Chapter Two
Olivia
Friday
“Asshole,” I muttered angrily as the box nearly toppled from my fingers under the weight of him slamming the door. Not once, but twice my new neighbor had avoided helping me to move in, which was just insane. He was a tall, broad, very muscular man who was undoubtedly very capable of lifting these boxes for me.
It seemed that chivalry really was dead – or in New York anyway. Men from Pennsylvania would have jumped to help me; it was one of the great things about them. With a smile, too. They would have been all “Oh, anything for you, Olivia.”
Damn, I missed the friendly faces of home.
No, I shook my head rapidly. No, I couldn’t get sucked into that negative spin of thinking. This move to New York City was a good thing for us – it was an adventure, what we needed. Just because one man was an asshole, it didn’t mean that they all were. That man didn’t represent everyone; he probably didn’t even represent himself. There was a chance that I’d caught him on a bad day and that everything would be better the next time I saw him…or maybe I was just being naïve.
“What did you say, Mommy?” Meghan giggled, which instantly brought a blush to my face. I was supposed to be curbing the swearing now that Meghan was three years old and talking much more fluently, but every so often one slipped through. “Hole?”
“Nothing, sweetheart,” I garbled quickly. “Come on, let’s get in. It’s getting late now. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting hungry.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah! Hungry!” she declared gleefully. “I want food!”
Luckily, that was enough to distract her, but in her excitement she started leaping and jumping over all the unpacked boxes, giving me visions of them all falling on top of her. She was at that delightfully tiring age where she was into everything, on everything, and constantly in danger. It was absolutely exhausting.
“Get down from there, please,” I wearily demanded as I flopped down onto the mattress situated in the middle of the room. That was all we needed for tonight; I could continue with the unpacking tomorrow. “You can’t eat if you’re under all those boxes.”
“Do we have to take the van back now?” she asked as she climbed down in a surprisingly graceful way. “Can’t we keep it?”
“Unfortunately not.” I wrapped her up in my arms as she slammed into me for a hug. “I rented it, so we have to take it back.”
“Will we get a van of our own?”
I smiled to myself at the idea of owning a car in New York. Everyone knew that it was pointless in the city, that it was quicker to use public transportation, but I’d miss it.
Still, without a car parked right outside my door, I would get a lot more walking done which could only be a good thing. We were always being told to get more exercise, weren’t we? And I knew about that more than most being a physical therapist. Walking was great for maintaining health and getting over injuries… But knowing that information and actually acting on it were two very different things.
“I don’t know,” I said as I ran my fingers through Meghan’s hair. “We’ll see, we might not need one here. It’s different here to what we’re used to.”
“It’s louder,” she commented quietly.
“You’ll get used to that.” I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “Now, do you want to go and get changed before we go out and get something to eat? We can take a look around our brand new home, can’t we? It’s going to take some getting used to, living in the city, isn’t it?”
She scurried off my lap and raced towards the one box I’d actually bothered to open which was filled with her clothes, and she tugged on a blue dress. I rubbed the sweat from my forehead and forced myself into a standing position. I was too tired to even think about getting changed myself, so it didn’t matter that I had no idea where my clothes were. This slightly sticky red tee shirt and jeans would have to do. Luckily, I didn’t have any nice neighbors that I wanted to impress!
We bypassed the elevator and walked down the stairs to leave the apartment, giving me the chance to see more of the apartment block. It wasn’t amazing, which was fair enough since it didn’t exactly cost me a fortune to live there, but it would do.
The money would’ve got me something so much better at home, but home was where I needed to escape. I had to get away from the stifling atmosphere Pennsylvania gave me, which was how I ended up here.
“Do other people live behind all those doors?” Meghan asked me.
“Yes, they do.” I gripped onto her hand tighter, wondering about the lives of the people I now shared a block with. Were any of them like me, just trying to start again? Would any of them become my friends? I wasn’t sure New York City was a place to make new acquaintances easily. I’d heard that it was very unfriendly, which so far had been proven to me.
“That’s a lot of people.” She spun around as if she was dancing as she spoke and I felt jealous of her innocence. She was just floating through this experience, enjoying it for what it was; she didn’t share any of the burdens that I felt. I wished I could be that way, just for a moment.
“Well, there are a lot of people here.” More people than I was truly prepared for, I admitted to myself. I knew it was going to be a massive difference. But I wasn’t prepared for it to be so overwhelming. I hoped things would feel easier with time. I hoped that soon enough the city would feel like home.
“Nice people?”
