in a headlock on sight. His skull is the shape of a tennis ball and his black-rimmed glasses are entirely too big for his face.
He has a wannabe hipster vibe about him.
There are a dozen open sugar packets on the table and he’s twitchy when I slide into the back booth without a word.
“It’s really you,” he says, his beady eyes going round with surprise. “I thought maybe you’d send someone. I know you don’t meet with the press.”
“We’re not meeting,” I say, leaning forward. “We’re exchanging information.”
He nods, leaning back in his seat. “I understand.”
“Who told you about the group home? About my involvement with it?”
His eyes cast downward, focusing on his coffee cup. “Look, I’m well aware of the fact that you could just take me out back and beat the crap out of me. But like I told you on the phone, I’ll tell you what I know after you answer my questions.”
“Regardless of what information we do or don’t share here today, stay away from the group home,” I warn him. “Let me be clear. Don’t prowl around asking Miss Nancy or any of those kids a single question. If I hear that you so much as drove slow down the street it’s on, you’ll wish I had taken you out back.”
Threats are no longer my preferred method of communication, but I’ll do what I have to in this case.
He glances down at his hands and opens another sugar packet. “I won’t ask them anything if you’ll give me the answers I need.”
“Ask your questions then.”
I shake a toothpick out of the container on the table and put it in my mouth. I need something else to focus on so I can sit still.
“How old were you when you become a ward of the state?”
My teeth clench together. “Three.”
He moves his finger around on the screen of his phone. “How many foster homes did you live in over the years?”
“Didn’t keep count.”
Eleven.
“What happened to Joseph Walsh?”
Joey. A shudder ripples t
hrough my body. I can’t help it.
Every day I try not to think of him. Every day I fail.
Inhaling deeply, I roll the toothpick to the other side of my mouth and wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans beneath the table.
“Don’t know for sure. His sister takes care of him last I heard.”
He nods. “I’ve done my research. You pay his medical bills and he lives in a house with your name on the deed. Why is that?”
I lean forward, tired of his condescension. “I’m guessing you know why.”
“You still in touch with Pops McGarrett?”
Now I want to slap him. “He died last year. Thought you said you did your research?”
Something in his expression tells me he knew this. He’s rattling me on purpose. Not a real bright one, this guy.
“You ever think about fighting again?”
I arch an eyebrow. “No.”
“I mean professionally.”
“I’m aware of what you meant.”
He clears his throat. “So even if it was for a really good cause, say, a charitable donation to an organization you care a great deal about?”
“Look, man, I don’t know what your angle is or why the media gives a damn what I do or don’t do, but I left fighting years ago and I’ve moved on with my life. I wish everyone else would.”
“That’s the thing. You know what makes you so intriguing?”
I shrug. “I honestly don’t have a fucking clue.”
“You don’t want to be in the spotlight.”
“So?”
“So it’s been my experience—and the experience of most every journalist out there—that the people who avoid the attention are the most interesting ones worthy of it.”
“If you say so.” I’m ready for this to be over. “I answered your questions. Run your piece on something that happened when I was a kid if you must. But leave the kids living at the home now out of it. Don’t name the specific group home in your article under any circumstances. We clear?”
I make sure my glare penetrates his wormy stare until he’s squirming in his seat.
He nods. “Oh, and about what you wanted to know?”
I stand and wait for him to tell me that Hollis’s sister-in-law told a friend who told someone.
“My cousin, Aimee, works at a toy store. Lucky break for me that you happened to be dressed as Santa and mentioned where you were headed when she was working.”
Fuck me.
I owe Hollis the apology to end all apologies.
16
HOLLIS
A HIPPOPOTAMUS FOR CHRISTMAS
“I’ve never seen you like this at the holidays,” my mom remarks over Christmas Eve dinner. “You’re usually the one keeping all of our spirits up.”
Addi tosses me a sympathetic smile across the table. “Hollis isn’t feeling so jolly lately. Her boss is a real pain in the a—”
“Addison,” my mom admonishes, cutting her off. “I thought Tony and Mikey said he came by the bar and he was a decent guy?”
“He is,” is all I say.
Tony jumps in with a comment about how much heavier the traffic at the bar has been since Jonah stopped in.
The conversation goes on without me as I move my food around with my fork.
I walked the dogs all week and Jonah wasn’t there one single time. I don’t know why I’d expected him to be. But I’ve never gone this long without talking to him. Even if it was just about random errands.
He hasn’t called or messaged and demanded his key back, so I’ve just been tending to the dogs like I normally would. I figure if he wants to fire me, he’ll do it when he’s ready.
I’m pretty certain the assistant position isn’t going to happen but surprisingly, I don’t care as much about it as I did a week ago.
He was angry and hurting the last time I saw him. But now I’m angry and hurting and I don’t know how to fix it for either of us.
