Olivia

by Donna Sturgeon

  Olivia shrugged and slid out of the booth. She didn’t want to go, but whatever.

  They rode to South in silence until Olivia had to direct him to her trailer. He laughed when he saw it in all its 1950’s glory, and he was so damn cute in the faint, green glow of the dashboard lights with his perfect, white teeth and crinkles around his eyes, that Olivia couldn’t stop herself before she leaned into him, puckering with her eyes closed.

  Her lips hit skin, and it took her a full second to realize she was kissing his palm instead of his lips. Her eyes opened as he gently pushed her away from his face, back to her side of the squad car.

  “Olivia,” Clete said softly when she pouted. “Can I give you some advice?”

  “No.”

  “For one thing, you are a very intriguing person. I really enjoyed spending time with you tonight, and that’s rare for me. I’ve seen it all and heard it all, but you, Olivia, are like a breath of fresh air.”

  Her heart melted and she puckered up again as she lunged for him, but he squished her lips together. “Please stop trying to kiss me, and listen.”

  “Ok,” she muttered as best she could because he was still pinching her lips.

  “Do me a favor and stop cursing so much in idle conversation. It makes you sound foolish, and you’re not a fool.”

  Olivia frowned. She didn’t curse. What the fuck was he talking about?

  “And never draw conclusions about someone or something until you’ve investigated every lead and combed through every shred of relevant evidence at your disposal.” He let go of her lips then reached across her to open the door. “Good night, Olivia. It was a pleasure meeting you.”

  Stunned and speechless, Olivia got out of the car. What the hell was he blabbering about evidence and investigations? Did he think she was a cop or something? What an idiot.

  And to think she was about to kiss him!

  Chapter Eight

  Besides being an awesome husband and an amazing father, Kenny Waters was also a mechanical genius, and he proved it yet again when Olivia’s engine cranked to life the next morning in the Riverwalk Park parking lot.

  “I love you!” Olivia threw herself into his arms and peppered his face with kisses. “You’re my hero, Kenny.”

  “Aw, it was nothin,” he said with a blush.

  Olivia extracted herself from Kenny and reached for her wallet. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Just pay me back for the new battery and it’s all good.” Kenny wiped his hands on a dirty rag and tucked it into his back pocket. “Nice move with the cop last night, by the way.”

  “What move?” Olivia asked.

  She leaned on her car to write a check and then stopped. What was she doing? She had no money in her account. Shit, she couldn’t give Kenny a check that would bounce. He wasn’t the power company… or Walmart…

  “Hey, Kenny, how about I take you to Walmart? Buy you some diapers or somethin’.”

  Kenny was always buying diapers. He had three kids in them now that he had his new baby—another girl, of course. That made four little girls in all. The oldest had recently turned five. She was the only one out of diapers. The three-year-old was being stubborn.

  “You can wait and pay me on Friday,” Kenny said.

  “You’re a peach.” She tossed the checkbook into her purse. “Now, tell me what move you’re talking about.”

  In a voice that sounded exactly like her, Kenny pantomimed a perfect reenactment of Olivia’s moon job of the dickwad officer. “Kiss… my… ass!”

  “You fucker.” She swatted at him as he belly-laughed and dodged away from her jabs. “How did you hear about that?”

  “I saw it first hand, Sweetheart. Nice.”

  She jabbed at him again. “Why didn’t you come to my rescue?”

  “You were holdin’ your own pretty good. You didn’t need my help. At least not until that po-ass pulled out his stick.”

  “Look at this shit.” She pulled up her pant leg to show Kenny the deep, purple bruise the size of a softball behind her knee. “It freakin’ hurt, you asshole.”

  “Holy fuck, Liv!” Kenny knelt for a better look. “He did that to you?”

  “Way to have my back, Kenny G.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry, girl.”

  “Ah, it’s ok.” She let the pant leg slide back down. “I’ve done worse to myself just getting the mail. I bruise easy.”

  “You gotta sue that mo-fo. That’s some police bru-tal-a-tee,” he said with a swagger, pulling out his inner gangsta.

