One Real Thing (9 page)

The dishes went into the sink, and then Holly padded off to the bathroom. The water ran as he brushed his teeth. Through it all, there wasn’t a single comment, a single joke or even a single resentful glance. When he came out, he crawled straight into bed without comment and curled up under the covers, facing the wall, hugging a pillow to his chest. His shoulders were visible above the covers, almost humming with tension.

Nick watched for a while, but the tension didn’t fade. The orange-brown of the pill bottle caught his attention out of the corner of his eye, and Nick picked it up. He shook out the pills and counted them—twelve, three days’ worth, just like the label said. Holly hadn’t taken any.

Glancing at Holly again, taking in the tight lines of his body, Nick ran a glass of water in the kitchen, then carried it and one dose of the painkillers over to the bed.

“Holly. Can you sit up enough to drink this?”

Holly’s breath caught and he swallowed, then nodded. When he moved, he was so slow, biting his lip against the pain. His lashes were damp, his cheeks flushed.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, holding one scraped hand out for the pill and the other for the glass.

Nick didn’t hand them over. This, he could do for Holly. He wanted to, wanted to take away the pain. He wished he could do more than the medication would manage. He set the capsule against Holly’s lips and waited for Holly to open up for him.

Holly opened his mouth obediently, looking up this time with bloodshot eyes. He let Nick give him the medicine, then the water.

God, he looked like shit. Nick wasn’t going to think about it anymore, though, not right now. He put the glass away in the kitchen, then came back to sit on the edge of the bed.

“You might have an easier time getting to sleep now.”

Holly was staring at the ceiling, battered hands leaving smudges on the covers where he clutched them to his chest.

“I’ll try.” He was breathing slowly, like it hurt. “Hurts worse than…Remember that time I broke my arm snowboarding?”

Nick had found out about it secondhand since he’d declined to spend a weekend with twenty drunken freshmen packed in a cabin meant for eight, but it was the first time he’d really grasped what a hazard Holly could be to himself.

“I swear I thought I could pick up enough speed on the roof to clear those trees. I did the math. I think I used the wrong wax on the snowboard.”

“You got hit by a
car,
” Nick reminded him. “And apparently you were drunk and high enough that it seemed like a good idea to walk in front if it.” Goddamn it. That was what the rules had been for, to stop Holly from getting himself killed like that. “I’m not surprised it hurts.” Nick sighed and gave in enough to stretch out on the bed, then touched an unbruised spot on Holly’s hip. “Get some rest, Holly. We’ll talk after you’ve had some sleep.”

Holly turned toward him and brushed the back of a hand across Nick’s cheek. “Either you have no damn idea what’s best for you, Nick, or you’re as good as I am at avoiding it.”

Nick knew what was best for him. He did. It just never seemed to matter, when the other option was Holly. “Do you want me to change my mind and leave?” he challenged, but before Holly could answer, he sighed and said, “Shut up and go to sleep, Holly. If not for your sake, then for mine. I’ve been up since five—
yesterday.
”

Holly’s deep blue eyes were filled with regret. He looked like he’d aged a decade overnight. “I’ll sleep.” Turning away again, he closed his eyes, and his body slowly relaxed into sleep.

Nick only meant to touch Holly, to be sure he was still breathing, but he ended up sliding closer, curling around Holly’s body like a wall between him and the rest of the world. If Nick couldn’t protect him any other way…

Holly’s body curved back into his until Nick could feel how thin he was instead of just seeing it. He could feel him breathing too, could smell the tang of blood on his skin. Holly inhaled deeply, and his breath caught. Then he sighed heavily in his sleep.

Petting gently, so he wouldn’t hurt him, Nick tried to soothe Holly into a deeper sleep. Holly needed the rest. Nick needed the rest too, but it wasn’t likely to come when he was so twisted up inside. He mulled over his options, ways to prevent a repeat of tonight’s chaos, and dozed here and there as he put the pieces together in his mind.

