We're Stuck Halfway

2012. Glendale, Arizona.

Holly sighed as her shoelace got caught in between her car and the car door. She tried to pry the door open only to have her car cry out in beeps from the theft alarm. She groaned loudly this time; she was seriously done with all the bad shit that had been pouring over her since the start of the day. The fact that it was only the afternoon made it even worse.

After disconnecting herself from her car, she sprinted up to the cart rack because the number of available carts was dwindling in seconds. It was Sunday afternoon, and she knew from childhood experience that it was almost every mom’s favorite grocery shopping time.

She arrived just in time to snag the last cart, and as she rolled it over the rocky parking lot ground, she realized why some people would rather carry around a basket than use it. It squeaked so loudly.

Adding to the squeaking was its annoying out of control turning in wheels that led her to slow down her pace. The sun was at its peak already, and she was barely to the entrance.

“I hate you,” she seethed at it, wiping the beads of sweat forming on the back of her neck. Her luck was seriously backfiring on her, and she almost understood why.

The day before, Garrett Nickelsen managed to shock her yet again. He appeared out of the blue on her porch with the notebook he gave her in his hands – and she couldn’t believe the irony because almost everything written inside of it was about him. She was ashamed and pissed and relieved all at the same time. She was pretty sure that her luck decided to wane on her when she allowed him to initiate some kind of restart in their relationship. Her luck must’ve been giving her a lesson for her stupidity.

Truthfully, the closure felt good, but he still made her heart speed up whenever he smiled. She liked making him feel bad, but she liked making him feel better even more. She didn’t want it to be that way. She wanted impartial thoughts about him because that was how a real restart felt like. What she was feeling then was bias to their previous relationship. It was bias in a way she didn’t understand. She shouldn’t have wanted to restart with him. But she kind of did.

Holly almost ran into a mother scolding her whining child, swerving in such a way that made her hit a rack of bread. “Shit,” she muttered, quickly fixing it up again as she struggled to open her phone to her checklist with another hand. It was definitely not her day.

An old lady passing by suddenly hit her arm with a large handbag, causing her iPhone to fall face down into the cart. “Shit,” she reiterated, picking it back up. It was barely damaged, and that was probably the luckiest thing that had happened to her that day. The woman, though, seemed to not realize what she had done. She glared at Holly and told her to watch where she was going. “Wow,” was all she said in reply, though quietly, “The nerve of some women in their menopausal stage.”

She was struggling to keep her cool, for she wasn’t even supposed to be in Arizona that day. She had plans for Nevada, to visit her parents in their vacation home to get away from everything happening. Her plans were ruined when she woke up to a morning text she shouldn’t have received.

poophead #1
hey holls can’t make it home tonite!! bunking with atl ;) wish me luck ily <3

It greatly pissed Holly off, but she focused on her positive thoughts, reminding herself that she made Charlie live in their place for months on end without her. Charlie also did all she could to try to retrieve her notebook back. It was the least she could do.

She couldn’t admit to herself that Charlie would’ve gone back home if she mentioned a thing about Garrett’s sudden visitation. What a bummer.

After cursing the best bestfriend in the entire world, though, she went downstairs to the kitchen to prepare breakfast only to realize that they barely had any food left in the fridge. Eggs, half a carton of milk, and bad lettuce didn’t sound like a breakfast to her. So she went to fix up for a trip to the grocery only to find out that they were short on shampoo as well. Afterwards, she drove to the closest coffee shop to order food, making it there in time to order the only piece of edible food they had left: an overpriced stale bagel for five bucks.

She rolled her cart towards the dairy section, trying her best despite the wheels that were barely budging even under linoleum.

“Hey!” Holly looked up from her checklist just in time to have her butt smashed from the back by a cart. She was about to scream at whoever hit her, but as she turned around she realized that there were two new things to add to the endless list of bad things happening to her on the fourth Sunday of September.

Garrett grinned sheepishly. “You’re having troubles with your cart?”
 


It made Garrett wonder what the hands of fate wanted from him, seeing how he managed to bump into the ex-girlfriend he’d been avoiding for years only a day after they reconciled.

It was commendable how they worked, though. He’d been watching Holly ever since he saw her enter the grocery. He didn’t mean to seem like such a creep, but he couldn’t help but observe her from a safe distance. He tried not to laugh out loud as she knocked down a stack of bread and as her phone literally just flew out of her hands. He didn’t want to make her shitty day even shittier by letting her know that he’d witnessed every embarrassing thing happening to her, but he knew that he had to do something about her out-of-it shopping cart, so he approached her.

