CHAPTER TEN

BRANDON

 

My laptop sat on the aluminum table top in the café of Reade’s. Scott had brought over cup after steaming cup of black coffee to keep the fire burning, but what he didn’t know was that I didn’t even have the kindling to get the flames going in the first place. With every delivery, he asked how it was going and every time I grinned with feigned enthusiasm. “It’s coming along, man,” I’d say, and send him on his way, not having the heart to tell him that not only was I struggling to get anything down but I really would have preferred he just left me alone.

Nick had continued his badgering, because it was his job. When he asked what the hell had been wrong with me, I just told him I was finding it harder to find the inspiration to write. But the truth was, I had found an entirely different type of inspiration that made me want to push the story in a different direction, but I couldn’t have found it at a worse time.

I leaned back in the chair, tipping it on its back legs. With my fingers laced behind my head, I glared angrily at the words I had typed that night. All of them felt like puzzle pieces that had been forced to fit somewhere they weren’t supposed to go, and through my frustration, I angrily held down the backspace until they had disappeared entirely. That left me at 81,236 words, and dammit, what I would have given to have my bottle of Scotch magically appear before me in that moment.

The sound of the front door jingling open provided me with a welcomed distraction, and I turned to see the bane of my existence walking toward me in what I could only describe as a death march. She was a vision of vampiric elegance in the black dress; a jolt struck me in the heart and other neglected places of my body at the hint of milky white skin through the slit that went up to her thigh. Her hair framed her face in darkness, and I couldn’t remember if I had ever seen it out of a ponytail.

I wanted nothing else than to take more than a moment basking in her enigmatic beauty, but I couldn’t draw my eyes away from the makeup streaked along her cheeks as my blood reached a point beyond boiling.

Acting as the Knight in Shining Armor to her Damsel in Distress, I stood up to impulsively wrap my arms around her. Pressing my cheek against the top of her head, my thoughts ran angry circles around that instinctive part of my brain, screaming at me to protect her.

I will kill him. I will throw my entire fucking life away and kill him. I will find him and break every fucking bone in his body and I. Will. Kill. Him.

She took a step back after several moments, wiping her hands against her face frantically before wrapping her arms around herself with a shiver. Her shoulders and back were exposed, and I took my jacket off to drape it over her. She thanked me, pushing her arms through the sleeves, and when they had a moment to focus on the sight before her, her dark eyes widened.

“Wow,” she said breathlessly, sniffling the last bit of her tears, looking over the tattoos that I realized she had never seen. “How many do you have?”

I struggled a laugh, still seething. “I’ve lost count.”

Her hands went to my arms; a grateful disruption to whatever was happening in her mind, as she rolled the short sleeves of my t-shirt to the shoulders. I felt frozen with excitement as her hands ran over my bicep, and I saw her lick her lips before letting them part.

She swallowed, and moved her hands away, stepping back to stare for a moment. “Do you only have these?”   

Aware suddenly of Scott’s boisterous singing from behind us, I glanced over my shoulder to see him with his back turned, buffing away at the espresso machine. I pulled the collar of my t-shirt down just a bit, revealing a little peek of the stone lion’s head that encompassed the right side of my chest, and then turned around and lifted the hem, exposing half of the piece that blanketed my entire back. I had to remind myself to breathe as her eyes stared at the skull that covered most of my lower back; the lower jaw disappearing under the waistband of my jeans. My heart jumped and my flesh goose-pimpled, startled by the touch of her hands against the sensitive skin, and dammit, my pants strangled my groin as she pulled my shirt up further, giving her a full view of the raven carrying a crown in its talons, spanning the width of my upper back and shoulders.

It was the closest I had gotten to a woman disrobing me in over five years, and my cheeks flamed with the reminder of how exhilarating it could feel to be touched.

“Jesus,” she said quietly with awe. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but um, you look …” She cleared her throat and swallowed. “You look really good.”

Oh, but I wanted to take that the “wrong way,” if there was such a thing, and after hearing the compliment countless times before, it had never sounded sweeter.

“Thanks,” I said with haste, covering myself before Bill or Scott could ask why I was undressing in their store. I turned back to her to find her face flushed, knowing mine was as well. “You like tattoos?”

