"You know, it is a testament to your beauty that I still find you attractive after watching you being sick," Roger said, following Holly to her bedroom and making sure that she did not trip on her own bare feet.
"Gee, Roger, thanks for making me feel like a woman again," Holly dead-panned, sitting on the end of the bed.
"Would it kill you to be a little more gracious? I just saved your life here," Roger replied, kneeling in front of her and rubbing her feet to get her blood circulation going.
"I was just sleeping!"
"Nah, you were passed out, big time. How are you feeling now?" Roger asked, looking at her and taking in her harassed look and her bedraggled hair.
"Hung over and cold."
"That makes two of us. Let's get into some dry clothes and then I'll make some coffee," Roger stated. Now that she was conscious again, he expected her to kick him out at any moment, and was astonished that she had allowed back into her room at all. He looked in her wardrobe and found a pyjama which he handed to her, then turned his back so that she could change.
"Do you have some men's clothes that I could borrow?" he asked while waiting and dripping on the carpet.
Holly scoffed behind him. "I thought it was painfully obvious to everyone in town that I had no man in my life, but since you ask, no, I don't have any men's clothes."
"Not even Daniel's stuff?" Roger inquired hesitantly.
"Are you kidding me? I got rid of every last bit of clothes that ever belonged to that freak." She finished buttoning her pyjama top and sat back down on the bed. "You can turn now, I'm done."
"Ok. What I'm going to wear thought? And before you can say it; I'm not leaving you like this."
Holly scratched her left cheek and looked at him. "Don't worry; I'm not so mean as to send you away in this weather with nothing but wet clothes on. You can put my dressing gown; it's the only thing that will fit you."
Roger stared at the pink number lying on the back of a chair. "I don't think so. Just give me a big blanket and I'll manage until my clothes get dry."
"Have it your way, but if I see just an inch of skin that I'm not supposed to see, you're out the door."
Roger mumbled under his breath and took the gown from the chair. Holly closed her eyes and lied back on the bed while he quickly stripped of his clothes and put on the robe. "I look stupid," she heard him say after a few minutes.
She could have laughed if she had not been so tired. Instead, she just smirked and said: "You know; it is a testament to your virility that you still even look remotely like a man in this thing."
"Fine, make fun at me. At least I know that you're back to your cynical self." He grabbed her hand and put her arms around his shoulders. "I'm going to make us some strong black coffee, and you're coming with me. You shouldn't sleep now."
They were sitting on her couch twenty minutes later with each a huge mug of fuming coffee. Holly, wrapped up in a blanket, had finally stopped shivering.
"Should we go to the hospital, or should I call Ed?" Roger said after taking sip.
"Why?" Holly asked, puzzled.
"You tell me." Roger got up and went to her room, then came back with the bottle of pills. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"
"Oh, that. I took ONE pill, Roger."
"Do you swear? No stomach pumping necessary?"
"Cross my heart. I just had this migraine that wouldn't go away."
"So, let me get this straight. You took a pill, and then you washed it down with a whole bottle of wine?"
Holly gave him a nasty look and wrapped the blanket more tightly around her. "You'd be drinking too if you were alone on your birthday."
Roger looked down in his mug, embarrassed.
"I thought you were done with the migraines," he offered after a while, eager to change the subject.
"I was, but they all came back this summer, after…" her voice trailed off and she scoffed bitterly.
"After you found out about Blake and Ross," Roger said, looking at her with a renewed compassion. He was so caught up in his own affairs that he sometimes forgot how much suffering she was going through. "I won't forget now," he shuddered, "not after tonight, not after seeing her lying on the floor like this."
"You look cold. There are blankets in the chest over there if you want," Holly said, misinterpreting his shivering.
"Thanks, I think I will get one, if only to hide this dressing gown." He took a look at the fire place and added: "And if you don't mind, I think I'll start a fire as well. That should cheer us up."
Holly snuggled under her own blanket and yawned. "Knock yourself out."
Roger got up and went to the fireplace, bringing his mug with him. "Keep on drinking coffee, Holly. I'm not sure that you should be sleeping right now."
"Why not?"
"What if you lose consciousness again?" If you're asleep I won't be able to tell. I'm NOT a doctor, and you don't want me to call Ed," Roger said, putting logs in the fireplace.
"There's no need."
"Are you ashamed of him seeing you like this?" Roger asked, and when she didn't answer, he knew that he had struck a nerve. A part of him wondered why she did not have the same scruples when it came to him, but then again, he reflected, they had been to hell and back together already. A nasty hangover was nothing compared to the states he had seen her in and put her through. Thinking of Santo Domingo, he stuffed the fireplace with crumpled newspapers and threw a match on them, then looked on as the fire slowly started.
"Great! All we need is a bear skin rug and then we're all set," Holly said, smiling at last.
Roger went to the chest to take a blanket and wrapped himself in it before sitting back on the couch. "What triggered your migraine this time?" he asked, looking at her intently.
