Olivia (6 page)

She stormed into the kitchen. “What the hell are you doing here?”

The sudden movement caused her brain to whip around in her skull, preventing her from walking in a straight line and looking as pissed off as she wanted to be. The sound of her own voice echoed through her head and she leaned against the wall. “Oh, fuck.”

“Are you ok?” Mitch rushed to her side, putting his hand on her arm to steady her, and she swung at him.

“Don’t touch me!” she screamed. Her head screamed back in protest, and she brought her hands to her temples.

“Calm down, Olivia.” He tried to take her arm again, and this time she let him. Her head hurt too bad to fight, and her stomach was back to rolling.

“Bacon.” She covered her mouth quick as she fought back the urge to spew.

“Wha—” It only took Mitch a second to comprehend her problem. He grabbed the skillet and rushed out the door, tossing it into the yard, and then opened all the windows to vent the tiny trailer. She stumbled over to the kitchen table and collapsed in the first chair she came to.

“I’m sorry, babe. Usually you’re starving after a night on the bathroom floor. I was trying to be nice and start breakfast early.”

“What time is it?”

“Around one,” he answered after a quick glance at the clock on the wall. It was one of those old-fashioned cat clocks, the one where the eyes and tail flick back and forth to count out the seconds. It came with the trailer, and Olivia got a kick out of it.

Olivia groaned and rested her head on top of her folded arms on the table. “I think I should call in sick today.”

Mitch pulled a chair up close to her and sat down. “You should. It would give us time to talk.”

“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say,” Olivia said into her arms.

“How about ‘I’m sorry’?”

“How about your words mean shit to me?” Olivia countered.

“I know.” He stroked her hair. “Sorry’s not enough. There’s no excuse for what I did. I was acting like a child blaming you for something that wasn’t your fault.”

Olivia lifted her head. “You dumped me out of bed, yelled at me, and threw glass at my face. Of course ‘sorry’ doesn’t fucking cut it.”

“Olivia, from the bottom of my heart, I never meant to do those things.” He brought his hand around to stroke her cheek with his thumb. “And it will never happen again.”

“Well, no
duh
because I’m done with you. Forever. Goodbye, Mitch.”

Olivia turned away from him and laid her head back down on her folded arms. She heard him sigh and felt him leave and she closed her eyes… just for a minute… before the ringing of a phone bolted her upright.

“Hello?” she heard Mitch answer in a low voice.

The kitchen was dark, the sky outside the curtain-less windows pitch black. A soft glow from the television flickered across the wall as Olivia rubbed her sand-filled eyes. She blinked a few times to moisten them.

“No, she’s still asleep.” There was a pause and then he said, “Of course.”

Olivia stood and her back protested. How long had she been asleep at the table?

“Yeah, sure,” Mitch continued his phone conversation. He looked up as Olivia coughed the wad of phlegm from her throat. “Oh, hang on. She’s up now.”

Mitch put his hand over the receiver and held the phone to her.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Sam. I called him earlier and told him you were sick. He’s calling to check on you.”

Olivia shuffled to Mitch and took the phone from him.

“Hey, Sam,” she croaked.

“You really sick?” Sam asked.

“Yeah.”

“Brown bottle flu?”

“No,” Olivia lied.

“You coming back tomorrow or what?”

“Yeah.”

Sam hung up.

Olivia returned the receiver to the cradle and collapsed onto the sofa next to Mitch. He put an arm around her and she rested her head on his chest.

Mitch scrolled through the listings guide with the remote. “What do you want to watch?”

“I don’t care.” Olivia sighed. “Whatever you want to watch.”

And, so, Olivia and Mitch began again where they’d left off before. Had they known better, they would have left well enough alone.

Chapter Three

“I don’t understand how you can use all this crap every morning,” Olivia said as she rooted around in Izzie’s makeup drawer. Olivia had her own fair share of make-up, most of which she’d purchased on a whim and had never opened, let alone used, but Izzie was better stocked than the cosmetics aisle at Walgreens.

“We can’t all be natural beauties like you,” Izzie said from behind Olivia. She rustled through a plastic shopping bag for her freshly purchased EPT test.  

