Mrs nashs ashes, p.15
Mrs. Nash's Ashes, page 15
The door opens when the dress is covering only my bottom half. For a second I startle, trying to cover my chest with my arms. But Hollis appears in the doorway, leaning on the frame as his eyes sweep slowly from my bare feet up to my eyes.
“I’ve seen you naked, Millicent,” he says. “You don’t need to hide your bra from me.”
“You’ve felt me naked. You couldn’t see much of anything last night.”
“Semantics. The point is, I already know what’s going on under there.” He latches the door and pads over to where I’m standing by the armoire. “Turn around.”
When I do, he coaxes the dress up until my arms are through the holes. Then he zips me up. But none of it is especially sensual. His movements aren’t slow and deliberate so much as efficient. It’s more reminiscent of how one would dress a toddler than seduce a lover.
“Hollis,” I say, deciding honesty is the only way I’m going to get through this, “I don’t understand how this works.”
“It’s a dress. It covers your body. There’s not much more to it.”
“No. Not— I understand clothing, thanks. I do not understand how this works between us now.”
“Oh. I told you last night. Nothing’s changed.”
“Maybe not emotionally, but something has changed. You didn’t dress me yesterday morning.”
“I would have if you asked.”
“You know what I mean. Like you said, you know what’s going on under here.” I gesture wildly in the direction of my chest. “You stroll over and touch me in a way you never would have done before we . . .”
“Before we fucked. It’s okay to say it, you know.”
“Before we fucked,” I say, trying to say every syllable as precisely as I can to show I’m unafraid. “I understand how to talk to you. But I don’t know what the rules are for the physical parts of this. How do we know if or when we’re going to do it again? Who can touch whom and in what contexts? I’ve never done the casual-sex thing. And you do it constantly. I need guidance so I don’t get it wrong and do irreparable damage to our friendship.”
“I do it constantly?” He huff-laughs. “Just how much game do you think I have?”
“Hollis. Please. Tell me the rules.”
“The rules?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He dips his head to position his lips close to my ear. His voice is low, intimate. “Rule one. Open communication—always. For example, if I want to get you out of this nice dress that Connie thought you might want to wear for the parade today, and then make you come on my tongue, I will communicate that to you and ask if that’s something you’re up for. And then you will say yes or no or maybe propose something different. Consent is never assumed, and we can each change our minds at any time and for any reason.”
“W-what’s rule two?”
“Rule two is be safe. And rule three is have fun. That’s about it.” He lightly nibbles my earlobe. “So what do you say, Mill? Can I find out how you taste?”
I squeeze my eyes closed, overwhelmed by the liquid heat pooling between my legs. “Oh. Shit. I thought that was hypothetical.”
“No, I meant it as an actual right-now proposition.”
“Oh.” It’s only complicated if you make it complicated. Dani’s text flashes in my brain. I wait for Mrs. Nash’s words to do the same, my memory searching for some past advice that might apply enough to act as the angel to the devil Dani on my shoulder. But the only thing I find is always do what is right for you. And what is right for me at this moment—according to my body, if not my brain—is Hollis’s mouth. I reach back and grab his wrist, then turn it so I can read the time on his watch. Hours and hours still before I have to be ready for the parade. “Yes, I am amenable to that.”
The dress’s zipper slides back down, this time with Hollis’s lips on the back of my neck and his other hand caressing my exposed skin. With a little shimmying, the green fabric puddles at my feet.
“Is this you finally being nice?” I ask.
“No,” he whispers into my ear. “This is me being extremely, extremely selfish.”
I’m fully naked with little fanfare, Hollis pausing only long enough to confirm that yes, those are dogs wearing sunglasses printed on my underwear. He guides me toward the bed, gently pushing me onto my back before dragging me by the hips to the edge of the mattress. After setting his glasses on the chest at the foot of the bed, his tongue skims along my inner thigh and makes my legs turn to jelly in anticipation. But inches from his ultimate destination, he pauses and stands abruptly.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. This is really not the reaction you want someone having when confronted with your vagina.
“Sorry. I was raised Southern Baptist and I . . .” Hollis mutters as he climbs onto the bed behind me and reaches up. “Can’t with the . . . them staring.” He flips the Jesus paintings over, then moves on to the next grouping of them, and the next, until all twenty-five have been forced to avert their eyes.
I laugh the entire time, deep belly laughs as he frowns in his very Hollis way as he encounters each one. “Now,” he says when he sinks to his knees beside the bed again, “let’s make that worth the trouble it’s going to be to flip them all back around again.”
13
• • • • •
My two favorite things about the Gadsley Broccoli Festival parade are that the procession is short, so I will be able to hear the marching band playing “Tusk” behind me the entire time, and that someone has given me a silky Parade Grand Marshal sash and a flower crown with broccoli florets tucked into the arrangement.
“Look!” I call to Hollis from my place in the back of the white convertible as we wait in the staging area. I point to my head. “Do you get it?”
“No,” he says. He’s standing a few feet away on the sidewalk, his arms crossed over his chest, frown firmly in place. For a man who got laid not two hours ago, he sure looks grumpy again. It’s actually kind of impressive how dedicated he is to being a curmudgeon.