  Olivia made a face. “No way. My luck the judge would throw my ass in jail for biting him. Just forget about it.”

  “If that other cop hadn’t swooped down like Batman, I’d’a been all over that punk. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah,” Olivia agreed, but then a synapse in her brain misfired. “Wait… Huh?”

  “That cop that came outta nowhere! It’s like he had some kinda Spidey-sense for a damsel in distress or somethin’. One minute it’s just you and the one asshole cop and the next that other one comes screamin’ in all pissed and just unloads on that guy. I wish I’d ‘a had a camera. I’d ‘a put that shit on YouTube.”

  “He beat him up?” Olivia asked in disbelief.

  “Fuck, yeah,” Kenny said. “He got you in the car and just POW! Laid that other cop flat out on his ass. It was the shit, man. Coolest thing I ever seen in my life.”

  “He was a pretty cool guy.” Olivia blushed as she thought about Clete in the dashboard lights.

  “Awww.” Kenny laughed. “You got that face, Liver! You’re crushin’ on the po-po.”

  “I am not,” Olivia denied.

  But she was. Kinda. Just a little. Batman was hot.

  “Don’t turn all stalker on him like you always do.” Kenny laughed again as Olivia’s blush deepened.

  Olivia didn’t turn stalker on Officer Cletus Wade, but she did drive by his house a few times. It’s not like she had anything better to do anyway. Clete lived in a little bungalow with faded, clapboard siding and a fenced-in backyard. Judging from the piles of lumber and stacks of shingles in the side yard, he was doing some work on it, but she couldn’t tell what. She always drove by at night, in the cover of darkness, and street lights were few and far between in South. It was like the city wanted dark and scary corners for murders and rapists to hide out in, and they kept making more by claiming “budget issues” and “lack of funds” for not replacing burned out street lights. But Olivia knew it was bullshit. There was always enough money to replace the burned out lights in Northside.

  On a typical night, after Olivia drove past Clete’s house six or seven times, she would park a block away and then walk back to his house to peek in the windows. Usually he was up, watching crappy television (never porn) or surfing the internet. (Again, amazingly, never porn. What was this guy, Eugene’s long-lost brother or something?) Sometimes by the time she got there he was asleep on the sofa. He was cute when he slept, kinda sprawled out all over the place like a little kid. From what she could tell he wasn’t a drooler, but he did occasionally get a sleep-woody. And it was impressive. No teeny, weenie weenie on him. Thank goodness.

  She never caught sight of his daughter, Allison, but she did peek in the little girl’s bedroom window. It was a cute room, done in a retro-styling of bright oranges and reds, and every single wall was covered in posters and magazine pictures of some boy band. Magic Marker hearts were drawn around the face of one of the boys. Olivia smiled at that. She had a similar crush on a celebrity once, but she outgrew it. Allie would too someday. And then she would enter the real world of manipulation and disappointment and jealousy and rage, and she would know what it truly meant to be in love.

  One night during her surveillance, Clete wasn’t home and Olivia knew he wouldn’t be home for a long time. He, along with every other cop in Juliette, was busy running up and down the highway, wrangling pigs that had escaped an overturned stock trailer. Olivia, along with every other criminal in Juliet
te, was feeling a little brazen from the lack of supervision. She scaled the six-foot privacy fence into Clete’s backyard and landed smack in the middle of his landscaping, on top of a little, purple-leafed tree.

  She broke a bunch of branches on her way down and cursed like crazy as she tried to stick them back on, but her efforts were futile. The branches kept falling back off. She gave up with a sigh and tossed them on the ground. No point in trying to hide them. The damage was pretty obvious.

  A quick look around the backyard was all it took for Olivia to fall in love. Not with Clete. With his yard. It was a-ma-zing! Everything was brand-new and shiny. The patio was made up of little bricks that looked like aged cobblestones, and it had built-in benches and planters, and a place to grill on a shiny, new, stainless-steel Weber. The grill was so big Clete could roast a hog on that thing and still have room for a few slabs of ribs. There was a pond and a waterfall, and little bushes and trees that looked young and freshly-planted, and landscape lights. They weren’t turned on, but Olivia could imagine they were probably really cool when they were lit.