Olivia pulled a neon-pink eyelash curler out of the drawer and leaned into the mirror to try it out. Her eye kept blinking, making it impossible to capture her lashes in the foam-cushioned jaws. Seven tries later, she found success. She got so excited she damn near ripped her eyelid off. “Ouchie, pete, Iz! This thing oughta be registered as a deadly weapon.”

Izzie laughed. “For you, maybe.”

“Don’t laugh while you’re peeing. You’ll miss the stick.” Olivia looked through the mirror, back at Izzie who was sitting on the toilet with her hand between her legs. “And hurry it up. I’m hungry.”

“Quit watching me. You’re giving me stage fright.”

“You’re the one who wanted me in here in the first place,” Olivia grumbled but shifted her eyes back to her own reflection. She only needed two tries for the other eye. She danced a little victory boogie, and then applied some mascara to her freshly-curled lashes. “Mitch and I are back together.”

“Why?” Izzie sighed in disgust.

“What do you mean why?” Olivia turned to face Izzie. “Because we’re in love.”

“No, you’re not.” Izzie finished her business, capped the stick and set it on the counter. “Three minutes or five?”

Olivia checked the instructions. “Five.”

Izzie set the timer for ten and washed her hands.

“What makes you say we’re not in love?” Olivia asked.

“Oh, I believe you’re in love with him.” Izzie reached around Olivia for a hand towel. “But he’s not in love with you. If he was, he’d never’ve done what he did.”

“He was upset about being fired,” Olivia offered as an excuse.

“That’s bullshit, Liv, and you know it.” Izzie folded the towel into perfect thirds and tucked it onto the towel bar, fussing until it hung even.

“No, it’s not.”

“Is he working now?” Izzie asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Of course, he’s working! He’s not a bum. He got a sales job at New Holland.”

Izzie laughed. “He’s selling tractors?”

“What’s so funny about selling tractors?”

“Nothing.” Izzie said with a snort, failing to control her laughter.

“Oh gee, so sorry my man’s not a big-time hotshot like yours.” Olivia huffed. “And what exactly does John do again?”

Izzie turned her back on Olivia and picked up a brush to perfect her already perfect hair. “He works for the city.”

“He picks up trash, Izzie. You can sugar coat it as much as you want, but your husband’s a trash man, and we both work in a factory. Of all of us, Mitch is the only one with potential for getting out of South.”

Izzie opened her mouth to argue, but closed it quickly. Instead of coming to terms with the fact that her man was as big a nobody as every other Souther out there, Izzie stuck her head in the sand and turned her attention back to her hair. “I’m thinking of getting highlights again.”

“You should,” Olivia said, letting the argument drop. If there ever came a day when Olivia and Izzie really told each other what was on their mind, they would never speak to each other again. Olivia knew that wasn’t how it was supposed to be between best friends, but it worked for them. She wasn’t about to rock the boat.

“That new girl, Renee, over at Sally’s shop does a two-color highlight for thirty dollars extra,” Izzie said. “I’m thinking about going to her.”

“That would be cool,” Olivia agreed.

Olivia wandered over to the bathtub and stepped inside. Izzie had stuck pink, no-slip duck decals to the floor of the tub and had a net full of bath toys attached to the wall with suction cups. There was a bottle of Johnson and Johnson’s Tear-Free Baby Shampoo in the caddy and Ivory Soap in the soap dish. In the kitchen, Izzie always kept a fresh supply of animal crackers and applesauce and had a drawer full of bendy and twisty straws. She owned every Dr. Seuss book ever written and had a collection of Disney Princess coloring books tucked into wicker baskets behind the sofa. Izzie was born ready to be a mommy. All she needed was the baby.

When the timer went off, Izzie froze. Olivia slowly sat down in the bathtub and stretched out. It was their sixth month of locking themselves in the bathroom, and Olivia knew from experience that even though the buzzer had buzzed and it was five full minutes after it was ok to look according to the directions, Izzie would still need a little extra time before she dared to peek at the stick. When a person wants something bad enough, sometimes it feels like jinxing it to rush. Izzie picked up a bottle of lotion, and Olivia tipped her head back against the rim of the tub.

“You know that new girl in shipping and receiving? Yvette?” Izzie asked through the mirror.

“No.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“I don’t.”

“Short, little, cute blonde with the bubble-butt. She started last week on third shift.”

“I have no clue who you’re talking about,” Olivia said.

