I glance at Holly. “Did you skip lunch again?”
Holly folds her arms. “Are you stalking me and my eating habits, Mateo?” I don’t miss how she’s avoiding eye contact with me.
“Yes, I have been, considering I didn’t see you all weekend and was concerned about you eating when you didn’t leave your room for any meals on Saturday and Sunday.”
I see her wince out of the corner of my eye. “I forget to eat lunch a lot when I get caught up in my work.”
“That’s not good.”
She shrugs. “Eh, it doesn’t hurt me any to skip a meal, anyway.”
Hold up. Did the words I think she said just come outof her mouth?
No way.
“Holly, you’re beautiful. Please don’t skip meals. You need food. Food is energy.”
I see her face in the window’s reflection. Her eyebrows are pulled down, and the frown on her face hurts my heart.
“I know food is energy, farm boy.” I can practically hear her eye roll.
“Do you know you’re beautiful?”
The other side of the car is silent.
This gets fixed now.
“Holly. You’re gorgeous. Please tell me you know that you’re attractive.”
Holly’s shoulders hunch. “I know I’m at least kind of attractive. Mainly, I know men think my bank account is attractive.”
I wave my hand in the air, battling the rage at all the men who made her feel like the only thing attractive about her was her money. “Forget your bank account. This is about you.” I wish I could pull over and look her in the eyes for this conversation, but we’ve hit traffic on the way to the venue and there is nowhere to get off.
“You are stunning. You are gorgeous. Your curves draw the eyes of every man in the room and I’ll probably have to fight them off tonight because of how good you look in that dress. You are just as gorgeous in that dress as you were in the sweats you wore yesterday. You are beautiful all day, every day. You don’t need to lose weight. You don’t need to change. You are gorgeous. You just are.”
Traffic is at a standstill and red brake lights are all I see. I throw the car in park and turn to Holly. Her hands are tightly folded in her lap. A tear falls onto the top of her fingers from her bowed head.
“Holly?” I whisper.
“Why do you have to be so nice?” She mutters. Her words sound harsh, but a myriad of emotions lace themselves beneath the surface.
“Come again?”
Holly throws her head back, spearing me with her gaze. “You. You’reperfect. You’re kind, considerate, and you say the most heart-melting things. Meanwhile, I feel like a broken wreck. This marriage isn’t fair to you. You should be with someone who is confident, put together, and who loves dirt, living in the country, and all the things you love.” She wipes her tears away and pulls a tissue from the glove box. She dabs her eyes, avoiding eye contact with me.
I reach out and grab Holly’s free hand, squeezing it tightly in mine. “Holly, I’m not perfect.”
She scoffs.
A horn blares behind us. I turn back to the road to see cars moving.
Of course I’m having a heart-to-heart with the woman I’m falling in love with in the middle of stop-and-go traffic. I have great timing with such things.
I close the distance between me and the car in front of us and keep my eyes on the road as I let out a little of my heart. “Holly, I’m not perfect. I have issues too. Over the next year, you’re going to discover a lot of them. I’m very impulsive and I make cringy dad jokes. I can take some things seriously, but most of the time I dodge hard conversations with humor. I’m a momma’s boy, and you’ll hear me call her daily. The point is, we both have things we’re working on and improving at. I’ll probably leave messes around the house that will drive you crazy. I’ll make a lot of noise with my tools that will become annoying at some point, I’m sure. The point is, I’m not perfect.”
She waves a dismissive hand in the air. “Yeah, but you don’t have a bunch of emotional trauma from your parents to deal with.”
I hold in a sigh. “My parents aren’t perfect either. It was different being raised in a half-white, half-salvadoreño home. I’ve got weird traditions, and my family had to figure out how to balance their different cultures and parenting styles. I’m the guinea pig as the oldest. I’m sure I have a lot of weird habits. It might not be emotional trauma like what you and Alex have dealt with, but I can understand having to work through habits andhardships of the past.”
