My ears burned. “I told you it was cheesy.”
“It’s not. It’s just…different. My ideal life is lightyears from yours.”
“Oh yeah? Well, it’s your turn now. What’s the title to your life story?”
“Misery,” Holden said. “It. The Dead Zone. Desperation… Goddamn that Stephen King hogged the best ones.”
“What a bastard,” I said with a grin.
Holden peeked open one eye and heaved a sigh. “If I’m going to tell this dark and depressing tragedy, I’m going to need more alcohol. You probably should too.”
“I’m good.”
“You sure? My story is R-rated. Borderline NC-17.”
“And I suppose mine was PG?”
“I’ll give you PG-13.”
I laughed. “Fuck off.”
“Have you ever given a blowjob to a married psychiatrist in a sanitarium?”
I coughed. “Um…no.”
“See? NC-17.”
“I’ll take another beer.”
Holden mixed another martini and then filled a silver flask from his coat pocket with more vodka.
“For backup,” he said.
I wrinkled my brow, watching him pocket the flask. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen in February. But I’m an over-achiever in the booze department. Ahead of my class. Vodka Valedictorian…”
“I’m eighteen in February too,” I said. “The fifth. You?”
“The twenty-ninth.”
“No shit? Leap year.”
Holden nodded. “Three years out of four, my birthday doesn’t exist.” He gave me a pointed look. “Make of that what you will.”
“I think it’s kind of cool.”
“I think it’s the universe trying to remedy a cosmic mistake.” His voice lowered. “God knows my parents would agree.”
I started to ask what he meant by that, but he’d been poking at the state-of-the-art sound system next to the minibar. Cage the Elephant’s “Night Running” filled the space, and instead of heading back out to the patio, Holden beckoned me into the dark of the house.
“What…” I cleared my throat. “What are you doing?”
“It’s time to go exploring.”
“At least turn a light on.”
“No lights,” he said with a wicked grin. “Everything’s more fun in the dark.”
We made our way slowly past chairs and couches with only moonlight from the huge windows to guide us.
I bumped an end table and Holden shot me a look over his shoulder.
“Try not to tackle anything out of habit.”
I smirked. “I’m a quarterback. I throw things.”
We passed through a formal living room and dining room for entertaining and into a game room with a pool table. A half dozen balls of an abandoned game were still on the green felt.
“Besides,” I said, “if I chuck a vase out the window, won’t you just replace it like you did the Blaylock’s dining room table?”
Holden drained his martini and set the empty glass on a bookshelf. “Does that offend your noble sensibilities?”
“No. I just don’t like to throw money around.”
“I do.” He picked up a cue stick and bent over the table to line up a shot. The song coming in from hidden speakers sang of secrets and demons.
“Why?” I asked. “Because you have so much of it?”
“That, and because it’s my parents’ money until I graduate. When it’s mine, I’ll take better care of it.”
“Theirs is disposable because…?”
“Because fuck them.”
With smooth power, he drove the stick into the white cue ball. It struck with a clack that shattered the relative quiet. Balls ricocheted around the table, two dropping into pockets.
“They care more about money than they do about my happiness,” Holden said, his perfect face fierce and cold. “I spend it as fast as I can, but there’s always more.”
He sank another ball with precision and offered me the pool cue. I waved it off.
“Not a fan of the game?” he asked.
“I don’t want to leave fingerprints.”
He chuckled and I was glad to see some of the anger drain out of him as we left the game room.
“When you say there’s always more, you mean like…millions?” I asked, feeling slightly tacky, but the beer had loosened my curiosity.
“Billions.” Holden peeked into a guest bathroom and a linen closet before starting up the stairs. “The Parish family is the last of the old money dynasties, like Vanderbilt or Rockefeller. You ever seen Titanic?”
“Sure.”
“My parents are the first-class assholes sitting in lifeboats while the people from steerage freeze to death in the icy water.” Holden’s eyes looked distant for a moment, and then he gave his head a shake and kept walking. “They were born old. I’m positive they fucked only once to create an heir for their legacy—me. Which is ridiculous. Even if I hadn’t failed spectacularly, there is no legacy. They’re not building or making anything worthwhile. They do nothing but sit around being rich.”
“Wait, what do you mean, you failed?”
Holden stopped at the top of the stairs. “They thought being straight was my default setting too.”
A moment of silent commiseration passed between us in the dark. Understanding that heated quickly. For a crazy, heart-pounding second, I had a vision of him grabbing me—or maybe I’d grab him—and we’d crush our mouths together…
I blinked and gave myself a shake. Jesus…
Holden’s green eyes glittered in the dark as if they held the same thoughts, and then he tore his gaze away and continued down the hallway.
I followed him into a bedroom that belonged to a little boy, with a racecar-shaped bed, video game console, and flat screen TV. Holden toyed with a model airplane from the kid’s dresser as if it were a relic from a world he didn’t understand.
“It was clear early on that I wasn’t going to quietly settle down and marry a nice girl to carry on the family line. I was a Tasmanian devil born in a glass factory. They tried to do everything to ‘cure’ me, sending me to psychiatrists, reform school… Threats to disown me, which I
