Wrapped Up in Holly (Hart Brothers)

6. Holly

Holly

I rearranged my pillows, settling back in my tiny twin bed, my cell phone pressed against my ear as it rang on the other end. My bottom lip was lodged between my teeth, my nerves a ball of excitement.

“Hey, babe,” Evan said when he finally answered.

“Hi!”

“How’d it go? I thought you were going to call me earlier.”

“I know, but it was so crazy. I didn’t get home until ten and then I was talking with Tori.”

“Yeah?” He yawned. “What happened?”

We’d had our end of semester runway show today. “One of Zed’s models had an allergic reaction and ended up in the ER.”

“Are they okay?”

“Yeah, she’s fine.” I waved my hand. That wasn’t the big part. “But he needed someone to fill in and didn’t have any time to adjust the clothes, so he asked me to do it since we were about the same size.”

I could hear Evan shuffling around on his end, waking up more. It was past midnight, and I knew he had a final tomorrow. I probably should have let him sleep, but I couldn’t keep this in any longer.

“You were a model?” he asked, and I nodded even though he couldn’t see it.

“Yeah.”

“How’d it go?”

“Amazing!”

He laughed. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I was so scared, but once I got out there, it was like… I don’t know how to describe it. I felt free.”

“Well, I’m proud of you. That’s really?—”

“You know how our runway shows sometimes have industry people at them? Tonight there was a woman from a modeling agency, and she pulled me aside after. She wants to sign me!”

“Wow. Really?”

“Yes! Can you believe it?” I was hopping around my bed now. I’d never seen myself as a model. Always too tall, too skinny, hair too long, eyes too big. When I was little, kids called me Bug Eyes, and once I’d moved, my cousins called me Stick Bug, which eventually turned into Stink Bug, so I was self-conscious about how I smelled. At one point, they had me so paranoid, I was showering and washing my hair twice a day.

“Wow,” Evan said again, but it was barely audible and completely flat. And my heart sank.

“I guess… I don’t have to… I…”

“I’m sorry,” he muttered and then with more feeling, “I’m so excited for you. Really.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Promise. I was just… I was taken by surprise. But it’s incredible. Do you want to do this? You want to be a model?”

“Yeah. It’s an incredible opportunity. Besides, you know I’m not doing very well in school.”

Turned out I was a better seamstress than designer. My friends all loved me because I could help them with their projects, but I struggled with what my professors called “vision.”

“Micki—that’s her name—Micki Tapper said I’d have no problem getting jobs as long as I kept walking like I did tonight.”

“That’s amazing,” he said quietly, back to that flat tone. “I can’t believe it. I mean… I can believe it. You’re beautiful. Of course you can model, but… You know…”

I did know. How did a bug-eyed girl from Akron, Ohio, belong strutting on a runway? She didn’t.

“It made me feel seen,” I confessed to Evan, and it was a long time before he answered.

“I see you, Holly. I always have.”

I hated that I made him think he wasn’t good enough. I’d already surprised him once when I’d admitted two years ago that I didn’t want to go to Ohio State. Now, I was doing it again, inadvertently telling him he wasn’t enough.

“I know,” I said. “I know you have, and I love you. I’ve always loved you, but I meant that she sees me as something more than…” I scrubbed my hand over my cheek. “You know I’ve always struggled with confidence, and fashion was the only thing that made me feel close to my mom. Having this opportunity, it… I guess, it brings it all together. You know?”

He breathed deep enough that I heard it on my end. “I’m really happy for you.”

“Are you?” I still wasn’t convinced.

“Yes.” He huffed. “But I’d like to see some of these photos of you. To get the whole picture.”

“Really?”

He huffed again. “Yeah. Why are you so surprised? I need to see my beautiful girl. Send them to me.”

My face flamed in embarrassment, even though we were only on the phone. “Right now?”

“Yeah, right now. Send them.”

“Kay. One sec.”

I texted him the few pictures I’d saved on my phone.

A few moments later, he hummed. “Babe.”

“Hm?” I bit into my bottom lip.

“I can see your nipples.”

I giggled at the mix of surprise and possession in his voice. “You cannot.”

“Yes. Totally. I can make out the whole outline of them.”

“But you can’t actually see them,” I said, and it was a while before he responded.

“Are people going to see your tits?”

I twisted my hair around my finger. “I don’t know what kind of jobs I’ll get, but modeling isn’t like… You have to be comfortable being naked.”

“Are you?” he asked, sounding so sincerely worried for me.

I honestly wasn’t sure. “You’re the only person who’s seen me naked.”

He grunted. He liked that answer.

“I’m not looking forward to being naked in front of other people, but a body is a body, you know? Models are interchangeable.”

This time, his grunt wasn’t happy. “You’re not interchangeable to me.”

I pressed my palm against my cheek, my mouth pulled wide with a smile.

“Where are you right now?” he asked.

“In my room.”

