Hers for the weekend, p.22
Hers for the Weekend, page 22
Holly rested her head back against the island and closed her eyes. Yep.
She’d met a girl who made her want to try for the real thing again, after all this time, but she couldn’t have her. Fucking amazing.
Her phone buzzed again and she reached for it, finding a text from her own mother.
Mom: OMG Caitlin showed me more pictures of your new lady! Why aren’t you bringing her home for Christmas, again?
Leaving aside the important questions of whether she was going to kill her sister and who needed to pay for teaching her mom to say OMG (probably Caitlin, so yes, either murder or glitter through the mail), she didn’t have the energy for this. She dropped her head onto her knees, trying not to mess up the makeup she’d spent an hour on. The door swung open, and she looked up to find Tara sitting down in front of her. In her beautiful, outrageously expensive vintage dress. On the kitchen floor.
“Hey. You okay?” Tara’s voice, so often sharp as a knife, was so soft. Holly wanted to tell her the truth about the phone call from Tara’s mom, and how torn up inside she was about it.
About them.
But Tara was here to be part of an event that mattered to her, and she didn’t need to go nuclear on her mom right beforehand. And maybe a small part of Holly was afraid that if Tara heard that her mother knew they were dating (fake as it was), she would freak out and cut off their dalliance early.
So Holly did what she’d been training at for a decade, and what she’d promised Tara she wouldn’t do as long as they were together: she put on her mask.
Smiling, she put a hand in Tara’s.
“It’s so embarrassing! I tried to grab my phone and fell right over! And now I’m stuck, because I can’t get up in this dress. Help?” She forced herself to make her voice light, to laugh, to make it a joke.
Tara must have been distracted because she bought it. She tugged on Holly’s hand, hauling her up. They ended up pressed against each other, and their eyes caught. The ice blue in Tara’s was so warm, Holly didn’t want to look away. She flushed, heat pooling between her legs but also, worryingly, in her heart. Finally, Tara pressed their foreheads together, only for an instant, then pulled back.
“Ready to go watch these goofballs become wives?”
Chapter 23
Tara
In the barn, Sawyer was saving seats for them in a row with Ernie and Lawrence (who both gave Holly a thumbs-up), Collin from the diner and his wife Marisol, and the Greens. They slipped in, Holly’s fingers loosely tangled with Tara’s in a way that felt natural, as if they’d been holding hands for much longer than a long weekend. Once they were seated, Sawyer put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed, leaving it there in a casual gesture that said he assumed they were already friends and would only become closer as time went on.
Historically, Tara didn’t love being touched by people she didn’t know well, but this seemed right. She settled their still-laced-together hands on Holly’s thigh and felt her shiver with pleasure.
When the barn doors opened, the assembled crowd turned as one to watch Noelle head to the front to stand under the chuppah, followed by Cole, then Levi and Hannah. Hannah stood on Noelle’s side, with a woman Tara had been told was Noelle’s AA sponsor. Cole and Levi stood on Miriam’s side, their heads—one bright and one dark—bent together as Levi whispered to Cole and Cole grinned back.
They were such deeply unlikely friends, Tara thought, the two boys, yet they seemed to have come to love each other deeply in a short time.
Miriam came in then, everyone rising as she walked down the aisle. Tara watched Noelle watch Miriam and knew only joy. She’d never once looked at Miri with that light of love shining from her face, and Miri deserved that, and more. She was so grateful that, no matter how hard it had been, the universe (or Cass Carrigan) had brought Miriam here, to Noelle.
Their rabbi, Ruth, leaned on their cane with the wolf’s head and gave a crooked smile to the brides in front of them. Noelle reached up to adjust her yarmulke while Miriam’s hair pillowed out from her head in the most perfect cloud of almost-black curls. Time froze, this tableau of all these people connected in an interdependent web of love and faith and community, sharing a Jewish Christmas Eve wedding on a Christmas tree farm.
The ceremony was beautiful, made only more so by both of the boys crying buckets behind Miriam’s back. Noelle was obviously trying very hard not to meet Levi’s eye, because every time she did, her eyes got noticeably more moist. Miriam was oblivious to anyone but Noelle. After the traditional religious vows, the brides each recited their own.
Noelle quoted Andrea Gibson and bell hooks, because she was a queer literature nerd, a fact Miriam teased her about through tears.
“I was going to find you poetry,” Miriam said, “but I knew I would never be able to do it better than you. So I didn’t write anything! We’re going to see how it goes.”
Tara laughed with the crowd at Miri’s chaos. “The first time I saw you, you smiled at me and I knew my life was never going to be the same. You were somehow the only color in a grayscale world, and everything you touched turned to Technicolor. Meeting you was like coming to Oz for the first time, and not even realizing I’d been in Kansas.”
In theory, hearing that should have made Tara feel angry, or sad, since they’d been engaged when Miriam and Noelle had met, and she was the Kansas from which Miriam had escaped. And she was sad, but only because Miriam had left her alone, still stuck in the beginning of a movie. Trapped in the first act of her own story.
She was still stuck there, if she were honest with herself, but now she was acknowledging it. That had to count for something.