“Do you want to use my cart?” he repeated, acting as if he didn’t accidentally hit her butt at that moment. She was staring at him bluntly, like she wanted to say two million different things in his face. It was starting to worry him. “Holly?”

She put her face in her hands. “Are you stalking me?” She sounded indignant, and he had no idea why she was getting even harder to read by the second.

Last night, she suddenly snapped at him for complimenting her. Right then, she suddenly snapped at him for trying to help her. It almost made him want to give up on trying to make conversation with her as a whole, but he reconsidered the odds of them going to the same supermarket, and he let go of the accusation. It made sense. “Let’s not get our heads too big. Fry’s is the only supermarket within a five-mile radius,” he stated. “Do you want the cart or not?”

He watched Holly peek at him from behind her hands. She sighed, letting her hands fall to the edge of her defective cart. “I’d really like to use that cart.”

He rolled it over to hers, helping her transfer the tiny amount of things she managed to take from the racks. It wasn’t much progress for the ten minutes she’d been shopping, but Garrett kept his mouth shut. It didn’t seem like the best of her days.

She paused as he separated her bread from his chips. “But I haven’t been out of Gilbert for that long. I happen to know for a fact that Fry’s isn’t the only place within that kind of radius.” She scrunched up her eyebrows. “In fact, Fry’s is much, much farther from your place.”

“Oh.” Garrett looked up at her, blue eyes alarmed. It seemed weird that she didn’t know about his band’s Phoenix flat. It kind of slipped his mind that they hadn’t caught up to each other for more than two years. “It’s the closest to our flat here in Phoenix.” He finished with a final nudge to his cheese dip that kept sliding over to Holly’s butter.

“Our?” Holly was turned away from him, but he could hear the curiosity in her voice. He reached for the yogurt cup she was trying to reach, handing it to her. “Thanks.”

He took a pudding cup in hand, putting it into the cart. Pat liked them. “The band… we, uh, rent it together. It’s near the office, and you know how I always hated driving too long to get downtown. Ken, too. Yeah.” He scratched the back of his neck as he finished talking. It was strange to mention it out loud, more so to her. It was going to take some getting used to catching up with her on just about everything.

It wasn’t bad what they were trying to do, the befriend each other again thing, but it was painfully awkward. Garrett thought he was awkward as himself enough.

But Holly was just the type of girl he couldn’t have mad at him forever. No matter how much Garrett forced himself to think that he didn’t want to be with her, he couldn’t bring himself to think it completely. He needed her back in his life. If a bunch of awkward conversations was what it took to get her back, he’d endure them all.

She nodded in response, holding up two different cups of yogurt. “You didn’t have to tell me that, though.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, trying to make sense of what she wanted to imply. Did it mean that she didn’t want to know? Or did it mean that he didn’t need to tell her things that he was uncomfortable mentioning? He thought out his next line carefully. “Well, I wanted to tell you, anyway.”

She paused from reading the nutrition facts to smile at him, both corners turned up. “I know you’re itching to go get something in the isles. Go, I’ll still be here examining yogurt when you come back.”

Yes, Garrett mused, she was very unpredictable. He almost didn’t want to believe that she’d keep to her word, so he was surprised to see her on that same spot on the ground when he got back with two six-packs of soda, reading the two yogurts’ nutrition facts like they were the most fascinating things on earth.

“If you were to think like a girl who wanted to be healthy, would you rather choose the less fattening yogurt with less calcium, or the more fattening one with more calcium?” she asked as he approached. “Also, the lesser one is fifty cents more expensive than the more-”

“And since you buy yogurt by sevens, that makes it three dollars and fifty cents more expensive than the more?” he finished for her. He actually surprised himself for remembering that mannerism of hers. Her grin expressed that he was right, and he shrugged. “I’d get the lesser. The three-fifty would be worth it-”

“And also because you’d pick the more in your state of being as a guy who’s not healthy, the exact opposite of me.” It was his turn to chuckle, then. They didn’t know much about their recent lives, but everything else from before, they remembered. It felt great.

She then proceeded to take the lesser cups of yogurt into her arms, only to have one fall out and spill its contents onto the floor next to her feet. “Fuck,” was all she said as she looked up at Garrett. “Today really hasn’t been my day,” she explained.

Instead of telling her that he knew, Garrett gestured towards her shoes. “I can see that with your mismatched socks.”

“Oh, brother.”

 

Garrett watched in the sidelines as Holly continued to apologize to the manager of Fry’s.

After the yogurt incident, she had asked Garrett to take things from the racks for her, but somehow she ended up messing things in some other way. Right then, she was saying sorry for tripping on the cords of the lights display. He had a feeling that she was one step away from being banned from the supermarket. If her day was already as bad as it was at two o’clock in the afternoon, what more during the night?

