“Yeah,” she laughed. “Only the best, ya know?” She teased tersely.
“What’s wrong?” I went to her, reaching out for her hand. “You don’t like it? We can live wherever.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “It’s the right amount of space it just doesn’t feel like home yet. Not even to me. I never stay here.” She was hugging her arms around herself but she lazily took my hand. “We should go get your stuff,” she said. “If you have any decorating ideas now would be the right time.”
“Where does feel like home. I want you to be as happy as possible and if there’s somewhere else you’d rather be then let’s go there.” I shook her arm, drawing her eyes to mine.
“No, I think this is the best space,” she said seriously. “It’s not the main house. It’s not small. It’s not hot and filled with sad memories like the treehouse.” She just still didn’t seem sold on it. “Really I just wish we could live somewhere else. Somewhere new. Somewhere that didn’t make it feel like we were playing house.”
“We will.” I pulled her over to the bed. “When we graduate and get out of here we can live in our own place with no one next to us. This just makes the most sense for now. We won’t be here that long. Maybe we can even just move to Palo Alto after we graduate and spend the summer setting up our new place. How does that sound?”
“It sounds nice,” she whined, leaning into me like she always did when she was sad.
“It does. Now, are you going to be okay with this until we can get the hell out of here? Because I can think of a few ways we can make this place feel more like our home.” I looked around at all the shiny, fancy surfaces.
“It’s fine,” she said. She was annoyed with me but playfully so.
“Aww,” I said, cradling her face. “Do you want to punch my arm? That might make you feel better. I can take it.” I presented my arm to her and closed my eyes like I was bracing for the hit.
Instead of a punch though I felt her lips graze my skin and then kiss it.
“That hit me way harder than a punch.”
She grinned and I put my arm around her.
“You better watch out,” she teased, eyes glossy with love.
“Oh, I watch you every chance I get.” I stood up, and took her with me.
The room was nice, the whole place was great. I knew what she meant though. It wasn’t ours. We could do our best to make it that way though. “Let’s go. I’ve got clothes and crap we need to pack and that wall will be perfect for my Veronica Mars poster.”
“Oh boy,” she sighed, eyes wide. “Soooo excited for that,” she lied. Olivia’s walls in her room were pretty plain. She had odd framed photographs that gave very little away, a large intense mirror, and a painting or two but not much more. Not that I noticed anyway. No posters. Nothing pop culture. It was different than the rest of the house but only in a subtle way. The treehouse was different. There was more on the walls up there. I still didn’t know what it all meant.
“Yep, you marry me, you marry my crap too,” I said, laughing.
“If you like it, it’s not crap,” she said. “But please tell me it’s a big print of Kristen Bell because…” She stopped talking and just implied.
“Yep, it’s the movie poster. HUGE print of Kristen Bell’s face”
I caught her drift. At least that was one celebrity we had in common.
“So you like that?” She asked. “Just huge pictures of faces?”
“No, I like all sorts of art. I’ve never had any money to get what I want. I’ve always dreamed of being able to deck out a house with awesome art though.”
“We can buy things,” she said. “My parents won’t mind and my nom will probably think it’s sweet. If you want to,” she said. “Just know they will probably come over and snoop when we’re not around. More my mother than my father. He’s avoiding me. I can tell.”
“I’d rather wait till we have our own place and then do whatever we want with it.” I walked to the front of the guest house and opened the door, immediately smelling the chlorine from the pool.
“Do you want to talk to him or is that a good idea? I think I had that one interaction with him maybe so I didn’t know if him being gone was normal or not.”
“He probably just doesn’t know how to be,” she said. “My mom knows she wants to know me. All he knows is he wants me to be a certain way and I’m not. He’ll get over it probably but talking to him wouldn’t help anything, you saw. With him he’d rather ignore the things he doesn’t like. Like my mom used to I guess...”
