Holly and Her Naughty eReader (16 page)

So what if they weren’t real?
They were real to me. They were people I knew, people I was eager to see again,
people I loved, and Vivian had taken them away from me forever.

I sat at my desk and sobbed for
the next twenty minutes. I might have sat there all morning if it weren’t for
Max, who knocked on my door at eight.

“Just a minute!” I called out. I
went to the bathroom and washed off my face. My eyes were puffy and red. There
was no hiding it. Max would know I’d been crying. I’d have to tell him
something.

I opened the door.

“What’s going on?” Max said.
“Have you been crying?”

I nodded. “I just received some
really bad news,” I said.

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Do
you want to talk about it?”

“No, no, it’s okay. I’ll be
fine. Let’s just….”

Just what? What was there to do
now? The hunt for my Kindle was over.

“Max, we can go home,” I said.

“Home? What about--”

“Vivian’s fine,” I said. “She
sent me a message. I’m not worried about her anymore.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good news, I
suppose.”

“Yes, it is. Everything is fine.
I really have no reason to be upset. Let’s just go.”

“We’ll have breakfast first,”
Max said.

A little laugh came out of me.
It was an involuntary thing. This was the new Max. Somewhere between high
school and now, he had turned into a man who told people what to do.

Not that I minded being told
what to do at all this morning.

We walked around the corner of
the hotel and found a cute little French café. I was still devastated about
Vivian’s message, but had to put on a brave face. There was no explaining the
truth to Max. There was no talking to anyone about what had just happened to
me.

After a few minutes laughing
over tea and croissants, I found the sadness slipping away. Max had a strange
way of captivating me, keeping me interested with clever quips, funny stories,
and most of all, his unwavering stare. He looked like he was memorizing my
face, every freckle and eyelash, every expression. It was unnerving, and
exciting. His scrutiny came with his wide smile. The one that made little
wrinkles appear at the corner of his eyes. The one that showed off his
beautiful, white teeth, including that slightly crooked one on the bottom. Man,
that smile took me back. Every time I saw it in high school it made me melt,
and it never got old. Now he was here, gazing at me and smiling like he won the
lottery. Butterflies danced in my stomach, and the horror of Vivian’s deed
started to fade.

After breakfast, Max suggested
we go find an adventure. I wasn’t sure what adventure could await us in this
little town in the middle of the summer, but I was up for anything. Walking
down the street, we passed a vendor setup with brochures and promises of a
wild, wet adventure. Whitewater rafting. Max was immediately sold on the idea,
and grabbed my hand as I tried to walk away from the kiosk, my heart hammering
at the prospect of hurdling down the rapids in an inflatable raft.

“Oh, come on, Holly! It’ll be a
blast! This guy says the water is perfect. They’ll teach us what to do, right?”
He looked up expectantly at the 20-something hippie peddling the trips.

“Totally,” the man said, his
blonde dreadlocks seeming to nod in agreement.

“Max, I’m not sure this is up my
alley. Can’t we just, I dunno, go shopping? Or see a movie?”

“Nope. We’re doing this. Holly,
we are going to have so much fun. This is just what we needed – to let loose,
have a ‘wild, wet ride’.” I wasn’t sure but he almost made that sound sexual.
“Besides, I’ll be right beside you. I won’t let anything bad happen. I’ll keep
you safe. Please? ”The puppy eyes were too much. And how did my hand get in
his? My heart was hammering now for an entirely different reason, and I knew
that I couldn’t say no to this man.

“Okay.” I swallowed, hoping that
I’d live to tell my friends back home about this wild adventure.

“Excellent!”

Max and Dreadlocks negotiated
the price, we got our instructions, and we signed a waiver.

“The van’s leaving in an hour,
so you’ll want to get going soon,” Dreadlocks said, smiling at me in some sort
of truce. I think he could see the fear radiating off me.

Next Max took me to a clothing
boutique, where he bought me a new tanktop and cut-off shorts. I remember
telling Max I could pay for my own clothes and having him turn me down. I
remember wondering why he was Mr. Moneybags all of a sudden.