She nodded, wrapping her arms tightly over her chest. “I’ve always wanted them, but …” She shrugged, her eyes wandering toward something off to the side. “Stephen didn’t really like them, so …”

“He didn’t let you?” My mouth twisted into a frown.

Looking back to me, she shook her head. “Oh, no, I just never got them, because I, uh, thought he wouldn’t want me anymore if I did.” She snorted a sorrowful laugh, dropping her gaze to the floor. “Oh, the irony, right?”

“Well, hey, if you wanted to go get matching butterflies or something, I’m game.” She silently rolled her eyes up at me, and I took that as my cue to change the subject. “So, um, do I really want to ask what happened tonight?”

She bit her bottom lip to keep it from quivering as her watery eyes looked everywhere but at me. I felt guilty, as though I had jinxed her with my jokes about him being a psychopath. I hadn’t meant anything by it, of course, even though it would have thrilled me to find that he had snagged a picture off of the internet to call his own. I had secretly hoped that he was really a basement-dwelling goblin of a man without a penny to his name. Maybe he would have even left her with the tab—shame on me.

The truth was, I selfishly didn’t want her to have any other man to turn to, to sit with and read during Story Time, to receive cups of tea from. I didn’t want another man to be lucky enough to hear her laugh and see her smile; to be the reason for that smile. It was wrong of me to assume I could hold her from a romantic life, especially after I had vowed to never make another move, but having her so close to me almost felt like enough. Almost.

But when she told me that he had implied that she wasn’t the most beautiful woman he had ever laid his snobby eyes on, I instantly regretted ever hoping for anything but wedding bells as I clenched my fists on my lap, out of her view.

“So, wait, you haven’t even eaten dinner yet?” I asked. My heart pumped hot blood through my veins, each one of them threatening to burst under the pressure. She shook her head, and without a moment of hesitation, I stood up from the table, grabbing the closed laptop and taking her hand in mine.

“Where are we going?” she asked with surprise, wobbling on her stiletto heels as she stood.

I led her to the door with anger fueled determination. “You put in all of this effort to go out to dinner, and dammit, you deserve that.”

 

***

 

Turning the black Mercedes into the parking lot of the Golden Carousel diner, I felt the shame of taking her somewhere so lack luster when she had dressed for a place of class and wealth. But despite the casual destination, like a gentleman, I rounded the car and opened the door for her, enveloping her hand in mine to help her out. She curtsied as best as she could in the dress with sarcastic pleasantry.

“Why, thank you, kind sir,” she said, followed by a giggle that awakened every nerve in my body.

Playing along, I bowed with more grace than even I expected, holding my opposite arm behind my back and I brought her delicate hand to my lips.

“It is my most honorable pleasure, milady,” I said with sincerity, looking at her through my lashes before lightly kissing her knuckles.

“Wow.” Her giggle was nervous, and a light flush rose from her chest to her cheeks. I caught her bite against her lower lip, and I tried with great difficulty not to let my ego inflate. “You’re smooth,” she said with a blushing grin.

“It’s how I woo all the ladies,” I said, unable to fight my own laugh, and straightened my back to offer her my arm. “Shall we?”

She accepted graciously, and we walked along the sidewalk and up the steps to the aluminum adorned doors as the late October wind whipped cruelly against the thin material of my shirt, but with her close at my side, I couldn’t find it at all possible to feel cold.

“Hey B.!” A raspy voice called from inside the diner, and my favorite grey-rooted waitress Birdy bounded her way over to us. “I can’t wait for you to try this new pie I’ve been working on. It’s peach with—” Her eyes opened in shock at the sight of Holly on my arm, and she gave me a suspicious look. “Well, well—who’s this?”

“Birdy, this is my friend Holly,” I said, giving her a stern look and hoped she got the message, and as I should have predicted after thirty years of knowing the woman, she didn’t.