Miriam went on. “You weren’t the first person who ever saw the best in me, but you were the first person I believed. When I saw myself through your eyes, I trusted that I could become the version of myself you saw. Maybe it’s selfish, but even though you’re handsome and funny, smart and hardworking, ethical and great in bed—”
Miriam’s mom made a hilarious noise in the back of her throat.
“—the thing I love best about you is who you allow me to be.”
Tara looked over at Holly, who was staring at her. They smiled a little conspiratorially, and Holly leaned her head on Tara’s shoulder. A chunk of the iceberg around Tara’s heart broke off and floated away, and she was afraid the melt might be permanent. That was exactly it, what she felt about Holly. She wasn’t in love, not yet, but she could be. Easily.
And if she fell, she would be falling in love not just with Holly, but also with who she was when she was with Holly.
When the glass had been broken and the couple declared married in the eyes of God, their families, and the state of New York, they recessed down the aisle. As they passed, Cole caught Tara’s hand and hauled her up next to him, kissing her soundly on the head before reaching past her to pull Sawyer along with him.
As they walked away, Tara whispered, “Do you think they’re disappearing somewhere to make out before the reception starts?”
“Oh, they definitely are,” Holly confirmed. “Should we do the same?”
“God, yes.” Tara nodded and let Holly lead her past the milling guests, out of the barn, and into the back acreage, away from the inn where people were heading in anticipation of dinner.
They tried to sneak into Noelle’s work shed, but she had padlocked it, probably to keep Cole and Sawyer out. Damn her brilliant foresight. Eventually, giggling and tripping over their heels in the snow, they made it all the way around the back of the building to the side door of the kitchen.
“There’s a pantry in here that I know is big enough for fooling around, because Hannah tells me way too much about her sex life,” Tara whispered.
Before they could get to the pantry door, Holly pushed Tara up against the kitchen island, trapping her hands on either side of her. “Hey,” she said, waiting until Tara met her eyes. “Wait a second.”
Tara stopped and tried to get her raging lust brain to focus. “What’s up?”
Holly took a deep breath.
“Do you ever think… Did the wedding…”
She stopped and breathed again.
Then, all in a rush, she said, “Do you ever think about extending our agreement, and maybe being, uh, more-than-friends? For a little while? I know it would be bad for your career, and your mom might kill me. Actually, when she called me earlier, I thought she might actually kill—”
The maelstrom of feelings that had erupted at the beginning of Holly’s sentence, a mix of joy and terror, fell silent when Tara’s brain processed the rest of what she was saying.
“My mom called you.” She tried to inhale past the rage flaming up inside her.
Holly shrugged. “Yeah, she told me I had to stop dating you or she would ruin me, but, like, ruin me how? I was already going to quit Emma’s because Matt won’t let me bake, and no one who would hire me would give a shit what Bunny Chadwick thinks.”
Her mom’s name wasn’t Bunny, but that didn’t seem like the critical point.
Tara freed a hand and grabbed Holly’s chin. “I do want to keep seeing you. I have no idea how it will work, it’s guaranteed to explode in our faces, and I absolutely want to do it anyway.”
Holly’s eyes filled with hope and tears. “Really?”
She nodded. “So much. It’s all I can think about. But first, I need to call my mom and tell her to go all the way to hell on a one-way ticket.”
Chapter 24
Holly
This was happening. Tara wanted to be with her, and she was going to tell off her mother. Carrigan’s really was magic at Christmas.
Tara fished her phone out of the basket on the kitchen island—where they’d all left their devices so they could focus on the wedding—and frowned.
“Hol, why do I have an email from the Innocence Project?”
Oh shit.
“Why are they offering me a job?”
Holly swallowed, hard. “So, funny story. I drafted an email to them about you, but I didn’t realize I’d sent it.”
She’d drafted it in a moment of panic, trying to figure out anything that would make Tara happier and allow them to be together. But she’d known even in the moment that she should never send it. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Tara stared at her, frozen. “You did what?”
“I had this whole brainstorm, that it would be so great if you worked for them, because you would still be doing activism work, but you wouldn’t be beholden to keeping ties with your family if you didn’t want to, and you might even be able to have a broader reach, but I would never have sent it intentionally. I should have had a conversation with you about it. It was a huge overreach, even to draft something,” Holly babbled, her heart in her throat as Tara’s face only became icier.
“What I don’t understand,” Tara said slowly, her accent as thick as molasses in January, “is why you would have been brainstorming ways for me to leave the career I’ve painstakingly grown, that I excel at and care deeply about.”
Holly blinked at her. She’d expected Tara to be angry that she’d stepped in without Tara’s consent, but she wasn’t sure how to process the idea that Tara didn’t understand why anyone would think she should maybe leave her job.
“Well, I’m not saying leave your career,” she said, equally slowly, “just your job. And perhaps because I see you constantly arranging your life to meet your parents’ approval, which they use to hold you hostage.”
Tara shook her head, her bob swinging from side to side like a pendulum. “That’s a choice I’ve made. I decided a long time ago that I was willing to accept the whole package when I decided on this path.”
