Hold My Breath (15 page)

“Oh no,” he says. “You brought the play money, right?”

I tilt my head, one eye closed more than the other. “Yeah,” I say.

“Then let’s go play, Maddy. We’re celebrating you getting faster,” he says, his arm reaching around me and pulling me close as he leads me through screaming women to a small table near the main stage.

I slide up on the stool and pull my purse over my body, resting it on the tabletop in front of me. Will drags it toward him, gesturing with a quick nod, asking my permission to open it. I nod
yes
, and he reaches in, pulling out the cash, then fanning himself with it like the women we’d seen when we walked in. I laugh so hard my head falls back, but when I look forward again, Will is closer, and his eyes are serious. My smile starts to fall, but he presses two fingers on my lips and leans in toward me, his forehead almost touching mine. He slides the stack of ones across the table to me.

“You know how I feel about competition, Maddy. I’m willing to earn it,” he says, grabbing my hand and pressing it against his bare abs while he lifts his shirt up with his other hand, gripping the bottom with his teeth.

My eyes flash when he rolls his hips. He pushes my hand along his body, and I flush with heat—incredibly aware of the path my fingers take along every ridge, ever tip, every searing piece of flesh until my fingertips hit his waistband. Will lets his shirt fall from his teeth, his lips curving into a devious smile as his body quakes with quiet laughter.

He was joking with me, which, in so many ways, is the Will I crave. But I felt those few seconds throughout my entire body—between my thighs, in my chest, and along my tingling lips. That one small practical joke brought back the feel of Will against me, his mouth on mine, his tongue on the inside of my leg, and it takes more strength hiding that from him right now than it does to swim the fifty in twenty-three seconds.

With little hesitation, I fan out the ones in my hand and blink at him, as if I’m unfazed and bored by his performance. I reach into the center of the stack with my thumb and finger, pulling out a single dollar, and then I reach forward and tuck it in the neck of his shirt, pressing it flat against him while my eyes meet his and his laughing comes to a pause.

“I’m gonna need change for that,” I say.

His eyes are on the place where my hand rests against his chest. For a brief second, I think maybe he’s flashing back to that moment of weakness, too. His lip curls, though, and his chin lifts as he slides from his stool, backing away from me toward the bar.

“You got it, darlin’,” he says. “Two waters, coming right up.”

I wink and nod, a little proud and a little guilty that he’s drinking water in a place that serves alcohol. He wanted to come here, though. Well, not
here,
but booze flows at any strip club. You have to be a little drunk, I think, to let go of the inhibitions that make it hard to enter these places in the first place.

But not Will Hollister. Not
this
Will Hollister. He walks away with his head held high, nodding to half-dressed men as if he knows them, not a glimmer of redness from being embarrassed. He owns this strip joint, just like he owns the water.

Kinda like he’s starting to own me.

* * *

S
omehow
, my prank turns into one of the best afternoons I have had in ages. Will and I both grade the performers on their dancing, and we decide to give the biggest tips to the guys with the least amount of coordination. We dub our mission the Maddy-Will College Fund, and by the end of our afternoon, we’ve earned ourselves a fan club of male strippers, some who actually run over to give us hugs goodbye before we walk out into the hot parking lot, orange-lit from the setting sun.

We don’t speak about any of it until we’re in the car for a few miles—then, out of nowhere, we both burst into laughter, the uncontrollable kind that tears up in our eyes.

“You do know, that small guy at the end was also named Will, right?” I glance over at him, his body relaxed and his mouth stretched into a smile that makes his eyes crease with happiness.

“Why do you think I gave him the rest of the cash? I gotta take care of my Wills, darlin’,” he says, putting on a drawl to his tone.

“You’re his pimp now, are you?” I tease.

