But it was too late to change things now, because I was in too deep with my own faulty system. I had lives and careers, hundreds of millions of dollars depending on the man I’d become based on a foundation of lies. On the burial ground of skeletons I wasn’t willing to unearth.
It was pure fantasy to think that it could change at this point.
Okay, I pumped the brakes just as I felt my chest twisting harder than I could handle anymore.
“I never got to ask you what that was,” I changed the subject abruptly.
It took a moment for me to even catch up with myself. To realize I’d dropped my eyes again to the notebook in Holland’s lap.
I’d first seen her with it that day I came back early from Boston. She’d been writing so furiously in it before I found her in the bathroom. Before I fucked her like I’d never fucked anyone in my life.
When I looked up, she had a hint of a smile on her lips, as if she too was remembering when I’d first seen the thing.
“It’s my gratitude journal,” she answered, giving me a much-needed laugh, because it already sounded exactly like something she’d be into. She smirked at me and just like that, the air shifted back to something breathable. “Glad you find it so funny.”
“I’m not laughing at you, I just think you’re really fucking cute,” I said honestly. “Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“Just what it sounds like,” she said lightly, running her hand over the page. “You just write down all the things you’re grateful for every day. Doesn’t matter how big or small. It could be that I’m grateful for finding a miracle roommate in Mia or just that I caught the L right as the doors were closing. It just keeps things in perspective,” she shrugged. “Forces you to look at all the good in your life.”
“And I take it this is the secret ritual you do during your me time.?
?
“I write what I’m grateful for every day. All the firsts. First time on the subway. First time giving directions. First time trying champagne. And then on my me days, I write myself a little summary. Just to reflect on the week. Remind myself what strides I’ve made,” she explained. When she looked up at me, she laughed. “Yeah, I know. It sounds like some mystical bullshit, but you asked me before how I got to a place where I wasn’t always mad at everything, and this was it.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Really.”
“Mm-hm. You should try it. You wouldn’t think it, but it’s always the simplest things that make the biggest difference,” she said, flipping back through the pages. “You’re in a lot of it,” she said with a laugh. Then she paused. “In a lot of the old ones too.”
I cracked a smile, my chest actually warming at the thought of teenage Holland writing about me in her room.
There was another beat or two of quiet before she looked up at me again.
“Are you going to come to bed at all?” she asked, making me immediately wish that I could.
“I was actually about to go in the living room for a bit to make some calls.”
She hit me with a look of disbelief. “It’s almost 2AM.”
“Yeah. Which means it’s almost 11PM on the West Coast and my clients just got home from their games,” I said, eyeing the distorted palm trees on her shirt as she crossed her arms. “Plus, I told myself I wasn’t going to touch you tonight and you’re making it very hard on me right now.”
She smirked and said “fine,” though she swung her legs right off the bed and insisted on coming out to the living room to make sure I had all the pillows and comfort I needed to work. I asked her what time she had to wake up in the morning, silenced my own alarm and then settled in on her couch as she headed back to her room.
But just before she disappeared into the small hallway, she turned and said, “Hey.”
I looked up at her. “Yeah?”
Hanging in the frame of the hall, she looked at me for a couple seconds.
“I just wanted to say that growing up, you were the best person I knew,” she said unabashedly. “That’s all.”
And then she went back to her room, leaving me alone on the couch, staring for another five, ten seconds at where she’d just been.
Wondering how she always managed to do this to me.
Anytime I said something, she made me question it. Every time I said I wouldn’t do something, she proved me wrong.
At my core, I knew the person I was. A person who lived to repent. That had been my truth since I’d started over here five years ago.