Just a Girl - Becky Monson Page 0,22
a felon, would the two of them have happened? I want to point this out, but I’m still not sure it would be a good move on my part. The wound is clearly still too fresh. I’ll wait a few more weeks before bringing it up.
“Oh, wait—I might have an idea for you,” Holly says, her face thoughtful.
“You do?”
“I saw it a long time ago, back when we lived in Charlotte. They did this feature with one of the interns at the station—it was like a dating thing. ‘Date Our Intern,’ they called it. It was super cute, and I remember making my dad record the news so I could see what happened.”
“Date our intern . . .” I roll the words over my tongue, my brain starting to take off at the possibilities. “That could work, and we have this super cute intern that just started a couple of weeks ago. I can’t remember his name. Marco? It was something like that. I wonder if he’s single?” I say, realizing I’m talking to myself as I look over and see Logan and Holly having a conversation.
“I’m going to go do weights,” I hear Logan say to Holly as he slows his treadmill down and slides to the back of it, jumping off.
“Okay,” Holly says with a smile directed at Logan. The corner of his mouth hitches up, and I swear little heart bubbles float out of his head. He touches her on the arm and then saunters off to the weight section.
There was a lot said in that simple touch of his. Normally I’d watch this scene with eyes of longing, wishing I had what they have. But with a certain handsome Brit in my life, it only makes me hope for possibilities. Maybe one day Henry will be on the treadmill next to me touching me that same way . . . giving me a look of love like that.
Holly’s right. I do get ahead of myself. I mean, he hasn’t even officially gotten a job offer. For all I know, he could be moving back to Miami tomorrow. My stomach drops at the thought.
“That man is smitten,” I say to Holly after Logan is definitely out of earshot.
She looks over her shoulder, toward the direction Logan went, and then back at me. “Yeah.”
“And you?”
“I . . . don’t know,” Holly says as she lowers her treadmill and then begins to pick up the pace to a jog. I do the same.
“You don’t know?” I look over at her to see her brow furrowed in concentration.
“It’s all happening sort of fast, you know?” she says, her voice getting a little breathy as her legs move faster.
“And . . . that scares you?”
“It doesn’t scare me . . . It just . . .” She looks away.
“Feels too soon to have the feelings you’re feeling?” I ask, filling in what I’m pretty sure she wants to say. I want to point out that this means she’s scared, but I decide to let it go.
She looks over at me, the side of her lip hitched up. Bingo.
“Holly,” I say, my voice breathy as my heart starts pumping blood through my body at a faster rate. “Stop being all Holly-like and trying to control things.”
“I’m not trying to control things.”
“Yes you are; you’re putting your own time constraints on feelings. You’re Hollying your relationship. Giving it a timeline. That’s not how that should work.”
I look over at her giving me a side-eyed glare. “I don’t like it when you’re right,” she says.
“I promise to not do it often.”
“Thank you.”
~*~
“Hey, Dad,” I say as I hear someone come into the garage. I have my back to the door, but I don’t have to look. My mom doesn’t do quiet entrances, and my sister Tessa has been busy with an internship at a bank this summer. So, by my super-sleuth deduction skills, I know it’s him without having to even look.
“Quinn,” my dad says, his soft voice barely audible from the doorway.
He’s a quiet man, my dad. But also a kind one. He’s also funny, but mostly in that reserved, calm way of his. Tessa and I didn’t get that gene from him. We both tend to be loud oversharers like our mom.
I was always so envious of Holly’s dad, growing up. James Murphy is outgoing and more the life-of-the-party type dad. My dad was more of the run-off-to-his-office (or his garage) type when my friends came over. They never really got to