Will pulls his right leg up, propping his foot on the seat and leaning into the door, his elbow resting on his knee while his teeth hold onto his thumbnail. All the while, he smiles. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

This lighter mood continues for most of our drive, and we talk about the old days—when there were three of us and we were all young and stupid. We talk about hiding in my dad’s storage closet at the club until he had to put something away, just so we could scare him. And we reminisce about holidays at the club—swimming on Thanksgiving, even the year when we couldn’t get the pool heater to work. The only time we give pause is when we mention Christmas, but neither of us falls into the trap of thinking about the one
worst
Christmas. We don’t go there; we stay in the light, and we laugh about Evan and we laugh at ourselves. It feels like it should, until Will’s phone
buzzes
.

We’re close to the club, maybe five miles out, when he pulls his phone from his back pocket, tilting it just out of my view. He silences it immediately, and begins to put it back in his pocket, so I dismiss it. Until it happens again. Another
buzz
, and suddenly everything about him changes. Over and over, his eyes shift to me briefly while someone calls.

“It’s okay…if you need to take that,” I say.

I watch him in glances. He stares at the phone intently, his mouth shut tight as he takes a deep but short breath through his nose. His eyes fall shut, and I look back to the empty highway ahead, determined not to make this into something.

“Hey,” he says. It’s a familiar answer, his voice soft and warm. I wonder if I called him, if that’s how he’d answer for me. I feel stupid for wondering this.

“What did they give you as the cause?”

I look over at his question, his arm still propped on his leg, but his thumb is pressed on the bridge of his nose, his eyes shut while his hand cups his phone against his ear. Whatever is being said on the other end isn’t good news—that much is clear.

“Okay,” he sighs.

“Everything all right?” I whisper. He turns his head to me and his lips paint a fake smile while he nods. I recognize it—we both made it to each other a lot before today, before this past week.

“No, it’s all right. You can call anytime. I want to know.”

He’s quiet for several seconds, listening to the other end, his thumb again pressed into his forehead.

“Okay. Yeah…I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he says, ending the call and dropping his phone to the pocket on the opposite side of me.

I pull us off the highway, onto the exit for the main road through town. We’re minutes away from the club, and I’m not sure if I want to press the gas to make them fly by, or if I want to coast and draw this out.

We’re stopped at the light to turn, the car’s cabin echoing with the sound of the blinker. My heart starts to match its rhythm, and I feel my stomach knot and give with my uncertainty.

“Are you sure?” I ask, timid.

Will’s head has fallen against his window, his attention lost to something far away.

“Will?” I speak a little louder. My voice booms amid the silence.

“Huh?” He turns to me, shaking his head then rubbing his hand down his face. “Oh, no…it’s fine. Just…a friend of mine’s kid. I’m sort of the only person they can call.”

A friend.
They.
He means
her
, but he’s just not saying it. I think all of this in a span of a single second, and then I bury the suspicion, and the weird tinge of jealousy that comes with it, because I don’t need to carry that weight. Will and I are friends, and if that’s what he wants me to know, then that’s where I’ll leave this conversation.

His mouth forms a thin, unconvincing smile, and I pretend to believe it, whispering, “Okay,” before turning toward the club. Will moves his leg back to the floor of my car, and his hands fold in his lap, his thumbs beating against one another in a nervous battle counting down the few minutes we have left together in this car. When I pull in to the club lot, Will wastes little time, pulling his belt loose before I stop, and opening his door the moment I push my car into park. I’d considered coming back inside with him, talking more, but the sweet feeling of our conversation has soured. I almost can’t wait for him to shut his door so I can pull away as quickly as he exited.

I watch his hand grip the door’s edge, swinging it a few inches more open, then more closed. His back is to me as he pauses, and his fingers wrap once—twice—against my car doorframe. He bends down, enough that I can see his profile, his sideways glance meeting my eyes and hitting them with a dose of something just shy of sorrow until his lip ticks up on the left.

“You know, you really are beautiful when you laugh, Maddy,” he says, my body feeling as though morphine has just rushed down my spine and along every single nerve. His eyes soften more, the smile making it to the other side of his face. “It’s exactly how I remembered it.”

I blink when the door closes, and I move both of my hands to the top of my steering wheel. But I keep my eyes on the other Hollister brother. I watch him walk all the way inside, and I wait until I’m sure he’s made it up the stairs, to his uncle, where there is nothing but space and building and wooden doors and glass between us. Barriers—a dozen various barriers—including the solace of my car.