“Well, I’m sorry that he’s avoiding you and not being a real dad. It sucks when parents just don’t get it. They should love us and that’s it but I guess it’s that whole: they’re human and humans suck sometimes.”
“I don’t need him to baby me,” she said coldly. “I might’ve needed or wanted that once but I don’t need him now. I don’t need him to approve. I don’t need him to pretend to want to know me. I didn’t need that from my mom either but if it’s true I want it and I love it. It’s hard to explain. I sort of lost my thirst for them I guess. Young too. I lost it young. They screwed me up and I lost my thirst for that want of normalcy, those things other people claim you’re supposed to have. I gave up on all of that. Shut down with them. Told myself it didn’t matter. It’s like a long time ago I sort of swore them off in my head and told myself I was just biding my time. And I stuck with that and now we’re here and it’s strange.”
She walked us back into the house and I followed her out to the car.
“It is strange but I’m still sorry that he wasn’t there for you in the way you needed. Not to mention your mother. At least she’s trying where he isn’t.”
“I don’t want people to have to try for me.”
She handed me the keys and I got in, waiting for her to get settled before starting the car and taking off.
“Our parents might be even crazier than we are but at least we have us.”
“You’re everything,” she said, pulling sunglasses from her glove and putting them on. “Not an: at least,” she bit. I guess the topic was touchy.
That nerve scared me a little so I tried to get as far away from touching it as possible. My ability to stick my foot in it was probably going to be famous by the time we were married old ladies.
I didn’t talk for the rest of the drive, letting her think and process. It was best to do that sometimes. I just sang along with the radio softly and kept my hand on her knee.
Dad’s truck wasn’t out front when I pulled in. My car was, of course. Apparently he’d managed to get it back to the house. I didn’t really need it though. Unless I needed to drive myself from practice. I walked through the empty side of the garage and unlocked the door, going in.
“I guess we better load up both cars if I can find my keys.” I stopped at the hall closet and grabbed a few bags and my big suitcase. She followed me, pulling the rolling suitcase behind her.
We started with the closet, packing up clothes, leaving others behind. There were some things that I never wore anymore. Wearing Olivia’s things was nice and made me feel even more like hers but I was glad that I would be able to wear my own clothes. We weren’t exactly the same sizes.
When it came to it I was a little sad. This was my home and had been for three years. It was safe and I knew it. I didn’t know Olivia’s house and I still felt like a guest. Not Olivia’s guest, she made me feel like I belonged, but her parents. Her mom had been welcoming and gracious beyond belief. It was just how it was. Home is where the heart is but home is also the familiar places that you’ve spent your little moments in.
I tossed my journal into a bag and put my little jewelry case on top of it. I didn’t have much else to bring other than my computer and a few pieces for the walls. I chose the little print of the ocean that my mom had given me one year for my birthday. She’d found it in a junk store.
I stopped, looking at it, my heart aching. She would probably hate herself when she foun
d out about Ben. I was going to have to tell her myself when Dad and I went to visit.
“Are you bringing this?” Olivia asked.
I turned to see her holding up a photo album from when I was a kid. I’d forgotten about it. I usually did until I came upon it for some reason.
“Yeah, why not. There are some pictures of me when I was little in there if you want to look.”
She flipped it open and began to go through it. I watched her smile. She flipped the pages of the album slowly, looking at each photo carefully. Happier times. I held in a sigh and moved around the room, making sure I didn’t need anything else.
“I should be helping, sorry,” she said, closing the book. “Easy to get distracted in here. What else?” I could see her fighting that urge in her, trying not to snoop.
“No, you keep doing what you’re doing. The rest is really just me trying to figure out if I want to take anything else. I’ll be right back.”
I left her on the bed to look through the rest of the house. Dad could keep my spare car key in case he needed it again for some reason. He was probably just out running errands or something but I wished he was here. It was the first time I’d done that in years.
