Olivia (5 page)

When he finally dared to pull away, he looked into her eyes with nothing less than pure amazement in his. “What the fuck was that?”

She stared back in wide-eyed confusion as her lungs raked in huge gasps of air. She was, for the first time in her life, totally and utterly speechless.

And so began Olivia’s romance with Mitchell “Mitch” Toler. They crashed in the parking lot, and kissed in the middle of the road, and that kiss tumbled them head-over-heels into each other’s worlds, merging the two into one where they co-existed in peace, happiness, and sexual fulfillment for six, blissful months.

Had he backed away, had he opted not to participate in that kiss, everything that happened after those six, blissful months would have been avoided. But once he moved his lips and breathed in that first lungful of her essence, once it began coursing through his system and flowing through his bloodstream, their fates were sealed. And it could not be undone.

Those first six months were indeed blissful. Olivia had never before experienced a relationship quite like the one she had with Mitch. From that very first kiss, she felt as though they were destined to be together, and that set her inhibitions free. With Mitch, unlike with any of her previous boyfriends, she felt free to be herself. She wasn’t reserved. She didn’t hold back. She didn’t keep secrets or make up lies. She was brutally honest about herself and her life, and he accepted everything she revealed without judgment.

And Mitch was a different man with Olivia than he had been with any other woman. He was giving and loving and attentive to her needs. He showered her with gifts and took her out to dinner. He bought her beer and gave her quarters for the jukebox. He danced with her and opened doors. He held her hand as they walked side-by-side. He took the time to listen to her when she needed to vent frustrations. In return, she gave him rides to work while his truck was in the body shop and then paid to have it detailed when he finally got it back.  

Every time she saw him her heart beat faster. When they kissed they couldn’t stop. Each and every peck on the cheek held the potential to turn into a wild and frantic sexual event. Olivia had always believed the female orgasm was a myth perpetrated by
Cosmopolitan
magazine until Mitch showed her they truly did exist. Once she experienced one, she couldn’t get enough. And Mitch had never known there was such a thing as intimacy until Olivia came along. He had never experienced sex where the heart was an active participant, and once he felt it, he never wanted it to end.

Olivia gave Mitch all of her, but she only got bits and pieces of Mitch in return. What she did know was he was twenty-eight, lived by himself in a rundown, one-bedroom apartment off Pike Street in South, and was working his way up the ladder of Juliette Power and Lights—literally working up a ladder—as a lineman. He felt the past was the past and the here-and-now was what was important, and that was where he lived. If Olivia pried for more, he distracted her with a nuzzle behind the ear, or a tickle on her inner thigh, and her mind quickly focused on the here and now.

During the week, Mitch worked days and Olivia worked nights, so in the beginning their relationship revolved around the weekends. Mitch would wait for Olivia at Kitty’s on Friday nights, and as soon as she clocked out she would rush into his arms, then rush into a quick drunk and take him home and make love to him until dawn. They would sleep and love away their Saturday day and then return to Kitty’s to drink and dance away their Saturday night. Sunday was their day of nursing hangovers and sharing a bag of Cheez Doodles and a John Wayne marathon with Eugene. Once Eugene wandered back to his side of the trailer court, they would love away the night.

September marked their one-month anniversary and everything was wonderful. The more time Olivia spent with Mitch, the more she became convinced Mitch was the “One” who would save her from a life of misery in South. She indulged in fantasies of living with Mitch in a neat and tidy, brand-new townhouse with a white picket fence on the outside and two-point-five kids on the inside, smack in the heart of Northside.

Late on a Thursday night, in Kitty’s backroom, Olivia shared her vision with George, and was disappointed when he didn’t show enough enthusiasm for her liking.

“You hardly know the guy, Liv. Don’t you think you ought to slow down and take it a day at a time? Really learn about him before you start picking out china patterns?”

“What are you, jealous or something?”

“Jealous?” George laughed. “Jealous of what?”

“Of me and Mitch. Of us finding each other and falling in love.” She stood in front of his desk with her arms crossed and a frown on her face, and looked down on him.

“Love?” George set down the stack of receipts he had been sorting, and looked her in the eye. “Liv, you have no idea what love is.”