Currently, he was trying to read her body posture. Messy hair always meant that she had a rough morning, and her mismatched socks gave that away, as well. She had her hands on her hips, which wasn’t a good sign for the person she was communicating with, and her partly squinted eyes told him that she was very close to blowing up.

He liked that he could still read her, even just a little bit, after so many months of being apart from each other. Before the whole break-up scenario, they were capable of reading each other like open books with a huge font size. He’d know what was on her mind just by looking at her face, and she’d have a clue on what his next move would be just by studying his posture.

How they let that connection of theirs slip away so easily was saddening. He almost punched himself in the face as he remembered it was he himself who threw it all away singlehandedly.

“I am so mad,” she grumbled, keeping her eyes on the ground as she approached Garrett. She looked at him and groaned. “I need to go home.”

“Hey, chin up,” he nudged her as they walked side by side through the glorious chocolate section. “Some people out there do not have chocolate in their lives.” He took three packs of six Hershey’s bars and put them in the cart they shared. “They’re on me.”

She laughed, and it made Garrett turn towards her. She had her hands spread. “Wow, déjà vu, much.” She met his eyes. “You did this exact same thing during finals week in sophomore year.”

He cocked his head, remembering how stressed she was back then. She was worried for her grades, and he was worried for her. It was common knowledge that chocolate was good for those types of situations, so he pulled her out of the confines of her bedroom and bought a shit-load of Hershey’s bars. He did buy the exact same thing. He also told her that they were on him. Except for one thing. “I also treated you to the Gilbert Diner afterwards, so I think we need to add that to the list, as well.”

“There’s a diner a few blocks away…” she told him, grinning. He pretended not to hear the grumble of her stomach just then. He almost reprimanded her and asked if she ate anything for breakfast at all, but he stopped himself. It was probably too soon for that.

He tapped his thumbs on the cart’s hand railing. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get this shit checked out and paid for.”

 

Four years ago, if someone told Holly that Garrett would break her heart before 2012, she would have laughed in their face and told them it was impossible. Two years ago, if someone told Holly that Garrett would be moving her groceries over to the cashier’s conveyor belt for her in 2012, she would have punched them in the face and told them to fuck off.

What was happening should’ve been impossible.

She wasn’t supposed to be sitting on the metal railing that separated their line from the others as he did all the work because she was too scared to touch the items. She wasn’t supposed to watch him closely and wonder if she’d feel the same in his arms.

She wasn’t supposed to notice how the holes in his jeans looked bigger than ever. She wasn’t supposed to care that his hair was standing on end as if he hadn’t showered in weeks. She wasn’t supposed to realize that he had a new feather tattoo and that his shoes were wrecked and that despite being so messy he still managed to smell the same.

No.

She wasn’t supposed to think those things because there was someone else for her, and that someone else wasn’t the guy who was stacking up her yogurt and shamelessly casting her tampons off to the side of the cart with the other inedible items.

The one for her was on the other side of the world in China, reading lines off a script and pulling stunts or probably shooting a scene with his new leading lady… where they’d kiss and fall on a bed or where she’d rip his shirt off and stroke his chest as if they were actually in love and-

Holly lost her balance on the railing and tipped back, hitting the magazine rack behind her. It would’ve fallen if she didn’t catch it in time, and she looked back to find Garrett raising his eyebrows at her, amusement written across his features. “Nice save,” he laughed before returning his focus to the cart.

She glumly leaned on the railing instead, clearing her head of the deadly thoughts. She hated thinking about those scenes. Of course there was never actually any real romance in them, and Jesse always told her that the other girls never tasted like strawberries, but they still looked so real and intimate that it still made her feel insanely jealous with a passion. Those girls were kissing her man.

Before she could get away with thinking nasty thoughts about the actresses, she reminded herself that they were just doing their job. Anyway, if any of them actually fancied Jesse, he wouldn’t care.

He had eyes for only her.

It took months and months and months for Holly to comprehend that. The first five months of keeping her mouth shut about her jealousy were the most horrendous because she didn’t want to seem like the clingy bitchy type of girlfriend that always had actors running. But as soon as Jesse sat her down to talk about it, she knew he was different.

Holly never mentioned groupies to Garrett, and because of that he never thought of sitting her down to talk about her feelings on the matter. He never asked her if she was uncomfortable or if she felt threatened. But Jesse did, and he was empathic about everything.

It made her the happiest girl on earth.

