It’s hard to put into words exactly how much I love Lauren Hart’s writing.
She writes in first person and you get this sense that you are going through whatever the character is going through. Plus, she captures details unlike anyone else I’ve ever read.
Our drinks arrive. I take a sip of mine.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, looking down at the table. “You’re just one of my favorite writers and I had no idea that you are…her and she is you.”
“It’s okay,” she says, putting her hand on mine. “It’s really sweet actually. I love hearing from my readers and I had no idea that my long lost daughter was one of them.”
She looks away for a moment and then back at me.
I can see that she’s trying to push away a tear. She bites her lower lip and picks up the drink that was just delivered.
“I want to make a toast,” she says. “I have been looking for you for a very long time, Olive. I’ve loved you ever since I found out that I was pregnant and I never stopped. Everyone told me that you were dead but I never stopped believing.”
Tears are flowing down her face freely now.
She doesn’t try to hide them or to stop them.
“I want to drink to you and to thank you for coming here and finding me,” she says. I start to sob along with her.
“Thank you,” I mumble through my tears, wiping off my cheeks. “Thank you for welcoming me and for accepting me.”
We clink our glasses.
The glass feels cool against my hot lips and the cocktail tastes like heaven.
“Wow, this is amazing,” I say, pulling it away from my mouth.
“I know, they make the best drinks here. And the food is to die for as well,” Josephine says. “What did you get?”
“The refrescado,” I say.
I look down at the menu and read the ingredients: blanco tequila, agave, lime and lemon juice, and cucumber water.
“It’s like cucumber water but so much more,” I add. “It’s so refreshing.”
“Mine’s really good, too.”
She gives it to me to try and I take a few sips.
Suddenly, we are no longer strangers. We are almost like long lost friends or, dare I say, family.
Over lunch, she tells me all about how she always loved to read and has wanted to be a writer ever since she was a little girl.
After majoring in English at USC, she went on to get a graduate degree there along with a PhD but after graduation she knew for sure that she didn’t want to work in education.
She started out like many others, writing short stories and submitting them to literary magazines.
“The ability to handle rejection is one of those things you really need to develop as a writer if you want to pursue traditional publishing,” she says when our fried avocado bites arrive. “When I wrote my first novel, a young adult paranormal romance about a werewolf, I sent it out to about forty different agents. Most didn’t write back but the few that did sent back form rejection letters.”
“Wow, I had no idea that it was so brutal,” I say.
“It’s kind of like acting. You just have to brace yourself for rejection and not take it personally. Otherwise, it’s never going to work out.”
“So, what happened then?” I ask.
“I wrote more. I wrote a sci-fi dystopian novel with my husband. We alternated writing different chapters. While he worked, I traveled to Texas to a writers’ conference to pitch the book to agents.”
“And that worked?” I ask her eagerly.
“I was scared shitless to present the pitch. I’m not much of a public speaker. But I did it and they both asked me to send it to them. Well, I was really excited and that’s what I planned on doing. The conference itself had a lot of different seminars so I attended as many as I could. One of the ones that I went to at the very end was this one that Deanna Roy ran.
“It was all about romance writing and how she quit her job as a teacher because she was able to make about thirty grand a year as an independent author. Well, I had no knowledge about this whole field up until that point. I mean, I knew that romance existed but I’d never read any modern indie romance books.”
She stops talking to dunk the last avocado bite into their magnificent spicy sauce.
“What happened then?” I ask.
“I took lots of notes and when I went home, I got to work. I started researching as much as I could about the industry. I read a lot of books, I realized that I could totally write this kind of book, and I dove right in. There were a lot of other things involved in the process as well. I had to learn a lot about marketing and advertising and things like that, but it started to work. When I got started, I thought just like that author. I was like, if I could just make thirty grand a year doing what I love, that would be enough to keep going.”
“And now…you have that huge house!” I say.
I immediately want to take it back because of how crude it comes out but she laughs.
“My husband quit his job and he does a lot of the financial parts of the business. But yes, after a lot of books and a lot of hard work, we were able to buy that amazing house.”
“Your parents must be so proud,” I say.
“I don’t talk to them. I haven’t talked to them for many years after your birth and I only briefly reconnected with my mother before her death. They aren’t part of my life and I will never take a penny from them. My siblings can have all of that.”
17
Olive
When I realize that I’m a bad friend…
Josephine and I talk a lot about school and how much we both enjoy learning.
I tell her about majoring in mathematics and how much I enjoyed the subject in school but not once I got out into the real world.
I tell her the truth about everything except for what happened over the last year of my life.
