Rob was not that man. Holly flared her nostrils in distaste as she explained, “Mom. Rob and I went on one date. We won’t be going on another. I don’t think he’s stable.” That morning he’d skulked outside her apartment in his sheriff’s deputy car until Kaylee made a point of taking her pistol out on the porch to polish it in plain sight. Then he’d cruised out of the parking lot and down the palm-lined street.
“He can’t be any less stable than Elijah Brown,” her mom muttered.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Holly asked. “Elijah’s not unstable.”
Her parents exchanged a look over her head. Holly’s mom took her hand. “Sweetie. We didn’t tell you this all those years ago when he asked you out, because Elijah’s mom doesn’t want it spread around about him any more than we want it spread around about you. But Elijah has MAD.”
“Oh.” Too late Holly realized her oh should have sounded shocked, as if she’d discovered a corpse, rather than sympathetic with a lilt on the end, as if she’d found an adorable, wriggling puppy. Elijah and she had the same mental disease!
In what universe was this good news?
Her mom was still talking. “You remember how crazy you felt before you got on Mentafixol?” She raised her eyebrows and nodded, willing Holly to nod along. “Maybe Elijah’s having an exacerbation. You see now why we didn’t want you getting involved with him?”
“You mean you made me break my date to the prom with him just because he had the same condition I have?” Holly croaked in disbelief. “You’re supposed to bring together people with the same disease, Mom, not keep them apart. We could have supported each other.”
“And his mother is a dealer.” Holly’s mom examined her biggest diamond.
Holly shook with fury. All those years of feeling like she was utterly alone with her illness, and her parents had prevented her from seeing the one person she knew who had it too—Elijah, so sweet and funny, even back then. Her life would have been very different if they’d had each other to lean on.
She was on the verge of telling her parents to butt out of her business, once and for all. She was twenty-one, almost twenty-two, and no longer lived under their roof. They had no right to tell her what to do anymore. They’d done it for years. This was the last straw.
There was only the pesky point of sucking up to them so she could ease into the illusionist business herself.
Breathing through her nose and talking herself down, she convinced herself that standing up for her right to date Elijah wasn’t worth the trouble. Not yet. She didn’t even know what he wanted from her. He’d signed G-L-I-T-T-E-R-A-T-I to her during the show, not M-A-R-R-Y M-E.
Holly’s dad paced in front of them, waving his fists in the air. “How long are you going to sugarcoat it for her, Lanie? That kid has an exacerbation, as you call it, and the first thing he does is come looking for Holly?”
“He was in the audience,” Holly murmured. “He didn’t do anything.”
Now he pointed at Holly. “Don’t go out with him. You hear me? Don’t go anywhere near him, and don’t let him get you alone.”
“Don’t let anybody strange get you alone, either,” her mom said. “If strangers try to talk to you, tell us.”
This odd directive struck Holly as something a parent would say to a five-year-old: Don’t get into a stranger’s car when he offers you candy.
“We’ll take you to your apartment in the limo,” her dad informed her, “in case that kid’s hanging around.”
“He’s not hanging around.” Holly yawned to show her dad how little she cared about Elijah Brown. “And you’re not taking me to my apartment.” No way was Holly giving up a crumb of the freedom she’d finally gleaned from her parents, just because Elijah was having an episode.
“We’ll sit with you at the bus stop, then,” her mom called.
“I’m going out with Kaylee. She’ll pop down from her office and drive us.” Holly wasn’t supposed to drive while taking Mentafixol. Actually she’d never learned to drive, since she would probably take Mentafixol for the rest of her life.
“Oh, sweetie,” her mom said. “I don’t like the idea of you going out so late, especially without Rob.”
Holly hoped she was going without Rob. She was so exasperated, she almost told her parents that Rob, alleged dreamboat, was rapidly morphing into a stalker. But then they really wouldn’t let her use mass transit by herself. “Mom, the act lasts until 10 p.m. almost every night of the week. When else can I go out? And how can you worry about my safety when I’m with the head of security for the casino?”
This shut both her parents up. She’d always been surprised there hadn’t been more commentary from them about how Kaylee shouldn’t be the head of casino security as a twenty-two-year-old wisp of a girl. Sometimes Holly heard other employees at the casino make comments like this, but her parents never had.
With a few more sighs from Holly’s mom and a very pointed threatening look from Holly’s dad, the two of them donned matching white fur capes (on an eighty-degree June night in Vegas = style) and breezed out of the dressing room, headed for the casino limo that would drive them to their gated mansion on the outskirts of town.
The second they left, Holly stretched her arms over her head—ahhhh, free of them—and fished a single Hershey’s Kiss from a secret compartment in her purse. Mmmmm.
Then she searched through the hangers on the wardrobe rack for something to change into for Glitterati. She chose a pair of jeans to wear with her sequined show shoes, her show bikini top, and a midriff-baring sweater.
She stood back and looked at herself objectively. Her eyes scanned her hair and makeup, down her body, and stopped below her belly button, hovering at the fly of her jeans. She turned to the side to make sure that long expanse of exposed tummy was perfectly flat, despite her mouthful of chocolate. She wondered if she looked as good to Elijah as she had seven years ago. His fingers, roughened from carpentry work, would find softness as they explored downward, fumbling below her navel to ease her jeans open. . . .
Because that was what he wanted from her, right? Some sort of mutual MAD hookup? They must have subconsciously sensed each other’s mental illness at his house last night. Otherwise their attraction was too much of a coincidence. He was having an exacerbation, his inhibitions were down, and he made a beeline for Holly, just as her dad had suggested.