  Olivia had seen landscaping like this before, but only on TV, or in Northside. Never in South. Grass didn’t even want to live in South. It refused to grow in most people’s yards. Same with everything green, except dandelions. That’s why all the old ladies just stuck fake flowers in their whiskey barrels. Plastic blooms didn’t have the luxury of dying.

  Olivia wandered around a bit, touching and sniffing flowers and stuff, and worked her way over to one of the chaise lounge chairs. Feeling a little like Goldilocks, she looked at the comfy chair and debated stretching out and resting for a bit, and almost did, but a sudden flash of movement in her peripheral her made her scream.

  She thought for certain it was Clete sneaking up to cuff her and haul her ass to jail for B&E, but when she turned around it wasn’t Clete’s breath blowing hot and damp across her face.

  It was a horse!

  Ok, it wasn’t a horse, but it was a fucking huge dog, and its dog tag was a shellacked pack of Juicy Fruit gum.

  Juicy Fruit had the potential to be a killer. He was massive. His teeth were massive. His paws were massive. His head was massive. Everything about the dog was massive. His massive jaws looked like they could open up wide enough to take her head off in one tasty bite. His cojones were the size of bowling balls. They put Chester’s to shame.

  The horse-dog stood there, drooling a little, and looked at Olivia with sad, saggy eyes. His ears were pointy and perky and seemed to move as he listened to her breathe, but his face was a mask of disinterest. It was extremely unsettling. When he licked his chops, Olivia about shit her drawers.

  “Hey there, puppy,” Olivia whispered out as slow and as sweet as she possibly could as she cautiously inched away from him. “Good doggy.”

  She backed across the yard one tiny footstep at a time, angling toward a gate she hadn’t noticed when she had first scaled the fence. Juicy Fruit cocked his head and watched her retreat, but made no move to follow her.

  “Good puppy.” She exhaled as the space between them increased and her confidence grew. She took a few more steps backward. “What a pretty puppy.”

  She was four feet from the gate and closing in on it. Juicy Fruit sat and watched her, his head cocked in doggy, confused interest, undecided if he wanted to follow or stay put… until her foot landed on something squishy that let out a raspy squeak!

  Juicy Fruit charged with a rumbling growl.

  As soon as her foot let off the rubber porcupine, Juicy Fruit was on the squeaky toy like a cannibal on fresh meat. Olivia screamed like a little girl and hauled ass to the gate.

  Panicked to the point of hysteria, Olivia fumbled and struggled with the latch, and little-girl screamed some more. When Juicy Fruit came lumbering toward her with the squeaky toy clamped in his massive jaws, she abandoned the gate and scaled the fence in one giant leap, landing face-first in a barberry bush on the other side. She sprung to her feet and ran like the wind, screaming in terror with arms waving, right past her car, all the way to the safety of her trailer.

  From that point on, whenever she staked out Clete’s house, she stayed in her car.

  * * *

  Now, Olivia may or may not have been stalking Clete, but Mitch had definitely started stalking Olivia. Everywhere she went, he was there. She’d catch him chewing on fries in the McDonald’s dining room when she was sitting in the drive-thru waiting for her Big Mac, or she’d look out the window and see him getting gas while she was milking the Dr. Pepper fountain at the Get ‘n Go, or he’d be molesting produce while she was debating Fruity or Cocoa Pebbles at the Sack ‘n Save. Every time she stopped at a red light, she’d look over and there he’d be, picking his nose in the lane next to hers, or she’d feel him breathing down her neck while he stood behind her in line at the liquor store.

  It was really starting to piss her off. She couldn’t turn around or push open a door without seeing his ugly mug. And he couldn’t just be there, sharing space with her. Oh no, not Mitch. He had to talk to her as well. He would say hello and ask her how she was doing, and she would tell him where to go, or what to suck, or how to die, and then she would storm off without her toothpaste or vanilla milkshake or annual gynecological appointment, and would have to run her stupid errands all over again later.

