Page 89 of A Very Merry Enemy
We made love for the first time right here, under these same stars. Both of us nervous and excited and fumbling through it, promising to keep one another like a secret. She looked at me afterward like I’d given her something precious. We held one another through the night and then spent three months fooling around. Best summer of my damn life.
I remember the last time we were here, before she left for culinary school. We lay in this exact tent, and she cried because she was scared to leave. I believed distance couldn’t touch what we had. How wrong I was.
Holiday walks around the area, taking it all in. She stops at the firepit and runs her fingers along the stones we carefully arranged all those years ago.
“Wow,” she says.
“Yeah.” My throat is tight.
“We were both so nervous and excited and so in love.” She looks at me; her eyes are shining with unshed tears.
“Come on. Let’s get warm.”
Holiday sinks into one of the chairs, putting distance between us. Smart. Because right now, with all these memories pressing in, I’m not sure I can be trusted to keep my hands to myself.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asks.
I uncap the bourbon and take a long drink. The burn reminds me of all the lonely nights I spent thinking about her, wondering where she was and if she ever thought about me. About this place. About us.
I hand her the bottle. “We need to talk.”
“We’ve been talking all week.”
“No. We haven’t.” In the night, her eyes seem darker; it makes her look like she did when we were young and stupid and thought nothing could tear us apart. “We’ve been dancing around things. Being careful. I’m tired of it.”
She takes the bottle but doesn’t drink yet. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.” I lean forward, elbows on my knees.
“Lucas—”
“Want to play a game?”
She goes very still. “No.”
“Yes, you do,” I tell her, taking the bourbon and gulping it down. “Confessions. Remember the rules?”
She stares at me for a long moment, and I can see her considering it. Weighing the risk. Wondering what truths might come out in the next hour that we can’t take back.
“This is a very bad idea,” she finally says.
“Probably. But we’re doing it anyway. I’m tired of walking on eggshells around you. Tired of not saying what I really think. Tired of pretending everything is fine.”
She snatches the bottle and drinks. “You asked for this. The answers might not be what you want to hear.”
“Right back at you.”
It’s a game we invented when we were sixteen. Simple rules: steal alcohol from Mawmaw’s liquor cabinet, set a timer for one hour while getting drunk enough that the truth comes easy, and then take turns asking each other anything for another hour. The catch was that when the game was over, everything said during Confessions stayed in Confessions. Nothing changed. We went back to being who we were before we played.
It was our way of being honest when we were too scared to say what we meant.
The pulse in her neck increases, and I set an alarm on my phone for one hour. For the first fifteen minutes, we drink without speaking. I think about everything I want to know, all the questions that have been burning in my chest. We keep passing the bottle back and forth, the bourbon going down easier with each sip.
My throat and chest are burning, and I’m sure Holiday’s are, too.
I glance at her and notice how damn pretty she is, how she’s always been, without even trying. It makes me drink more.
Forty minutes in, I stand to add more wood to the fire and don’t walk in a straight line. The world tilts slightly.
