Page 22 of Hers for the Weekend

“I’m going to need some more details.”

“When we were seventeen, Cole and I decided it would be a great idea to write ‘Eat the Rich,’ in fire, in the grass on the front lawn of our parents’ country club.”

“Oh no.” Holly let out a horrified little giggle. “I’m guessing it didn’t go as planned?”

Tara shook her head. “The whole place burned to the ground. Thank God it was two a.m. and there was no one inside. The flames were… a nightmare. It was so fucking irresponsible and childish. It’s a miracle we didn’t hurt anyone. It haunts me every day. How close we came to killing people.”

“Holy shit, Tara,” Holly breathed. “But you didn’t go to prison. Did you not get caught?”

Tara shifted in her seat, keeping her face tight and eyes glued on the road ahead of her. “Oh, we did. But my daddy is very good friends with the circuit solicitor and Cole’s daddy is Nicholas Jedediah Fraser II. It didn’t matter if we were caught, we were never going to do a lick of time. Cole had access to his trust fund blocked; I was sent to boarding school for my senior year. Cole reacted by becoming a criminal and I…”

“Started following every rule there is?” Holly guessed.

Tara shook her head. “No. Well, a little. Mostly I got mad. I saw that if we had been anyone else, our lives would have been over, and maybe rightly so. Not that I believe we should have gone to prison. I don’t believe anyone should go to prison—prisons should be abolished—but we should have faced the same consequences as any other South Carolinian. Hell, any consequence.”

Holly went silent, either digesting the fact that Tara Sloane Chadwick believed in prison abolition or had once committed arson. “How does what you do now help even the scales?” she asked finally. “Aren’t you just part of the system now?”

Tara nodded. “The system needs to be dismantled, and I support the national network of activists working on that any way I can, but mostly I’m just making sure that a few people who get caught in the system get the kind of defense I would have gotten if we’d gone to trial. And, a little bit undoing the work my father’s done as a prosecutor for so many years.”

“That’s admirable,” Holly said slowly, obviously carefully choosing her words, “and doable in many ways. Why do you need to stay connected to your family to do it?”

“It would be irresponsible of me to give up my access when it can help people,” Tara tried to explain. “I was handed this privilege, and it’s the only way I have to use it that might do any good. Honestly, my career is the best thing I’ve ever done. The most joyful thing I’ve ever done.”

Holly made a grumbling noise Tara couldn’t interpret. “Are you sure you’re not using them to punish yourself for the fire or something? Seeking absolution through misery?”

Tara snapped. “I don’t require absolution from those people.” She felt like her skin was on fire.

“Does your family hold it over your head? Have they convinced you that you don’t deserve to be happ—”

Tara cut her off. “Holly, with all due respect, this is the life I’ve chosen. I hear that you don’t agree with it. You don’t need to.”

Just a few minutes ago, Tara had been questioning if she, herself, agreed, but Holly’s interrogation made her slam up all her defenses.

No, she didn’t think she deserved better. Not because her family had told her so. Actually, once they’d paid to make all the legal trouble go away, they’d only cared that she’d been messy and gauche in her troublemaking. She wasn’t using them for absolution, because she didn’t think she could be absolved of the kind of reckless endangerment she’d taken part in. Punishment, though—maybe she was staying miserable as punishment. Because misery was what she deserved.

Holly cleared her throat. “This was all the big stuff, right? There’s not, like, even bigger stuff you have to tell me about yourself?”

Her tone was lighter, and Tara could tell that an olive branch was being offered. She decided to take it.

“Well,” Tara sighed, “I’m also a lesbian.”

“What a wild coincidence! I, too, am a lesbian!” Holly joked.

After a long moment, Holly said more seriously, “Okay, you told me your big secret. It only seems fair to tell you mine. You asked me if I had any best friends or ex-girlfriends. I do have both, the same person. My ex-wife. I mean, we’re not best friends anymore. We were best friends, we got married, we split up, and now we’re friendly strangers.”

“I didn’t realize you’re divorced,” Tara said evenly. It was another reminder that she and Holly were, truly, mere acquaintances. It might be safer if they stayed that way, but Tara couldn’t help being wildly curious about this woman and her past. She didn’t ask a question, though, because she’d found that people who wanted to avoid talking about things often balked at questions but spilled all sorts of info when left with an opening.

“We met in middle school, in the comments of a Paramore LiveJournal account. We were best friends in high school, then fell in love. We got ‘married’ as soon as we graduated, although not legally, obviously. When Obergefell came down, we talked about getting legally married and realized that we should probably break up instead. Divorced by twenty-two!” She made a self-deprecating face and a peace sign.

“You seem stunned,” Holly said. “Is it the divorced thing, or the Paramore LiveJournal thing? Because if you speak ill of Hayley, I will end this charade right now.”

Tara shook her head. “I was trying to do the math. You’re a little over thirty now, right? So you’ve been divorced for almost ten years? Have you…” She wasn’t sure how to end that sentence in a way that didn’t sound judgmental, which wasn’t her intention.

“Been single that whole time? I definitely wasn’t celibate, but I didn’t get into any relationships. Not because I wasn’t over Ivy, but… we broke up mostly because she wanted to play house and I had grown up poor and didn’t want to ever feel stuck, in the same way I had as a kid, in the same little Midwestern town I’d always lived in. So, I didn’t want to get involved with yet another girl I would let down in the same way. I still don’t want to settle down, have a white picket fence and a dog.”

There was something in Holly’s voice, and Tara wondered if she was still hung up on her ex. “I was actually going to ask if you’ve been without a best friend this whole time. Single, I can understand, but I’ve never been able to live without a best friend.”

“Trust me, it’s better this way,” Holly told her. That wasn’t the first time she’d referenced being a bad friend, and Tara was itching to dig deeper. What had convinced Holly that she needed to be a lone wolf?

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