Birdy dramatically clapped her hands over her buxom chest and grinned from ear-to-ear. “Oh, Brandon, your mother is going to be thrilled. Absolutely thrilled! Honestly, she never thought you would ever meet anybody, especially after …” She grimaced before shooting a look in Holly’s direction. “Well, anyway, she’s always so worried about you, hon. Every time I talk to her, she says, ‘Brandon needs to meet someone soon or I’m never going to meet my grandchildren.’ Can you believe that? I always tell her, ‘Carole, you raised a good, successful, handsome man and sooner or later, the right girl is going to come along and sweep him off his feet. You’ll see.’”

“Mom needs to relax,” I grumbled at the plump woman.

“Oh, honey, she’s your mother. She can’t relax. She knows you need someone to take care of you.” Her bauble-adorned hand patted my arm gently as she turned to Holly. “You know he doesn’t cook for himself? If this diner didn’t stand, I’m convinced he’d starve.”

Holly looked up at me through her smudge-ringed eyes. They twinkled with amusement, and that instantly made the teasing worth it.

“You’d starve, huh?” She hugged my arm tighter against her and treated me to her smile, and I felt a sliver of affection poke through my humiliation.

“I wouldn’t starve,” I insisted, glowering down at Birdy. “I’m capable of using a microwave, you know.”

Birdy waved her hands, dismissing my comment as unimportant. “B., I can tell you found a good one here. She’s absolutely stunning, and that smile!” She paused to take a hand from each of us in hers, squeezing tightly as though I had just burst through the metallic doors with the announcement of our engagement. “I’m just … I’m so happy, I could cry—Oh! But I won’t, I won’t, don’t worry. I just … Oh God, I can’t wait to call your mother …” She turned, letting the excitement in her voice trail off as she hurried to grab a couple menus from the rack, and walked ahead of us down the aisle of booths. 

“Does everybody know you?” Holly asked in a whisper.

I leaned down to whisper in her ear. “She and my mom go way back. She actually used to babysit me back in the day, and—Jesus.” I cupped a hand over my mouth, lost for words. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t think she’d react like that.”

I expected her to look up at me with a panicked expression, but I was relieved to find her grinning. “No, it’s fine. I actually think it’s sweet.” She tightened her grip on my arm once again, and my heart swelled against the skeletal confines of my chest. “I can play along. I mean, I wouldn’t want to disappoint your mom.”

We met with Birdy at my usual spot, hidden behind a wall of frosted glass bricks. Unhooking her arm from mine, Holly excused herself, but before leaving for the ladies’ room, she craned her neck and stood on her toes to kiss me on the cheek. My breath was instantly entrapped in my lungs, and I closed my eyes at the sensation of having her lips touch my skin again.

“I’ll be right back,” she said softly, and walked away in the direction of Birdy’s finger.

My eyes followed every step she took as I sat down into my usual seat, entranced by the steady but fluid rock of her hips, barely visible beneath the length of my jacket. The exuberant woman leaned close to me. She was absolutely beside herself with glee and the ruby red grin didn’t hide that fact one bit. I cringed to imagine the phone call she would be having with my poor mother. I cringed again at the thought of having to tell the hopeful woman it was all a ruse.

“So, you love her, huh?” Birdy blurted out.

My heart might have stopped at her question; I couldn’t be sure because in that moment, my entire body had seemed to come to a functioning strike. I held my breath, my body stiffened, and the only sign of life that remained was the perspiration that collected along my brow.

If my mother’s old friend could hear the secrets of my heart, how was I supposed to keep Holly from listening?

I remained still, as if I could cease to exist, but instead of taking the hint and walking away to busy herself with another customer, Birdy cocked her head with a knowing smile and squeezed my shoulder. The expression took me back to when I was a child, sitting in her living room while she and my mom visited; I would sit on the floor, writing stories in composition notebooks for hours. When Birdy would ask if I wanted a snack, I’d decline the offer, too polite to beg for a slice of pie. And she’d give me that look, seeing through the lies told by a well-mannered kid, and off she’d go to fetch me a piece of her latest baking adventure.

She shifted her weight, jutting a hip to the side in a position of attitude. “Does she know?”

With nowhere to hide, I raked a hand through my hair and shook my head. “No,” I said dryly, but I softened immediately, letting myself relax into the childish comfort I felt in her presence. “I’m really not sure how I feel about her.”