I remember letting these
thoughts float from my mind, some voice in my brain that wasn’t entirely my own
telling me it didn’t matter.

Max dragged me back to the hotel,
his warm hand still tightly wrapped around mine, and told me to change. I went
to my room in a daze, flexing my fingers and trying to remember all the ways
Max’s hand felt. The rough pads of his fingers, the firmness of his grasp. I
changed into my new clothes, laced up my sneakers, and wished I had a swimsuit
I could put on underneath it all.

Ah well…it’s not like whitewater
rafting was on my radar when we headed out on this trip.

I found Max in the lobby looking
positively giddy. I took a minute to watch him before he saw me. There was no
denying it. I was totally into this guy. Funny how an old crush could come to
life after so long. Funny how he got even better with age.

Funny how I was perfectly
willing to allow these thoughts this morning, how I didn’t care if he and
Vivian had been living together until yesterday or that he stood me up once or
that we hadn’t spoken in ten years. Funny how none of that mattered to me at
all when I saw him standing there waiting for me.

He was a catch, for sure, but I
wasn’t sure how he felt about me. Or what would happen after we left Durango.
He checked the time on his phone, looked over his shoulder, and found me. I got
another smile. The perfect smile, and headed over to face my fear of water,
adrenalin and boats. This was going to be a disaster.

“Let’s go!” His energy was
palpable and a little contagious. “You ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I
mumbled, staring at the carpet. “You promise I won’t die?”

He threw his head back and
laughed. “Yes, Holly, I promise. I would never let anything happen to you. I
mean it.” He grabbed my hand again, and pulled me toward the door. Suddenly,
the prospect of hours on a boat next to him, his hand in mine, sounded like the
best day ever.

The rafting company had an old
15-passenger van, dinged and rusty in places. The logo was fading on the side
panel, and an elderly man approached us as we got out of the car.

“You folks ready for some fun?”
He practically shouted.

Max nodded his head
enthusiastically.

“Alright then, pile in.”

We joined a half-dozen others in
the worn seats, everyone bubbling with excitement over how high the river was,
and how the rapids were looking particularly good. I wasn’t sure that my good
and their good meant the same thing. I was hoping for more of a lazy river
experience. My van mates seemed more in the mood for a white-knuckled
rollercoaster.

*******

The yellow raft bobbed in the
calm pool of water near our drop-off point. The guides leading the tour
instructed us on rowing, floating, avoiding rocks and a dozen other things I
didn’t understand and wouldn’t remember. I focused solely on making sure my
life vest was painfully tight and securing the straps on my helmet. Max asked
if I had any questions, if I was ready, if I knew what to do. I nodded but the
truth was I had no idea what we were doing. I couldn’t hear anyone over the
banging beat of my heart. All I knew was that I could float, and that I should
be able to avoid serious head trauma. Max grabbed my hand to help me in the
raft and held it until it was time to push off into the rushing water a few
yards away.

We headed out at a steady clip,
Max rowing on one side, and one of the other tourists manning another oar. The
tour guide shouted instructions over the din. The river was loud. Really loud.
Waves crashed over rocks and the current sped by at an alarming pace. I had my
hand clamped on a small rope that looped around the perimeter of the raft. I
heard the guide shout out a warning about an upcoming rock formation jutting
from the spray. Max and the rowers yelled at each other as they argued about
how to get round the rocks. Watching this play out, I may have slipped into a
daydream about Max the salty sea captain, and I may have been painfully unaware
of my surroundings at the moment the raft hit a particularly steep drop.

We landed hard on the waves.
Hard enough to bounce me like a tennis ball. Next thing I knew I was all
flailing arms and legs, and then I was underwater.

Even though the current threw me
about like a ragdoll, it was strangely quiet down there. I thought of a poem by
Emily Dickinson, and a scene from
Superman
2
.

I heard a fly buzz when I died

Lois, grab the log, Lois!

