HE HAS HIS hands down there afterward, where Holly has shaved her hair into an upside-down triangle. She shaved it that way because she is a math geek and she likes things to be neat and tidy and have forty-five-degree angles. He forms a “V” with the index and middle fingers on his right hand and tops it with the index finger of his left hand, then frames her triangle and peers through.
“Your bush is sexy,” he says. Your bush.
LATER: “So that girl you work with seems really cool.”
“You only met her for a minute. How could you tell?” She snaps at him like a trap around an animal’s foot. She has just been lying there waiting for this.
“She just did. I’m sorry. You’re the one who’s always talking about her.”
“She’s cool, yes.” Miserably.
SHE IS LEARNING that people get sick of each other very quickly.
THE NEXT DAY Christian and Shelly hang out at Taco Bell. Holly knows they hang out at Taco Bell because she hears about it from Shelly a week later, as they start their shift together, the two of them straightening their pharmacy smocks, cuffing the sleeves, buttoning the oversized buttons. Shelly’s gray eyes are lit up with the exuberance that comes with a new friendship as she tells Holly the details: how he had to rush a new prescription for his father who was so sick, she didn’t realize how sick he was—did you, Holly?—how it was right around her break, so they figured it might be cool to hang out, get to know each other, her boyfriend and her best friend from work; and how all they did was talk about her the whole time, how smart she is, how great it is that you’re going to be a doctor, how much we’ll both miss you when you go away to college in the fall.
Isn’t that awesome? That your boyfriend and your best friend from work are friends now? And you know, neither one of us knows a lot of people, both of us are so new in town. So like, how great is it that we each have a new friend?
It was true, Shelly didn’t have a lot of friends, and neither did Christian. With their troubled pasts and their bad reputations and their unremarkable academic records. How could she argue with that?
HE HAS KNOWN about it for days, of course, and never mentioned it.
ON THEIR NEXT shift together, Shelly shows up late, with two round red hickeys suctioned on her neck. She passes Holly, fast, and heads straight to the back bathroom, but the bruises are unmistakable. She’s probably putting concealer on them, thinks Holly. She had done so herself just two weeks before.
Holly counts out fourteen penicillin tablets for Mrs. Packer, who is leaning against the counter near the echinacea display.
She is gabby, Mrs. Packer. Her daughter Mindy got sick over the weekend. She tells this to the store at large.
“It started with a little cough Saturday morning,” says Mrs. Packer, “and by Sunday afternoon she could barely speak. She’s going to miss auditions for the school play.” Mrs. Packer shakes her head grimly, as if Mindy were about to lose a limb.
Shelly ducks through the storeroom door and slides past Holly toward her post in front of the lottery machine.
“They’re doing Oklahoma! this year. Mindy wanted to play Ado Annie,” Mrs. Packer says.
“The slut,” says Holly.
Mrs. Packer says, “What?” It only works for Mrs. Packer if she’s the only one talking.
“Ado Annie,” says Holly. “She’s the slut, right?”
“Yes, I suppose she is, although that’s not exactly the word I would use.”
“That’s the word I would use,” says Holly.
SO THIS ONE I don’t get to keep, she thinks.
LATER WHEN THEY go to Taco Bell on break, Shelly orders a bean burrito instead of her usual steak taco. “I’m trying vegetarianism now,” announces Shelly when the counter guy tries to ring up her regular order.
Holly doesn’t question it. Holly doesn’t even want to know. “Really?” she says. Holly has no idea what it sounds like when it comes out of her mouth; she only knows the conversation ends immediately.
LOOK, WHAT were you going to do with him anyway? Marry him?