“Is the door closed?”

“No, why?”

“Close it,” he said in a gruff voice that I didn’t think I’d ever heard him use before, and without consciously making a decision, I got up to close the door.

“It’s closed.”

“Good. Now, I want you to get naked and take a picture of yourself to send to me.”

I gasped. We’d never sent naked photos to each other before.

“You want me to…”

“Take a picture of yourself naked and send it to me.”

“Evan… I…”

“Come on. One little picture.”

I stared at myself in the mirror. Did he want a selfie in the mirror like Kim Kardashian or, like, a posed photo on the bed? I asked him, and he sighed. “I don’t care. I just need to see you.”

I decided on laying back on the bed and extending my arm up, aiming to get as much of myself as I could in the frame and sent it off before I could overthink it. I could tell when he’d received it because he breathed audibly.

“God, I miss you so fucking much.” Then he let out that familiar sound from the back of his throat. The one he always made whenever we were intimate. “I’m hard for you.”

I cushioned my head against my pillow, absently tracing my collarbone with my fingers. “You are?”

“Of course. I’m always hard for you. But I want to make you wet, too.”

I swallowed thickly. We’d never done this either.

“You want to get wet for me?” he rasped.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Pretend I’m there with you.”

“Okay,” I whispered and wiggled further down the mattress, bending my knees, the heels of my feet on top of the covers.

“I want you to lick your fingers and tug on your nipples. Pretend it’s me kissing them, licking them.”

I did as I was told and licked my thumb and index finger then dragged them over my chest to one of my nipples, tugging on it. “What are you doing?”

“What do you want me to do?”

I moved to my other nipple, twisting and pinching it. “I want you to touch yourself.”

“How?”

“Soft. Like when I tease you and kiss your thighs.”

He groaned, and I imagined him in bed with me. All those times he’d pulled me over him so my hips were over his face and my mouth was between his legs.

“I’m thinking about when we sixty-nine,” he said, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Me, too.”

He chuckled. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Now,” he said all business, “I want you to lick your fingers again and touch your clit. Circles like I do with my tongue. I think you need a reminder of who your pussy belongs to, huh?”

I hummed, unable to answer, my mouth dry.

“It’s been too long. I don’t want you to forget,” he said. “Now touch yourself.”

With my phone on speaker, I kept one hand on my breast and moved the other between my legs.

“Are you wet?” he asked, and I couldn’t believe that I was already.

“Yeah.”

“I’m so goddamn hard for you.”

“Make your palm wet,” I told him. “Lick it or use something. Pretend it’s my mouth on you.”

“There’s nothing like your mouth,” he said, but he must’ve been touching himself because he let out another throaty sound. “I can’t wait to get my mouth on you. I’m gonna eat you out for hours.”

“Mmm. Sounds good.”

“Slip your fingers into my pussy. Slide them in and out.”

I dropped my knees to the side as I dipped my index and middle fingers inside of me, working them in and out.

“They nice and wet?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Put them in your mouth.”

I didn’t think twice. I stuck my fingers in my mouth, licking off my arousal.

“You taste that? Fucking delicious. My favorite flavor in the whole world.” He sucked in air. “Ah, fuck, Holly. It’s been so long. I’m already so close.”

Without having him direct me, I skated both hands down my body, using one hand to spread me open like he always did and used the other to circle my clit faster and faster.

“You gonna come? You gonna come with me?”

“Yes, Evan, yes.”

“I love hearing you like this. All out of breath. When your back arches and your neck goes red. You close your eyes when you get close.”

“I’m close,” I told him, my eyes closed.

“Get there.”

“I’m there. I’m there,” I moaned, my skin growing hot, my lower back reflexively bowing, my thighs coiling tight.

“Come for me, baby.”

With a few more strokes of my fingers, I was falling off the precipice, my eyes squeezed tight, as I imagined Evan’s fingers digging into my hips while he grunted his pleasure, like he did now. “I’m coming. I’m coming.”

As I came down, my heart rate slowing, my muscles relaxing, I blinked my eyes open and rolled to my side to grab my phone, turning it off of speaker. Weirdly enough, it felt more intimate now after that than while we were doing it.

“Evan,” I whispered.

“Yeah?”

“I miss you,” I said, and his answering, “I miss you more than anything in the world” brought tears to my eyes.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”

“With us?” he asked, the first sign of urgency in his voice. When I didn’t answer right away, he said, “If you want to do this, we’ll make it work. Just like we’re doing with school. We’ll take it one day at a time.”

“Okay.” I rubbed the back of my hand over my eyes.

“Don’t cry.”

I sniffed. “How did you know?”

“Because I know you. I know everything about you. And I just want you to be happy.”

“You make me happy,” I told him, and I swear I heard him smile.

“Go to sleep. I’ll call you as soon as I get out of my exam. Okay?”

“Okay. I love you.”

“Love you, too. Forever.”