Rolling in the Deep by Rebecca Rogers Maher

a long time, and her eyes fill. She blinks the tears away. “I believe you.”
    “You do?”
    “Yeah.” She sniffs, and laughs a little. “Thank you, Ray. Not everyone would, you know.”
    “Seriously? You’d have to be a complete asshole to take the money from someone like that.”
    She smiles at me. “The world is filled with assholes.”
    “Ain’t that the truth.”
    We stand there awkwardly for a moment. I don’t want to let her go. I want to ask her to dinner. To go for a walk. To buy a puppy with me and move in.
    She doesn’t look eager to leave either. After all, once we get in our cars and drive home, what then? We don’t have our Cogmans jobs anymore, and the money hasn’t arrived yet. All we have is time on our hands. Time to worry about how drastically our lives are about to change.
    I’m not ready to walk out this door, to take that first step into the future.
    But we’re standing in a freezing cold Cogmans warehouse. We can’t hang by this door forever.
    It’s time.
    I give Holly what I hope is an encouraging smile. Then I place both hands on the bar that opens the door.
    I’m not sure what makes me pause before I push against it and step out into the employee parking lot. The silence feels wrong, maybe. Or the faint smell of cigarette smoke in the air. I crack the heavy door and there, at the bumper of my truck, is Timmy, talking to the
Poughkeepsie Record
news reporter from the press conference. A photographer stands behind them.
    I shut the door quickly and pull Holly back. “Shit.”
    She makes a pinched sound and grabs my hand. “Oh my God. What are they doing?”
    Adrenaline spikes through me, from the shock of seeing the reporter out there like a burglar in a bedroom. It sparks against the low-burning flame of all these past few days—the exhilaration, the disbelief. The desire.
    And suddenly my heart is racing. Holly is standing beside me, inches away, her hand in mine. And we’re both trembling like idiots. And then laughing at how ridiculous we are.
    And all at once, I can’t take it. I just can’t.
    All that energy twists inside me into something deeper.
    Darker.
    And I want her so bad I think I am going to fucking die.
    I release her fingers and turn her to face me. It’s too soon, too fast, but I can’t help it. I slide my hands into her thick hair and hold her there. Her eyes fly open. Her mouth, too, and she sucks in a breath.
    I kiss her, and I’m not smooth about it either. I push her against the wall and slip my tongue into her mouth. And,
oh Christ,
she tastes good.
    Like bright, warm light. Like honey. And suddenly everything feels absolutely fixed in place. Stilled, and
right
. Like I’m not spinning anymore. Like I can stand to be where I am. In Holly’s arms, pressed against her body.
    I feel her heartbeat rocketing into mine, the vibration of her shocked moan against my lips…and this,
this
is exactly where I’m supposed to be.
    I pull back from her with effort, and hold her at arm’s length. Just to look at her, to stop this moment in time. Because when this single moment passes I am going to ask her an impossible question. A question we won’t be able to turn back from.
    I’m stuck here in the store unless I want to face the reporters outside, clamoring to interview me or waiting to follow me home. My guess is it’s the same for her.
    We owe them a story, and we don’t want to give them one. It’s too much, already—all the changes bearing down on us. And we have to feel our way through that with people watching? It’s more than anyone could handle with any sort of grace.
    The pressure of screwing it up, of being judged, of taking a wrong step and being humiliated for it—it’s more than I can take now. It’s more, I think, than Holly can take, too.
    The only thing either of us wants to do, I’m sure, is lose ourselves for a little while. Just go somewhere and take a break from all of this. Step off the wheel for a minute and figure out where we