She nodded knowingly. “I know, hon. It’s tough. You know, admitting you could feel that way about someone new.”

My mouth fell open to protest, but to protest would have been to lie, and what was the point in that?

I abruptly turned to her, impassioned by a sudden surge of panic. “You cannot tell my mother. Please.”

“Oh, my God, but why?” she whined with desperation. Forty years of smoking caused the higher pitches of her voice to sound akin to squealing tires.

Much to my relief, Holly walked back to the table, fresh-faced and smiling. She slid into the seat across from me and picked up a menu. Birdy straightened up and shook her head at me with disappointment, but she didn’t need to. I was already disappointed in myself.

“I’ll be back to get your order, kids. Take your time,” she said, still glaring directly at me with her mouth forming a thin, tight line before turning to bound her way down the aisle towards the other diners.

Holly put down her menu and leaned closer. “What was that about?”

I shrugged. “Who the hell knows?” I brushed it off, hiding myself behind my own menu, just grateful that the prying into my soul had stopped.

“So, you never answered my question,” she said, turning the laminated pages.

“What was that?”

“Does everybody know you?”

I laughed, putting the menu down, knowing already what I was going to order. “It’s a small town,” I reasoned with a shrug.

She shook her head. “Yeah, but I mean, you seem to have these close relationships with people, or at least from what I’ve seen.”

I pursed my lips and scratched against my chin. “No, you’re right. I just have a tendency to go where I feel comfortable, I guess.” I had a thought and chuckled at the realization. “Actually, you’re the first real friend I’ve made since … Shit, college, maybe.”

There was only a handful of people I had met over the years that I could consider myself friendly with, but could I sit in a diner at ten o’clock at night with any of them? The realization hit me with lonely clarity, and I waited for Holly to flash me a sympathetic look.

But she only smiled, looking up from her menu. “Me too.”

 

***

 

She was ravenous, and she seemed to inhale the hamburger loaded with bacon, lettuce, and tomato. I couldn’t recall the last time a woman had eaten in front of me without the slightest hint of self-consciousness getting in the way of their enjoyment.

My God, it was so refreshing.

“This is so good,” she groaned through a mouthful of food. I tried to hide my amusement, but she caught me and rolled her eyes. “You have no idea how sick of take-out I am. This isn’t even a real home-cooked meal, but it’s the closest thing I’ve come to it in months.” She took a long sip of iced tea before resuming her assault on the burger.

“Well, hey, if you ever want to come over and cook me dinner, don’t let me stop you. I can’t cook to save my life,” I admitted before stuffing a fry into my mouth.

“I heard,” she teased, sending a quick glance over at Birdy.

“Julia was the cook, so when she left, I stopped eating like a normal human being.” I talked absentmindedly, and as what I had said settled in, I stopped my chewing and a hand flew to my hair.

Holly shoved the last bite of her burger into her mouth. “Who’s Julia?” She asked innocently, completely unaware of what it truly meant for me to openly talk about her to someone. “It’s amazing you even have hair, by the way. You do that thing so often.”

I sighed ruefully, looking up towards the low-hanging light that hovered above the table. “Julia,” I began, letting the name pass through my lips slowly, savoring the bitter taste, “was my fiancée.”

“You were engaged?” She was clearly shocked by the news and unsure of if she should be expressing pity or not.

“Yep,” I said shortly, annoyed at myself for inviting the conversation.

Holly’s eyes dropped to the table and danced over the surface for a few painful moments, her jaw working from side-to-side. With her eyes still glued to the table, she finally spoke in a timid voice. “What happened?”

I wasn’t wanting the topic to linger for long, and I quickly ran through the different ways to explain what had happened. To tell the whole truth meant telling the whole truth about myself, and I wasn’t ready. I clasped my hands on the table, resisting the urge to rake my hair right out of my scalp.

“She and I had been together for a long time—about ten years or so—before we were engaged.”

Holly held her hands up, keeping me from moving forward, and dammit if I didn’t have the slightest bit of aggravation niggling at me. “I’m sorry, but you were together for ten years before you were engaged? Jeez, and I was mad at Stephen that he hadn’t proposed after two.” 

