Just imagine if she had been around through the Malcolm era.
Liam was a good guy. A great guy, even. And the thing was, he always had been. Though obviously a cliché that sends shivers down the spines of all single adults, our breakup had been a textbook case of “It’s not you, it’s me.” Fiona had been wrong, and so had I. Liam had always been interesting, with or without an unleashed sense of humor and the ability to make my heart question my brain. I was so glad he was my friend, and without a doubt, ending our romantic relationship had been the best thing that ever could have happened for our friendship. So why, when the guilt came to light and I was forced to consider how different life might have been if we had stayed together, did I always end up wondering if I had made a horrible mistake?
What would have happened if I had paid attention to Fiona’s criticisms earlier, when they were still loving pieces of advice—before they became parting shots meant to inflict pain? What would have happened if I had allowed myself to get caught up in the romance rather than the checkboxes with Liam rather than Malcolm?
I shook it off, as I always did when those thoughts came to mind. It wasn’t that I had those thoughts often. I didn’t. It was usually just in moments when Liam’s goodness came shining through in full force. Moments when he was there for me and no one else was. Moments when his button-up shirt was unbuttoned just low enough that I could see enough of his chest to realize what a good body he had . . . and remember what a good kisser he was . . .
“So, how’s the screenplay coming?” he asked, oblivious to the new direction my thoughts had taken me, thank goodness. I was taken aback by his abrupt change of topic, but I welcomed it.
I rolled my eyes and removed my top-layer shirt—feeling warmer all of a sudden. “What screenplay?”
“That’s what I thought.” He grabbed my hands in his. “Look, why not take some time? Lots of time. Go to Italy on Malcolm’s dime and get inspired. Pour all of your emotions about Malcolm and Fiona and whomever or whatever else into creating something you’re proud of. And then, when you’re ready, come home.”
“‘When I’m ready,’” I muttered. “Ready for what?”
“I don’t know. Ready. For whatever comes next.”
“I’m thirty-three years old, Liam.” I sniffed and attempted to focus on the warmth and security radiating from his hands into mine. “If I’m not ready by now—”
“I don’t think we should ever stop getting ready. If we’re ready for the thing that’s two, three steps down the road, what’s the point of the thing that’s supposed to come first? Just think of how many things we might end up skipping.”
The sun reflected through the window and off of his dark hair, which perfectly matched his eyes, and I noticed how the natural light brought out the hidden shades that at first glance could so naively be interpreted simply as “brown.” How many other things about him had I diminished in a similar way? Just like giving hair color a one-word name, I guess it had been easier that way.
“Should I give Malcolm another chance?”
I think the question surprised Liam nearly as much as it surprised me.
He pulled away gently, grabbed me a tissue, then turned and faced the window. “It’s not for me to say.”
“I’m asking for your opinion.” The confusion bubbling up inside of me threatened to boil over if the pressure didn’t release somewhere. “I trust you, Liam. And if you say it was a one-time thing, I believe you. If you say he still loves me, I believe you.”
Without the warmth of his hands and his eyes, my misery took on the form of a chill once again. I forced myself to disassociate the coldness and misery from Liam and instead remember the life I thought I was going to have with Malcolm. I forced myself to remember that Malcolm was the man I loved. Malcolm was the reason my heart was in shambles.
“Will you please tell me what you think?” I pleaded.
He turned and walked back to me again, and I saw that the warmth in his eyes had grown into a fire. “No, Olivia. You shouldn’t give him another chance. I don’t care if it was one night or if he had a wife and a houseful of kids you never knew about. If he’s able to let his thoughts drift away from you and to another woman for even one moment, then he doesn’t love you enough.” A touch of anger permeated every word he spoke. I understood that I was neither the source nor the recipient. “Yes, I believe he loves you, but he doesn’t love you enough. Plain and simple. You deserve someone whose love for you causes them to be a person worthy of you.”
