Page 44 of Hers for the Weekend

Some she identified as Rosensteins and some must be Noelle’s relatives from New Mexico, given her excited greetings. And then a number of older guests who didn’t seem to be related to anyone started arriving.

“Who are all these people?” Holly whispered to Tara, gesturing at the septuagenarians hugging each other like long-lost loves.

Tara smiled. “These are Miriam’s Old Ladies. She buys junk from them, for her art. Well”—she paused—“some of them are. I think some of them might be Noelle’s AA friends? They seem to have put their collections together.”

“I don’t understand how anyone knows this many human beings,” Holly said, and Tara looked at her strangely. “What?”

Tara shook her head. “I don’t think I’d be happy not having a village.”

Holly’s hackles stood up. It was pretty rich of Tara to accuse her of not building a village, when Tara actively avoided being where her village was, in favor of burning her candle at both ends, trying to make up for one terrible teenage mistake.

“There’s nothing wrong with my life, Tara.”

“I didn’t say there was.” Tara’s drawl was back, and her posture was straighter, which meant she was feeling called out. She didn’t have to say that she thought there was something wrong with the way Holly lived her life. She said it with her actions.

“Tara!” cried a woman holding out hands with perfectly sculpted nails, tasteful, expensive gold bracelets clinking as she walked toward them.

“There’s Ziva,” Tara said flatly. She put an arm around Holly’s shoulders and whispered, “Get ready.”

Holly put on her waitressing smile, the one she used for men who tried to peer down her dress and women who talked to her like she was three. She knew from Tara that Ziva was on a tour of amends for allowing Miriam to grow up in an abusive home, but something about her dinged Holly’s alarms. Was it the way she presented herself, the blowout and freshly microbladed eyebrows and expensive athleisure reminding Holly, fairly or not, of a Certain Kind of affluent customer who never tipped enough? Was it the knowledge that Ziva had called Tara after the breakup but before Noelle and Miriam were officially together, to apologize for Miriam’s bad judgment and try to talk Tara into winning Miriam back?

Tara rose from the table and held Ziva at arm’s length, air kissing both of her cheeks. “This is my girlfriend, Holly,” Tara introduced them. Holly did not stand up. There were people on this earth she would pause her breakfast for, but Ziva Rosenstein-Blum wasn’t one of them.

Ziva scanned Holly up and down, holding out a hand. Holly shook it, refusing to react when Ziva squeezed a little too hard. Then she sat down in the empty chair next to Tara without being asked, effectively forcing Tara to turn her back to Holly if Tara wanted to look at Ziva while she talked, which Tara was too polite not to do.

“So you’re not here to dramatically object in the middle of the wedding and win back the love of your life?” Ziva asked, her tone joking, although Holly was sure she heard a little bit of disappointment.

“Fortunately for all of us, Miriam was never the love of my life, and I could not be more glad that she is the love of Noelle’s life,” Tara said in that syrupy, slow drawl she used to tell people they had crossed a line. The “Bless Your Heart” was silent but implied.

Ziva tittered and turned to Holly. “So, what do you do?”

Before she could answer, Tara said, “Holly is an amazing baker, and she actually grew up right near the Rosenstein’s flagship store.”

Apparently “waitress” would have been too embarrassing an answer for Tara.

Ziva clasped her hands together. “Oh, so you grew up eating our products.”

“Our” seemed like a stretch, given that, as far as Holly knew, Ziva was in no way involved in the family business and hadn’t been since she’d married Richard Blum, to whom the family had objected because he was, well, a dick.

She didn’t say this to Ziva.

Instead, she said, “I would die for the hamantaschen!”

This had the benefit of being true, so she could say it with real enthusiasm.

“I have to introduce you to some friends who work at the home office,” Ziva told her. “You’ll have so much to talk about.”

Standing up, she pulled Holly to her feet and began dragging her to a nearby table as Holly glanced longingly at her unfinished eggs. It was clear that it had never occurred to Ziva that Holly might not follow along. Ziva seemed very skilled at moving social situations so that people couldn’t object to whatever she wanted without appearing rude. It was equal parts impressive and appalling.

Holly looked over her shoulder at Tara, whose face, to her credit, was sheepish. She wanted to hang back and remind Tara that she’d known all along that Holly was a career waitress but had agreed to have Holly come along on this fake girlfriend farce anyway. Remind her that Holly didn’t give a shit if her life was impressive to someone like Ziva. If Tara’d wanted Holly to pretend to be someone else, she should have said so.

Actually, she should have gotten someone else to do this. Pretending to be the kind of woman who would date someone who was ashamed of her really chapped her ass.

Instead of getting into that argument, she let herself be dragged off by Ziva, who introduced her to a lot of people whose names Holly wouldn’t remember. The cousins who were close to her age exchanged details of what high schools they’d gone to and played the game of trying to figure out who they knew in common. One of the cousins had spent a summer working with Caitlin at a movie theater, so they took a selfie and sent it to her.

“Holly is an incredible baker,” Miriam supplied when she joined the group. “Her coconut cake blew me out of the water the first time I had it.”

This brought on a chorus of oohs, requests for recipes, and a discussion of the difficulties that Miriam had experienced when adjusting to baking at such a different altitude, here in the Adirondacks, than she was used to in Charleston.

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