Olivia Young

––––––––

WHEN IT WAS ALL SAID and done, being let out of the pantry by a half-dressed Caroline was one of the more embarrassing things Olivia could remember happening to her in her life. She was pretty sure it would be one of the most embarrassing things that would happen to her, period. She could hardly look Caroline in the eyes even though her old friend was making all kinds of jokes to help lighten the mood. Abel, too. He seemed to think it was a total riot that both of their best friends had been in their apartment while they were getting it on not once, but twice in the last couple of days. It helped her to feel a little bit more at ease, but it didn't get her all of the way there.

The problem was more than hearing Caroline and Abel having sex that had her rattled. It was what she had felt in the laundry room with Nick. She had finally told him, sober this time, what she thought was wrong with him. It hadn't been everything, maybe, but it had been a pretty comprehensive list. She had thought it would make her feel vindicated, perhaps make her dislike him even more. But then Caroline and Abel had come barreling into the apartment, and there had been nothing to do but listen. It was unavoidable. She had been angry at first when Nick's hand had first touched down on her lips and she hadn't yet known why. Something funny had happened as they continued listening, though. Her entire body had gone hot, but it had felt like there were chills going up and down her body at the same time. It felt like the air itself was pressing down upon her skin, and when she accidentally pressed her body against his, she couldn't make herself move away. She could smell his woodsy scent filling her nostrils, and it made her mouth fill with saliva. For a second, one crazy second, she wanted him. In her mind, she could see herself winding one hand down to his belt buckle, undoing it without her eyes ever leaving his. She imagined the way his tongue would taste inside of his mouth and the sensation was so strong, so visceral, that she almost went through with the insane fantasy. It was the absence of noise, the sound of them stopping, that broke the weird fantasy. When that happened, she pushed back from him, and moments later they were out of the pantry and back into something resembling normal.

“Hey, lady, you recover yet?”

“Hm? Sorry?”

Caroline laughed and plopped down on the couch next to Olivia. She slung one arm around her shoulder and laughed, the kind of laughter that sounded absolutely genuine. It was a happy that couldn't be faked, and Olivia smiled widely.

“You,” Caroline laughed again, “you look a little bit shell-shocked. You think you’re going to recover from this?”

"I expect so. It'll just take a little while. I don't know why I'm so surprised. You guys are clearly perfect for each other. I'm really so, so happy for you. I can't believe you're getting married."

Olivia grabbed Caroline's hand and looked appreciatively at the ring. She had to hand it to him, Abel really knew how to pick out a piece of jewelry. Her heart leaped in her chest, and she squeezed Caroline's hand tightly. Her best friend getting married. Her best friend moving forward in her life in one of the biggest ways a person could move forward and Olivia couldn't have been more pleased. At the same time, she felt an unexpected sadness coming over her. For all of the time she had spent growing her career, she was still alone. It was more than not being at the point where she was going to get married. She didn't even have somebody to go on a date with.

“Come on, ladies! Stop dragging your feet. We’ve got some celebrating to do!”

************              *

“THIS PLACE IS TOO MUCH, buddy. Even for you. Don’t you think you’ve outdone yourself a little bit?”

“Are you shitting me?”

“No, Nick,” Abel laughed heartily, “I’m not shitting you. This place is expensive. There’s no way I’m letting you pay for the whole thing.”

“I don’t really see how you’re going to stop me. Besides, you can just think of it as an early wedding gift. One of a lot of gifts, if we’re laying all of our cards out on the table.”

Abel laughed and took Caroline by the hand. Nick took the liberty of refilling everyone's glass with fresh wine. Olivia couldn't do anything but sit there watching them all and feel stunned. Sitting and having dinner like this, across from her best friend, her best friend's new fiance, and Nick Oswald was just about the last thing on the planet she had expected to be spending her evening doing. After the way things had gone when she'd tried to apologize to him at his apartment complex, she had felt like if she never saw him again it would be too soon. Now she was struggling. She didn't have any idea what she was supposed to think. When Caroline had let them out of the closet, Nick had immediately started making jokes to lighten the mood. When Caroline had told them that they were going to get married, Nick had looked like he was just as happy as the soon-to-be newlyweds. That had been the first point of confusion for Olivia. She had a difficult time believing that Nick could be more gracious that she could, but it looked like he was having a much easier time coping with the prospect of this major change than she was. That was a point in his favor. It had been his idea that they all go out and celebrate, too, which had been another point. The drive over had been terrifying, though, with Nick driving way too fast and bragging about his super-expensive car. Point against him. Now, he was making a big show of paying for the entire meal for the four of them and Olivia couldn't decide which side that point belonged to at all. Was he really just doing it to be a good friend or was he trying to show off how rich he was? Only twenty-four hours earlier and Olivia would have been certain It was the former. Twenty-four hours ago she would have been positive that everything he did was for show, that all of it was to feed the largest ego ever known to exist in man. But that man wasn't the same guy who apologized, the way he'd done in the pantry.