The fire intensified as his fingers touched my cheek and he gently wiped my tears. “And then the tricky thing is going to be convincing you that you’re worthy of them,” he said so quietly that I couldn’t help but wonder if he had meant to say it aloud at all.
He seemed to be wondering the same thing. He cleared his throat and broke our eye contact. “When you find someone who loves you enough to be good enough for you . . . I think that’s the one you shouldn’t let go.”
I’d never made a habit of allowing my heart to stand in the way of my brain—the Malcolm Larcraft months aside—but in that moment, Liam captured them both. That was a difficult combo to dismiss.
“Hey, Liam,” I whispered hoarsely. “Maybe it’s time we talk about things.”
His shoulders fell and his eyes darted away from me again. “‘Things’?”
“Yeah. Things. Us things. I know we’ve avoided it like the plague for two years, but—”
He silenced me by gently grabbing my face in his hands. Our eyes locked, and he whispered, “Olivia,” as he slowly leaned his face toward mine. I closed my eyes, not realizing until that moment just how much I had missed the feel of his lips, or how desperate I was to experience the sensation again.
But he only kissed my cheek before pulling me into a gentle, platonic hug. The tears began to fall again, and I felt a shiver of disappointment and desire run down my spine even as I jumped at the opportunity to seek refuge in his comforting embrace.
“Let’s not do that,” he whispered in my ear. “I can’t be your rebound. And I know you don’t mean it that way, but . . .”
He pulled away but kept his hands on my face as he pressed his forehead against mine, looked into my eyes, and sighed. “The thing is, I do know how that feels. To know that this is the person you will be with forever. To know, I mean know, that this person prizes you above all others. And I understand what it’s like to find out you had it completely wrong. I can’t go back there, Olivia. In the past two years, somehow, against my better judgment at times, you have become my best friend. Let me hold on to that, please. I . . .” He took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I don’t think I’m strong enough to go through that again. Especially now, if I had to go through it without my best friend by my side.”
I sobbed into his shirt with my head still against his chest, and he held me. How had I ever let a little thing like him not being funny convince me that Liam Howard was not a leading man? And how had I ever let a little thing like realizing he was perfect for me compel me to do anything other than hold on to him for dear life and never let go?
I wanted to say something. I wanted to say a million things. But there were no words that could capture the confusion and the chaos of my heart.
“I need to get back to the office,” he said, and he pulled away from me just as abruptly. “Call me if you need help packing.”
“Liam . . .”
As he headed to the door, he looked back at me—so briefly—and I saw the despair in his eyes. And for the first time I realized the despair hadn’t just suddenly appeared. It had been there for two years, while I had been perfectly content seeing things as nothing more than brown.
He stopped with one foot out the door and whispered, without turning to face me, “I did tell you not to ask anything you weren’t sure you wanted to know.”
He was gone, and I was left gasping for breath, having no doubts about what I had just learned. Liam never would have cheated on me. Liam had love
d me enough to be good enough for me. And, perhaps even still, Liam never let his thoughts drift away from me to another woman. Not even for a moment.
I could never unlearn that.
February 4, 2007
“Hey, Liv! We’re running just a few minutes late, but we should be there before you even get through customs. Can’t wait to see you!”
“Okay. We’re here now. The arrivals board says you’ve landed, so we’ll wait for you at baggage claim. I’ll grab your luggage if it gets here before you do. I’m assuming you’re still using the Samsonite set your parents bought you in college? Seriously, Livi . . . can’t wait to see you.”
“Did you go to the right baggage claim? We have all your bags, I think. I like what you did with the spruced-up duct tape. I was telling Liam I’ll probably never get you to throw these suitcases away, now that they’ve proven they can survive internationally. Where are you? Hurry up! I keep looking at all of the people standing around, and none of them are you. At least, I don’t think they are! Is it possible that we haven’t seen each other in so long that I don’t even recognize you? No telling what a year in Italy does to a Boston girl. Have you started wearing designer? Oh, please say you’ve started wearing designer! Oh! There you are! Nope. Not you. Unless you’re a lesbian now. Are you a lesbian now?”