“Well, we never shied away from the idea of getting married, but …” I sighed, already feeling as though I was delving further into the topic than I wanted. I drummed my fingers anxiously against the table. “We had started dating in our first year of college, so when we had come to the realization that we wanted to get married one day, we decided to wait until after graduation. But then graduation rolled around, and we got busy with finding jobs, finding an apartment, then … life just gets in the way sometimes, and before you know it, ten years fly by.”

I shook my head, feeling a few hairs fall against my forehead, but I didn’t bother pushing them back as I nudged a fry on my plate. “I used to wonder if that was part of it; maybe we had just waited too long. But …” I avoided noticing the way she looked at me by shoving the fry in, and I continued, talking around it. “We were only two months away from the wedding, just closed on a house, and she just, uh, decided she more or less despised me and no longer wanted anything to do with me.”

“Holy shit, I’m sorry,” she said apologetically, her eyes dropping to the table, as though I would snap at her if she dared to look. “I don’t even know what else to say.”

“It’s fine, and you don’t have to say anything. It was a long time ago.” 

“Well, I’m sorry,” Holly repeated, this time in a whisper. She looked to me again, the familiar pain overshadowing the golden flecks in her eyes.

She was sad for me, but without the pity so many others had felt when I called to tell them the wedding was off. No, she was sad in a way that told me she understood what it was like to have love and be forced to give it up. She understood what it was to not be enough for the person you thought you needed more than the world. She understood in a way that brought my heart to release any residual ache it had been holding onto, and it felt good. It felt warm, it felt alive, and it felt a lot like love.

I shook my head slowly, dismissing the apology. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” I said in a low voice, and cursed myself for not sending the fear along with the pain.

 

***

 

We drove in silence back down Main Street, and I fantasized about the bottle of Scotch lying in my desk drawer. I accepted I was going to need it that night. I also accepted that there was little chance of getting anymore writing done. I silently apologized to Breckenridge, feeling guilty for already stifling his voice for too long.

Holly shifted in the heated seat, a distressed sigh passed through her lips and into the quiet of the car. I glanced quickly at her, to see if she was all right, and her eyes met mine.

“Thanks for tonight,” she said with a little smile and another sigh. “I’m just not exactly looking forward to going home and having to work tomorrow, just so my little mundane life can begin all over again.”

“Yeah, well, at least you won’t have the phone call I’ll have waiting for me once I get back to my house,” I grumbled, knowing damn well that Birdy had called my mother once we had left. I could just hear my mother’s excited voice, leaving message after joyful message on the machine.

Holly laughed. “God, that’s right. Hey, I could come with you and talk to her. Really solidify the whole thing.”

On the surface, the idea wasn’t a terrible one. My mother would rest easy for once, believing her little boy was happily involved with a respectful woman, and I could, at least for a while, avoid any further conversation about my relationship status. But when I dug deeper, the sheer thought of her being in my house kicked my anxiety to an unbearable level. Having her exposed to so many secrets, as well as my bedroom, told me that the idea was not only a bad one, but a dangerous one.

I gave my head a little shake. “Nah, I’ll suffer on my own, but thanks,” I said, smiling my appreciation.

“So, she used to babysit you?”

“Who, Birdy?” Holly nodded as I turned the wheel into Reade’s parking lot. “Well, my mom was a hairdresser by day, waitress by night, and Birdy would babysit me until my dad could pick me up after his deliveries were done.” I glanced at her, pleased to find myself divulging a little information without any apprehension. “He used to drive a delivery truck for Entenmann’s.”

I parked the car next to her van as she asked, “What do they do now?”

“Well, a few years ago, they both decided to retire, sold their house, and moved down to a condo in Florida. So basically, they sit on a beach all day and play shuffleboard at their fifty-five-and-over complex,” I laughed with the acknowledgement that the smile on my face was one of bitter sweetness.

“You miss them,” she stated, and I nodded. “Why don’t you live closer to them?”

I considered the question, biting my bottom lip. God knows my parents had asked me that question countless times since I helped buy their condo on the Atlantic coast. They reminded me often that there was nothing holding me to New York, that I had enough money to fly back when I needed to, and I retaliated with my distaste for a state that seldom saw more than a sprinkling of dusty snow.