“Oh my God!” Caroline shrieked, jolting Olivia out of her thoughtful absence.

“What?” Olivia asked quickly, looking around to see what was wrong.

“This is so sweet! I can’t believe this! Nick, did you have something to do with this?”

“Me?” he asked nonchalantly, shrugging his shoulders and tipping a wink at the server who had just appeared at their table with a very large and lavish-looking bottle of champagne, “Don’t know what would have given you that idea.”

“Seriously, bro,” Abel grinned, taking Caroline’s hand in his own and kissing it with a gentleness that made Olivia’s insides ache, “you don’t need to do all of this. This is nuts.”

“I do, though,” Nick answered quietly, the jocularity gone from his face now and replaced with a surprising amount of sincerity, “I mean it. It’s important.”

“But you know we don’t need this.”

"I know. It's selfish, I guess. I need it." Nick fumbled with his glass of champagne, looking into the bubbles instead of the people he was having dinner with. Abel and Caroline leaned into each other, their bodies full of a slow, easy kind of love, lazy smiles trained on Nick. Olivia kept herself stock still, and she was pretty sure she was doing a passable job of looking as easy going as the two of them. On the inside, though, she was anything but calm. Every nerve ending in her body felt like it was alive for the first time. She could see why Nick was so successful, why he had so easily catapulted his business to such shocking success. She didn't know whether or not he meant what he was saying, but she believed him. She didn't want to believe him. It didn't fit her idea of who he was, who she was. She believed him anyway, and it made her feel like she had to get out of her chair and get away as quickly as possible.

“Selfish?” she asked softly, not even knowing that she was going to talk ahead of time, “What makes you say that?”

“You think it’s stupid, right?” he asked quickly, defensively.

“No! No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just an odd choice of word.”

“I know. I just mean that I have a lot of shit, okay? I have a lot of money, a lot of cars.”

“Yeah,” Olivia said, rolling her eyes, “we know.”

"Right, and I don't have a whole hell of a lot to do with it. I don't have any family, and I don't have any steady chicks. I might as well spend it on my best friend. Especially when he's got such happy news. If you don't go all out at a time like that, when else are you supposed to do it? Besides. It gives me an excuse to buy a really big bottle of champagne. So can I get a fucking toast, or what?"

Abel and Caroline laughed and raised their glasses willingly. Olivia only lifted her own after a raise of the eyebrow and a slight frown coming from Caroline. She understood where the look came from. It was rude to ignore a toast like that, especially when the guy making it was so ready to lavish nice things on his dining companions. She was just back to being annoyed all over again. He had really had her going for a minute. He had managed to make her second-guess her opinion of him, only to bring it all back to the same old bullshit wavelength he was always on. He was still just an over-glorified frat boy, too old for the things he still so routinely got away with, and that was all he was ever going to be. What pissed her off the most was that she couldn’t quite manage to make herself believe it, not all of the way. All she wanted at this point was go home.

“Hey, lady,” Caroline broke in again, “since we’re giving toasts and all. Making speeches, and such.”

“Oh, no,” Olivia laughed, holding up both hands in a warding-off gesture, “don’t look at me. I can’t follow that lovely little diatribe.”

“Diatribe,” Nick said dryly, “that’s nice. Appreciate the sentiment.”

"Caroline," Olivia went on pointedly, feeling good in a petty sort of way for so childishly ignoring him, "you know I love you. Obviously, I love you more than just about anyone in the world. I'm just not good at impromptu speeches. Believe me; you're going to want to wait to get a speech from whomever you choose to be your maid of honor."

“Perfect!”

“Wait, what?” Olivia asked laughed again, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, seriously? You’re going to make me spell it out for you?”

“Um, no, but you might have to. I guess I’ve had a little bit too much wine. I still don’t get what you’re saying.”

"I'm asking you to be my maid of honor, you big dummy. I guess I should have gotten you one of those cards or something, maybe a box that releases a butterfly when you open it. I can still do that, later on, but for now, it just felt like the right time. Please say the answer is yes?"

"Of course! Of course, it's yes, you goober! Oh my God!"

Caroline and Olivia both jumped up from the table at the same time, almost knocking their glasses over as they did so. Olivia could see Nick rolling his eyes at Abel out of the corner of her eye, but at that moment even that couldn't get to her. All of her jealousy was, for the time being, gone and she was just happy for her friends. She could feel hot tears welling up in her eyes, and although she would have rather dropped dead then cry in front of Nick Oswald, she didn't know whether or not she was going to have control over it for that much longer.

“Hey, mister?”

"Jeremy! Please, don't! We can't interrupt these nice people’s dinner. Come on; it's so far past your bedtime right now."

