SWNOVELS Chapter 20: Just Holly
Roderick walked down the road towards the garage Holly worked at, thinking about everything that had just happened within the past couple of days.
With Hector dead, the mysterious deaths in Spectreville stopped, and from Akaysha, it was learned that he had simply been killing off anyone who had even annoyed him in any way. She wasn’t entirely sure what he had had planned with all the people with abilities, and told them that he might not have even had a plan.
The PDU had taken custody of Akaysha, and she was now living with Shaq, Shannon, Everett and Ramona, where she would be able to fully explore and control her powers. She thanked them all profusely, and at last seemed to be happy with her circumstances.
On the other hand, Joey seemed concerned with the fact that they had already had a couple of instances of being controlled by some kind of spiritual means. So with the help of Everett, they set something up. Brian and some of the other people who worked at the PDU ended up taking some of the Everett’s blood and created a type of “vaccine” as they called it. Hopefully, this would prevent any spirit or person from controlling them ever again. It didn’t guarantee everything, but it was at least a start at a solution.
With this new solution, it was announced that Shaq would be taking over the unit of people with paranormal abilities. He asked Joey if she wanted to join them, but she declined. Her abilities hadn’t truly manifested yet, but she said that when she did, she would spend some time training with them.
Ian had complained for almost a full fifteen minutes about how he was so done with everything as they started to clean up their apartment from the zombie attack, but Roderick could tell that he had somehow secretly enjoyed himself in solving another mystery and saving lives, even though he knew his older brother would probably never admit it.
So with everything said and done, Roderick was free for a while to think about something else.
Like a certain Holly Richardson.
His heart jumped up with glee at the thought of her as he approached the garage, where he could see his orange truck sticking out of the back, finally finished. He walked through the office, and then let himself into the shop, where he shoved his hands in his pockets and stood there smiling at the girl he liked.
Holly was deep into the hood of another car, completely lost in her work. Her short blonde hair was tied up in the back, and she had a couple of smudges on her face. Roderick slowly walked up to her and then poked her in the side. She jumped, and then started laughing.
“Well, lookie who it is.” she blushed. “Everything settling down now at the PDU?” Roderick nodded, and then motioned over to the back room, where a tv was on to Jurassic Park.
“I see Bobby is finally back. He’s not done with that movie after being attacked by a velociraptor?”
“Naw. He says that he’s proud now to have lived and tell the tale, unlike many of the characters in the movie. He’s an odd one.”
“Hmm. Well, I’m here to pick up my truck.”
“Oh yeah! I wanted to show you a couple of things with that-.” she told him, bouncing over to one of the sinks so she could wash up a bit. Then, she took him over to the back, where his glorious truck was waiting for him.
“You going to be very busy now that you’ve solved the mystery?” she asked with a smile.
“Not at the moment. Chief Lenard is giving us a little break over the next week or so, and then we’ll be off on assignment in South Carolina. Apparently there’s some sort of weird sickness going on that has to do with our department. Should be interesting.”
Holly crawled into the passenger seat, and Roderick climbed into the driver’s seat. She immediately went into explaining some of the things she had to do with the truck, like rigging up one of the windows so it would actually roll up and down, and how to open certain compartments. After a couple of minutes, he realized that the two of them were actually alone and not very distracted at the moment. He looked down at her hand, lying on the seat, and softly held it, causing her to trail off in the middle of her sentence.
He could feel his heart thumping in his chest, and he swallowed his nervousness and excitement.
“Hey so… you made sure I didn’t die.” he started out. Holly looked confused for a moment, and then her face turned red.
“Oh-oh yeah! Um… Sorry I got all… I don’t know… In the moment I was just… I wasn’t thinking clearly and…”
Roderick reached up and wiped some of the grease off her cheek.
“You’ve got nothing to apologize for.” he told her. “Like I said, I just wanted to be on my own timetable.”
Holly bit her lip nervously.
“So… is it your own timetable now?”
Roderick pulled her a little closer to him.
“Yep.”
Then he and Holly kissed in his old orange truck, and at the moment, any thought of ghosts or paranormal activities was far from Roderick’s mind. Instead, he was simply filled with one thought, and one feeling:
Holly.