Chapter Five
Zack
Tuesday
I lifted my head from the couch where I was laying down, lazily vegging out, and furrowed my eyebrows in confusion when a knock sounded on my door. I wasn’t expecting anyone today, and it wasn’t like I had a lot of visitors coming my way, so I was perturbed as to who it might be. I racked my brain, but no one immediately came to mind.
“Who’s there?” I called out sleepily as I pushed myself into a standing position. If it was a cold caller, I wasn’t going to answer. I was not in the mood for small talk right about now…not that I ever was.
“It’s me, knob head!” Lark’s voice rang through my apartment, making me sigh with relief. I didn’t mind the idea of seeing my friend. “Who else is it going to be? Some beautiful blonde who’s desperate for your body?”
I laughed mirthlessly at that ridiculous idea and went to greet him. “I thought you had some competition in Las Vegas to get to. What the hell are you doing here, bothering me at eleven a.m.?”
“Yeah.” He pushed his way inside and grinned up at me. “I do, but my flight doesn’t leave until this afternoon, so I thought I’d come and visit my best buddy before I go.”
“Oh God, what do you want?” I asked him warily. It wasn’t like Lark to want anything from me, but I had a feeling that today was different.
“No, nothing, God what do you think of me?” He flopped onto my couch where I’d been laying only moments before and changed the channel, breaking the chain of murder documentaries that I’d inadvertently ended up watching all morning long. Not that I was really taking them in, they were just running in the background while I thought. “No, I just came to see you…although, you can make me a coffee. How have things been?”
I flicked the coffeepot on and turned to face him. “Well, I had physio yesterday, and I have a new therapist.”
“Oh yeah? Rebecca finally went to have her baby?” It was crazy how much he knew about me.
“Yes, and you’ll never guess who it is.” I poured the coffee granules into a mug and waited for the boiling to stop. “Olivia, the woman from across the hall.”
“No way!” He spun around to stare at me in shock. “Are you serious? The hottie who moved in the other day?”
“The very same.” I paused for a second while I recalled the time I spent with Olivia in her office. She had been professional the entire time, but I could acutely tell that she felt a little awkward around me. I completely understood because of my obnoxious behavior around her, but now, I wanted it to end. I didn’t want her to think I was truly like that. I needed to make her see the real me…whomever that was these days. “Weird, right?”
“Does that mean you’re going to have to be all nice to her out in the hallway now?” Lark was gushing now like we were two schoolgirls gossiping. “So she’ll treat you nice in the hospital?”
I shrugged and tried to blow the suggestion off as I handed him a drink. Ever since leaving the Navy Seals, I’d tried to keep a low profile, and that had become even more of a necessity in recent times. I wasn’t just keeping people at arm’s length because I wasn’t myself anymore – the other reason felt much more prominent. I didn’t want to start being overly nice to some neighbor just because I felt like I had to. Who knew where that would lead?
“Oh, God.” Lark rolled his eyes as he seemed to see right into my mind. “Are you thinking about your lottery win again? God, you must be the only guy in the world who isn’t flashing the cash and actually enjoying the one stroke of luck. You still live in this crap hole; you don’t really own anything nice, you don’t even use it to your advantage to help you get women.”
My defenses rose high. The wall I’d built around myself flew up and blocked Lark out. “The other day, you were giving me crap saying I need to save, now you’re saying I need to spend.”
“I was being sarcastic when I said you needed to save. Obviously, I think you need to start living your life a bit more.” That riled me up, and Lark could see it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to stop him. “You could be traveling the world, living in luxury, banging a different woman every night. A flash of the cash would get you everything you wanted. I keep telling you that. I don’t know why you won’t listen.”
“You know I don’t want that,” I told him firmly. “I’m not interested in sowing my wild oats or whatever. I just want to get better; then I actually want to settle down.”
“Oh whatever, every guy wants that,” Lark made a dismissive comment, but it didn’t bother me. I knew that was what he wanted for his life, too, despite the bravado. “Are you actually saying you’re the one person who’s different?”
“I am not getting into this with you, Lark. I’m living my life how I want to.” That wasn’t strictly true. I couldn’t exactly say that I was happy, but that didn’t help my argument right now, so I ignored it. “Come on, let’s watch this movie, something has just started playing.”
There was some old Western playing on the television that would be a good distraction. I didn’t want to get into an argument with him, especially not if he was going away for a few days. It was easier to veg out simply and to sip our coffees until he had to go.
***
Lark and I both leaped up as someone hammered on my door, proving just how into the movie we’d gotten. It was during a really tense bit, so being shaken out of it was something of a shock. We stared at one another wide-eyed as if there was going to be something horrifying on the other side of that door.