Olivia whirled around, her arms still intertwined with Caroline's, and saw a little boy. He looked like he was somewhere between the ages of ten and twelve. Olivia hadn't spent enough time around kids to be able to tell for sure. What she did know was that he was too young to be out so late and that the four of them were probably a little bit too intoxicated to be talking to children. His had been the first voice. The second had been the kid's mother. She had hurried up behind him and put her hands on her boy's shoulders. Her face was a mask of apology, and she was clearly embarrassed by her son's interruption. The little boy didn't take any notice of that emotion nor much of anything else, either. He had eyes for one thing and one thing only: Nick Oswald.

“Come on, Mom!” he said loudly, shrugging his shoulder to get her clinging hand off of him, “You gotta let me talk to him! You gotta!”

“Please, Jeremy! These nice people are trying to have a dinner. It looks like they might be celebrating something, too. We don’t want to get in the way of that.”

“No,” Nick said genially, smiling at both boy and mother, “it’s totally fine. What can I do for you, my fine gentleman?”

“Um, I was wondering if you would give me your autograph, maybe. Would ya? Is that okay?”

“Autograph? Why would you want his autograph? He’s not a movie star or anything. I think you have him confused with somebody else.”

“Olivia!”

Caroline hissed her name, and Olivia looked around sheepishly. God, she really must have had a little too much wine if she was at the point where she was just saying whatever popped into her head. To make matters worse, she appeared to be the only one at the table who didn't understand why this boy, Jeremy, would want to get Nick's autograph in the first place.

“Sorry,” she said defensively, wishing that everyone would just take their eyes off of her, “I just thought–”

“You must not know who you’re eating with, lady,” Jeremy said in a voice hilariously pompous for a kid his age, “this guy is a big deal.”

“No,” Nick laughed, “I’m not a big deal.”

“Are too! You’ve been on the cover of a bunch of magazines. You’re like, the best engineer there is. Some guy even said you were like the Albert Einstein of engineering.”

“Wow, you read those articles?” Nick said kindly, his eyes thoroughly impressed, “I didn’t think anyone read those.”

"Sure they do! You're the best, and someday I want to be just like you. I'm totally going to be an engineer when I grow up, you know? And I want to be even close to how you are."

"I'll tell you what. I've got an idea if it's okay with your mom."

“It will be!” the boy shouted loudly enough for the tables around them to turn and look at them curiously, “You just bet!”

"How about when you get a little bit older, you come do an internship with my company. If you really like it, you can send in an application after you get out of school. Maybe you can even do an internship with us in school, too. Like I said, if it's alright with your mom."

“No way! Is it? Is it okay, Mom? You better say yes or I’m going to freak out!”

Jeremy was now hopping from one foot to the other, and all of the adults were laughing. His mother had lost the nervy look she'd been wearing when she'd first approached the table with her son and was now smiling with the best of them. Again, Olivia was struck by Nick's uncanny ability to put people at ease. All he had to do was say a couple of words and people thought he was their best friend. It was an excellent sales tactic. That was what the cynical part of her was thinking. The other part of her was tingling all over again. He was being sort of amazing with the kid. It would have been easy for a guy as swanky as Nick to blow him off and tell him to get lost, but he'd never even blinked when their serious moment had been interrupted. It was easy to see that Nick had made this kid's night. Hell, he had probably made his whole year. He handed Jeremy's mom his card, much to Olivia's surprise. She'd thought the whole bit about having him do an internship was just one of those things people said to make a good impression. Apparently, she had been wrong.

"Here's my number. This line goes straight to my secretary so you won't have to go through all of the BS with the receptionist and everything. Just tell her you're calling about Jeremy. When she gives me that message, I'll know what it's about and we'll get everything set up. Only if you want, okay. If not, he's still welcome to come to us about an internship when he's older."

“Thank you so much, Mr. Oswald! And thank you for giving him the autograph. You have no idea how much this means to him. I’m so grateful that you’ve been so kind.”

“Don’t mention it. Now get to sleep, Jeremy. You’ve got to make sure you get good rest if you’re going to be ready to come and work with me.”

"Yes, sir!"

Jeremy gave Nick a salute and then finally allowed his mom to lead him away from the table. The minute he was gone, Caroline and Abel started laughing, and Nick smiled. It was the perfect ending to the strange night they'd had, and Caroline was going on and on about how good of a story it would make for when they told people about the night they got engaged. Olivia did her best to keep herself a part of the conversation, but her mind kept wandering. No matter what she did to try and stop it, she kept thinking about the pantry. She could still smell him, she realized with dismay. She could smell his musk, could feel how close their bodies had been. He hadn't actually put his hands on her, but she imagined she could feel that, too. When she shut her eyes, she could imagine all kinds of things, and none of them were the kinds of things you were supposed to think of in polite company. She wanted to kick herself for letting those thoughts in at all, and it was driving her crazy that she couldn't stop it, but she couldn't. She kept thinking about what it would have been like if instead of pushing him away, she had used her hands to do something different, something along the lines of what, say, Caroline and Abel had been getting up to. She was having very, very dirty thoughts and if it didn't stop, it was going to make it a lot harder to hate him the way she had been. And she did hate him. At least she thought she did.