“You’re beautiful, too, Will,” I whisper, my lips barely parting with the words. I wanted to see if I could say something I was feeling for him out loud, no matter that nobody could hear it.

I push the gear into reverse, and I drive home happy. I’ll judge myself for letting Will inside my heart later. For now, I like him just where he is.

* * *

D
ylan’s seizures
are getting worse. They’re hard to predict because of how difficult everything is for Dylan. He can’t communicate, other than some limited arm movements and sounds that can’t quite form words. Tanya’s found a doctor at the Cleveland Clinic willing to evaluate Dylan’s case. The problem is getting there. Dylan doesn’t exactly travel light. A plane ride makes the most sense, because that much time on the road wouldn’t be good for either of them, but this isn’t really something Tanya can do alone by plane, either.

I knew it when she mentioned it to me, told me about the correspondence she had with the doctor, the tentative appointment. She’d never ask me to go—to help. She’s desperate for me to, though. She just can’t bring herself to ask. I get that. It’s an independence—or perhaps stubbornness, I possess—and maybe it’s why I decided to admire her instead of blame her or be angry with her when I found out she had Evan’s child.

I woke up early this morning, finished my laps and sat by the pool while the sun rose, spinning my phone in my palm until I was sure that I couldn’t live with myself not helping her and my nephew. She cried when I insisted I would come, and I told her to keep the appointment. It’s next week, which means I’ll miss workouts Thursday and Friday. Which means Curtis might cut me from trials. It hurts like hell, but it’s a possibility I can live with, because not helping Dylan would be far worse.

I’ve spent the last two hours sitting in the same place, on the top row of bleachers at the far end of the pool, trying to talk myself into undoing it all. I don’t think all of the time in the world would get me to do that, though. I give in to the ache settling into my lower back and legs, and I climb down from my perch to make my way back inside.

My uncle is hard at work at his desk when I enter our room, a small cloth wrapped around a sharp tool, his eyepiece focused, and his headlamp on. He’s so meticulous.

“You actually
clean
the parts nobody sees?” I ask.

He looks up at me, one eye squinting while the other holds on to the magnifier.

“I do when it means something will keep working for years to come. Seems lazy not to put in that little extra bit of effort,” he says, looking back down and returning to work.

I step back and tilt my head, feeling a little put in my place.

“Right,” I say, nodding and chewing at the inside of my cheek. “I’ll brew a new pot of coffee then. Do my part.”

“Sounds good,” my uncle growls.

I laugh silently to myself because despite my uncle’s slight frame, portly belly, and thinning hair, he can still wear the confidence of a tough guy when he’s right. And he is…right. It does seem lazy not to go the extra mile.

I fill the pot with water and slide it into place, pressing the two-cup option. My uncle pulls out one of the mismatched wooden chairs from the small card table we’ve been eating our dinners at. I lean against the counter space where the fridge and coffee pot are housed and fold my arms, preparing myself for more words of wisdom, when he slides the watch he’s been working on across the table. The band is polished platinum, and the face is antiqued, but also a style one doesn’t find any more. I slide it closer and pull it into my hands, admiring his work while the tiny second hand makes its pass around the dial and the exposed gears underneath work in unison.

“It’s remarkable,” I say, holding my hand out to him to take it back.

“It’s yours,” he says.

My brow lowers.

“It was your dad’s, Will. Our dad gave it to him when he went off to college, as a gift. Your dad wore it for many years, but then it stopped working. I always promised him I’d get around to fixing it. Took a little longer than I planned to, I guess,” my uncle says. He chews at the corner of his mouth while his eyes stare at the treasure held in my palms.

“Dunc, I don’t know what to say…”

I turn the watch over, the date engraved on the back instantly recognizable.

“It was their anniversary,” my uncle says.

I smile, barely.

“I know,” I say, quietly.

I trace the cold metal rim with my thumb.

“Should be set to the right time,” he says.