  Finally, one day, when she was pushing an empty shopping cart around the end cap display of the feminine hygiene aisle of the new Walgreens she didn’t even know South had, and came face-to-face with Mitch as he perused flavored condoms, she lost it.

  “Quit stalking me you… stalker!”

  She charged. Before he knew what was coming, she ran full-speed down the aisle and rammed her shopping cart into him, hitting him square in the family jewels. He squealed like a stuck pig as the neon cherry condoms went flying out of his hand.

  “I’ve got connections in the Juliette PD, I’ll have you know!”

  She rammed her cart at him again. He stopped it with one hand as he bent over and clutched his crotch with the other.

  “I’m not stalking you.” He choked on the words and his face flushed cherry-red as he dry-heaved. His misery made Olivia smile. “I’ll leave. I swear! Just give me a second here to find my dick. Aw…fuck, Liv! I think you broke it off!”

  “Aw, gee. I’m sorry.” She laughed, not feeling the least bit sorry, and scooped his condoms up off the floor. “Guess you won’t be needing these anymore. Sucks for your girlfriend.”

  He coughed and took a few deep breaths as he straightened up a bit, his face still pained and his hand still protecting. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “Planning to pick up some poor, unsuspecting bimbo at the bar?”

  “No. I was just looking around. When the hell did South get a Walgreens anyways?” Mitch took another deep breath and stood a little straighter yet. “I swear it wasn’t here yesterday.”

  “Oh, I know! It totally wasn’t here yesterday! It’s like they dropped it in by helicopter or something!”

  “Guess we’re moving up in the world, huh? Next thing you know South’ll get their own hardware store.”

  “Menards would never let that happen. They own the city council.”

  “I thought Walmart did.” Mitch winced again as he rubbed his hand over Mr. Happy and tugged at the seam of his jeans, trying to make more room for the swelling. “Fuck, Liv. Next time give a guy a little warning, eh?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it this time. She stepped closer to him. “But you’ve gotta stop following me around. You’re creeping me out here.”

  “I’m not following you. You’re following me.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I know you are but what am I?” she mocked and stuck out her tongue.

  Mitch let out a little laugh. “God, I miss you, Liv.”

  “I miss you, too,” she admitted.

>   They both looked at each other for a long minute. He moved closer to her. She moved closer to him. Her heartbeat sped up like it always used to do whenever he was near, and her tummy flipped over. The borders of her vision grew foggy and time slowed down as they took another step toward each other. The lights of the Walgreens dimmed, and the director cued a disco ball to slowly descend from the ceiling. It started to spin. They stepped closer yet.

  As Peaches and Herb started to sing “Reunited,” Olivia reached for Mitch, who was dressed in his 70’s disco finest, his butterfly collar looking like it could take flight in the lazy tango of the yellow and red lights.

  He took her hand. “I’m so sorry for everything, my love.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” she whispered, and slipped into his arms.

  As his powerful hand fanned across her back, his lips met hers. The fire that had been missing from her life returned in a blaze. She melted from the heat of his lips, her heart soaring in her chest as it sang out its love for him in beats of wanting. All the while Peaches and Herb kept singing away.

  “I love you, Liv,” he whispered before kissing her again.

  That’s how Olivia’s reunion with Mitch played out in her mind. In reality, they looked at each other, Olivia’s tummy flipped, and she pinned him against the condom display, kissing him as ruthlessly and recklessly as she had in the middle of the road almost exactly one year earlier. They kissed and moaned and writhed against each other until Mitch winced from the hot blood rushing into his still-sensitive area.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he suggested when he finally came up for air.

  Olivia grabbed a handful of condom boxes from the rack behind him and they made a break for the exit.

  They barely made it to the parking lot before Olivia had the package open and barely got the Buick’s back door closed before Mr. Happy was strawberry-flavored and Olivia was diving hormone-crazed and legs spread into the next chapter of her life with Mitch.