“Yeah, you do. Anyways, I set her up with George. They have a date tonight.” Izzie smiled. “The second I met her I knew she was perfect for him.”

Olivia laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Olivia said. Izzie’s matchmaking skills were horrid at best, but Olivia wasn’t about to tell her how far off the mark she was with this one.

“You just watch. He’s going to take one look at her and fall madly in love. And you’re gonna be wishing you would’ve taken your shot with George when you had your chance.”

“I never had a chance with George.”

“Yeah, you did.”

Olivia looked up at her with confusion. “When? I’ve been throwing myself at him since the day we met him. He never took me up on the offer.”

“Last summer… the night of the championship game…”

Now Olivia was even more confused. She remembered that night like it was yesterday. Izzie’s John played first baseman for the city employees’ baseball team in Juliette’s Men’s Senior League. They had made it all the way to the finals before being knocked out in the last inning by a line drive to third by Evan Willis, a ringer for the pricks of Young and Sons Accounting and Financial Planning. The entire team had gone to Kitty’s to drown their sorrow in Budweiser, and Olivia had helped George bartend. She had stayed late like she always did and they played rock-paper-scissors to see which one of them would get stuck cleaning the men’s restroom. She lost.

“What exactly was my ‘chance’ that I missed out on?” Olivia asked.

“You were carrying that tray of drinks and Chucky bumped into you and you did that little pirouette-spin thing and juggled the tray and saved it from toppling over without even spilling a drop and George said you were a keeper.”

“
That
was my chance?”

“Yeah.” Izzie nodded. “And you blew it.”

“Are you serious?” Olivia laughed.

“Dead serious. It’s not what he said; it’s the look in his eyes when he said it.”

“Oh, ok.” Olivia rolled her eyes.

“Fine. Don’t believe me. It doesn’t matter anyways. He’s going to be in love with Yvette by midnight tonight.”

“I’ll bet you twenty bucks they go out once and that’s it,” Olivia offered halfheartedly. She was still trying to figure out exactly what Izzie was talking about. What look in George’s eyes? He was gay. And she wasn’t speculating. He’d said so himself.
Liv, I’m gay
. Those three little words that he’d said without looking at her had spoken volumes. And she hadn’t even been trying to kiss him at the time. So, if he was gay, and Olivia was sure he was, then what the hell could Izzie have possibly seen in his eyes that night? Admiration, maybe?

“I’ll take that bet,” Izzie agreed. “Better be prepared to pay up. This is one match I’m feeling pretty damn good about.”

“Where are we eating tonight?” Olivia asked to change the subject. As she said the words, her stomach growled. The acoustics of the tiled walls of the tub amplified the sound until her tummy rumbled like a hungry bear’s.

“Applebee’s,” Izzie answered with another musical laugh. The girls always followed up their monthly ritual in the bathroom with a dinner date, making sure to pick a place where they could either celebrate with something chocolate and sinful or drown Izzie’s sorrows in margaritas.

“Oh.” Olivia pouted in disappointment. “I was hoping for Mexican tonight. Can we go to Tomas Juan’s instead?”

“Wherever. Doesn’t matter to me.”

“Mitch hates Mexican food so I have to sneak it in whenever I can. He doesn’t even like Taco Bell.”

“Fine. We’ll go to Tomas,” Izzie agreed.

“You could get that chicken tostada thing you like.”

“Yeah.”

“You like their nachos, too.”

“Yep.”

“Or if you don’t want Mexican they have deli sandwiches.”

“Liv!” Izzie turned to face Olivia. “Enough! I said we’ll go to Tomas. Shut up already.”

“Geesh. Sorry.” Olivia slid further down in the tub. Or at least she tried to. Her butt got stuck on one of the no-slip ducks. She more or less just kinda folded into a pretzel.

Izzie tilted her head and crossed her arms over her chest. “That looks comfortable.”

“Oh, it is.”

It wasn’t.

Izzie rolled her eyes and picked the EPT stick up off the counter. She looked at the results, paused for a moment, and then said, “Carla wants to meet up with us. I better go call her and tell her we changed restaurants.”

Izzie tossed the stick into the trash and did a quick double-check of her lip gloss then headed out of the bathroom. Olivia stayed put for a few more minutes, and then unfolded herself and followed Izzie out.