“Sure,” I answered, before realizing that maybe I shouldn’t just give her the easy answer. She was going to have to be a bit more careful living here. “Well, at least, I think so.”
“So, some of them are horrible?” Meghan looked up at me curiously.
“Maybe.” I shook my head trying to clear the fog from my brain. Why did I start this conversation? I was much too tired for it. “I don’t know; I guess we won’t know until we meet them.”
“Will we meet all of them? Everyone in the building? Will they become our friends?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer that because a couple passed us on the stairs, so we flattened our backs against the wall. The woman said nothing as she brushed past us, but the man gave us a little grunt. It wasn’t exactly a thank you, but it was the politest thing that had happened to me since getting to the city. I hoped that wasn’t a sign of how my life was going to be.
“Okay, come on.” As we got to the front door of the building, I held tightly onto Meghan and led her outside. “Let’s go and find the nearest takeout place.”
As we walked down the street, Meghan kept waving to people on the street. A lot of them gave her a curious look, some of them ignored her, and only a couple of people actually waved back, which really got me thinking. A lot of behaviors that were okay in Pennsylvania were not going to be alright here. I would definitely have to sit down with Meghan at some point and explain that to her.
“What do you want?” I asked, trying to distract her from the throngs of crowds surrounding us. “Anything in particular that you’re hungry for?”
“Fries!” she answered without hesitation. Usually, I wouldn’t be too happy about that because of the lack of nutritional value, but today I was too tired to fight. Meghan suffered from many food allergies, she couldn’t eat a lot as it was. If she wanted fries, then tonight she could have them. Tomorrow, when we were all moved in, would be a brand new day.
“Okay, sure. Fries it is.”
***
“We didn’t explore much, Mommy,” Meghan whined as we stepped back into our apartment. “I wanted to see more.”
“I know you did, sweetie,” I answered wearily. “But there isn’t time today. We’ve only just moved in, and it’s late. There will be plenty more time for that, anyway. We’re going to be here forever, remember.”
She pouted out her bottom lip and folded her arms across her chest. I knew the only way to rectify that was by unwrapping the food, which was exactly what I did. As she sniffed the air and the smell pleased her, I could see Meghan regretfully coming around.
“Now, we do have a problem, though,” I told her with my head cocked to one side. “Where are we going to sit to eat? We have no chairs, no tables?”
“On the bed,” she giggled as a reply. “We can eat on the bed.”
“That mattress on the floor?” I acted as if I was horrified by the suggestion. “Are you serious? That’s absolutely insane.”
“No, look.” She hopped onto the mattress and sat with her legs folded. “It’ll be easy; we can balance the plates on our laps.”
“We don’t have any plates,” I replied with a chuckle. “But I suppose we could sit with the cartons on our laps.”
“Yeah, see!”
I sat down with her and pulled out all the food. We were making a mess, but it really didn’t matter. Everywhere was a mess! I didn’t want to deal with any of it until I slept. Luckily, I had the whole weekend to settle in before starting my brand new job.
New job.
When I thought about my new job, it sent a terrified shiver racing up and down my spine. I was excited, it would be a good opportunity for me, but I had those “first day of school” nerves. What if no one liked me? What if the patients hated me? What if I failed miserably?
“Are you looking forward to meeting Drea?” I asked Meghan to distract myself. The babysitter that I’d chosen for Meghan came highly recommended, but I was still a little anxious about handing over the responsibility of raising my child. It wasn’t a decision that I’d taken lightly, but it was the best thing for my daughter and me. I needed a career – we needed money to survive our new lives. It was the only way.
“Yes, I am.” Meghan nodded enthusiastically. “She will play games with me, won’t she?”
“Yes, she will.” I smiled reassuringly at my little girl. “I’m sure you two will have lots of fun. You’ll play games, do crafts, go out for the day… It’ll be great.”
“I can’t wait.”
Once Meghan had finished eating, she started yawning and rubbing her eyes, so I scooped all the garbage off the mattress and lay her down to sleep. She flopped backward as the exhaustion got her, which was exactly how I felt myself. It’d been a very long day, and it would be again tomorrow as we got all set up.
“We will get your bedroom set up tomorrow, I promise you, but we’ll be okay here tonight, won’t we?” I asked Meghan, but I was speaking more to myself than her. She was almost fast asleep, snoring lightly. “Yeah, I think we’ll be okay here.”
The question referred to everything, really. I wanted us to be alright here in New York, not just tonight. I wanted all of this just to work out. The first step of that would, of course, be making this apartment a home for us both. Once that was done, I hoped everything else would simply fall into place. The job, the babysitter, everything…