Page 95 of The Corruption of Hollis Brown

Hollis huffed.

And this situation is what it takes for you to admit that? You’re a fucking asshole.

Walt smoked in silence, wiping his own nose and face when he needed it. The night sky was turning purple. Not dawn, but close to it. The stars were harder to see.

Why are we still out here, Hollis?

I had things I wanted to do to you that would make you too loud to keep in my house. But now I’m too angry for that.

Walt tapped ash and shook his head, dragged a hand through Hollis’s hair.

What now, Walt? What do you want to do now?

Walt shrugged.

If you don’t mind me working rough, I can pick someone up at the bus stop. Someone not from here and ride them to Rose Town. You can be yourself by the time the sun’s high in the sky. Swing by Yulia’s, green-eyed and pretty.

That was it.

Hollis stood. He took a few steps from the hollow and then turned his head up to the sky, furious.

Is that what you want? To leave me? That’s what you want, more than anything?

It’s what I came here to do. Not leave you, Hollis, but to eventually go back to Rose Town. I’ve overstayed my welcome long enough. I have to pay my debts.

You’re such a coward, Walt. This is so fucking convenient.

What?

Hollis closed their eyes and crouched in the grass.

You did something selfless, got scared and ran. Did something selfless again for Toji, then got scared and ran. Spent ninety-two years doing something selfless, then ran home to Rose Town. Then you met me. And you think you’re changing, turning over a new leaf to go find your eternity door or whatever the fuck, but you’re just running again.

You came to this town and you found out that it’s the same as when you left it. All of us are still poor and struggling and eating fruit from hundred-year-old trees. You stood in my pantry and tried not to weep at the sight of it. You spent a month fixing a home fifty years younger than you are, and I know what that means now, I do.

But you came home to Rose Town, and you found me. And I’m a part of this place, and we fit. And I scare you.

You scare me because you keep doing things I don’t—

“Don’t say it, Walt, don’t say it if you don’t mean it. Because you and I both know you like it. We like it,” Hollis snapped out loud.

I scare you because for the first time in ninety-two years, this isn’t about anyone else, it’s about you. You’re not on a stage, you’re not in a house, you’re with me, and I can see you and I’m not screaming.

You don’t know what to do with that, so you want to run, and I’m not pissed off that you’re scared. It’s okay to be scared. But running from that to go die isn’t any different from what you’ve been doing for the past hundred years.

You have no idea what I—You don’t know what it felt like! You don’t know how bad it was, how could you say that to me?!

Walt pushed them to the ground. Their anger doubled in the way Walt warned him it would and it made them feel reckless. Walt flipped them flat on their back, pinned their wrists to the ground. Hollis pushed against it, struggling. Hollis was so fucking furious, he could barely see. Everything was black, and Walt was winning.

FUCK YOU, WALT. YOU’RE A GODDAMN COWARD. You didn’t learn anything!

Stop saying that! Stop it!

FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU.

Shut up, stop saying that!

Hollis couldn’t handle this sanctimonious fucking martyr bullshit. So fucking lost in his own head he couldn’t fucking figure out how to handle what was in front of him. Drowning Hollis’s body with his yearning and his sorrow and his shyness and all of these things, like Hollis wouldn’t fucking feel it every day and didn’t know him. How could he act like Hollis didn’t know him? How could he—