“Who’s that?” Lark demanded as my heart pounded angrily. “It’s not the physiotherapist, is it? Is she likely to come and visit you?”
“I don’t know who it is.” My pulse painfully thundered as I walked to the door, but I tried to remain blasé on the outside. I didn’t want Lark to know that I was weirdly freaked. “Could be anyone.”
“Zack!” I was shocked to find myself staring at my upstairs neighbor, Dolly. As a fashion designer in her early forties, she had that amazing quirkiness that guaranteed to cheer me up whatever my mood. Right now, she was wearing some spotty red outfit that looked like it took her forever to climb in and out of.
She held out a plate of tarts for me, which suggested that she was worried. I only ever got baked goods from her when she was stressing about something. It was a blessing and a curse all at once. “I’m having a terrible week.” Just as I suspected. “It’s awful, just awful.”
I stepped aside to invite her in. “What’s wrong, Dolly?” She clip-clopped through my home like she owned the place. Her dominating nature undoubtedly helped her to get to where she was in life: very successful!
“Urgh, it’s this new show I’m doing, the nature line…” She always said these things as if I should know what they meant. I always nodded along because I didn’t want to infuriate her in the way that her employees did, as I’d been told many times. She couldn’t tolerate stupidity, and I felt certain that not understanding fashion terms counted as that. “And, the models just aren’t cutting it. I don’t know what it is about them – they’re just so practiced, polished. I think what I want is someone new, someone, who isn’t currently in the business, but then it’s like…do I have time to train them up?”
Lark shot me a look, and I gave him a half shrug. He knew about Dolly, but he hadn’t ever actually been here for one of her famous rants. He didn’t know that the best thing to do was just listen. All she wanted was a neutral ear; she would come to her own conclusion eventually.
“You should check out Olivia, from across the hall,” he interjected, making me cringe internally. His opinion would not be taken well. “She moved in last week sometime. She’s a real natural beauty. She has a kid, too, so she’ll probably want the money.” I tried to give him a warning look, but it was too late. He was on a roll. “She’s got this long red hair and pale skin…like an English rose.”
Dolly gave me a surprisingly inquisitive look. “What do you think, Zack? Is she pretty enough to be in one of my shows?”
I pictured Olivia gracing the pages of a fashion magazine, her plump lips pouting and her wide brown eyes staring. She was definitely gorgeous enough to be a model, in my mind. “I do,” I admitted. “But she’s a physiotherapist, not a model.”
“Perfect!” Dolly happily declared while snatching the plate of tarts from me. “That’s exactly what I want, someone I can mold myself. And if she’s a physiotherapist, she must be very clever, so she’ll probably pick up on things really quickly.” She paused and mused for just a second before bulldozing on. “Yes, she sounds exactly what I want. I’m going to give these tarts to her now, sweeten the pot a bit…”
And then she was gone. Like a hurricane she blew in and out of my life, leaving me a little breathless. I often wondered what had just happened after she left.
“Thanks a lot, Lark,” I grumbled angrily at him as I shook all of that off. “I never get baked goods – that was the first time in ages. I didn’t even get to eat one of them!”
“I’m sorry,” he chuckled in a way that suggested he really wasn’t. “Dolly scares me. I panicked. I just wanted to help her.”
“Yeah, well, that’s only going to help if Olivia wants to do it. If she doesn’t, Dolly will be back here in a moment.”
Lark uncomfortably shifted where he sat. The idea of Dolly coming back pissed off at him had him trembling in his boots. It was almost laughable. “She will, though? Won’t she? Doesn’t every girl grow up with dreams of becoming a model?”
“Maybe the girls you hang out with when you’re living it up in Vegas,” I told him sarcastically. “Not every girl.”
“Well, I bet Olivia does. She just seems the type, don’t you think?”
“What on Earth are you basing that on?” I wasn’t sure why, but I felt a bit offended that he was making assumptions about her. I didn’t know her any better than he did, but I felt like I did. “When did you become an expert?”
“I dunno… She moved here alone, with her daughter, probably running away from, like, a crappy life or something.” Lark shrugged. “I don’t know; it just might be a way to make her life better, that’s all. Maybe she’ll be grateful for the opportunity.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I replied quietly. “I’m sure we’ll soon find out either way.”
Lark’s words made me curious. I couldn’t help but wonder why Olivia had all of a sudden moved to New York. It wasn’t any of my business, of course, and I knew better than anyone about wanting to keep an identity a secret. But the more of an enigma Olivia became, the more interested I felt.