Page 51 of The Holiday Honeymoon Switch
He smiles. “Yeah. Me, too. Not how you usually spend the holidays, huh?”
“Actually, I normally spend them alone.” She explains more about her yearly art retreats, which happen while her parents travel—as well as her parents’ hatred of corporate greed, which they associate with the commercialism of Christmas.
“Really, your parents don’t use actual money?”
“For almost everything, they barter. Dad hasn’t figured out a way to barter for flights yet, and he and my mom do like to travel. But truly—almost literally everything.”
“What’s the craziest thing he’s ever traded?”
Ivy thinks for a moment.
“Two of our prize pigs for a pickup truck. He had tears in his eyes—he loved those pigs. Hmm, what else. He draggedme to a Comic-Con convention when I decided I didn’t like comic books anymore—I went through a Catwoman phase—and we traded a box of old comic books for my Halloween costume that year.”
“And your Halloween costume was?”
“I wish I had been more original, but I was the Pink Power Ranger.”
“That’s adorable.”
“Stop it, I wanted to be taken very seriously as a preteen.”
“Oh, I take you very seriously, Ivy.” Suddenly, he’s not smiling anymore. Their eyes lock, and Ivy finds herself leaning toward him. She decides to slide back into the water, hoping the cool of it will help clear her head. He follows and they swim alongside each other.
“So, how about you?” she asks him.
“How about me, what?”
“Your family? Your embarrassing childhood stories.” They’re facing each other now, treading water. “I’m sure you must have some.”
“I didn’t exactly have an idyllic upbringing.”
“Sorry, right, you mentioned that…”
“Yeah, my parents split up when I was pretty young, and I kinda helped raise my little sister a bit—then took off as soon as she was safely in college.” They’ve reached the other side of the pool, and there’s a rock ledge to stand on. He stays in the water but leans against the rocks, and she doesthe same. “Now she’s just as much of a wanderer as I am, so I honestly can’t remember when the last time we spent Christmas together was, although we do try to link up at least a few times a year.”
“And your mom?”
“Gone.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He shakes his head. “Yeah. She was a single mother, and she worked hard. And then she got sick. Ischemia, stress-related.” He sighs. “I always wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t had to work that hard, you know?”
“Oh, Oliver.” His sea green eyes contain a pain she suddenly wishes she could take away.
“It was tough. But I’m okay. I guess after that, and after getting Cecelia off to college, I just didn’t want to be tied to any one place anymore. And maybe I was trying to outrun my grief.”
“Did it work?”
He laughs, but it’s still a sad laugh. “Not really. Sort of? I think it was probably better than the alternative, which was rot in Indianapolis working at some dive bar for the rest of my life, possibly turning into the father I never knew. I don’t know for sure—but what I do know is I’ve done what I felt I had to do with my life. Sometimes, though…” He trails off. He doesn’t say anything more, and she feels waves of emotion as she processes all he has just told her. She hadassumed, when she first met him, that he was a roving photographer and bartender because he refused to grow up, that he was irresponsible, hell-bent on having fun to the exclusion of all else. But it turns out he just grew up way too fast, and the life choices he made had nothing to do with irresponsibility at all.
“I really admire you,” she says. “I think I made some assumptions when we first met and they didn’t turn out to be true.”
He turns toward her. “Oh, yeah? What sort of assumptions did you make?”
“I guess I just thought…this sounds shitty, but that you weren’t a serious person. I’m sorry.”
She pushes herself off the rocks, floats on her back, and looks up at the sky. He joins her in the water, and she can feel his presence, floating nearby.