“I do, too,” she insisted with a stomp of her foot.

“Then what is it?” He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest and furrowed his brow until his posture and expression mirrored hers.

Olivia opened her mouth, but no words came out. How does a person explain love anyway? She thought for a minute and then gave it her best shot.

“Love is that feeling of electricity that seems to course between you and another person, you know? Like when you sit so close you’re touching them with your hip or your shoulder and you feel all tingly. It makes you think about that person all day and all night until you’re sure you’ve gone crazy… and it puts the smile on your face and the song on your lips and the sunshine on your shoulders.”

Ha! She knew what love was and she had defined it as eloquently as any poet ever dreamed of doing. She smiled at him and gave him a nod that dared him to disagree. George sat quietly for a long moment as he looked into her eyes, searching for something she didn’t understand.

Finally, he said, “I feel sorry for you, Olivia.”

He bent his head back over his work and didn’t look up again. Olivia waited for him to say something more, to say
anything
, but he didn’t. She turned on her heel and stormed out of the office, leaving him to fester in his jealousy. She continued to go to Kitty’s Place after work and on weekends, but she quit staying afterhours to hang out in the office. If George missed her in her absence, he never said a word.

In October, Mitch bought tickets to a Thursday night concert in Omaha and booked them a room at one of the fancy, casino hotels on the Missouri River. They gambled away their paychecks and drank away their winnings and experienced the glorious high of hotel sex. It was the most perfect weekend Olivia had ever lived—until the long drive home.

They stopped for lunch at Burger King. Mitch waited in the truck while Olivia ran inside to use the restroom and order their food to-go. Two miles from the restaurant, Mitch took his first bite of his sandwich, and immediately spit it back out.

“What the fuck is this?” Mitch demanded. The truck swerved as he fumbled to take the bun off his sandwich.

“A Whopper, just like you asked for.” Olivia unwrapped her own lunch and took a bite.

“I said no onions! How fucking stupid are you?”

She rolled her eyes at his tantrum. “So pick them off, Dipshit.”

Mitch turned red and grabbed her sandwich out of her hand. Before she could blink, he had his window down and her crispy chicken was nothing more than a splatter on the highway.

“You asshole!” Seconds later, her fountain Dr. Pepper was nothing more than a gigantic puddle in his lap.

Mitch’s hand shot out and he grabbed a fistful of her hair on the back of her scalp. Olivia screamed out in surprise and pain as her hands flew up to his hand buried in her hair. The truck swerved again as he slammed on the brakes. The tires dipped off the shoulder, and he jerked her head, forcing her to look at him. 

“Try that shit again, you stupid cunt, and your ass’ll be walking home.”

No longer surprised, fury took control of Olivia’s emotions. She spit her mouthful of chewed-up chicken in his face. His hand tightened and twisted in her hair and her jaw set as they stared each other down. Finally, Mitch let go and pulled back out on the highway.

They didn’t talk to each other the rest of the way home, or for the next three days, but apparently absence makes the heart grow fonder. Or maybe just stupider. They blamed the incident on hangovers and exhaustion, gambling losses and too much time together, and they were back in blissful, ignorant love by the following weekend.

In November, Melanie, Olivia’s co-worker with the four kids and convict ex-husband, announced she was re-engaged to her ex. The extra government assistance for being a single mother wasn’t worth the sacrifice of not being married to her true love. They began planning a late-spring wedding for May when he would be up for early-parole due to over-crowding at the pen. Izzie and John still weren’t pregnant, so they stepped up their efforts from having sex every day to having sex twice a day, every day. Chester ran away again, only to be found two days later, thirty miles away in Allman Falls trying to get off on the mayor’s Cocker Spaniel. Mitch started staying over at Olivia’s almost every night, instead of only on the weekends, and they made it through the entire month without arguing.

In December, Olivia and Mitch went to Dusty’s Pawn and Tattoo Shop on Washington and gave each other matching lobster tattoos for Christmas. She got hers on her left wrist and he got his on his right, and when they held hands the lobsters kissed. When she showed hers off to George, he laughed and asked her what in the world made her get a lobster permanently drawn on her wrist when they lived nowhere near an ocean and she hated seafood.

