Olivia (20 page)

As usual, Izzie was refusing to look at the stick even after the timer went off, and was sitting on the toilet painting her toenails. Usually it only took ten or fifteen minutes for Izzie to summon her courage and pick up the stick, however this month Izzie was having a harder time. Olivia was rolling up on two hours of sitting in the tub. Her ass was getting numb.

Olivia tipped the bottle of baby shampoo over and watched the thick amber liquid slide down the inside of the clear plastic bottle. “Iz?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“No reason.” The shampoo slowly filled the cap. It looked so much like honey Olivia had to fight the urge to open the bottle and taste it.

“Where do you want to eat tonight?” Izzie asked.

“I don’t care.”

“Mexican again?”

“Sure. Unless you want Chinese. We haven’t done that in awhile.”

“No, that’s ok.”

The girls fell into silence as time crept by. Izzie finished her toenails then blasted them with the hairdryer. Olivia put the shampoo bottle down then played with the shower curtain for awhile.

“Liv?” Izzie asked.

“Yeah?”

“I know you don’t care because you’re not friends with him anymore, but I figured you’d want to hear this from me instead of on the street.” Izzie wrapped the cord around the dryer and tucked it into a drawer, then turned to look at Olivia. “George asked Yvette to move in with him.”

“Oh… Ok,” Olivia said, pretending like she didn’t care. But Olivia did care. She cared so much it felt like someone had stabbed her chest with a burning bayonet dipped in acid, and then twisted.

“She hasn’t said yes yet, but the offer’s out there.”

“Right… ok…” Olivia chewed on her bottom lip and tried hard not to cry. “Who told you that?”

“Yvette. She’s actually really cool. You’d probably like her if you didn’t have a crush on George.” 

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“I think you would.”

“You think wrong.”

They fell into silence again. Izzie meticulously applied lotion to her legs and Olivia tried to see how many times she could bounce Izzie’s shower pouf on her hand without dropping it. She wasn’t very good at it, but she wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t really good at anything.

After an eternity, Izzie walked over to the counter, picked up the stick, and threw it into the trash without looking at it. “You ready to eat?”

“Izzie!” Olivia hopped out of the tub, which was extremely hard to do because both of her legs were sound asleep. “You didn’t even look at it!”

She reached into the trash and looked at the results of the pregnancy test. Negative. Of course. No smiles today.

“I knew it would be.”

“Don’t give up, Iz, it’ll happen,” Olivia said.

Izzie’s started to cry, her entire body shaking. “No, it won’t.”

“Hey, hey don’t cry…” Olivia awkwardly patted Izzie’s shoulder. Crying people made her nervous, especially when the tears came out of nowhere.

“He left me, Liv,” Izzie whispered.

“Who left you?”

“John. He wants a divorce.”

“What?” She forced Izzie to look at her. Her heart broke when she saw the pain on Izzie’s face. “When did this happen?”

“A few weeks ago, right after my last period. He said I loved the idea of having his baby more than I loved him. And then he said he was so sick and tired of having sex with me he felt like puking,” Izzie said through her sobs.

“But… I don’t understand. I saw you two together on the Fourth and you guys were grossing me out with all the snuggle wuggle shit like you always do! What happened between now and then?”

“I don’t know!” Izzie cried.

“Izzie…” Olivia started, but she was at a loss for words. Her mind raced from the totally unexpected news and she didn’t know what to say to make everything better. She didn’t have any experience with situations like this. The last time she’d tried to comfort someone, she’d ended up marrying her. She couldn’t do that again. For one thing, it was illegal to have two wives, and for another it wasn’t that easy this time.

She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t give Izzie John, she couldn’t give Izzie a baby, and she couldn’t give Izzie a promise that everything would be ok.

So, she did all that she could do. She gave Izzie her shoulder to lay her head on and her arms to wrap up in, and let her cry for as long as she wanted to without complaining about the snot or the tears soaking her shirt or the fact that her legs were tingling like crazy as they suddenly woke up. She gritted her teeth to the stabbing pain, and let Izzie cry it out.