“It’s a broccoli crown!”
He shrugs as if to say so what?
“The way broccoli is harvested, you know, like the bunches. That’s called a crown. So it’s a pun.”
Hollis rolls his eyes.
“Maybe you’d have known that if you hadn’t unsubscribed from Broccoli Facts,” I say just as the car dealership owner driving the convertible turns the key in the ignition. That at least tugs at the corners of Hollis’s lips.
No doubt he’s remembering this morning. After he brought me to orgasm with his mouth, he told me not to worry about him even though it was obvious he was hard. So when he began turning the paintings above the bed back around, I grabbed for my phone and texted him that California is the United States’s primary producer of broccoli. He read the text and got the stormiest, sexiest look on his face.
“No. No more broccoli facts. No more.”
“Had a feeling you might say that,” I said. And then I hit send on a draft I prepared just for this moment:
The heaviest broccoli on record was grown in 1993. It was 35 lbs.
“Millicent,” he said through clenched teeth as his phone buzzed on the nightstand. “If that’s another broccoli fact, I swear to god.”
“What are you gonna do about it?” I asked, daring him with my smile.
Suddenly, he was over my naked body, kissing me hard. “Gonna block your number, first of all,” he mumbled against my lips. And then I felt him smile.
“What’s second of all?”
My face heats at the memory of what Hollis proposed and proceeded to do to me. I fan myself with my hand, hoping the cool air will dissolve the flush of my cheeks.
“Little hotter down here than y’all’re used to up north, huh?” the mayor says beside me.
“Ha, yeah.” Gadsley is currently a balmy seventy degrees. But I’m too grateful for the excuse to mention that I’m originally from Southern California or that DC is technically south of the Mason-Dixon line and gets a lot hotter than this (with way higher humidity) once summer hits in earnest.
The parade should last about twenty minutes—which is the amount of time it takes to travel the length of Gadsley’s Main Street at a leisurely pace on foot—and I bask in the warmth of the midday sun and the crowd’s attention as we go. Because as much as I value my personal privacy, I always did love an audience. The only other time I was in a parade was when I rode on the Pringles float in New York on Thanksgiving Day 2003. Now that was a throng. But this is a much more manageable four hundred or so people, all lining the sidewalks and waving back at me like we’re neighbors. Ryan the Hepcat did a great job with the band, and even after hearing the same song on repeat for a quarter of an hour, I’m not at all tired of it.
Still, I keep catching myself wishing we could speed up, get to the end already, because we’re wasting too much time. In the shower this morning, I thought again about calling the nursing facility before we get back on the road. But like the last time I considered it, the idea left me a little nauseated. Then Hollis distracted me from giving the matter much more of my attention, for which I was grateful. Hey, maybe I could get Hollis to call. It’s cowardly, but it also feels less insurmountable than having to ask the question and hear the answer myself.
Hollis is waiting for me at the end of the parade route, typing on his phone.
“How’d you get here?” I ask. “You were at the staging area before.”
“I walked,” he says, sliding his phone back into his pocket. “Y’all were going like two miles an hour. It wasn’t exactly difficult to keep up.”
“Were you watching me the whole time? That’s kind of creepy, dude.”
“I was sending an email, if you must know.” Hollis frowns one of his very deepest frowns as he holds out a hand. “Are you going to get out of that car so we can get going, or are you going to keep interrogating me?”
I lay my palm against his, and my warm skin turns hot at the touch. Hollis wraps an arm around my waist and lifts me down from the convertible. Our faces are close together when he sets my feet on the ground. He looks like he wants to kiss me, and I definitely want to kiss him. But he lets go of me and takes a step back.
“There are newspaper people here,” he says. “And I saw a few local TV news vans.”
“Yeah? Well, good. Then Ryan and the mayor are getting the publicity they wanted.”
“I just meant that I probably shouldn’t be seen with you. In case the media thinks we’re together. That’s not the kind of attention you signed up for.”
I smile and fiddle with the zipper of his hoodie. “Well. That’s very considerate of you. But I’m nowhere near famous enough for anyone to care who I’m involved with. That was kind of Josh’s whole point in doing what he did.”
Hollis crosses his arms over his chest, cutting off my zipper access. “Still. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Wait. Is this about Yeva?” I slap my palms against my forehead, wincing when I hit the bruise strategically hidden under a swoop of hair and fifty layers of concealer. “You don’t want her to see you with me. That’s the real reason, isn’t it?”
How do I keep forgetting about Yeva? If cutting in front of someone to ride a roller coaster is bad, cutting in front of someone to ride their sex friend is probably like a hundred times worse. “I knew this was a terrible idea,” I groan. “And I’m a terrible person.”
“What? No. There’s no need to freak out. Don’t—” Hollis steps toward me again.
“Do I need to apologize to her? Send her like . . . some flowers or something? Maybe an Edible Arrangements? Does she have any allergies?”
“What are you even— Mill. Look at me.”
I squeeze my eyes closed in defiance, refusing to be talked down from my panic.
