Mending Michael (11 page)

MICK

Her hair is the color of an autumn leaf—not quite brown, not quite red. And out here in the moonlight, a translucent glow drips down the long strands, glossing it like the hair on one of my sister's old porcelain dolls.

In lieu of a hello, I sigh inwardly, too tongue-tied to speak.

"You owe me." She greets me with a wink, a smile, and one of her usual snarky comments.

I untie my tongue and say with a raised brow, "And how do you want to be paid?" But then I immediately regret letting those words slip from my lips. Especially since I am kind of grieving right now, not to mention the fact that I don't want her knowing I have any attraction at all to her.

She grabs her helmet, hops on behind me, and laughs. "Don't you wish you could be so lucky," she says, lowering the helmet onto her head.

She's already as comfortable getting on my bike as I am having her strapped around me.
God, I can get used to this.

Since it is impossible to have a conversation over the bike's engine and the passing traffic, we settle into a comfortable silence. The constant beating of her chest against my back and her steady breath against my neck lulls me into auto-pilot. I let my bike lead the way, while my thoughts turn to my increasing attraction towards the girl who renders me completely insane.

These new thoughts about Holly provide a relief from my grieving over Kenna's welfare, which makes me wonder if subconsciously, my mind is playing tricks on me.

Up the four lane highway is a little ice cream place that sits along the river. I figure it's as good a place as any to forget I'm in need of my Grey Goose.

"I've never been here," she says, laying her helmet on the back of the seat.

"City girls don't visit the country?" I joke.

"Country?" She looks around, noting the highway in front of us. "This here don't look like no country land," she mimics in a southern accent.

"It's more country than Soho."

We get in back of the long line of people waiting for their turn to be served.

"And how do you know where I'm from?" she asks slowly, and, if I'm not mistaken, flirtatiously.

I shrug. No need to tell her I had a thousand questions for Donny, most of them about her. "Good guess."

"No. People don't just guess things like that," she says, her hands clasped behind her back.

"It's not too hard to guess where you're from." I look down at her. She's nipping at the inside of her lip again.

"I'm not
that
easy to figure out, am I?" she asks softly now, as if she's hurt by what I'd said.

"You don't like to be easy to figure out?" I ask her seriously.

She shrugs her right shoulder. "Not really."

"Ah. Now I got ya. You like to keep people guessing."

"Something like that." She smiles, but I'd punctured her confidence, I can tell.

Part of me feels bad—the part that's growing fond of her. The other part of me—the part that wants to smack her most times—smiles proudly.

"What're you smiling for?"

I shake my head, "Nothing. What would you like? My treat."

"Oh gosh, we're next. Um..." She looks up at the menu. "Chocolate's good. A cone."

"That's it?"

"I can only eat one cone at a time." She chuckles.

I'm getting the feeling that Holly doesn't stay down for long.

"So you're a vanilla man?" she asks after we sit at a table that overlooks the river down below.

"And what exactly are you implying?" I respond, aware of the vanilla implication.

She laughs. "Not a risk taker, are you?"

"No." I refuse to expand on that.

She spends a couple minutes looking down at the moonlit water, probably searching her mind for something to say that won't have me giving her one word answers. My thought makes me chuckle out loud.

"What?" she asks, looking back at me.

"Nothing....I used to come here when I was little," I decide to tell her.

"Oh? You used to live around here?"

Shaking my head, I say, "No. My grandparents did. I used to spend my summers and weekends here."

"Oh. You were pursing your lips when I asked. Why?"

"I wasn't aware that I was." I shrug, answering her truthfully.

"Your grandparents don't live around here anymore?"

"No. They died in a car crash." I close my eyes, trying to wipe out the memory.

"I'm sorry. Was that a long time ago?"

"About eight years."

Holly nods and returns her sights on the river.

"My father was driving." I have no idea why I decided to reveal that.

She snaps her head around. "Oh my goodness. That's horrib... he must... wow. That's crazy."

"Yeah. Crazy it is," I deadpan, hating my father every day for that.

"He must feel so so bad."

"When he's sober maybe."

She opens her mouth to say something, but my divulgence renders her speechless.

"There used to be a rope hanging from that tree," I tell her... a much needed change in subject necessary. "The locals would swing from it and jump into the river."

"It's deep enough?" she asks, trying to switch gears, realizing she's probably still reeling from my revelation that my father was drunk when he'd killed his parents.

"It used to be."

"You didn't? Swing from it?"

"No." I shake my head, and now I feel myself pursing my lips, so I stop before she asks me why.

"You don't swim," she states, she doesn't ask.

"No. Never really did."

"And you're not a risk taker."

"You're trying to size me up?"

Holly's cute when she blushes.

"No. I'm not a risk taker." I think about something else to talk about again. The call to go to the nearest liquor store is loud, and I'm trying not to answer it. "What about you?" I decide to ask.

"What about me?"

"You ever go swimming in a river?"

"You're joking, right?" She chuckles. "No. I've never gone swimming in a river. At the Hamptons though. My parents own a summer house in Amagansett, not to mention a winter house in Florida. So...I do a lot of swimming in the ocean...not the river."

"You going there this summer? To the Hamptons?"

"No." She sighs, bringing her shoulders along for the ride. "That stupid internship, remember?"

"Ah, yes. On Wall Street."

"Yeah."

"You got nice parents?"

She sticks the last of her cone in her mouth and groans. "They're okay."

"That's it? Okay?" I should know better than to ask a question about parents. Lord knows, I don't want anyone asking about mine.

But the pull to know Holly better is so strong, and I can't help myself.