I nod just as the sound of the coffee beginning to drip kicks in. I swallow and turn to face the pot, holding the watch carefully in my hands, unable to take my eyes off it.

“Thank you, Duncan. This…it means a lot,” I say.

My uncle’s chair slides out, and soon I feel his heavy hand pat my upper back twice.

“I know it does, Will. That’s why I had to finish it. You needed to have something of his that meant something,” he says.

Slipping my hand inside, I fasten the band around my wrist, the fit almost perfect. When I twist my wrist, there’s a faint sense of recognition—my arm reminiscent of my father’s, and I smile again seeing that. When the dripping coffee finishes, I pull the pot from the machine and fill both of our cups, setting my uncle’s on the center of the table to cool while I add a shot of milk and a sugar packet to my own.

My uncle takes his in his hand and drinks, not even bothering to blow away the steam. Hot and black, exactly the way it was made. Even the way he takes his coffee matches his personality.

“That sweet girl we both love has been sitting over there in that room for the entire morning,” my uncle says, jarring me out of my trance and jolting me enough to splash coffee onto the leg of my swim shorts.

“Shit!” I let out, setting my mug down and blotting the spot with a towel. It’s hot, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what I’m swearing about.

I toss the towel into our sink, and leave my mug on the counter, walking over to the door, but stopping and pacing back into the small kitchenette. I follow this same pattern three more times before my uncle chuckles.

“Did she come by while I was swimming?” I ask.

My uncle pulls his lips in, his eyes laughing at me while he shakes his head
no.

“She’s just as bad as you are. She’d rather sit over there, in the dark, than come in here and have a real conversation,” he says.

I open my mouth to ask another question, but then his words settle in, so I close my mouth and take a sharp breath in through my nose.

Straight. Black. Hot. Honest. Just like his damned coffee.

I turn back to the door, but I don’t move. Frozen here in limbo.

“You gonna go over there and talk to her? Or are you gonna crack the door open and spy?” my uncle asks in a gravelly voice as he passes by me, his hot coffee in one hand and the TV remote in the other. I twist my lips at his back as he passes.

“I just don’t want to interrupt something. Maybe she wants time alone,” I say.

“Or maybe you’re just a chicken shit,” he says, not waiting for my response as he clicks on the late morning news and kicks his feet up on the oak coffee table, settling deep into the cushions. He’ll be napping as soon as that cup is drained, caffeine or not.

I think about flipping him off, but I can’t even do it behind his back because the old man is right. I am a chicken shit.

I slip into the bedroom to change out of my trunks, not bothering to hang them since they’re dry from sitting around in them all morning, and I pull on my cargo shorts and the gray, long-sleeved thermal that I’ve worn so thin, it’s actually cooler than any of my T-shirts.

Yesterday with Maddy was the closest thing I’ve had to normal in a long time, and we were at a male strip club. There was a small window on our drive home when I thought about asking her on a legit date. Every bit of me wanted to kiss her, but more than that, I wanted to feel the entire thing—the chase, the small little favors like holding her door open. Then Tanya called, and shit just quit feeling like I deserved more than I had already gotten out of life. I still have more I need to give to get myself back to even.

Maddy needs to understand why I’m going to be gone Thursday and Friday, though, so I roll my shoulders and pinch the bridge of my nose, squeezing my eyes closed and cracking my neck to one side. You’d think I was heading out to the dumpsters behind the schoolyard for a good old-fashioned ass kicking.

Maybe I am.

I leave our makeshift apartment, and pause for only a second before pressing my palm flat against the office door, pushing it open enough to slip inside. She had left it open the tiniest bit, and I wonder if she was hoping I’d notice when I walked upstairs the first time. I wish I had.

She’s sitting in the window seat, her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms holding them in place. Her hair is messy waves, the way it looks when she just lets it dry after swimming, which means she probably got here early. She’s been waiting here for a while.

“Hey,” I say, my voice light, not wanting to scare her.

She turns slightly, her chin falling to her shoulder, but not far enough for her eyes to meet mine.

