And now she's seen through mine.
My hands shake as I grip the safety bar.
"You know what the difference is between you and Holly?" Nick finally breaks the silence as we near the top.
I don't want to know. But I ask anyway, my voice rough. "What?"
"She’s the first to apologize for what she does, but she never apologizes for who she is. " He studies my face. "Maybe you should try it sometime."
And that's exactly why she deserves better than me.
Chapter Twelve
Holly
Well,slamming my fingers against the keyboard with increasing force isn’t working, dashing any hope that if I hit these keys hard enough, my computer will get its shit together and cooperate.
For the sixth time in twenty minutes, the WiFi drops, taking my presentation updates with it into the digital abyss.
"What did that Mac ever do to you?" Charlie asks from her perch on my bed, swirling her cocktail. She showed up ten minutes ago with fruity drinks and concern.
I took the drink—shrugged off the concern.
"Nothing yet, but the night is young." I jab viciously at the refresh button. "And this WiFi is personally victimizing me."
The soft glow from the bedside lamp casts shadows across the room, making it feel smaller, more intimate. Like the kind of space where secrets slip free.
Or where you hide from them.
Charlie takes a deliberately casual sip of her drink. "So... rough day?”
I snort. “That’s what we’re calling it?”
“I meant the computer, sorry.”
“Just technical difficulties.” I try for breezy, miss by about eight emotional octaves, and land somewhere between strangled and hysterical.
“And judging from Santa’s precision dropping his sac of computer glitches on me, he has no problems hitting the bowl.”
"Mmmhmm." She studies me over the rim of her glass. "And this… frustration has nothing to do with my brother? Nothing at all.”
“Nope.” There’s that emphasized pop again.
“That’s good, then it definitely has nothing to do with a certain blonde bombshell who crashed?"
"Please." The word is more of a cracked yelp.
A dying seagull.
Helium-like, but solid.
But I totally stuck the landing.
Judges—would totally give my graceless swan dive into life's unflushed toilet an 8.3.
Ahhhhh, a solid foundation of skills I can build on.
"I couldn't care less about GI Joe's blast from the past."