"They love me, if that's what you're asking, but...my dad's a controlling man, and mom goes along with everything he says, whether it's right or wrong."

"Sounds like you got some hostility toward your parents, too?"

"Too? What's wrong with your parents?"

"We don't have that much time."

She laughs, because I laugh, but there's nothing funny about what's wrong with my parents.

"C'mere," I stand and move to take her by the hand, but instead, I pull on the sleeve of her dark blue sweater. "I wanna show you something."

The flat brown rock that leads to the river is slick from the spray of the water, and it's dark, so this time, I actually take Holly's hand. I'd hate to be responsible for her getting hurt. She doesn't resist my hand, which encourages me to hold her a little tighter. I'm pleased when her hand squeezes mine back.

"Oh my gosh. A rock seat," she exclaims.

"That's what I wanted to show you. It's cool, right?" Fortunately, the moon is bright enough for her to actually see it.

"Yeah." She reaches up the hand I'm not holding and touches the haphazard brush that juts out like a canopy to the flat rock bench beneath it. "Wow. Did somebody, like, make this?" she asks, fingering the bud-lined branches.

"I don't know. It's been here for as long as I've been coming here. I used to sit here and play my Gameboy while my sister and the kids who lived here were swimming."

"You sat here all alone?"

Looking at the frown on her face, I say, "I like being alone. Trust me. Besides, my Gameboy was my best friend."

She laughs, and lets go of my hand to sit on the seat. I can't say I'm not disappointed.

"You miss your grandparents," she states, not asks, her hands now cupped at the edge of the rock seat, her feet swinging from it.

I nod and sit next to her. "You know how when you're playing tag," I muse, "and everyone's out to get you, and the tree is, like, home-base?"

Holly's smiling one of those 'I-feel-sorry-for-you' smiles when she nods, but she's still swinging her feet.

"My grandparents’ house was my home-base." I can't help but sigh longingly. "They played games with me, took me for ice cream, and when my aunt was home from college, we'd go to places like New York City, or Cooperstown. Sometimes she'd tell us to ask a friend. I always asked Luke to come, Charity always had a different friend. But I loved my Aunt Liz. And I loved my grandparents. I just loved being there. It was my happy place." Then I say on an exhale, "No one could touch me when I was there."

I see the shock on her face, and I quickly correct myself. "Oh no, I wasn't abused or anything, more like...neglected, for lack of a better word, but...bad things usually happened around me. At my Grandma's...it was all good. I was happy there." I swallow back the lump forming in my throat.

"But they died when you were, what, sixteen? How much bad could have happened to you by then?"

I see in her face she immediately regretted that question, so I shake it off. "Let's just say, it goes along with all that is wrong with my parents...and me." I say the latter more to myself than to Holly.

"So...
Holiday.
Where did your folks come up with
that
name?"

HOLLY

I groan at his question.

A not-so-serious but unfortunate thing for an unborn child is for its mother to be celebrity-obsessed. Which was the case in my case and in my mother's decision to name me after all things Audrey. I
did
inherit my mother's obsession with Ms. Hepburn, but I could have done without the name Holiday Eliza Sabrina Buchanan, aka Holly for short.

"My mother had...
has
this huge obsession with Audrey Hepburn...and she thought it'd be cute to name me after some of her popular characters." I shake my head in mortification.

"
Some
of her characters? Plural?"

Rolling my eyes, I try to avoid answering his question.

"That's right, I do remember seeing an E.S. on your license." His eyes roll up to the right before he says, "Holiday E. S. Buchanan, right?"

"Correct," I say, humiliated.

"Let's see...Holly is easy. After Holly Golightly, right?"

"I'm impressed."

"Wait, wait." He holds up his finger, enjoying this way too much. "Holiday.
Roman Holiday
?"

"Not bad. Is your mom an Audrey fan too? I know you said she watched
Breakfast at Tiffany's
."

"She was movie-obsessed. Any movie really. It was her way to escape. That...and the alcohol."

I'm at a loss for words. He's pretty much implied his whole family has a fondness for drinking. So I just kind of say, "Hmmm," because I can't think of the appropriate response.

Mick taps me on the knee and clicks his tongue. "So...the E and the S. You'll have to help me out there."

"Eliza Sabrina," I moan. "Eliza Dolittle from
My Fair Lady
and Sabrina Fairchild...from her movie
Sabrina
."

"Cute. So your name is Holiday Eliza Sabrina Buchanan." He turns his face to really look at me, and he narrows his eyes. "Yes. It suits you."

Punching him on the thigh, I say, "No busting."

"Oh. No busting? Does that mean you'll stop your snippy comments too?"

Uh oh. "I'll try," I promise, lowering my chin to my chest in humble apology. Yes, in sarcastic humble apology.

While my head is still down, his shoulder bumps into mine. On purpose. "Hey," he says quietly. "I wasn't busting. I really do like your name."

I tilt my head up and give him a genuine thank you. "And I like your name too," I say, and then mentally chastise myself for sounding so flirty.

"Yeah. Mick. Good name."

"I'm talking about Michael. It's a nice solid name. I like it."

"My sister's the only one that still calls me that. She says it sounds like the name of a man you can count on." He rubs his hand on his thighs, and the small dimple on his face reappears.

"She's right." I nod. "Your sister. It
is
the name of a man you can count on. And I'm sure that's why she still calls you that... Michael."

He thinks about this for a second and a very small smile plays at his lips. I decide right then to call him Michael from here on in. Something tells me he needs to be reminded that he's one of the good guys.