“You made the choice, Tara, but you don’t have to keep making the choice.” Holly was exasperated.
“I don’t deserve another choice.”
Wow. She wanted to say, “You don’t have to earn the right to a less desolate life,” but realized it would be wasted breath.
Nothing Holly said would ever fix what was broken in Tara, her bone-deep belief in her inherent worthlessness. She needed to walk away now and cut any connection between them, so she did what she was good at—she brought out her knives and threw them.
“You’re the exact same selfish, self-destructive kid you were at seventeen, Tara, and you’re still throwing yourself on a pyre. I hope it brings you some peace eventually. I hope it’s worth it, ’cause it’s devastating everyone who tries to love you.”
“That’s a fucked-up, hurtful thing to say,” Tara whispered. She rubbed both hands over her heart and took several short, shallow breaths. “Why did we ever think we could make this work in the real world? You’re going to leave Charleston, go on waitressing and refusing to take a chance on baking, and I’ll be a funny story from your past. That time you pretended to date a bitchy ice queen because she was too pathetic to go to a wedding on her own.”
Holly wanted to scream. “Oh, fuck you for thinking that of me. And for throwing baking in my face. You know how much I want to see us together. You want that, too! You just told me you did! But your mom threatened to blacklist me not two hours ago, and I’ve never seen you happier than you are a thousand miles away from them, so forgive me if I think maybe a break from your job and family would be good for both of us!”
Tara nodded, her face stony. “So you emailed an institution I respect to tell them about me, without asking me first, and making me look like I can’t get my own job?”
“It was a mistake!” Holly cried. “I didn’t mean to!”
“Was it a mistake that had you talking to my friends all week about how I should totally live here? It’s interesting that you want me to take you as you are, but you don’t want to do the same for me.”
That was rich. “Oh, so it’s okay for you to try to Pygmalion me, talk about how great it would be if I got a job that was less embarrassing for you than being a waitress, convince everyone to offer me charity, but I can’t say, ‘Hey, I care about you and I see you’re unhappy’?”
“I never convinced anyone to give you a job out of charity!” Tara argued. “Any offers you got were sincere. And you told me yourself you don’t want to be a waitress forever, that you want to bake! What’s wrong with me trying to encourage you to do that?”
Holly cocked her head disbelievingly. “What’s wrong is, it’s patronizing and hypocritical. You can keep a job you hate for complicated reasons, but I can’t choose my job for equally complicated ones? Maybe you should fix your own life before you decide to rehab your lovers!”
“Right back at you,” Tara drawled, drawing up to her full height. “You want me to leave my entire life so we can be together, but you knew I never would. You were looking for a reason to run. You can tell yourself you wanted to try with me, but you didn’t. Because that might ask something of you, for you to compromise or change or grow. Which you won’t because you had one failed marriage and made it your whole personality.”
Holly took a page from Tara’s book and wrapped herself in ice so she didn’t cry.
“Thank you for showing me that when I eventually fall for someone, it needs to be someone who actually likes me for me, instead of trying to make me into a project.” Holly rubbed her hands on her pants. “I think I’m going to go.”
Tara was right about one thing.
Running seemed like a hell of an idea right now, so that’s what Holly did.
Chapter 25
Tara
Blood was rushing in Tara’s ears, but from the other side of the swinging door she heard Miriam’s voice cry out, “You can’t talk to my friend that way. You need to get out of my house.”
Holly volleyed back, “Oh, you can treat her like shit, and her family can destroy her every day, but I can’t tell her the truth?”
Tara couldn’t hear what Noelle said after, just the rumble of her voice. Then they all tumbled through the door, Hannah and Miriam and Cole all pushing each other out of the way to get to each other.
“What are you all doing here?” she said, looking between them, confused.
Noelle snuck to her side and snagged a pfeffernuss off the counter. “We heard there were cookies so we came to get some before the reception starts and everyone eats them all. The Rosensteins are serious about their desserts.”
Of course they hadn’t come looking for her. That had been a ridiculous hope. Why would they go looking for the bride’s ex-girlfriend, all of them in a pack?
Levi snorted. “We came looking for you, you dork. Elijah said you were in here.”
“Why, though?” she asked, her voice so much smaller than she was used to.
“Because you’re Team Carrigan’s? And we need the whole team at the party?” Miriam sounded confused.
Not as confused as Tara felt. “But you’ll be late.”
“I don’t think they can start without us,” Noelle said. “Here. Have a cookie.”
The last thing Tara wanted was a cookie, but she dutifully took one, robotically eating it, and it did make her feel better, or at least more grounded.
“You didn’t have to kick her out. I mean, I appreciate the gesture, but…” Tara trailed off at the look on Miriam’s face. “What?”
“Of course we’re going to kick someone out who’s mean to you! Why don’t you believe we love you enough to choose you?” Miriam said, her fists on her hips, looking even more than usual like Peter Pan.
To her abject, undying horror, Tara started to cry.
“Did you hear everything we said?” She hiccupped, trying to save her mascara.
They all nodded.
“So you know we were pretending to date?”