When Izzie ran out of tears, they ordered in a pizza for dinner and sat close on the sofa while they watched one Lifetime Original movie after another until Izzie finally fell asleep around midnight. Olivia tucked a blanket around Izzie and paced her friend’s house for another hour while she tried to figure out what to do.

Izzie’s news didn’t make any sense. Izzie and John were in love—hopelessly, sickeningly, desperately in love. They had the kind of love that would keep them blindly together until they both died of old age. They had been in love forever, since they were all kids and didn’t even know what love was. John had been Izzie’s first boy kiss when they were thirteen, her first poke and tickle in the back of a Suburban on her sixteenth birthday. The only reason they hadn’t run off to get married the minute they were both eighteen was because Izzie had wanted a fairy-tale wedding, and John had wanted to give it to her. It takes a long time to save up that kind of cash in South. It’s not like you can go in and donate plasma every single day, no matter how desperate you are to get married. There are rules against that.

The more Olivia thought about it, the more she became convinced something was wrong with the entire situation. Despite the late hour, Olivia pulled out her cell phone and called John to find out what it was.

“Olivia?” John answered, his voice thick and heavy, sounding as though he had awakened from the dead. “What’s wrong? Is it Izzie?”

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Olivia demanded.

There was a long pause, and then John cleared the sleep from his throat. “I take it Izzie finally told you.”

“Damn right she told me and I’m gearing up to come over there and kick your ass! How could you tell Izzie you want a divorce?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I just can’t be with Iz right now. I love her with all my heart, and I’ll love her until the day I die, but until she stops treating me like a sex machine and starts treating me like a human being with real feelings and real emotions, I can’t be with her. She’s killing me, Liv,” John said.

As much as she didn’t want to, something in John’s voice made Olivia feel sorry for him. “But if you still love her, why are you divorcing her?”

“I’m not divorcing her. I have no intention of
ever
divorcing her. This whole situation got blown way out of proportion…” He let out a heavy exhale that rumbled through the phone connection and amplified his frustration. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but a few weeks ago, Izzie decided to not only have sex like a million times a day, she also wanted me to jerk off into a cup so she could try doing her own version of artificial insemination with a turkey baster. I kinda freaked out a little, you know? I mean, I’ve got
nothing
left to give. She’s squeezed more jiz out of me than ten men would make in a lifetime, and she wanted more. I’m gonna spare you all the gory details, but I fucking hurt.

“When I told her I couldn’t physically do it anymore and needed a break and wanted to just make love to her like we used to, like we actually love each other and enjoy the feeling of each other’s bodies, she went psycho on me and started screaming and carrying on and throwing shit… She’s the one that mentioned divorce, not me. She’s my heart and soul, Liv. You know that. I would never leave her for good. I just need a
break
. I’d like to be able to feel my balls again, you know? As soon as I can I’m coming home, but until then, I’m living with my brother. When she remembers that I’m a human being and not a robot, she knows where to find me.”

John hung up and Olivia felt like giving him a hug. Poor guy.

She peeked in at Izzie and watched her sleep. The living room was as neat and tidy as always, and completely baby-proofed. It had been since the day Izzie and John had first moved in. Izzie had little locks on all the cabinets and drawers, and anchors on the shelves. The edges of the coffee and end tables were padded with little cushiony things to keep a toddling baby from splitting his chin open. All the outlets were covered, all the chords tied up.

Olivia knew Izzie was crazy for a baby, but she hadn’t realized until just then that her friend was also plain old crazy. Her baby obsession had gone beyond desperately wanting a baby to bordering on dressing up a cat and trying to enroll it in school. It was sad, really, and Izzie needed help. Olivia had no idea what she could do, but she knew someone who might—her wife.

It just so happened that earlier that month Melanie had come into Garretson all upset because her Section Eight apartment was being condemned and there was nowhere for her to go. Olivia hadn’t paid her much attention at the time because she’d had her own problems to work out, but looking around Izzie’s house it looked like the perfect solution to two problems—Izzie could give Melanie and her rug rats a place to stay while her apartment was being brought up to code, and Melanie’s real live children could give Izzie the chance to play Mommy with real live children instead of the ones she made up in her imagination. And—
bonus!
—at the same time, John could work on getting the feeling back in his manly parts and give his sperm the opportunity to become abundant again. As an extra, extra bonus, Izzie could give her girly parts the break they desperately needed, because quite frankly, she was starting to smell a lot like Louise.

