Holly
Bryn is looking at me with concern, like I’m in danger of drowning in my teacup. “Why haven’t you told me any of this before now? I thought we said no secrets.”
I play with the handle of the cup, but I’m not fooling anyone. Teacups aren’t interesting; handles even less so.
I didn’t want to tell Bryn about Cole, but I tried talking to Rowan last night about Jane and Cole and the kiss, and he actually left to help Nana Mayberry just so he could get away from me. And the task she had for him was to lower the feet of one of her chairs so the people they interview for the cohosting gig would be lower than her.
Honestly. Tina’s basically throwing Harry to the wolves by getting him wrapped up in that mess. From what I’ve heard, the interviews—ahem, disasters waiting to happen—will be on Friday.
Anyway.
Rowan kept pushing. “Tell Bryn,” he said, giving me this big brother look I should have totally razzed him for, given he’s younger than me. “This has gone too far.”
He was right, though, and I couldn’t come up with a great reason for why I hadn’t told her yet. Admittedly, Bryn and I had a pretty bad fight soon after it happened—the one that led to my short-lived stint as a New Yorker—but things have been good between us for months now. The only reason I was holding back was because…
Bryn knows me in a deep way, and she would never, ever let this fucking go.
Oh, well. In for a penny.
“It happened right after Dad…Auggie showed up in Asheville last year,” I say. “It didn’t seem like the right time to say anything.”
Auggie and I had been sporadically in touch since high school. Our connection was about as deep as a puddle, which wasn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it. He shares my enthusiasm for computer games, so we started playing together and chatting on Discord. It was all very casual but kind of pleasant.
Anyway, last year he saw a viral video on YouTube where a dad surprised his kids on their birthday by stepping out of a cake. So he bribed someone at the restaurant where Bryn and I were having our birthday dinner, Salt and Bone, and stepped in as our waiter. It was awkward to the max because Bryn hadn’t seen him in person for decades and didn’t recognize him at first. He took this badly and tried to interrogate her about what had changed in his looks. He’d apparently fooled himself into thinking some hair dye and Botox could help him pass for under thirty.
She threw a drink in his face, Auggie left to grab a beer with an old buddy as if he hadn’t blown our night to bits, and I headed to the bar of the restaurant where it had all gone down to get myself a pity drink.
No, let’s be honest, I headed back there because I’d seen Cole at the bar before dinner, grabbing a drink on his night off, and he’d looked almost sinfully good, dressed in worn jeans and a Henley, his arms hugged by the shirt. In that moment, I needed something good, and I felt compelled toward him, like somebody had brainwashed me.
Cole didn’t gloat about the embarrassing scene that had just gone down. Surprising, because the last time I’d seen him I’d thrown dick-shaped confetti at him. To be fair, Iwasat a high school friend’s bachelorette party at Ziggy’s, so it didn’t come out of nowhere. He should have seen those dicks coming.
In fact, he offered to buy me a drink, making it clear that it was a friendly offer, and he was not about to break hisI only bang touristsrule.
“Why aren’t you gloating?” I demanded.
“Gloating?” he said, looking surprised. “I prefer to reserve my gloating for non-disasters.”
I’m not sure why, but I ended up telling him about Auggie. Maybe it was because he was the one I’d talked to that day, years before, after I first spoke with my dad. And then…in a fit of bad judgment and hormones, I waylaid him in the hall after he went to the bathroom, and I kissed him.
Well, that’s sort of a tame word for what happened. I tackled him, basically, and he pressed me into the wall, and claimed my mouth while grabbing my ass.
It was so good with him. Better than when anyone else touched me.
The zip was to blame.
The zip’s the word Bryn and I coined for the type of chemistry that beats through every part of your being andcannot be denied.It’s the kind of thing that makes smart women do stupid things.
Case and point:
It made me forget that Cole didn’t much like me.
It made me forget that he didn’t want a relationship with anyone, something he’d made very clear to everyone in town.
It made me forget that he was the one man who’d ever made me feel something beyond passing pleasure.
Then Rowan walked into the back hall, looking for me, because he’d heard about the whole Auggie brou-ha-ha. He let out a “Jesus fucking Christ,” and the expression on his face floored me. It was like…he feltbadfor me. Like he knew Cole was just looking for some fun, and it would mean something more to me.
And he was right. Hadn’t Cole himself just told me as much?
