Page 87 of Hers for the Weekend

“So, you want me to work for you, and I want to work for you, but in different positions?” Holly clarified.

“I feel like we should absolutely be able to come up with a solution that makes sense for all of us,” Shoshana said. “Why don’t I put my head to it, and you, too, and we’ll talk next week?”

Something about that willingness to live in the gray area spoke to Holly, on more than just a career level. She’d been so sure, with Tara, that there was no gray area. And there wasn’t one when it came to Tara’s racist, elitist, homophobic family. But maybe there was when it came to Tara’s career, which she loved.

She’d wanted Tara to open up, let down her walls, and become a softer, more vulnerable version of herself, but then she’d proven herself someone who couldn’t be trusted with that kind of vulnerability. Even if Tara never gave her another chance, she wanted to show that she’d been wrong. Tara deserved that. But even if Holly didn’t have a right to ask, she did hope Tara gave her another chance.

She wanted to be able to go to Tara and show her that she’d listened. She understood that Tara loved the South, and being a part of the fight for its soul. That the place Tara’d grown in could still nourish her roots, even if Holly didn’t fully understand that concept. She also wanted to apologize in a way that was meaningful. Not an empty gesture, but something that showed she was committed to learning to fight kindly, to sit in discomfort and nuance, and to take a risk again.

“Holly? You still there?” Shoshana asked, and Holly came back to the present.

“Yeah, I’m in. Let’s find a compromise.”

They did find a compromise: Holly would get the food truck she’d dreamed of, and Shoshana (or, more accurately, Shoshana’s accountant and lawyer) would take care of the taxes and business licenses. Holly would go into new markets to introduce people to the genius of Rosenstein’s Bread and Pastries baked fresh, but she would also offer a new product line, under their umbrella. A line of reimagined, updated versions of the most classic vintage Rosenstein’s recipes.

They roped Miriam in to design the logo, only after Holly assured her, at length, that she was going to make real amends with Tara, to make things right. And even then, Miriam was skeptical of her.

“I’m doing this under duress,” Miriam said, “because my friend is sad. But if you make her sadder, I won’t come after you. Cole will.”

Once they had a mock-up of everything, the first product off the line went not to Rosenstein’s home office, but to New York.

A pink and green box with a starburst sticker reading Siobhan & Sloane that opened to a pineapple upside-down bar featuring handmade maraschino cherries, a gooey butter cake base, and a bourbon caramel was supposed to arrive at Tara’s apartment in Lake Placid, by courier. The morning it was set to be delivered, Holly watched the app on her phone, the little dot getting closer and closer to Tara’s address, and she waited for her phone to ring.

If it did.

When it did, she almost dropped it in her haste to answer it.

“Tara?” Brilliant opening, Delaney.

“You named your business Siobhan and Sloane?”

She inhaled, trying to breathe in the deep Southern cadence of Tara’s voice. She’d missed it, and missed, also, Tara’s unwillingness to say hello at the beginning of a conversation. If she’d expected anything, it was that Tara would be back to treating her with the same icy polite reserve she used on everyone she thought might hurt her.

Holly hadn’t realized it when they’d first met, but it must be something Tara only did with her inner circle. After all, she had impeccable Southern manners and must have to start most conversations, with most people, with ten to twenty extra minutes of empty pleasantries before she could get around to what she actually wanted to say. It was a sign of real trust when Tara just started talking; it meant she wasn’t wearing any of her armor. There was no reason for Tara to be showing her that vulnerability now, but she wasn’t going to argue.

“It’s not a business! Exactly,” Holly protested. On the other end of the line, Tara was silent. “Yes. I named it Siobhan and Sloane. I thought, even if you didn’t ever talk to me again, I wanted to honor that you pushed me out of my comfort zone and inspired me to do all this.”

“You thought I would never talk to you again?” Tara asked, her voice squeaking in a way Holly had never heard. “I thought you would never talk to me again.”

“Tara, I was so mean to you I got kicked out of Carrigan’s. Carrigan’s! The Jewish Hotel California!” Holly cried. “The place no one else ever leaves! I said horrifying things to you, things that keep me up all night, hearing them in my head, over and over.”

Tara laughed, and it was the most beautiful sound Holly had ever heard. “You were mean. So was I, for that matter, and I’m so sorry. And people had been trying to shake me out of my misery the nice way for a lot of years, and nothing worked.”

“Oh no. Just because it worked out in the end does not mean we’re going to push my behavior under the rug. I care about you, and I don’t tear down people I care about.”

Well, she didn’t want to anymore. It turned out that with the right motivation, a person could change a hell of a lot of their behavior. For Holly, the combination of Tara and feeling like a total asshole who didn’t want to look herself in the mirror was enough motivation.

She still held on to a tiny seed of hope that maybe, someday, they would be able to start something new, and they couldn’t do it with the shadow of Holly’s unkindness between them.

“Thank you for the apology,” Tara said soberly. “I was an asshole, and I’m sorry for making you feel like you weren’t good enough exactly as you are. For not listening to you or trusting that you knew what was best for yourself.”

“I mean, I don’t know what’s best for me,” Holly said ruefully. “I thought I did. I was so sure that I had my life all figured out, and only you needed to change. It turns out I was as lost as you were. I could ignore that while I was focusing on you. But maybe I’m starting to get… unlost? Found. I think I’m starting to be found.”

“The magic of Carrigan’s?” Tara guessed.

Holly scoffed. “The magic of Tara Sloane Chadwick.”

“Holly, tell me you didn’t get a corporate job just to somehow apologize to me,” Tara said. “You hate capitalism. You could have called and said, ‘Can we talk?’”

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