Since I live upstairs, it takes me no time at all to scale the outside steps and throw together a bag of essentials for my trip. I don’t know how long I’ll be in Fox Hole, but whatever I forget, I can pick up there or borrow from Delilah. I grab my Nintendo Switch so I can play cozy games with Sadie, as well as a pack of high-quality, washable markers so that we can color together. While tossing a couple pairs of underwear into a bag, I spot the olive green pouch with the embroidered “I” on the front tucked to the side of the drawer and pause.
I don’t necessarilyneedto bring my magic bag of sex toys with me. Lord knows there aren’t many available gay women in Fox Hole to play with, even if I had the time for a hookup. And if I want to go solo, I can always go old-school and play the acoustic clitoris like I used to before I discovered the magic of vibrators. It’s always good to do a factory reset and go manual every once in a while.
But something in me tells me I’ll regret leaving my strap behind, so the green pouch of wonders gets shoved to the bottom of my duffel bag where it likelywon’t see the light of day until we’re back here in Nashville.
The drive to Fox Hole is long and tedious, and by the time I pass the “Welcome to Be utiful Fox Hole” sign at the town limits, my eyelids are fighting the three energy drinks I drank on the ride with all their might. Normally, I’d be on the phone with Delilah for a drive this long. Whenever one of us has errands to run, or if I’m deep in a long tattoo session or she’s up all night jarring jam, the two of us are on the phone together. Sometimes we chat about everything and nothing, and sometimes we work in silence, going about our business with only the sounds of our breath or the hum of my tattoo gun filling the quiet on the line. But since Delilah told me repeatedly how unnecessary it would be for me to drive to her parent’s house tonight and I ignored her, I didn’t bother calling.
The sight of that stupid sign with the ‘a’ that’s been missing since as far back as I can remember sends a familiar pang of melancholy rushing through me. It’s not like Fox Hole was an awful place to grow up. Even being the not-quite masculine but definitely-not-feminine, only out lesbian in my age group that I was, most people were pretty accepting of me.
Maybe they were all just terrified of my grandma—Millie was a force to be reckoned with, and no onemessed with her little Ivy and got away with it—but either way, living in Fox Hole was always fine. Just fine.
Still, I remember lying on the roof of Delilah’s house with her, staring up at the stars and wishing the two of us could be anywhere but here. Fox Hole didn’t suit the person I was at eighteen. I’m not entirely sure it suits the person I am now. But it suits Delilah, and she has always been my home. My physical surroundings don’t matter when my heart is close to hers.
When I pull in front of the Hudsons’ house—with my headlights turned off, of course—I’m almost not surprised to see Henry Hudson sitting in the light of the porch lamp, rocking slowly on the wooden swing he and his son built together, the cherry of what I know is a joint burning bright between his pinched fingers.
I quietly turn off my Jeep and grab my duffel from the backseat, then half-jog across the lawn to the front steps of a house that might as well have been my own for how much time I spent here as a kid.
“Good to see you, Ivy girl,” Mr. Hudson says when I reach the porch. I settle onto the swing next to him, and he lifts the blanket off his lap so he can cover my legs with it as well. He offers me his joint, but I shake my head. It smells delectable—theHudson patriarch always gets the good stuff, even if marijuana is still illegal in the state of Tennessee—but I don’t need to be high right now.
And besides, I may have turned eighteen almost twenty years ago, but I still feel like Mr. Hudson offering me pot is some kind of trick that is going to end with me being grounded for a month. As much as I may want to sit here and enjoy the late spring night while—as he calls it—smoking a doobie with the old man, I’m not falling for it.
“So, what brings you home at—” he checks his wrist, even though there’s no watch strapped there. A classic dad move, if I’ve ever seen one. “A quarter to two on a Saturday morning? Don’t tell me you drove two hundred miles just for one of Miss Pattie’s jelly donuts.”
“No, nothing like that. I just wanted to see my girls. I was going to come down in the morning, but my last client ran late and I figured I would just chug some coffee and make the drive tonight instead of waking up early tomorrow.” I cross my fingers on my thigh under the blanket. Old habits die hard. I don’t love lying to the man who has always been like a father to me, but Delilah hasn’t filled her parents in on the Earl situation yet, and that’s not my story to tell.