“Because lobsters represent true love,” she said. “They mate for life.”

George laughed harder. “No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do!”

“The male lobster is like the ocean’s horny little Don Juan. He’ll get it on with anyone.”

Her expression made George laugh so hard he couldn’t breathe. He started hyperventilating and had to go to the back room to lie down. Olivia stomped over to Kenny and asked him if George was right. He shrugged and said, “I dunno what they do when they’re alive, but they taste pretty good after they’re boiled.”

 In January, Olivia started dropping hints about how much better it would be if they lived together. Mitch was open to the idea. Excited, she started looking through the Sunday paper for Northside rentals they could afford on their combined income and talked to a realtor about putting her trailer up for sale. Olivia had never been happier in her life.

And then, in February, Mitch lost his job.

Apparently, being perpetually late is a disease that is contagious. Whereas Olivia was able to get away with it at her job because she was desperate to be fired, Mitch was not. When he showed up late to work for the fifth Monday morning in a row because Olivia had kept him up too late with their Sunday night passion his boss ceremoniously handed him his walking papers, and showed him to the door.

Furious, Mitch returned to the trailer and unceremoniously lifted the mattress, dumping a sleeping Olivia and a tangle of sheets onto the floor.

“What the heck, Mitch?” she cried. Half-asleep, she stumbled to her feet and rubbed her elbow where it had smacked into the dresser on her way down, reminding her yet again there was nothing funny about the funny bone.

“You got me fired!” He cursed as he paced the tight space of her bedroom, pausing only to swipe his arm across her dresser, sending her beloved collection of shot glasses from every bar and truck stop she had ever visited crashing to the floor.

“I didn’t get you fired!” Olivia threw the stuffed parrot he had won for her at the Juliette Jamboree back in September at his head.

“I’m late for work every Monday because of you!” He scooped up a handful of the broken shot glasses and threw one after another at the wall above her head, accentuating each throw with the words “You,” “Stupid,” “Fucking,” and “Bitch.”

Olivia was no longer half-asleep. She was wide awake and pissed off, and she dove for him like a rabid cat—hissing, with teeth bared. Try as he might, Mitch couldn’t stop her attack before she’d scratched and clawed and bit every inch of his exposed skin, and then ripped open his shirt searching for more flesh to extract blood from. Mitch ran off with his tail between his legs, and that was the last Olivia saw of him the entire month of February.

March came in like a lamb, bringing warm weather and sunshine with it. Olivia tried to forget about Mitch while spending time with George after-hours at Kitty’s again. She admitted she was wrong about love and wrong about the lobsters, and George admitted he knew nothing about love either. He also confided in her that he was gay.

Olivia didn’t mention that she already knew, but she did try to convince him that maybe, just maybe, he was wrong about his feelings and was only confused by the recent, massive influx of extremely-attractive, metrosexual males on television and in print media. She offered to test her theory with a roll in the hay, or at least some heavy petting on the office sofa, but he declined both offers. He did dance with her though. No orgasms were to be had, but a slow bump and grind to 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop” reduced Mitch to nothing more than a distant memory, and that was all she needed to smile again.

 St. Patrick’s Day is a holiday requiring inebriation, and Olivia took the night off work so she could get started celebrating early. Kitty’s offered green beer and Lucky Charms to the revelers and, much to the dismay of her stomach, Olivia consumed copious quantities of both. She managed to make it home without tossing her cookies, but only lasted another five minutes before she was on her knees, praying to the porcelain god. The last thing she remembered as she passed out and her head hit the bathroom tile was a knock at the door.

She woke up the next day tucked into bed with the stupid stuffed parrot tucked under her arm and no memory of how she got there. The smell of bacon frying in the kitchen made her stomach roll and she stumbled toward the bathroom in a nauseating fog of confusion. Once she finished her business and downed a half-bottle of Tylenol, she stepped into the short, narrow hallway that led to the kitchen. She detected a whiff of Hugo BOSS cologne mixing with the aroma of bacon in the air, and her heart fell to her feet. She knew that cologne. She had purchased it herself. When she heard the first whistled notes of the theme song to the “Andy Griffith Show,” Olivia’s anger boiled and she forget all about the queasiness in her stomach.