Page 72 of The Holiday Honeymoon Switch
Ivy finds herself glancing at her phone, which she left beside her on the couch, but the screen is blank and it has been totally silent since she arrived. Nothing from Oliver.
“I’m going to get out of your hair,” Aiden is saying.
“Good, because we need to talk about you,” Ivy says with a laugh, trying hard to keep her happiness for her friend at the top of her emotions.
“That’s my Ivy, honest to a fault,” Holly says from across the room, where she’s boiling the kettle to make them a pot of coffee. At this, Ivy feels a pang. There’s so much she hasn’t told her best friend. But as soon as Aiden is gone, she promises herself, she’s going to tell her everything.
Ivy looks away as Holly and Aiden share a long, lingering kiss at the door. It closes behind him, and Holly lets out a happy sigh. “He’s so great,” she says, flopping down onto the couch. Ivy’s phone falls to the floor, and she picks it up and sets it on the coffee table, then sits down beside her friend, cross-legged on the end of the couch, holding a steaming mug of coffee. “Tell me everything,” she says. “I think this coffee will buy me about one hour before I fall asleep with my eyes open, sogo.”
She listens as Holly explains about Christmas with Aiden’sfamily, and his sister finding out about her canceled wedding, their misunderstanding—and then a heroic scene with a missing cat. “When I came out of the woods with Mrs. Claws, Aiden was calling out my name,” Holly says, her expression rapt as she continues the story, eventually getting to the part where she realized she couldn’t live without Aiden.
“Am I being illogical? Should I be taking my time?”
“I think you’re being amazing, Holly. What does logic have to do with any of this? You’re literally levitating!”
“Dancing like a dervish.”
“Screwing like a horny titmouse.”
Holly laughs and brings the French press coffee carafe over to refill Ivy’s cup. “Okay, a little more coffee and you tell me about your trip. Did you spend the week making amazing art?”
“Yes,” Ivy says, taking a sip of coffee. “And…”
“And?”
Ivy puts her coffee down and looks her best friend in the eye—and feels her own eyes growing wet with tears. She blinks them away, but it’s no use. One leaks out the corner of her eye and falls down her cheek.
“Ivy, what happened?”
Ivy puts her face in her hands. She needs to tell Holly everything, but where to begin? And what will it do to that happiness to tell her about Matt and Abby?
“Ivy, come on. Why are you crying? What happened? I’m your best friend. Tell me.”
So Ivy begins. “I didn’t stay at the hotel,” she says. “I met someone.” She starts to tell her about Oliver, but knows she is still leaving out important details, leaving Matt totally out of it. She just can’t do it. Not yet. She needs to talk about Oliver first. “And I’m so scared, Hol. I’ve never felt this way. I’ve never made myself so vulnerable with a man. Only you. And now that he’s five thousand miles away, I realize how completely unrealistic the whole thing is. But it still hurts so damn bad. And he hasn’t called or texted, probably because I was awful to him.” The tears start falling again, and Holly looks agonized.
“I had no idea,” she says. “I’m so sorry I called you. I’m so sorry I made you come here. I messed up everything for you.”
“No! Please don’t feel bad. You needed me in that moment, and of course you’re supposed to call me when you need me! Always. I’d do the same with you. I’m glad you two made up. I’m happy for you. I’m just…” She sniffles. “A little sad for myself, I guess.”
“Why don’t you call him?”
Ivy checks her phone again. No missed calls, no texts. “I wrote him a letter,” she says. “And I left him a drawing. I know I left—but I also left the ball in his court. I can’t call him. Not yet.”
“He’sgoingto call you, Ivy. I know it. There’s no way youfell for someone this hard who didn’t fall for you twenty times harder in return.”
“I guess I could text Larry and see if he’s okay, but I don’t really want to do that. She’s his friend, not mine.”
“She? Larry isn’t a guy?”
“No, Larry is a beautiful woman, actually. His bestie—and she’s engaged to a woman named Shira.”
Holly considers this. “Wow, it’s like you’ve led this whole existence I know nothing about. Can I see photos? Of Oliver, of Larry? Of some of the places you went to?”
“Of course.” Ivy unlocks her phone and scrolls through the photos with Holly at her side, feeling sharp pangs of nostalgia as she looks at images of the tree by the bar where she first met Oliver, the view from the villa right after he showed her around, the tree-lighting ceremony in Hanalei, Larry’s bar, their camping trip, the waterfall, and, finally, the Christmas Eve beach lu‘au. “Aw, look at you two, slow dancing,” Holly sighs, taking Ivy’s phone and peering closer. “That’s adorable.”
“Yeah. Larry took that one.”
“The way he’s looking at you,” Holly says, zooming in on the photo. “He’s smitten, Ivy. He’s going to call. He’s probably just trying to figure out what to say.” But then, abruptly, her expression changes. She zooms in on another segment of the photo—just as Ivy realizes with a plummeting heart what she has seen in the background.