It turned out that he was embarrassed about his profession. He didn’t enjoy kissing tons of girls, and he disliked even more that he had to pretend he enjoyed kissing them. He even demonstrated to her how kisses would feel like if she were just one of his acting colleagues. Afterwards, he proceeded to kiss her like he usually did.

And damn, did it feel different.

By then, she was over the jealousy and the all-consuming rage that used to threaten to escape from within, but her eyes found their way to a magazine spread that held the face she loved so dearly. The smile she had on her face was wiped off when she read the subtitle placed underneath him.

‘Are you worthy enough for Jesse Eckhart’s heart?’

Holly almost guffawed, rolling her eyes. People used to pine for Garrett when they were together. The number of girls increased drastically when The Maine became famous, sure, but the number of girls who fancied him could never top the number that wanted to bang her current boyfriend.

At the end of the day, all she needed to do was respect herself. Only a select few knew of her love life with Jesse, and that didn’t bother her at all. She didn’t date him to get attention, so it didn’t matter to her. But for the first time in forever Jesse would be bringing her out with him to the public, and she was blatantly scared of whatever would happen.

Her relationship with Garrett was so public and people bashed her for it. A lot. She didn’t need to pay attention to the hate written about her on the gossip blogs an enraged Charlie would come across. But sometimes she did, and it bruised her ego.

With Jesse, she knew it was going to be different. Opinions about her would be harsher and more offensive, but she learned the hard way through her relationship with Garrett that not even the biggest fans’ opinion mattered. The only person whose opinion mattered was Jesse. If he was happy because of her, she must be doing something right.

Those thoughts were enough to make her smile again, and she moved her eyes away from Jesse’s handsome face to glance at Garrett.

From then on a few horrifying seconds would pass as she glanced from Jesse’s face to Garrett’s back and vice versa.

Garrett didn’t know about her relationship with Jesse.

It dismayed her to realize that she wasn’t sure if she wanted Garrett to know. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, his opinion of her mattered a lot as well.

This friendship thing was going to get a whole lot more complicated.


 
The diner was comfortingly stereotypical. The place was vintage and old, classy but retro with a dance floor in the middle and a jukebox tucked in a corner as the source of music. It had popart nailed to the walls, round white tables scattered around and red vinyl booths lined to form two rows. It smelled of grease that was poorly covered up with the scent of roses, and Holly entered with her nose scrunched up as Garrett left her side without a word to make his way towards the jukebox.

Holly wove through the tables, almost tripping the single step up the platform to where the booths were located. She let out a breath of relief as a family stood up, leaving her a place to stay in with Garrett. She didn’t feel like sitting at a round table; it felt too much like a date already.

She set down the cardigan she took from her car on the seat before she sat on it, having her own share of vinyl sticking to her bare thighs. It wasn’t fun.

A worker cleared the table for her as she sent a quick message to Jesse, telling him about the magazine and how horribly inaccurate it was on stating which kinds of girls he was attracted to. When on earth did he ever mention that he liked blondes better than brunettes? As far as Holly knew, he only ever had two girlfriends before her; both were brunette like herself.

As soon as she was finished, a waitress approached the booth. Unfortunately, she arrived before Garrett could make his way to the table, leaving him to sit down by Holly’s side for the waitress was blocking his way to the other seat.

The whole scene was awkward, Garrett’s bicep pressing into Holly’s as he ordered his burger. She glared at the waitress who kept on giggling between notes and flirting with him even if the edge in his voice was evident. She felt his muscles tense, and she decided she had enough.

“I’ll have the French toast with a Long Island iced tea please,” she said, cutting off the waitress from another giggle. “Thanks for your time.”

When the waitress finally walked away, Garrett left her side to sit across from her, toying with his hair so that it stood up even more. “Thanks for that,” he gruffed. “For shooing her away. I don’t like that type of attention.” He avoided eye contact with her, and it hit her so suddenly that she sucked in a breath.

“What’s her name?” Holly questioned, laying her elbows down on the table. Her lips were curved into a smirk as she watched the red seep into his face, his words failing him as they stumbled upon each other. Only she knew how to make him blush, and she very much enjoyed it.

“What?” he finally asked in return. He laughed nervously, playing with the toothpick case to keep himself occupied.

Holly kicked his shin under the table, and he exclaimed in pain. He finally looked her in the eyes; she smiled smugly. “You know who I’m talking about. Don’t play dumb, you dumbass.”

She ignored the clench in her heart while Garrett coughed awkwardly, his eyes flickering down at the case in his hands. The thought of him actually moving on made her happy because it would’ve been unfair if he hadn’t, but some part of her heart was still used to the thought of him being hers and it wasn’t glad.