***

The pain that woke Holly brought his foolishness into perfect focus before he’d even opened his eyes, but it was nothing next to the stab of clarity through his head. He felt like he’d seen his life from the outside for just long enough that he couldn’t deny what he was doing anymore. Driving himself crazy for fear of being crazy. Losing himself because he’d felt lost for so long.

The one good choice he’d made, it seemed, was Nick. But it hadn’t been a good choice for Nick. Holly had to do what was best for both of them. He took a breath and opened his eyes.

The sunlight angled against the white wall said it was already afternoon. Holly inhaled again; it was hard to breathe, like there was a weight on him. Panic welled, but then his hand touched another, warm and limp. Someone’s arm was thrown over his side. Oh fuck, what had he done? Last thing he remembered, Nick had told him to sleep…

“Go back to sleep.”

Nick. Holly was in so much pain, he couldn’t have done anything stupid with Nick. Nick wouldn’t have done anything stupid with him. That was good. Holly’s breath was still coming shallow and fast, though.

“I thought I fucked up again,” he mumbled. It felt like his whole face had gone bony and resistant overnight.

“No.” Nick pulled his arm back, and the bed shifted as he rolled away. The soft pat-pat sound was Nick’s bare feet hitting the floor, and with another shift, Nick was gone. “You slept.” There was the familiar noise of pills rattling, water running, and then Nick was back. “Can you sit up? It’s time for your next dose.”

Now Holly was really sorry he’d woken up. If he’d remembered it was Nick, he’d have lain there and enjoyed it longer, feeling safe.

“I’ll try.” Trying was less successful than he’d anticipated. Holly couldn’t help his whimper or the tears that came to his eyes. But he managed to get up enough that when he fell back, his head hitting the wall with a dull thud, he was partly upright. “Okay, done.”

Nick sat beside him and, like before, pressed the pill against his lips and then offered him a sip of water to wash it down.

“You should lie back down. Let it work before you try to get up.” Nick didn’t seem inclined to stay there with him, though. He crossed the room to put the glass back in the kitchen, then headed for the love seat.

“Nick, I am so sorry.” He almost regretted he was going to be in less pain in a few minutes. Hurting was fair punishment. So was leaving so Nick could get his life back. “I can go. As soon as I can get my dad to send me some money. I’ll pay you back too. I never meant for this to happen…I mean, not the part that involves you.” Driving himself into the ground, yes, he’d meant that to happen. Not anymore, though. It was time to stop hurting himself. “I’ll be okay. I promise.”

Nick rounded on him, stalked back over to the bed. His face was stony, but his eyes were hot.

“You aren’t going anywhere, damn it. You aren’t setting one fucking toe out of this place without permission, not anymore. And you’re going to wear a fucking GPS tracker from now on, because I am never going to sit here again and wonder where the hell you are and which fucking hospital or morgue I should start with.”

“Okay.” Holly felt warmed through and then felt guilty about it, seeing how much he’d hurt Nick. “You’re right. Anything you want.” Saying it brought a rush of giddy relief that was better than the drug that had yet to kick in.

“Good.” Something flickered over Nick’s face—relief? pleasure? satisfaction?—and he nodded. His voice was quieter, but no less firm when he added, “You’re going to text me before and after all contact with your mother too, so I know if there’s a problem.”

“Okay,” Holly said. That was going to be a little harder. He’d just have to do it. “I just…” He hated letting his relationship with his mother out into the world. He didn’t want that part of his life to come into contact with Nick. All the warmth left him in a rush, and his throat tightened. “I will.”

“No more hiding.” Nick didn’t sit down, didn’t reach out, but his expression was sympathetic. “No more hiding, Holly, not from me. I’m the one you’re honest with, remember? I need to know so I can be prepared, so I can help you.”

“I know.” Holly rubbed his hands over his face, the scabs on his palms catching on his stubble and scrapes. He felt old. Right up until Nick had shaken him out, he’d felt twenty-one, stuck there forever. Now he felt ancient.