“Millicent.” His voice is a low, frustrated growl, the kind that turns me on a little. He snakes his arms around my waist and draws me against him. “Open your eyes and look at me.”
I open a single eye to find Hollis staring down into it.
“Don’t worry about Yeva,” he says. “This has nothing to do with her.”
“You’re just trying to make me feel better about cutting in line.”
“Cutting in line?”
“Yeah. If you were a roller coaster—”
Hollis cuts me off with a grumbled “For god’s sake.” His hands come to my face before his lips press against mine with enough pressure to communicate that this is mostly about getting me to shut up and stop spiraling. But soon the kiss shifts to a leisurely, soft exploration of mouths. And whoops, we’re making out in the middle of Main Street, surrounded by dozens of people.
A wolf whistle from someone in the crowd brings us back to reality some indeterminate amount of time later. I try to jump back from Hollis, to put space between us as if it will make any difference now. But he holds me against him, and says softly into my ear, “Guess we’ll find out if you’re right about not being famous enough for anyone to care.”
* * *
• • •
I’m not famous enough for anyone to care. Or rather, I wouldn’t be. Except it turns out that when someone takes a video of two people sharing a passionate kiss at the end of a parade route, and one of them is the parade’s grand marshal who is wearing a flower crown that includes raw broccoli florets, it gets a bit of traction online. Because apparently, even though Hollis and I are not a couple, we are somehow still hashtag couple goals and so obviously in love. The slack-jawed freckled kid in the background who drops his ice cream cone when Hollis squeezes my butt cheek only added to the speed with which the thing went viral.
A half hour after the original post on Twitter, the grand marshal thing got lost in the absurd game of telephone that is the internet. So thanks to the crown on my head, I’ve been dubbed the Broccoli Princess (although one retweet called me the Green Goddess, which I thought was inspired). Anyway, someone finally put two and two together and figured out Broccoli Princess equaled Millicent Watts-Cohen. So now social media is filled with Penelope to the Past hot takes and stills of my awkward teenaged body in the infamous yellow bikini.
“Stop looking at it,” Hollis says for the third time from the driver’s seat of Ryan’s lime-green Kia Soul. “You’re just going to get upset or skeeved out.”
I go deeper down the rabbit hole of retweets and quote tweets and—oh geez, there’s already a parody of it with two guys who have a comedy podcast or something. The bearded one is playing me and their dog is the kid in the background. It’s actually pretty hilarious.
“How did you wind up using my phone for this anyway?” Hollis mumbles.
“You have the app. It’s easier to use.”
“You can get it on your phone too, you know.”
“Then I’d need to make an account. No thanks, I’ll just keep using yours,” I say.
No one’s figured out Hollis’s identity yet, as far as I can tell. I hope that means Yeva won’t see the video. Hollis may have told me not to worry about her, but I can’t help wondering if my horniness is going to cause her distress. I’m about to bring it up again, to ask if Hollis is sure Yeva won’t be upset, if their arrangement explicitly accommodates this sort of thing, when Hollis’s phone buzzes in my hand.
Please don’t be Yeva again. Please don’t be—
Well, it’s not Yeva. But someone’s figured out the man in the video is Hollis Hollenbeck.
JOSH YAEGER: What the hell do you think you’re doing, Hollenbeck?
Seeing my ex’s name makes my stomach dip. “Uh. Hollis. You have a text from . . .”
JOSH YAEGER: I know you want to be me and have whatever I have but this is taking it too far.
“From . . . ?” Hollis coaxes.
“Josh.”
“Oh.” He huff-laughs. “What does that asshole want?”
I watch the phone’s screen, my hand trembling as I wait to see if another message will come through. “He must’ve seen the video. I think he’s pretty upset.”
“Good.”
JOSH YAEGER: If you want to stick your dick in crazy, be my guest. She’s a terrible lay anyway.
The words shoot fury into my chest at the same time they make my self-assurance feel like peeling wallpaper that could come down with one good tug. I’ve already become so used to the way Hollis makes me lean into the strongest parts of myself that I forgot how easy it is to be stripped down to something faded and fragile.
JOSH YAEGER: You should know she’s only using you to get back at me. Must’ve heard that’s all you’re good for.
Between reading the comments about the Broccoli Festival parade video and now this, I think I’ve punished myself enough for one day. I put Hollis’s phone in the empty cup holder and stare out the window as we travel down the highway. Hollis is focused on the road, his exaggerated arch of a frown curving more severely as the opening notes of “Sister Golden Hair” come through the speakers. If we weren’t in a completely different car and I didn’t now have a bruised forehead and a thorough mental map of Hollis’s naked body, it would be as if the last two days never happened. But they did, and we’re now twenty-four hours past my original intended arrival time at the nursing facility. We’re not even through South Carolina yet.
“Hey,” I say. “Will you do me a gigantic favor?”
“Depends,” he answers.
“On?”
“If I want to do it.”
I roll my eyes but honestly appreciate this evidence that nothing really has changed between us.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Would you call the place where Elsie is and check if she . . . if she’s . . . Would you see how she’s doing? I can’t seem to make myself do it. I’m too afraid of what they’ll say.”