“Ah. So your unceremonious arrival has nothingto do with that idiot rat bastard my daughter married and whatever he did to have her crying in the backyard after she put her kid to bed tonight, does it?”
My eyes go wide, and Mr. Hudson reads the obvious shock on my face as he takes a long puff of his joint. He inhales, then blows the smoke with the wind so it doesn’t fly in our faces.
“Delilah thinks she’s so mysterious, but I’ve always been able to read my kids. Something was off with her tonight, and I know it had something to do with that no-good son of a bitch. Delilah brought a bag stuffed to the brim with enough clothes to survive the apocalypse to spend one night here. She and Sadie are asleep in her room upstairs, and you show up here at my home in the middle of the night and not at their place? It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. Now you don’t have to tell me what he did,” he holds up a palm between us. “But I’m glad you’re here, Ivy girl. Delilah is strong, but she needs you. Whatever it is she’s going through, I’m happy you’ll be by her side through it.”
The truth is, I don’t even know what that idiot did to push Delilah into leaving him. She told me it was over, and I hopped in the car, no questions asked. She knows how I feel about her husband; the last thing she needed was me grilling her before showing up to support her.
But Mr. Hudson is right. It doesn’t take a genius to know that whatever happened; it was most definitely the Earl’s fault.
“Well, I’ll let Delilah give you the details, but yeah. I think it’s a good thing that I’m here, too.”
My eyelids droop, exhaustion weighing down on me as I rest my head on Mr. Hudson’s shoulder. He drapes his arm heavy around mine, and the two of us sit together in silence for a moment.
My parents died in a car crash when I was just a baby, leaving this world before I knew what it was like to have a mom and dad. My dad’s mom, Grandma Millie, took me in and raised me. She was about a thousand years old and mean to everyone but me, but she truly did her best to take care of me and give me the life I deserved.
I couldn’t have asked for anyone better, but when Delilah and her family came into my life, it was like they filled a void in my heart I hadn’t noticed was even there. I always missed my own parents, but only in that abstract way you can miss someone you’ve never known. Henry and Suzanne Hudson have loved me like one of their own since I was a teenager, and I feel incredibly lucky to have a paternal figure to lean on.
I yawn long and loud, and Mr. Hudson gives me a squeeze.
“Go on upstairs, Ivy. You can sleep in Stephen’s old room. Suzanne and I just cleaned all the sheets last weekend.”
“Alright, Old Man. I’ll see you in the morning.” Mr. Hudson chuckles at my use of the nickname given to him years ago, and I give him a kiss on his stubbly cheek before tiptoeing into the house. I don’t go to Stephen’s room, though—there is no amount of laundry detergent in the world that would make me okay with sleeping in sheets that once belonged to a teenage boy.
Instead, I quietly crack open the door to Delilah’s room. She and Sadie are lying in the bed, Sadie snoring away while Delilah murmurs in her sleep, the two of them bathed in the moonlight's glow shining through the window. The lines around Delilah’s eyes and the grown kid I watched her give birth to in her arms are the only indicators of the passage of time. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think we were still sixteen and staying up way too late in this very room playing round after round of M.A.S.H until we got the spouses, homes, jobs, and cars we wanted the most.
A part of me wishes there was room in the bed for me to climb in, too. To cuddle the two women who mean more to me than anything in the world. But I know I shouldn’t, and not only because if I squeezedmyself onto the sliver of mattress, one or all of us would wind up kicked to the floor by morning. Instead, I lay down on the carpet, resting my head on a pile of stuffed animals that have been here since I was fourteen, bearing witness to all the highs and lows Delilah and I have navigated together in this room.
I close my eyes, and whether it’s the exhaustion setting in or the sound of my Lilah breathing a few feet away from me, I don’t know. But there on the cold, hard ground of the Hudson’s house, I sleep better than I have in months.
3
WORLD FAMOUS HJ'S