He didn’t want Nick’s sympathy. Anger welled up to push away his fear and sadness, but he sat there, face covered, and wouldn’t let it out. The part of him that wanted to blow Nick off, to walk out so Nick wouldn’t see what he might be under the façade, couldn’t win anymore. But fuck, he was still scared he’d try to have a normal life and lose it all just when he was stupid enough to hope for it.

“You can do this, Holly. I know you can follow the rules. They’re not hard.” Nick looked at him for another moment, then walked away, back to the kitchen. Water ran, and then the coffeemaker burbled. When it was finished, Nick carried a cup back to the love seat.

By the time Nick was sitting again, Holly was feeling better, well enough to push up from where he was slumped against the wall. His head continued to pound.

“They’re fair. That doesn’t mean it’s not hard,” he pointed out. If he went around pretending it was going to be easy, he’d fuck up again. “Why do you still have any faith in me?” Searching for compliments, maybe, but Holly needed to hear them.

“I know how smart you are,” Nick said, glancing at Holly, then back at his steaming coffee. “I know you’re too smart to keep thinking that drowning yourself in all this shit is the solution for anything.”

“I think I started to get that last night, sitting in the ER, watching people come and go. I think I keep hoping to break whatever defective piece there is in me before I have a life worth caring about.” Holly ran his fingers over the stitches on his head. “But I keep not breaking.”

“Are you ready to stop trying?” Nick’s head came up again, and his eyes locked on Holly’s.

“Yeah.” Holly swallowed and willed his head to stop pounding. He was feeling sick, couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten. Hungover. Of course. “Don’t know about the life part yet. But the trying can stop.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Nick sounded approving. “Follow the rules and you’ll be fine.”

Holly wanted to follow the rules, so much. He watched Nick for another moment or two, then forced himself to get out of bed, one painful move at a time. Even the soles of his feet hurt. He was never walking in front of a cab again. Scratch that off the list of things to do in this lifetime.

As much as getting up hurt, sitting down was worse, all the way down on the floor at Nick’s feet. Once his head was on Nick’s knee, though, it was like nothing had ever happened to him, like he’d never been hurt at all. Nothing hurt except the place in his chest where he knew he’d crossed some awful line, accidentally, but still his fault—and that Nick hadn’t left him said everything about Nick and nothing about Holly at all.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Nick’s voice was as soft as his touches, fingers smoothing lightly over Holly’s hair. “I know. That’s why I’m still here.”

Maybe, in a world where Holly had stopped screwing up sooner, where he’d stopped taking Nick for granted and trusted him more, he wouldn’t be feeling guilty because he was keeping Nick from Caroline—that Nick was keeping secrets from her. Maybe Nick wouldn’t have had anywhere to be going from here.

It was too late for that. Holly was going to have to learn to live alone, because he didn’t see anyone else taking Nick’s place, not even a little bit. The sooner he got the hang of being on his own, the sooner he could leave and know Nick would be happy. He could do that. He’d been doing it all along, now he would do it right.

“Stay,” Nick said after a while. “I’ll get you some water. Do you think you could eat?”

“I can try.” Holly rubbed his cheek against Nick’s knee. “Could I please have some coffee?”

“The coffee won’t help with the dehydration from your hangover,” Nick pointed out, but he offered up his cup anyway. “I’ll get you some toast.”

“Thought it might help the headache.” Holly took the cup in both hands. Coffee was so good. He made himself look up, facing what he’d find in Nick’s eyes. Just looking at Nick made him feel better. “Thank you.”

Everything Holly had promised Nick he would do, he did. And for once, everything he had promised
himself
he would do, he did. Tentatively he began to make contact with other people.

He wasn’t ready to see Rich and Anne, not together. It wasn’t that there was anything particularly difficult about either Rich or Anne; Holly liked both of them a great deal. But he wasn’t ready to face their tidy little life.

Alison, on the other hand, had never been very invested in doing what other people thought was proper. She wasn’t judgmental or critical, not because she didn’t care enough to have an opinion, but because she couldn’t be bothered to expend the energy when it wouldn’t change anything. It made her a good photographer; she had a lot of work on both coasts and “across the pond.”