I don’t know her well and I don’t trust myself to dump everything that has happened with Nicholas and Owen into her lap. I’m afraid the drama would make her run away from me.
Instead, I just tell her the basics.
I tell her about Owen and his past. I tell her that I dated someone named Nicholas but we broke up. I tell her that my ex-boyfriend’s private investigator found her information and I wanted to come here and take a little break from work and find her.
When she asks how long I’m staying, I say at least for a few more weeks.
The word ‘ex-boyfriend’ still hurts when I say it out loud.
It feels like he has barely been my boyfriend and now he’s already an ex that I’m supposed to get over. When I share this with Josephine, she says that it’s important to take some time to focus on myself, otherwise my baggage from my old relationship will leak over into my new one.
A new relationship? Wow, what a novel idea.
Of course, it’s possible, and likely, but somehow even trying to imagine myself with someone who is not Nicholas makes me feel strange.
The following day, I FaceTime with Sydney and I tell her everything.
When I take a brief pause, she asks why she had cancelled our plans to meet up the next day.
“Apparently, she had to work,” I say. “She has a tight deadline to get her new novel written and she didn’t want to meet up for lunch in the middle of her writing days. She said that she raced through that book in order to get it done as quickly as possible and meet up with me.”
“I’m really happy for you,” Sydney says, turning her face away from the camera. I give her a second but then move my face a little bit closer.
What is going on here? Is she….upset?
“Syd, are you okay?” I ask.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she whispers and her voice cracks in the middle.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m so stupid. I can’t stop this.”
When she looks up at me, I see tears streaming down her face.
“Oh my God, what’s g
oing on?” I demand to know.
“James and I broke up,” she says quickly, jumping over each word. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to bring this up. You’re in such a good mood with everything that has happened—”
“Forget all that. Tell me what’s going on,” I insist, feeling like the most egocentric idiot.
How could I just go on like that?
How could I not notice that something was wrong?
Here she is going through something traumatic and I’m just going on about how wonderful my life is. I want to be able to rewind our whole conversation and start again.
Sydney doesn’t reply and just continues to nudge me to keep talking. But I refuse.
“Please, you have to tell me. Everything is fine with me. I’ve already talked enough.”
“Okay,” she says, taking a deep breath.
And then she takes another one.
And another one.
“I caught him cheating on me,” she says, shaking her head.
I narrow my eyes.
“I know, I know, it’s so stupid. I mean, he can’t cheat on me, right? We’ve been together with other people, so what am I complaining about?”
“That’s not what I think,” I say sternly. “And you know that.”
She shrugs. “That’s what I think. That’s what he thinks.”
I wait for her to explain. It takes a bit more coaxing but eventually she does.
“I came home early from work one day and found him in bed with his ex-girlfriend.”
“But doesn’t she live in…Hawaii?”
“She lives in California. He moved to Hawaii after they broke up. When I looked through his phone later, I discovered that they’d started messaging each other long before we even met. They were friendly at first, but soon it got sexual. She had a fiancé. He kept wanting her to break things off with him. But she didn’t. She married him. But they continued texting and talking and sending each other videos and naked pictures.”
“I’m so, so sorry,” I whisper, wishing more than anything that I was right there with her so that I could take her into my arms.
“It’s so stupid. I’m so stupid. This has been going on this whole time and I didn’t see it.”
“He was probably very good at hiding it.”
“He was,” she admits. “All of her conversations and videos were in a special folder. He only showed it to me after we argued for hours and I basically told him I was leaving.”
“So, she flew out there to be with him?” I ask, trying to figure out the details of the story.
Sydney nods her head and buries it in her hands again.
For a moment, all I see is an extreme close up of her forehead. Her sobs reverberate around the whole living room.
“She was in New York on business so she came to visit him in our apartment. Our bed. When I finally got him to admit the truth, he said that she has been there the whole week. Staying with him during the days while I was at work.”
“What an asshole,” I say under my breath.
“You’ve got that right.”
“So…what happened?”
“What do you think? I yelled. She put her clothes on and left. We yelled some more. Then we talked. Then I cried. Then I told him I never wanted to see him again.”
I guess that’s about it. That’s pretty much the anatomy of a breakup.
She lets out a big sigh and buries her head in her hands.
“Will you stay with me here for a while?” Sydney asks.
“Yes, we can talk for as long as you want.”
“No, I don’t want to talk. Let’s do something else. How about watch Netflix?”
“Sure. What do you have in mind?”
“Something dark and painful. Something we’ve seen before.”
I know what she’s going to suggest even before she says it. I put it on my TV and she starts it up on hers. When the opening credits start and sync up, we both start to laugh a little.