Not long ago, that was all I had. A single weak argument holding me to a home that left a bitter taste on my tongue. But there, in my car with my heart relearning the words to a long-forgotten song, I had something so much more than the weather to hold onto.

“New York is home,” I said nonchalantly, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel.

“Where is home?” She was on a roll, and so was I, satisfying her with the town name. “You actually live in Brightwaters? Where?” I told her that I lived around the lakes. Her expression suggested she was impressed. “Wow, then you live in a beautiful house.”

I caught her smiling wistfully as she looked into the distance, at somewhere faraway and out of her reach. “You know, when they were alive, my grandparents lived a few blocks over from that area, and I would go for walks around the lakes—feeding the ducks and whatever. I would fantasize about one day living in one of those houses. There was one in particular that I just … Oh, my God. I loved it so much.” I resisted the urge to ask which one, because what did that matter? “I didn’t really have any plan of how I’d end up in one, because I was just a stupid kid, but I would just imagine what it would be like to wake up in the morning and look out my window at that. I mean, it’s gotta be beautiful.”

My throat felt constrained by the loose collar of my t-shirt. “It is,” I confirmed, my voice sounding unused and hoarse.

She shook her head. “It’s funny, because I would imagine these amazing things happening to me. You know, meeting a guy who loved me as much as he was rich, moving into a gorgeous house, having a beautiful wedding, maybe having a couple kids of my own. But then sooner or later, I just started to accept that maybe all I was destined for was a guy who never touched me and a studio apartment in the city, and now …” Her voice faded as she looked downward at the leather sleeves covering her hands. “Now I just feel like it’s all too late, you know? I’m going to be thirty-two in a few months, and my freakin’ clock is starting to sound like Big Ben. I think I went out with James tonight because he said he was rich and successful, which is so horrible and shallow—but I thought if things had gone well, then he might have been the guy from my fantasies, and then I wouldn’t have to worry. But …”

Holly sighed a shaky breath that had me praying she wouldn’t cry again. “I was so stupid to think a guy like that could want someone like me.”

She was killing me. I hadn’t been sure up until that point, but I knew for certain then that she was in fact killing me. How cruel it was to meet someone so perfect in every way imaginable, and not have the courage to reach out and hold onto them for dear life.

“You think I’m stupid,” she stated, and she couldn’t have been more wrong.

“No.” My voice came out as one I didn’t recognize—gruff and strangled. I cleared my throat, staring at the steering wheel, as if it could read my fortune like some overpriced Magic 8 Ball. “But I do think you’re too hard on yourself.”  

I looked over to her, and saw her dark eyes had flooded; they resembled the mysterious depths of the ocean, undiscovered by mankind. I wanted to dive in and drown in them, to swallow all her pain and make it my own. If only I possessed such power, power that I could only manage in the stories I told and not in the real world.

“I’m a fucking babysitter, Brandon. That’s not even a real job, and a guy like that—” She shook her head and snorted a watery laugh. “A guy like that wants a woman with a real job and a real salary. Guys like that don’t want someone who would rather be in yoga pants and a sweatshirt than this stupid thing.”

“I like your yoga pants,” I said defensively, as I held a fist to my mouth. The image of her ass in those tight black pants came to mind, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut to scold it away.

She scoffed. “You’re not a guy like that, though.”

With a surge of defiance, I nodded my head with purpose. “Yeah, that’s right. I’m not a fucking asshole.”

Holly shook her head and twisted her lips around bitter words before spitting them out. “No, you’re not, and I cannot understand why a guy like you would want to spend so much time with me either.”

I couldn’t bear to hear her criticize herself any longer. I reached across to grab a hold of her hand with just the right amount of force to shock her into closing her mouth, and I looked her right in the eyes.

