“Okay, so then maybe change your ex’s name in your phone,” Bradie says, still as cold as ice. “And I have a feeling Holden’s absence tonight might have to do with that. I know everyone says my brother has changed and honestly, I’m beginning to believe maybe he has, in some ways. But I can tell you one way I don’t think he’ll ever change. If he thinks he’s going to get hurt, he will shut down and shut you out so quick it’ll make your head spin. And he won’t let you back in. Ever. I know because I’m the same way.”
“Solid advice,” I say quietly. “And I swear, I am not going to hurt him.”
“You don’t have to convince me. You have to convince him,” Bradie says. “Night, Winnie.”
After I hang up with Bradie, I feel even more confused and worried than I did before. Is he really upset I was talking to Ty? The idea that he is, that it caused him to leave, makes me feel like such a screwup. Ugh. I am all about the fails today clearly. Giving people I care about labels that aren’t their names in my phone started as a safety thing for Jude after I caught a girl in college going through my phone when I left a lecture to go to the bathroom. She was trying to find my superstar brother’s number. So, I changed everyone’s names who meant anything to me. My parents are listed under “Couple Goals,” my sisters under “Blond and Blonder” and Jude is “Putz.” I changed Ty’s to “Boyfriend,” just for fun, around the same time.
I try to call Holden again and he doesn’t answer again. Damn. Ocean Pines is a small town that is more than half empty this time of year. I could walk the streets and probably find him, if he stayed local. But he took his truck, so he could have driven into Portland or Ogunquit or anywhere. Fuck. My. Life. Now I just have to sit here and let my brain wander to all the horrible things that he could be doing or, worse, thinking about me—and us.
I finish the dishes and put them all away and when he still hasn’t called or texted, I decide to go out—not to look for him but just to keep from going crazy sitting here waiting. I head to the beach first and sit there for about half an hour on a bench by the dunes watching the tide roll in under the moonlight. It doesn’t do anything to stop the tornado of bad feelings swirling in me, which is rare. The ocean always makes me feel better.
I walk down Main Street, the same street that, if you walk far enough, will take you to the bus station. How does it feel like a lifetime ago that I was walking it in the other direction, home from the bus station, trying not to be noticed by Holden?
The streets are just as deserted tonight as they were that night. All the tiny motels that pepper the street between closed sundry shops and empty restaurants have flickering vacancy signs. I look up at the sign for the Driftwood, which has been the same since I was little. It’s a white neon clamshell with the name in pink neon script across the middle. The building is the same, squat two-story structure it’s always been, the white and teal paint peeling now, unlike when I was a kid. Normally, I wouldn’t look twice at it, as it’s so familiar I could sketch it with my eyes closed, but tonight it has more vehicles in the parking lot than the other motels. And one of those vehicles is Holden’s truck.
My steps falter and stop completely. I stand there, on the sidewalk across the street, unmoving and staring at the building for what feels like eternity. I don’t know what else to do except wait while I let my brain and my heart fight a battle. My brain says it’s sketchy as hell that he’s at some motel and that he must be up to his old no-good ways again. My heart says he isn’t. It’s something else…but what?
Finally, the door to a room on the bottom floor opens, second from the end. Holden steps out. He turns back to the open door and he’s saying something to someone, but I can’t see who it is. He looks…different. And yet familiar. His shoulders are tense, his hands in fists at his side. His jaw is so tight I can see the tautness of the tendons in the side of his neck from here. The scowl on his face as he turns away from the motel room brings me back to my youth—all the painful parts. Because he wore that expression permanently when he was young. It was always on his face and I stared it down while I died inside when he teased me mercilessly.
Suddenly someone else comes out of the room, as Holden is reaching for the driver’s door on his truck. A woman. Skinny, not slim, in a pair of cutoffs so short I can see her ass cheeks hanging out from here as she reaches for his shoulder, holding him in place and pressing the front of her body up against the back of his.
My emotions are spiraling, pulling my heart with them into a dark vortex.
She says something, her chin resting on his shoulder, her lips near the shell of his ear. Holden turns and gently moves her back, off him and then proceeds to get in his truck. I can’t move. I’m just standing there, rigid, stuck in this strange Twilight Zone where everything I’ve clung to—like the belief that he’s changed, that I’m a stronger person and wouldn’t see a cheater like Ty again—is disintegrating before my eyes.
He starts the truck and pulls out of the parking spot. As soon as he reaches the exit, his headlights shine directly on me. Despite the fact the road he’s about to turn onto is wide open he doesn’t pull out. Instead, his window goes down. “Winnie?”
I don’t respond. I can’t.
He gets out of his truck, leaving it running, in park in the middle of the motel driveway. He jogs across the street and as soon as he’s in front of me, I’m released from the trance I was in. I shrug off his touch when he reaches for my shoulder, which causes a wounded look on his face. “What are you doing in a motel with…whoever that is?”
“Were you following me?” he accuses, his tone hard.
“How can I follow you?” I ask angrily. “You took off without even telling me and you weren’t answering your phone. I was just on a walk and saw your truck. I’m not some psycho stalker.”
“Well, I would have told you, but you were busy talking to your ex-boyfriend,” Holden says icily.
Bradie was right. He’s hurt. So what? He runs to a motel with this girl?
“The key word in that sentence is ‘ex,’” I say my voice as hard and cold as his even though I feel like crying. “And just because I talk to my ex means you get to run off to a motel room with some woman?”
“Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?” he says.
“I guess I’m no one,” I reply and start down the sidewalk away from him, back toward the cottage. He follows.
“Wait! Winnie!” he calls. My sad little heart is yelling at my feet to keep moving but I slow to a stop. And then he’s standing in front of me again.
“I don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t know if this is something to you, like it is to me but I do know this,” he pauses, “I wouldn’t run off and fuck someone else just because I’m upset about something. That’s not who I am anymore and the real problem is the fact that, no matter what, you don’t get that.”
“I just don’t know what to think, Holden,” I reply, wishing, praying, crying inside for this to be easier. For this to be simple. But it’s not.
“Hendricks! Are you going to drive this thing or what?” I look over Holden’s shoulder, back to the motel driveway where the drug dealer guy is standing beside Holden’s truck. “And can I hitch a ride? I have some deliveries to make and my car won’t start.”
Holden doesn’t acknowledge him. His silvery eyes stay laser focused on me so there’s no way he misses the look of disappointment on my face. Our eyes lock. “I’m so fucking sick of trying.”
He starts to stalk away.
“Holden, wait! Talk to me!”