On the following Monday, Olivia swung by Krispy Kreme and picked up two dozen donuts on her way to work. As soon as she clocked in, she called a meeting in the break room and invited the entire quality department to attend.

While her co-workers noshed on deep-fat fried sugar, she explained the situation as she saw it, announced her proposal, opened the floor for discussion, and then conducted a show-of-hands-vote in favor of Izzie and Melanie cohabitating. The “ayes” had it with the only two “nays” coming from Izzie and Melanie themselves. Democracy rules, so a week later Sam pulled up in front of Izzie and John’s house with a truck full of broken toys, second-hand clothing, every Disney and Pixar movie ever made, some roaches and a handful of bedbugs in the back of his pickup, and dumped all of it on Izzie’s front lawn. Melanie and her kids showed up in her rattling, rusted minivan a few minutes later, and, thanks to Olivia, Izzie’s life was changed forever.

Chapter Ten

Mitch finally took a weekend off of gun-running or bank-robbing or meth-cooking, or whatever the hell it was he was doing for employment, and took Olivia out for a night on the town. There weren’t any good movies at the theaters or bands playing at any of the bars, it was pouring rain so they couldn’t do anything outside, and they couldn’t agree on a restaurant. So, they went bowling.

Now, it should be mentioned that Olivia was born with two left feet and a severe lack of hand-eye coordination, so it was difficult for her to participate in most sports. She played soccer for five years and was only allowed to kick the ball twice, and only one of those times was during a game. In her freshman year of high school, she tried volleyball, basketball, soccer again, softball and track, all without success and all with a unanimous vote by her teammates to kick her off the team. She protested, but the coaches agreed, so from her sophomore to senior years she cheered for the opposing team at all of Juliette High’s sporting events.

When Olivia reached legal drinking age and started hanging out in bars, she discovered there was a whole new world of athletics she had never tried—pool, darts and karaoke, just to name a few—and she also learned something about herself that she had never known before. When Olivia was drunk, she was Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

The hand-eye coordination she seriously lacked when she was sober suddenly showed up after her third beer. Speed and agility came after the fourth. After the fifth, she was unstoppable… until her seventh beer stole it all away again and she was just another giggly, falling-down drunk who thought she was sexy but really wasn’t. But for those two hours between the fourth and seventh beer, Olivia was unstoppable on the field or on the court, or on the bowling alley.

Mitch got their shoes and paid for their games, and Olivia bought the first round of beers. Between beer one and beer two, she bowled a 74. Beer two and beer three gave her a score of 81. The last of beer three and the first half of beer four netted her a 137, and she was in her zone when Clete and Allison suddenly appeared on the open lane next to them.

“Are you stalking me?” Olivia teased as she held her right hand over the blower on the ball return like a pro. She had no idea what the blower was for, but it made her hand feel cool.

“I’m not the one who stalks people, Olivia.” Clete turned to Mitch and held out his hand. “Hey there, I’m Cletus Wade and this is my daughter, Allison.”

“Mitch Toler,” Mitch said. With his jaw set firm, he shook Clete’s hand, sizing him up. Mitch’s eyes clearly and distinctly told Clete to stay the fuck away from his woman, and Clete’s eyes clearly and distinctly said,
No problem, man. Didn’t want her anyway.
Pissing contest over, Mitch let go of Clete’s hand and began actively ignoring both Clete and his daughter.

“I’m Allie,” Allie said to Olivia.

“I’m Olivia,” Olivia said to Allie.

“I know. My dad told me all about you. You’re the one who stole the Walmart scooter.”

“What?” With a flutter of panic dancing in her chest, her eyes shot over to Clete. How the hell did he know about that?

“You stole a scooter from Walmart?” Mitch laughed. “Awesome. Where’s it at?”