“Listen to me, okay?” The stern tone of my voice caused her body to tense, and I was pleased to have her attention. “You told me that you used to answer teenager’s questions for a living, and you think that’s a real job?” With a slight nod of her head, she shrugged her shoulders momentarily, and then they sagged with the weight of her sadness. “Okay, so let me get this straight. A job in which you told girls how to pick up a guy they’re not going to care about in a week is a real job to you. Yet, now, you have this new job where you are enriching the life of a little girl every single day, in ways that she will carry with her forever, and you think that’s demeaning? Fuck, I don’t know, Holly. You have a right to your own opinion, but in my opinion, there’s really no contest as to which one of those is the real job.”

I squeezed her hand gently. She reciprocated, and it was as though she squeezed my heart. “Nobody should ever make you feel like less of a person because of what you do, Holly, and anybody who feels they are able to do that is the lesser person—not you.” She nodded her understanding finally, and wiped a hand hastily over her eyes.

“You’ve never told me what you do,” she sniffed, glancing at me.

I gave her my best lopsided smile, and said, “I do the same thing as you. I enrich lives.”

She laughed, shaking her head. “You’re ridiculous.”

“It’s part of my charm.” I shrugged, and leaned over the center console to nudge her with an elbow. “Actually, I’m a writer.”

I was on the ledge, ready to dive off, ready to tell her everything. Her face contorted into one of genuine interest as her eyebrows raised with curiosity.

“Well, you’re certainly not a struggling one.” The gears turned in her head, trying to fit together the pieces. I wanted her to miraculously know who I was. I wanted her to suddenly exclaim that I was that guy that wrote those books. “So, what kind of writer are you?”

I laughed at that, ignoring the panicked churning of my stomach. “Sounds like you already have your answer.”

Opening my door, I went to her side. She climbed out without my help, too deep in thought to pay attention to the hand I had lent her.

“Well, what do you write?”  

“Books,” I teased, resting my back against her van.

“What books?”  

I was close, so close. I stood at that ledge, ready to take the plunge, but I made the mistake of looking down at those uncertain, rocky cliffs. I saw myself dead, floating at the water’s surface, and I took a step backward, recoiling with terror.

“I’ll tell you one day,” I said, hoping that would be good enough. She cocked her hip, visibly annoyed by my answer. “I promise,” I emphasized, hoping she could tell that I meant it, and I did.

“Is being a mystery part of your charm, too?” she asked, the hint of a smile playing on her lips.

“Well, is it working?” I asked, and she rolled her eyes and reached out to pull me into a hug. My arms wrapped around her shoulders, and I added, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

With her face pressed into the hollow of my chest and her arms around my waist, she sighed happily. A few moments passed with my chin sitting atop her head, looking out into the open spaces of the parking lot. I sat on the edge of being disappointed with myself, angry with my weakness, but the scent of her hair and the soft expansion of her chest against my middle left me hovering in a place of peaceful elation.

“Can I ask one more question?” she asked. 

“Hmm,” I replied, floating in the daze of tranquility with her in my arms.

“What’s your last name?”

I paused, my sense of serenity drifting away with the autumn wind that nipped at the naked flesh of my arms, and I bit my lower lip in consideration of the question. It was almost too personal for comfort, but if she knew, she could feel free to Google my name and find everything out for herself, and it would be all out in the open. Whether that would be a good thing or not, I could leave up to fate, and I decided to bite.

“Davis,” I said, and asked for hers.  

I felt her smile against my chest. “Hughes,” she said. 

It was a silly thing; how learning even just a small fact about someone could make you feel closer to them, and I found myself smiling along with her. Holly Hughes, I thought, feeling that I couldn’t have made up a better name for her myself. Endearing with a touch of quirky sadness, like the heroine in a romantic comedy.

And I wished on the nearly-invisible Long Island suburban stars that I could be her happy ending.

To my disappointment, she pulled away and began to take the jacket off. I insisted that she didn’t have to, if she needed it for warmth, but she assured me she would be fine once she got the heat going in the van.

About to open the door, she turned to me and thanked me again for making her night better. There was a moment of looking down at her in the dim light, and I felt the shove to kiss her hard on the mouth and claim her as mine. Of course, I didn’t, but I did lean down and felt my lips against her cheek, inhaling the scent of her hair deeply to accompany me during the lonely night ahead.

“Good night, Holly freakin’ Hughes.”

I love you.