When she called and said she was back in town and working out at the gym they both used, Holly had to offer to meet her there. Anything else seemed cowardly, and he was done avoiding life.

The day he was supposed to meet her, he woke up nauseated. He wasn’t surprised. He’d hardly slept.

After he’d gotten over the worst of his anxiety, he enjoyed the feeling of being anonymous. But meeting up with Alison meant facing someone who knew him—knew the person he’d been and how far he’d fallen.

Holly made himself get out of bed and take his medication and forced a cup of coffee down his throat. He could hardly swallow for all the fear that kept rising from deep inside his chest. He made it as far as the front steps of his apartment building, gym bag slung over his shoulder and GPS tracker in his wallet, before he had to stop and light a cigarette. After a few drags, he felt human enough to carry on.

For some reason Holly expected everyone to look the same as when he’d last seen them. Nick certainly did. So when he first saw Alison, he was startled to see she had changed. Always offbeat, she’d blossomed into a broad-hipped, hippie-punk hybrid with bright pink cropped hair and a Folsom Street Fair T-shirt that barely met the tops of her tie-dyed tights. The chunky shoes were the same kind she’d worn in college, though, hand-painted with daisies.

“Baby!” Alison hitched her backpack and her camera bag over her shoulder and jumped up from the bench she was sitting on. “You look terrible!”

The honesty hadn’t changed either. It made Holly feel better instantly. Laughing, he hugged her when she held out her arms, and he couldn’t remember why he been so anxious in the first place.

“Yeah, but you should see the other guy,” he said.

“Don’t tell me you’ve added fighting to your repertoire of vices.” She pushed his hair back to look at his stitches. “Because I have to tell you, you’re probably not very good at it.”

“I’m a lover, not a fighter?” Holly ducked so she could get a better look, submitting to her inspection. “Don’t worry. The other guy was a cab. I don’t think I even managed to bleed on it.”

“Oh, honey,” she said, shaking her head. “I bet Nick’s gone entirely gray.”

Holly’s face twisted with guilt, making his bruises ache. “Yeah, he doesn’t seem to know what’s good for him.”

“That’s precisely why the two of you deserve each other.” She looped her arm through his and drew him toward the locker rooms. “I read the tabloids, you know.”

Holly groaned. “Christ, when did all my friends develop such terrible habits?”

“Oh, honey,” Alison said again. “We always had a taste for drama. You just never noticed.” She grinned wickedly. “What with how you were always so busy being the drama.”

“Ouch.” Holly would’ve been lying if he didn’t admit that had always been his goal—to be the drama, the center of attention. Now he was living with the consequences of dedicating himself to that goal.

“Go get your sneakers on, big guy,” Alison ordered. “I’ll meet you on the treadmills. Mama’s got the cure for what ails you.”

The cure for what ailed Holly, it turned out, was running until he thought his lungs were going to get up and leave without him. Worse, Alison was taking it easy on him; she’d hardly broken a sweat. He worked harder when there was somebody there to keep him company. Even while he was wondering where the hell his next breath was going to come from, he knew it was good for him.

“So.” Alison smacked him with her towel as she got off the treadmill. “When’re you going back to work?”

“Back.” Holly gave up on breathing and took a drink from his water bottle. There, maybe now he could get some air in. “Back to work? You mean people have forgotten I screwed around with one of my clients and botched the whole relationship to the point that I was fired in order for the firm to continue representing her?”

“Well, no. I’m sure you’ll be held up as a cautionary tale for baby PR flacks for years to come.” Alison snickered at him.

“So much for ‘Mama.’ You’re not very maternal.” Holly pushed away from the arm of his treadmill, which was holding him up, and took a step.

“Aside from the bruises, it looks like Nick’s taking good care of you.” Alison said, shrugging. “You don’t need me for that. But you do need a job.”