“I’m starting to worry. Liam is scaring me with all sorts of legal horror stories. What if you are being detained for smuggling something into the country illegally? Ooh! What if it’s a Fendi bag? If it’s a Fendi bag, all you have to do is somehow get a message to me, and I’ll find a way to break you out. I just happen to have a lawyer here with me. We’ve got this. In the name of Fendi!”
I was not, in fact, being detained. I was also not dressing in designer. Or a lesbian. What I was, if I were to be completely honest, was tipsier by the minute from mango margaritas. I’d almost made it out. I’d gotten off of the plane and through customs pretty quickly, but I’d gotten hung up at Señorita Taqueria, just past Gate C36 in the international terminal.
I listened to the four messages Fiona had left me, and I felt guilty. I did. But not guilty enough to make my way to baggage claim, and certainly not guilty enough to keep from ordering the third margarita before I had finished the second. I knew I should have been honest with her when she asked if it was okay if Liam came along, but what could I possibly say?
Making up with Fi had been easy, but I knew that reclaiming my friendship with Liam would present a different set of challenges. I felt lucky that he was even willing to lay eyes on me again, much less give me a ride home from the airport. So I’d decided I could just keep my mouth shut—apart from occasional well-timed apologies—and my head down, and maybe eventually he’d get used to me being there. Like when they put a new stop sign in your neighborhood. But now, knowing he was just thirty-six gates, a security checkpoint, an escalator, two moving sidewalks, and another escalator away, I didn’t know if I could go through with it.
After I had been in Venice for about six months, I’d decided it was time to move on to Rome. Why? Because I could. I had decided that if I was going to live the vagabond life, I was going to do it right. I made no real plans, and I had no real structure in my life. For the first time ever, I didn’t set an alarm each night before I went to bed. That was something I had always done, even as a writer of maudlin greeting cards—a job for which I had only to meet quotas and deadlines without the confines of structured work hours. I don’t know why I did that, but I did. But not in Italy. No, sir. I awoke when the sun peeked through the window of my little apartment, and even then I didn’t always get out of bed. I would stay there until I was forced to address my body’s needs, either for bladder relief or cappuccino, whichever came first. And then I would spend the day writing—meeting my Heartlite quota, of course, but always being struck by so much creativity and inspiration that there was plenty of time to focus on my screenplay.
And one day I’d decided it was time to go to Rome. But when I got online to make travel arrangements, I discovered that a local airline was having a weekend special on flights to Paris. I didn’t think twice. I just booked a flight. It wasn’t until I stepped off the plane at Charles de Gaulle that I remembered Fi was there, and I decided it was time to let bygones be bygones. So I casually walked into Vera Wang’s studio and interrupted Eva Longoria’s bridal-gown fitting.
Okay, that was a lie, of course. All of it. I had found myself, on more than one occasion, desperately trying to convince myself it had actually happened that way, but none of it was true—apart from the Eva Longoria part. The truth was just far too depressing.
The reality was that in Venice I’d still set an alarm each and every day, and when it went off, I would get up, take care of my body’s needs, do a little work—for Heartlite and as many freelance assignments as I could round up, but rarely the screenplay—and then quite often take a nap. The sun probably would have been peeking through the window of my apartment if I hadn’t covered it with a scarf to keep it as dark as possible. While on sabbatical in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, I went through the darkest period of my life.
I am not a person who requires many people in my life, but there in Venice I discovered that I did require Fiona Mitchell. I didn’t have her number in Paris, so I called Vera Wang’s studio. They told me they had no one by Fiona’s name working there. I knew what that meant. Fi was so desperate to avoid me that she’d told her staff if some woman with a slightly Bostonian but mostly nondescript American accent ever called, they were to tell her there was no one there by that name. That was the only explanation.
Well, I wasn’t going to put up with that. Fi and I had the bond that never fades—that of pee in our pants. She couldn’t get away from me that easily.