“There’s nothing like watching someone else go through hell when things get shitty in your life, huh?” I ask.
She nods and we start to watch the first episode.
18
Olive
When I see him again…
I haven't seen Owen in almost ten days. I rented the Airbnb for just one week initially but then extended it to another two.
I still haven’t made up my mind as to what to do about him.
Mainly, I haven’t wanted to deal with him at all so I’ve just been ignoring his calls.
Today is no different.
I don’t want to see him, and I don’t want to talk about anything that happened that night.
I don’t know how far he would’ve taken it if I hadn’t physically stopped him, but he was certainly not taking no for an answer.
I shake my head as anger starts to well up within me thinking back to that night.
How dare he? Who does he think he is? What right did he think he had to do anything like that?
I pull up a little bit down the street and walk over.
The front door is probably locked and I have no intention of using it in any case so I jump the fence in the back.
There are no windows in the garage so I have no way of knowing if his car is there or not.
I did peek through the windows of the living room when I walked by but didn’t see anyone there.
His room faces the neighbor’s yard so there’s no real way of knowing if he’s home or not.
Instead of being drenched in sweat and with my heart pounding in my chest, I feel calm and collected.
My hands aren’t even shaking.
When I reach the sliding door of my old bedroom, I let out a sigh of relief.
Yes! The door is open.
I left it this way but there was a big possibility that he would’ve locked it afterward.
It slides open smoothly and I walk onto the carpet.
I tried to pack everything that was important to me when I took off, but I forgot this.
It’s a small silver necklace of a tree of life that Nicholas gave me. I looked around for it everywhere and then remembered that I had placed it inside the vanity of the master bathroom. It wasn’t with the rest of my jewelry and I couldn’t let it stay here much longer.
I don’t know what Owen’s plans are but I needed to get this back. It’s not worth much but Nicholas bought it for me just because and I love it.
I tiptoe to the bathroom and open the mirror, holding my breath.
I find it right where I left it and I drop it into my pocket.
“What are you doing here?” His voice startles me.
I flip around with my back against the faucet.
“I forgot something,” I say, standing upright and trying to look as big as possible.
The room is big for a bathroom, but it feels small.
The more seconds tick by the more the walls feel like they are closing in around me.
“Where have you been?” Owen asks.
His voice is deep but not slurred.
He looks tired and worn out, like he hasn’t slept for days.
His skin is sallow, gray even. There are big black circles under his eyes.
“I rented another place,” I say. “I needed some space.”
“Are you ever coming back?”
“No,” I say. I’m tempted to add, “I don’t think so,” but I don’t.
I don’t want to give him anymore hope than absolutely necessary.
I am not coming back here and I’m not going to live with him.
“Are you back with Nicholas?” he asks.
I furrow my brow. Where is this coming from?
“No, of course not. Nicholas is gone. I have no idea where he is.”
“Yeah, right,” he says under his breath.
I don’t care that he doesn’t believe me. I’m tired of having this fight over and over again.
“So, what have you been doing there at your new place?” Owen asks, leaning ag
ainst the doorframe, physically creating a barrier between me and the exit.
“I don’t know. Hiking, swimming, reading. What have you been doing?” I leave the topic of my mother out on purpose.
“Drinking,” he says, laughing.
“Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”
“No, of course not. But who says that living is such a good idea?”
I shake my head.
I don’t know what else I can do for him.
I try to get past him but he stops me.
He puts his arm out, blocking the door.
“I’m leaving,” I say, pushing past him.
“I’m sorry, okay!” he yells after me. “I’m sorry I did that, but I love you.”
I don’t turn around.
He wants me to engage and that’s the last thing I want.
I head down the long hallway and turn left where it splits off. The kitchen is to the right and the front door is to the left.
“I love you!” Owen yells after me. “Why won’t you believe me?”
“I do believe you but I don’t love you back,” I say, grabbing the door handle.
As soon as I turn it, Owen pounces over and pushes it shut.
We are face-to-face.
We’re so close I can feel his breath on me.
“You just don’t want to move in because you’re going to see Nicholas again, huh?” he asks.
His eyes are wild and out of control.
“I don’t know why you’re obsessed with him. We’re not together anymore.”
“You miss him,” Owen says in an accusatory tone.
“Of course, I miss him. I thought we would be together forever. So what? Life happens, right?”
I take a few steps away from him into the living room, hoping that he will follow me there.
That way, once he is distracted, I can slip out of the front door.
“Nicholas is a murderer,” Owen says, pacing around the living room.
Suddenly, it occurs to me that he is not just drunk. He is also intoxicated on something else.
Something not at all mellow like pot, something potent.
Tell me to Fight Page 7