Once Holly was relatively certain his legs would support him, he started walking. “I would love a job. I have to let Nick get back to his life. I could get a job as a paperboy. Need someone to carry your cameras?”

Alison laughed. “No. But I might know someone who’d be sympathetic to your plight.”

“Oh?” Holly leaned casually on a post to take another drink. Stopping gave him a good look at a leggy brunette working out on the thigh machine. And better yet, checking her out disguised his real reason for stopping—he wanted to sit down.

“I have a friend who used to date your ex, back in the day. I shot his wedding a while back and he mentioned his business was expanding.”

“He needs PR help?” A small business. It was a step down from Hollywood and reality-television starlets, but it was a job.

“It’s him and his wife calling the shots. Something has to give, and PR is the easiest to delegate. Get off that post.” Alison cuffed him lightly. “You have to keep moving or you’ll regret it tomorrow.”

Busted. Maybe he should be doing work on holiday specials and charity drives if he’d gotten this bad at pulling one over on people. He pushed away and started walking again. “Right now I’ll take what I can get. Where’s the company?”

“Baltimore.” Alison threw her towel around his shoulders. “It won’t be what you’re used to making, of course, but you wouldn’t need it in Baltimore.”

A job in Baltimore.
It had its advantages. It wasn’t too far from Nick. There was a train that ran between the two cities. It was within driving distance if he wanted to visit. And it wasn’t L.A. Holly was sure there were other advantages, but he didn’t know what they were. Fun, women, money and drugs probably weren’t among them. Maybe being near Nick wouldn’t be an advantage, but Holly couldn’t worry about that.

“Is something wrong with Baltimore?” Alison pointed at the hall that led to the men’s locker room. “Tell me about it after you’re clean.”

“Yeah.” Holly gave himself a mental shake and turned to smile at her. “See you in a few minutes.”

“Don’t get distracted in there.” Alison winked. “Happens to the best of us.”

“Yeah, and I’m hardly that.” As it was, he had too much to think about to let the naked bodies distract him. Baltimore. Work.

The more Holly thought about it, about being able to tell Nick he’d found a job, the better it sounded. Maybe it’d be a little film production company or a small acting agency. Not that it mattered. Whoever it was couldn’t be too bad off if they could afford to hire Alison, even with her discount for old friends.

After a shower, Holly felt immeasurably better. Any kind of work that wasn’t hawking fries and burgers was going to look better on his résumé than a long silence. Whatever it was, if they offered him the job, he was going to take it.

Alison was waiting for him in the lobby, holding two cups of coffee. “You look a million times better.”

“I feel it. You’re serious about your friends having work for someone in PR? And not because they released some plague or burned the pope in effigy?”

“Nope.” Alison gave him his coffee. “They’ve got a few stores and other obligations. They’ve been very successful, and you could help them keep that up.”

“I can’t wait to meet them.” Holly felt like he might have even meant it.

“You’re just their kind of people,” Alison said brightly, leading the way toward the street.

“Should I be worried?” Being their kind of people was the kind of thing that would worry Nick.

“I meant in the good way, baby.” She patted his shoulder and then held the door open. “Only in the good way.”

***

Holly stared at the front door of his apartment, trying to convince his heart to stop pounding. It didn’t work. The psychiatrist had advised him to stay away from the tranquilizers that were lurking in the cupboard over the coffeemaker, calling his name.

“Stay with it when it happens, Holly. It’s natural to feel things. People do it all the time. It’s normal.”

That was exactly what he was afraid of—feeling. He felt like shit. He felt like he was seven. He felt like he was going to puke.

He felt like he was going to lose his mind.

“If you lose your mind,”
the psych had said helpfully,
“you don’t have to do well at the interview.”

Not fucking reassuring. Holly wasn’t in this to screw it up. He didn’t want to let Nick down.

Nick. Just thinking of him made Holly’s heartbeat slow by what felt like half. Holly rubbed at Nick’s ring, twisting it around his finger to remind himself why he wore it. Because Nick believed in him. Because he trusted Nick. He double-checked his back pocket to make sure the GPS tracker was there. Between that and the ring, Nick was always with him in some way.