It was true that I was getting ready to go to Rome for a while, but only because my lease agreement in Venice was expiring and I’d found a much less expensive studio apartment in Rome. I got moved to Rome and then hopped on a flight to Paris. I certainly did not casually walk into Vera Wang’s studio. In actuality, I sat at a café across the street and spied for four hours, waiting for Fi to enter or exit. When she did neither but Eva Longoria entered through a side door, I realized she was no doubt there to meet with Fiona.
It was then that I decided the moment had come. After checking my hair and makeup (because that’s all that’s needed to make me look like I belong at Vera Wang), I crossed the street, and then I tried to casually stroll in. I got to the door and attempted to pull it open, but it wouldn’t budge. I pulled harder, determined that would do the trick. Then it turned into a scene from a Garry Marshall movie as Eva Longoria herself came to the door to assist me and pulled the door open from the inside. (Apparently I’d just needed to push, though I certainly wasn’t familiar with all the French customs.) The force of the door opening threw me smack-dab onto the floor in the showroom, where I found myself surrounded by Eva Longoria, Vera Wang, and several other confused and amused women.
None of whom were Fiona.
See, here’s the funny part: she actually didn’t work there anymore. According to Vera, Shonda Rhimes had stolen her away to work on the set of her new medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy. In Los Angeles, of all places.
“That doesn’t make any sense!” I voiced my frustration to Vera and Eva once I’d gotten up off the floor and convinced them I wasn’t a crazy lady.
“That’s what I told her,” Vera said. “It’s a much more difficult job for a lot less pay.”
“Hey, isn’t that the McDreamy show?” Eva asked. Vera and I nodded and sighed. “Well then, I don’t know anything about your friend, but I’d say it makes all the sense in the world.”
After we spent a few minutes McDaydreaming about Patrick Dempsey, Vera spoke once more. “You know, I suspected at the time that it was more about wanting to go back to LA, and now that I’ve met you, I’m pretty sure I was right.”
“Vera Wang, you are so wise,” I marveled.
I went back
to Rome and called my Los Feliz apartment to check my messages—just in case Fiona had reached out. And Liam answered.
I hung up.
What was he doing there? Ridiculous scenarios flooded my mind. Had Malcolm found out about Liam’s past with me and fired him, leading to Liam losing his apartment because he couldn’t afford it and moving into my empty place because he had a key? Or did he miss me so much that he spent all of his free time there, smelling my sweaters and listening to Alanis? Was it possible that after all that had happened and the way I had fled to Italy without another word, he was still considerate enough to water my plants?
When my phone rang minutes later, I jumped as if the device were about to attack me.
Stupid caller ID!
I had not received a single phone call the entire time I was in Italy, and I only occasionally chatted with my parents and my brother, Brandon, on Skype. I’d made sure to leave my parents’ number at the apartment for Liam in case of an emergency, and Brandon would always know how to get in touch with me. Needless to say, Liam had not reached out—for emergency or any other types of reasons.
“Hello?” I answered nervously after the third ring.
“Livi . . . It is so good to hear your voice.”
I burst into tears, and for a moment all of the wondering went away. I didn’t think about how Fiona got my number, and for a little while I didn’t think about Liam at all. We laughed, we cried, we apologized, we lamented the lost time, and we got all caught up. Fiona had, in fact, taken the Grey’s Anatomy job, at least in large part, in order to return to LA and make amends with me. She had left behind Paris, Luc Pierre, and Vera Wang. For me. She had chosen our friendship. (Also, Luc Pierre was sort of a jerk, it turned out. But still. It was for me.) There were new tenants living at the West Hollywood apartment, so she’d called Brandon to track me down. When she learned I had gone to Italy, she decided not to contact me because she knew I would choose her, just like she had chosen me. She was right. I would have. I would have run home, and she didn’t want that. She was happy that I had gone to Europe to focus on my screenplay, and she thought it was something I needed. And she would be there waiting, whenever I got home.
Plot Twist Page 6