I’ve picked my phone up a dozen times to text him that Addi never told a soul, but it doesn’t matter. I knew how private he was and I’d told her without giving a single thought to how it might affect him.
Maybe if we hadn’t slept together it wouldn’t hurt so much. No way to know for sure.
I’ve tried to tell myself what happened between us wasn’t a mistake, but nothing is worth feeling like this. Not even non-self-induced orgasms.
“So Hol, are we playing charades tonight or what?” Mikey blurts out.
I blink myself into the present. “Doesn’t matter to me.”
“Of course we are,” Addi pipes up. “That’ll be just the thing to get Hollis out of her funk.”
“Leave Hollis be,” my dad finally breaks in.
I offer him a weak smile. My dad is a man of few words but he always has my back.
“I’ll go get some pens and paper,” I say, excusing myself, unsure as to how I’m going to get through much more of this.
The doorbell rings and we all glance at Tony. The flavor of the week he’s hooking up with was upset about not being invited tonight and made a scene at the bar earlier. We’re all expecting it to be her.
Addi scoots her chair backward and starts to stand from the table. “I’ll get it.”
I wave her off. I know what it feels like to be on the wrong end of unrequited feelings. Addi is not exactly the queen of sensitivity.
“I got it. I’ll be gentle,” I tell them, looking pointedly at Tony.
They all begin talking at once, giving my brother a hard time about his dating habits as I escape the dining room. I cross through the living room and open the door.
But there’s no one there.
Achilles leaps up on his hind legs, startling me.
For a second, I was worried Tony might have a fatal attraction situation on his hands.
“Ache! What are you doing here, sweet boy?” I love on his massive head and see a red ribbon tied around his neck. With a card attached to it.
My heart skips a beat and restarts out of rhythm.
What the?
Turning my face away from an overabundance of Achille’s kisses and signaling him to stand down, I open the card.
Hollis,
All I want for Christmas is your forgiveness. I am an ass and I messed up. Also, Achilles wanted to bring you this in person. Or, in dog.
There’s a gift card attached to the lingerie boutique Jonah and I went to recently.
It feels like a lifetime ago. Part of me wishes we could go back to that day. But deep down, beneath the hurt, I know I wouldn’t take back a single second of our time together.
Movement to the left catches my eye as Jonah steps out from the sidewalk.
I don’t even know what to say. I can’t process his presence at my house.
“What are you doing here?”
His hands remain in his pockets as he approaches.
“Apologizing. How’s it going so far?”
Ache licks the palm of my hand.
“Using the dog is cheating.”
Jonah nods. “Never said I was into fighting fair.”
I work to control my breathing as he commands Achilles to come to him.
I wave the gift card. “Guess I’m getting some new lingerie. Wonder who I should wear it for…”
Jonah smirks. “I’d be willing to suffer through another fashion show if you need help picking something out.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Hollis,” he begins, and I stare openly because I’ve never seen him like this. Vulnerable. Unsure of himself. “I met with the reporter.” His throat moves as he swallows. “It wasn’t Addi who tipped him off.”
“I know.”
He sighs. “What happened was my fault and mine entirely. And even if you had told Addi and she’d told someone, it wasn’t right to react like that. You didn’t deserve that. I’ve just never…”
I wait impatiently for him to continue.
“Never what?”
His eyes practically glow und
er the street lamp. “I’ve never let anyone in before. Not as close as I’ve let you in. I don’t know how it happened. I woke up one day, and there you were.”
My lungs constrict. “You hired me to be your dog walker.” I can’t help but feel guilty about the one truth I’ve always kept from him. “Speaking of, I should probably tell you something I’ve been meaning to for a long time. I wasn’t there to walk the dogs that day, Jonah.”
I just got lucky that the actual dog walker never showed.
“I know that.” He grins, the charming boyish grin I love. “There was no dog walker position. I made it up.”
My entire life is a lie.
Strangely, I’m not that upset about it.
“What? But you said—”
“I was watching the interviews on camera. You were too tempting to be my receptionist. So I messaged Elaine and told her to say the position had been filled. Then seeing you up close…in person…” He pauses, shrugging and lowering his gaze. “I couldn’t let you go. I happened to have the dogs with me that day in the office and it was all I could come up with on the spot.”
I eye him warily to determine if he’s telling the truth. No nervous tics of any kind. It appears that he is.
“So what now?” I ask quietly.
“What do you want now?”
I am not prepared to answer that. I focus on the short-term.
“I want you to come inside, eat dinner, and play charades with my family.”
His expression turns pained. “Seriously? Charades?”
I step closer and peer up at him from under my eyelashes. “You really hurt my feelings, Jonah. My sensitive little feelings. After taking my virginity.”
“Oh, you’re playing that card? Really?”
I shrug. “My dad taught me to work with what I got.”
“And you’ll really forgive me if I play charades?”
“It will be a start.”
Jonah shakes his head and holds his hand out to me. “In that case, lead the way.
17