“Hey,” she says, leaving her head in its place for a few long seconds before turning back to stare out the window.

I walk closer to her, rounding the desk behind her and sliding to sit on top of it, pushing a few of the tools my uncle has left here to the side.

“You working on your dad’s books or something?” I ask.

She laughs lightly.

“I never want to see those books,” she says. “I bet they’re a nightmare. Receipts stapled to margins, arrows pointing to expenses, moving them from month-to-month. This place is an IRS treasure trove.”

I look around, layers of dust on binders stacked haphazardly in a nearby bookcase, each marked with a year in black Sharpie on the spine.

“Your dad used to swear up a storm when he worked on that crap up here,” I say.

Maddy turns her head again, her eyes moving to the same bookcase I looked toward. Her shoulders rise with a short laugh, and I see her mouth curve on the right with a smile.

“He sure did,” she says. Her chest rises slowly, her body moving as she breathes in deep, then exhales. “My mom does it all now. Mostly on the computer. They just like to store things up here.”

“You still come here to hide, I see,” I say, holding my bottom lip between my teeth, worried that I overstepped with that statement, about
hiding.

Her head waggles from side-to-side, and she adjusts her posture, leaning forward and pressing her head against the glass.

“I guess. I just always liked to watch the world from up here,” she says.

I study her. I look at her so long that minutes pass, neither of us saying a word, and when Maddy finally speaks, it hits me dead center.

“I used to watch you. You and Evan, but mostly…if I’m being honest…I looked at you when I came up here,” she says.

My throat tightens, and I let my head fall forward, looking at my dangling feet above the wooden planks of the floor.

“You can’t see the pool from here,” I say.

“I know,” she says. The silence that follows makes me think she’s done, but after several seconds, she says something I’ve ached to hear since I was sixteen. “I’d wait to see if you were coming to practice, too. It was the only place I could look at you like a part of me really wanted to.”

My jaw works side to side and I hold the back of my tongue between my teeth, trying not to be a chicken shit. My eyes close, and I keep my head down.

“And how’s that?” I ask, every breath I take after the question hurting my chest.

The short silence that follows is filled with her breathing, my heart pounding, my fingers gripping the edge of the desk hard, my soul hoping.

“Like maybe I should have fallen in love with you instead,” she says, the last word escaping with only a breath, barely audible, but enough that I heard it perfectly clear.

“What are you saying, Maddy?” I ask, lifting my head to find her looking at me over her shoulder.

She shakes her head, her forehead dimpled with worry and confusion. I’m sure I look the same. All it takes is for her tongue to pass lightly over her bottom lip for me to slide from the desk and walk over to her, coming as close as I can without touching her.

“I don’t know what anything means anymore, Will,” she says.

I shake my head.

“Evan was my whole life. He was the plan, and I know…” she takes a sharp breath, a small sob escaping her chest. “I know he was planning on marrying me, Will. I even think he was going to ask. Before you all left that night, he wanted to talk.”

My eyes grow heavy, and my heart stills completely. She couldn’t be farther from the truth, and this moment—it’s literally breaking me into two halves. I want to protect her, but I also want her more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. How can I keep saving her when every greedy bone of my body wants her for my own?

“My being here,” I say, moving my hands to my pockets and forcing my feet to slide a step away, to give myself distance from temptation. “I haven’t made anything better for you, and I’m so sorry, Maddy…”

“No, that’s not it,” she says, her body turning until her legs fall to the floor.

Her hands reach for my wrists, and I grow weak, letting her pull them from my pockets and bring them close to her, my body following. She turns one hand over, her thumb running along the metal of the watch I’d just been given, and I watch her eyes react to it. It’s obvious it’s old, and there’s a part of her that suspects it was probably my father’s. I can tell by the reverence with which she admires it. She looks up at me slowly, her cheek falling against one open palm, and the pleading look in her eyes undoes me. My hands move into her hair, and I step closer, gently coaxing her to stand, her chin resting on my chest as I lean my head forward and brush my nose against her, my mouth grazing her cheek, my eyes closing as I inhale.