Holly shook her head, suddenly looking dispirited. "Blake came by earlier." She was now remembering most of her conversation with her daughter, and none of it was good. "I told her things...things that I didn't mean, but terrible things nonetheless."
Roger took hold of one of her hands and squeezed it. "Having seen you two fight countless times, I'm sure that she must have said some pretty nasty things to you too."
Holly shook her head, staring down. "Not like this, Roger. I told her that I didn't love her."
"Oh," Roger whispered, his heart silently breaking for his daughter. "I'm sure she knows deep down that it's not true," he added in a reassuring tone.
"I don't know; she looked terribly upset when she left." Holly got up and started to pace across the room. "Maybe someday things will be good again between us, but right now, I honestly cannot stand the sight of her. Why did she have to come here, tonight, of all nights?"
"Well, it IS your birthday. Maybe she wanted to make amends."
"Maybe, but all she did was stand there, demanding to be forgiven, telling me that I had no right to deny her happiness. In the end, I just wanted her to go, so I said...I said that I didn't love her. I just wanted it to be over. I guess it is, now."
"So that's why you called me all those times afterwards?"
Holly sighed and when to sit back down at the other end of the sofa. "Yes. I was going crazy with guilt, and yet, I'm still angry with her. It seemed like my brain was pounding inside of my skull and that it would end up bursting out of it. I just needed to tell someone," she concluded sheepishly, her eyes watering.
"You know you can tell me anything."
"Even this? I'm surprised that you haven't yelled at me yet for being a terrible mother to her," Holly replied, letting out a mirthless laugh.
Roger shifted in his seat, leaning toward her. "You're not a terrible mother. You two just happen to have a rotten relationship right now, because of things that have happened in the past as well as this thing with Ross. You know what I think about that; she screwed up big time. The bottom line, though, is that you'll have to forgive her eventually if you want to move on. You can't stay like this, Holly. It will eat you alive."
A lone tear glided down one of Holly's cheek, and she did nothing to stop it.
"Hey, look on the bright side," Roger added, trying to cheer her up. "Ross might die!"
She glanced at him as if he was mad, then, seeing him grinning, smiled herself. "There's no need for that. I wouldn't mind him moving to Japan, though."
"Or Uranus."
"Even better."
"So you don't care about him anymore?" Roger asked hesitantly, remembering their conversation in the stairwell during the blackout a few months earlier. She had told him then that she was very eager to get Ross back. Of course, it was before she walked on him and Blake in bed.
Holly sniffed. "I don't. I realized that the Ross that I loved doesn't exist anymore, maybe he never did. Anyway, I couldn't care less about him now."
"And yet, you're still mad at Blake."
"Yes, because she did it to hurt me. I don't care if they ended falling in love for real as she claimed. The truth is that she seduced him to get back at me, because she thought that I had caused her to lose Alan-Michael. What kind of daughter does that?" Holly shouted, disgusted.
"Roger Thorpe's daughter?" Roger offered in an effort to make her laugh again.
Holly shrugged. "She's my daughter too." She rubbed her temples, her fingers getting caught in her tangled hair.
"Wait," Roger said before disappearing into the bathroom. "Turn around," he ordered, coming back with a comb and sitting on the couch so that she had her back to him.
"You'll hurt me!" she said, leaning away from him.
"I'll be gentle." He picked a strand of her still wet auburn hair and started to slowly comb through it. As he worked around her, he could feel her body gradually starting to relax until she ended up leaning against him comfortably. When he was done, he put the comb on the coffee table and started rubbing her temples in wide circles. Holly sighed, tilting her head back on his shoulder. Roger held his breath, afraid to break the spell that was making it possible for him to take care of her in this small way.
"How's the migraine now?" he inquired after they had both been gazing at the fire in silence, while he was massaging her head.
"Still there in the background, but it's much better," she mumbled in a barely audible voice. "You know," she added a little more loudly, "Daniel used to have a great trick to help me get rid of migraines. All I needed was a penny. Now, all it reminds me of is him."
"So the trick had become worthless?"
"Makes me want to eat my own head off," she replied as she exhaled deeply under his touch.
Roger looked down at her now peaceful face and resisted the sudden urge to wrap his arms around her. Instead, he kept talking to prevent her from dozing off. "Now that I think of it, one could argue that I wasn't the worse man you have ever been involved with. Surely a psychopath wins the title?"
He felt her shudder against his chest. "I guess you're right. Who knows what Daniel might have ended up doing to me if he hadn't died? Don't kid yourself, though, you're a close second."
A look of grief came over Roger's face like a dark cloud, but Holly could not see it. "How could I ever forget it?" he said. "I'm trying so hard to make it up to you."
"How?" she said, and he could hear the old dryness creeping back into her voice.
"I came here tonight, didn't I? That has to count for something?"
This time there was no mistaking the tension that invaded her body before she stood up to face him. "After I called you SEVEN times! And for the record, I know that you lied to me; there was no business meeting tonight. You dumped me on my birthday so that you could go who knows where with Jenna Bradshaw!"
Roger's shoulders drooped. He was completely and utterly busted.