“Selina,” he finally answered. He hesitated before looking up at Holly, a question in his eyes and a ghost of a smile on his lips. “How ‘bout you? Who’s the lucky guy?”

Holly’s heart clenched again.

Selina.

Her name was beautiful, and she probably was too.

Holly swallowed slowly, comprehending what Garrett just asked her. Her heart was torn between thoughts of Jesse and the ache of missing Garrett, and without thinking, she answered with a question. “What makes you think I’d have a lucky guy?”

He gave her a half-hearted smile, doing the one shoulder shrug she was so accustomed to watching on his frame. It made her heart ache even more. “You’re tolerating me,” he explained. “I know you. You wouldn’t tolerate me if you weren’t already happy.” He cast the toothpick case to the side, flipping his phone in his hands instead.

“You claim to know me so well,” she replied sternly as she thought over his words. Amidst the ache in her heart, she was offended. “What if I don’t need a guy to make me happy?” She was so insulted that she didn’t bother with mumbling a thank you to the waitress who set down their drinks on the table.

He sighed. “Come on, Holly, I know you really well.” He gulped from his root beer. “In fact, I know you so well that I can say what I did to you can be healed only-” He stopped himself, biting his lower lip. “Look, I don’t want to bring it up, but you know I read the first poem in your notebook, right?”

She took her elbows off the table, hoping to conceal the tremor of her hands by keeping her chin up. She hid the notebook in her drawer as soon as Garrett left her porch, writing only on the silk notebook Jesse had given her recently. “And what do you mean to imply by that?”

“You’re answering my questions with questions,” Garrett pointed out. “I know there’s someone in your life. I’m really sure of it. Why you don’t want to tell me who that person is is beyond me.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “Unless-”

“Jesse. His name is Jesse,” she interjected before he could imply otherwise. She tried not to think about Garrett’s ‘unless,’ focusing instead on how she could make it seem like the past minutes of conversation never happened.

It hit her that what she was feeling at that moment was so similar to how she felt when Jesse almost pieced it together that Garrett, her previous boyfriend, was in The Maine.

She didn’t want them to know of each other.

“How’s Charlie?” Garrett suddenly asked, biting into his burger.

Holly was so out of it that she didn’t realize her food lay on the table, waiting for her. She laughed in response. “Well, I wasn’t even s’posed to be here in AZ today. She just happened to ditch me overnight and I couldn’t possibly leave the house when she doesn’t have a key with her.”

He nodded. “Sounds like her. Sounds like you.”

After a few moments of eating in silence, Holly looked up to catch Garrett watching her in silence, chewing on his food pensively.

“It’s easier to add two than replace seven, right?”

She was taken aback by the sudden statement, her heart pounding at the sincerity in his expression. She nodded tentatively, spearing the last of her French toast without looking away from his eyes. She understood what he meant completely.

It was better to catch up on two years than forget the previous seven they spent together beforehand.

He beamed, tilting his head to the side. “So… we have a barbeque two weeks from now. We’re driving down to Sedona. Do you want to-”

“I can’t.” Holly braced herself for the look of disappointment on his features, not ready to explain that it was the day it would be revealed to the world whose girlfriend she was. That she would be at the other end of the country.

But one look in Garrett’s eyes and suddenly she didn’t care anymore if it was hard to explain or not. He would find out about her and Jesse eventually, and it was better to give him a slight heads up on where she was going rather than have him find out through the tabloids and have him possibly pissed at her for not saying anything.

“I have a date with Jesse that day in New York,” she told him. “In Helena’s, this really formal restaurant. I really wanna join you and finally face the guys, but…” She trailed off, shrugging instead.

She sipped on her iced tea as he replied it was alright, but he was cut off by the sound of the lead guitar of Start Me Up, no doubt her favorite song by The Stones. A lunatic grin formed on Garrett’s lips, and she then realized she was set up as Garrett started playing an imaginary guitar, singing along loudly to the music.

“Oh no…” Holly put her face in her hands, laughing as Garrett began clapping to the chorus, his eyes never leaving hers as he pulled her out of the booth and whispered in her ear to dance.

“You know you want to,” he teased her as she started singing along with him. He turned her around as he started belting “Don’t make a grown man cry,” and she continued to laugh as people joined them in seconds. She was pretty sure the diner’s owners were filming them, and in that moment she could give less of a damn.

She didn’t want to admit it, but she was grateful Charlie had chosen that particular day to abandon her for Alex Gaskarth. It was the most fun she’d had ever since she was separated from Jesse; she knew too well that she would never pick a day in Nevada over time spent with Garrett Daniel Nickelsen.