Nick wouldn’t let him go to this thing if he didn’t think Holly could do it. Hell, Alison wouldn’t. Holly was surprised to realize there were at least three people he could trust right now—first that he trusted them at all, and second that there was more than Nick on the list. Even Rich had been utterly sanguine about the impending interview when he’d taken Holly to lunch yesterday, and Rich was a pessimist who thrived on schadenfreude.

Okay.
Holly’s brain kicked him into action.
Just jump.
Of course, this was the same brain that thought jumping out of airplanes and off of roofs was all in good fun. But by the time Holly could reconsider, he was out the door and on his way to the Stone Age Sports New York store.

***

Holly got out of the cab a block from the Stone Age Sports store and walked down at an easy pace. Stone Age Sports was an eclectic little company that sold everything from clothes to skateboards to video games, built around the soaring career of Danner Stone, a self-made extreme-sports deity.

In Alison’s words,
“The two of you are peas in a pod. I can’t believe no one ever thought to keep you busy with a skateboard.”
Holly hadn’t been on a skateboard in years.

A cowbell clanged as Holly opened the door to SAS. He glanced at the window displays on his way by; one featured scuba-diving mannequins on mountain bikes plunging into the depths around a coral reef, and the other mannequins dressed as skateboarding monks wearing parachutes and preparing to BASE jump off a mountain somewhere in Tibet. Holly had to give the owners credit for thinking big. He’d have jumped at either choice.

The way to the counter led under a display of kayaks and around racks of brilliantly patterned board shorts and sarongs. Holly felt overdressed in the pair of decent jeans and button-down shirt Alison had suggested.

You’ll be meeting Julie,
her text message had read.
She’s Danner’s wife—not more conservative, just more demanding.

The skinny hipster behind the counter had a lollipop jammed in his mouth, his eyes locked on a handheld video game, and there wasn’t a chance he could hear Holly from under his skull-printed headphones. Great. Holly’s pulse fluttered in his throat.

“Holly?” The voice behind him was feminine and cheerful. Holly spun around and was momentarily baffled until he realized the tall stack of shoe boxes ahead was moving by means of a two very nice legs and a pair of very hot purple heels.

“Hey.” Holly made sure his laptop bag was settled firmly on his shoulder and stepped forward. “Can I help you with those?”

“Thanks!”

The stack of boxes stopped, and Holly scooped up the bulk of them, leaving the bearer holding the last few. Behind the boxes was a young woman who certainly lived up to the promise of those legs—not that Holly was noticing on purpose, but he’d have had to poke himself in the eyes to avoid it, the way her silk dress plunged to where it was barely held closed by a rather pricey-looking onyx pin.
Julie.

“No problem.” Holly’s recently revived sense of decency kicked in, and he hauled his gaze up to Julie’s bright brown eyes. “Where can I put these?”

“Follow me.” Julie took a sharp right and didn’t look back to ensure he was behind her. No wonder, either.

Holly mused that you’d have to kneecap most men—and some women—to keep them from tagging along. Julie had silky black hair pulled back in a twist that looked like it would come tumbling undone with the right tug, a petite, toned body in a perfectly tailored floral dress and a sweet voice that carried an unmistakably authoritative note. Holly liked her already.

“I need to get these shoes—well, the left ones—on the wall today,” Julie said. She dropped the boxes she was carrying onto a bench in front of an empty shoe display. “This is only the first dozen, and we carry forty-eight different shoes. Fortunately I just need to copy what I’ve done in our other East Coast store. I handle all the visuals and layouts, and I’m too busy to make up new ones for each store.”

“I could handle that if you have the layout.” Holly put the boxes down and then pushed his laptop bag under the bench.

Julie gave him an appraising look. “Let’s see if you can multitask. Shoes are arranged by style, then size, in four racks. This is rack one. We use eights for display. Get going.” She pointed to the back of the store, and Holly’s feet started moving before he’d finished parsing her instructions.