I surfaced, sputtering and
coughing. I flew down the river, the waves much stronger than my attempts to
swim. I heard shouts and a familiar voice. The raft was only a few yards away,
and Max was screaming at me to put my feet up and float. The entire group was
trying to pull the raft my way, but our paths continued to diverge as a new
outcropping of rocks appeared ahead. I put my feet up and tried to move my
upper torso in the opposite direction of the rocks. I slipped down a steep
slope, safely past the rock, and watched as the raft passed on the other side,
now headed directly toward me. Before the raft could reach me, Max jumped into
the water and grabbed me hand. He looked at me, confidence in his eyes, and
told me to hang on. We rounded a bend in the river to a lull in the rapids and
caught up with the raft. The guide helped haul me, none too delicately, back
into the raft. Max followed. After we were assessed and deemed fine to continue
on, the guide pushed back into the river.

“Oh my god, Holly, are you okay?
I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have made you do this.”

There was so much compassion in
his voice. So much concern. We had a story to tell now. We had lived through
this together.

And he had saved me.

With both hands, Max grabbed my
life vest and pulled me close, planting a big, wet kiss on my lips. Before I
could react, the guide screamed, “hold on, another big one!” With one hand I
grabbed the rope. With the other, I grabbed onto Max. And we laughed as we
continued our wet and wild adventure.

Chapter 17

“We need to get you warmed up,”
Max said, draping his arm over my shoulder.

Good Lord he felt good. My teeth
were chattering as we rode back to town in the air conditioned van. My wet
clothes clung to me and the towel the tour guide loaned me did little to warm
me up. But Max’s body was warm. Warm and welcoming.

“You can take a hot shower when
you get back to the hotel,” Max said. “Then you can meet me down in the lobby.
We leave for our next adventure in an hour and thirty minutes.”

“Our next adventure? What
exactly do you have planned?”

God, I hope it involves more kissing.

“It’s a secret.”

“A secret? This isn’t anything
fancy, right? The only clothes I have--”

“I know. Neither of us packed
anything. I’ll have a little something for you to wear when we get there,” Max
said.

An hour and a half later I was
showered and back in yesterday’s clothes. Max was driving us north on the
freeway. I couldn’t stop the volley of yawns coming from my mouth. The rafting
really took it out of me, and the excitement of whatever Max had planned was no
match for my exhaustion.

“Put your seat back and take a
nap,” Max said, turning down the radio.

“Nah, it’s okay,” I smiled at
him. I didn’t want to miss a minute of this surreal trip, even if it meant
sleeping with my eyes open.

“Holly, put your seat back and
sleep,” he said, his voice now stern and serious. Bossy Max was back.

I decided not to argue. I was
tired. He told me we were hours from our destination. And it’s not like we
could make out while he drove, and that’s what I really wanted for our
adventure. I grumbled a little as I pressed the lever on the side of my seat
and promptly passed out, lulled by the smooth motion of the car and the quiet
music playing.

I dreamed that I was Lois Lane,
floating down the rapids in
Superman 2
.
When I looked up to the shore, sometimes I saw Max, sometimes I saw Christopher
Reeve, sometimes I saw Robert Pattinson.

Or was it Christoph?

I felt myself returning to
consciousness, my eyelids too heavy to open, but my mind starting to recognize
the surroundings. I was in a car. With Max. We were driving somewhere, unknown
to me, but a part of Max’s plan. I stretched, feeling the cramps in my neck and
legs from sleeping in a car for who knows how many hours. The car was going
slower, navigating side streets and off the freeway.

Max looked down at me and
smiled. “We’re almost here, sleeping beauty.”

“How long was I out?” I asked.

I put the seat back up and tried
to subtly wipe the drool that had collected on my cheek. I hope I wasn’t
snoring the whole time, or worse yet, talking in my sleep.

“The whole drive,” he said. “I’m
glad you got some rest. You’ll want to be awake for the fun we’re having tonight.”

I looked out the window as we
pulled up to a huge building. Cars were everywhere, lined up to get into
parking lots on every side of the intersection.

“Pepsi Center? Wait, Max, are
we..”

I didn’t finish the question
because it was too ridiculous to even ask. This could not be happening. No,
really, it couldn’t. This was the NBA Finals. This was Lebron Freaking James.
There was no way Max had tickets to Nuggets vs. Heat game 2. How could he?