The fire crackled on the hearth and I shifted the blankets a little lower on my shoulders. I wasn’t trying to be risqué or seductive or anything. It was just pretty toasty in here now.
But if Holden happened to like my shoulders, and they caused him to change his stance on flavored-condom usage—well, I couldn’t control that, now could I?
“What’s your favorite childhood memory,” I asked after a minute.
Holden frowned. “That’s not fair. You can’t answer that question yourself.”
“That’s why I want to know your answer. Give me some memories I can pretend are mine.”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, come on. Just pick one at random. Hell, make one up. It’s not like I’ll know the difference.”
“I think one pathological liar in the house is enough,” Holden said with a smile. “Anyway, picking’s not the issue. I just don’t really connect with my childhood, I guess.”
“Why? Did something traumatic happen and you repressed all your memories? Oh my God, am I not the only amnesiac here?”
“You’re ridiculous.” He flicked a fruit snack at me, then twisted his lips. “No, my childhood isn’t the thing I’m trying to forget.”
Holden closed his eyes for a moment, and I was mesmerized, staring at the way his eyelashes fluttered. When he opened them again, he gave me a small smile.
“I told you I used to come camping here with my grandfather, right? Well, that was in the summer. In the winters, when my mom and I would visit, we used to go to Birch Bay’s winter festival. They did it for the twelve nights leading up to Christmas, and they’d have caroling, and hot cocoa, and ice sculptures, and they’d light a different tree each night. It was one of my favorite things as a kid. It seemed so magical.”
“You went with your grandparents?”
“Yeah. Even after my mom and I moved to the west coast, we’d come back for Christmas. Up until my grandfather died. But then I couldn’t really get time off, once I—”
He cut himself off again.
“Do you miss them?” I asked. “Your grandparents?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” Holden shrugged. “Or maybe I just miss the person I used to be, back then.”
He looked so sad that I wanted to hug him, to wrap him up in my blankets and tell him it would be okay—and not just because wrapping him up with me would mean pressing my naked body against his. Or, well, not entirely because of that.
“Anyway,” Holden continued. “I haven’t gone in years. They probably don’t even do it anymore.
“Wait, you live in Birch Bay now and you haven’t gone?”
“What part of recluse don’t you understand?” He smiled wryly.
“I don’t know, what part of hot cocoa and ice sculptures don’t you understand? How can you pass that up?”
“Somehow I’m surviving.” Holden rolled his eyes. “Okay, you go. What’s your favorite fake childhood memory?”
“Swimming with dolphins in Tahiti,” I said without thinking, and then stopped, my mouth hanging open.
“What?” Holden asked.
“Nothing. I just—”
For a second there, I could have sworn I actually did remember that. Maybe not Tahiti specifically, but warm blue water and a hot summer sun beating down on my shoulders, and the smooth gray back of a dolphin under my hand and—
Just like that, it was gone. Every time I tried to focus on one of those wisps of memory, they vanished like mist burning off under the sun.
“Do they even have dolphins in Tahiti?” Holden asked.
“They do in my fake memory,” I retorted, forcing a smile. This was a nice conversation with Holden. The nicest one yet. I wasn’t ruining it with memory issues and health problems and him bringing up me going to the hospital again. “They loved me and did tricks with me and let me ride them and invited me to become King of the Dolphins.”
“Pretty impressive.”
“What can I say? Animals love me.”
“Honestly, that part might be true,” Holden said with a laugh. “Frog likes you, anyway.”
“Frog hisses at me half the time he sees me.”
“Then that’s half as much as he hisses at me.” Holden shook his head. “I honestly don’t know why I told Daisy he could stay here, but now he thinks he’s in charge of the house, and he lets us live in it.”
“I wonder how he’d do with dolphins.”
“Boss them around, I’m sure.”
It was weird, how easy it was to talk to Holden when he forgot to be standoffish. Or when I forgot to make an ass out of myself. It made me feel