The living room was neat and tidy. He probably didn’t spend much time in here. The shed was his place. This was always Mom’s domain. Since she wasn’t here either it just sat empty, waiting for her to come home.
I looked through the movies in the entertainment center, pulling out the few I wanted to take. Just things that I wanted Olivia to watch with me. I knew she probably hadn’t seen them. We hadn’t ever spoken much about our tastes in media but I knew a little from seeing her collections.
There wasn’t much else to gather so I headed for the bathroom, grabbing my travel cosmetics case from under the sink and putting all my makeup and toiletries in it. I left my toothbrush since I already had one at Olivia’s. Maybe it would remind Dad that I wasn’t really gone from his life if he saw it there every morning and night.
When I got back into my bedroom Olivia was looking in a box she’d pulled from under the bed. “I guess you found my contraband.” I laughed and set the case next to the other bags we’d packed.
I took the box from her and peered inside. “Yep, I ordered all of those online and hid them down there just in case.” They were all movies with lesbian or bi characters in them. Not many, just ten or so. “Have you seen any of them?”
“Umm,” she seemed intrigued. “Yes, but= only once except for these two.”
“Should we bring them?
“Yeah,” she said. But she said it like a weight had been lifted.
“What? You seem surprised.” I sat down on the bed next to her, sitting the box between us. “Did you think I’d mind you looking through my stuff?”
“No,” she sighed. “I wouldn’t have looked if I thought you’d get mad. I just didn’t think you’d have these,” she said. “Anything like this I guess… When’d you buy them?”
“Oh, so you didn’t know my queer street cred was so high,” I chuckled and thumbed through the movies. “A few years ago I guess. I get one every once in awhile when I have spare money.”
“Is one your favorite?” She asked. “Which was your first?”
“Well, the barista borrowed my favorite and never returned it, which was Gia and my first was Fried Green Tomatoes.”
“I love Gia…” She said dazedly.
“Did I break your brain?” I felt her forehead, teasing her.
“No,” she said, putting the movies back down. “I just like knowing you have this. It’s something I didn’t expect. It took me a long time to realize why I liked certain movies so much. To Have And Have Not, High Society, Dirty Dancing, Grease, Grease 2,” she laughed. “Cold Mountain, Anne of Green Gables, Matilda even, there’s a long list of films I’ve always loved and I just never knew it was because I was attracted to one or all of the women in the films. Second I did realize, I started looking for things like this. That was after camp,” she hinted.
“Your tennis instructor.” I remembered. “So, what’s your all time celebrity crush?”
“That’s too hard to answer,” she said. “I want to be shallow and say Dianna Agron but I would have to go with someone like Angelina Jolie if I’m really thinking hard about it. She helped me come to terms with myself. I used to watch all kinds of old interviews. Because of Gia, and Girl Interrupted, and things she’d said to magazine reporters. And look at her now. She survived a great depression, fought off a lot of mental illness, survived a battle with her dad, to start a big family and become a goodwill ambassador. She’s amazing…”
“All of those things are very true. She is pretty awesome. I also love that she was in Foxfire. Even if it’s not one of my all-time favorites, I still like her in it.”
I took the box and slipped the lid on. Olivia seemed somehow reassured by me having them and it amused me but it also gave me a little worry. Was she one of those girls who thought I was just going to leave her for some guy? No, I didn’t think that really. It just stayed in the back of my brain.
“I guess I never thought about why I connected with female characters more until I met Holland and we became friends. That was my middle school obsession. I was so into her but in that puppy love kind of way.”
“Did she know how you felt?” She asked. “Being women, it just makes sense to like female characters. I think that’s why there was such a wall there with me. Of course I loved female characters. I wanted to be them and I was halfway there. I just didn’t realize until Sammy that there was a common thread, a deeper adoration, a curiosity… A thirst,” she said, rubbing her throat absentmindedly with her hand.
“I want to answer your question but I’m feeling a little thirst myself right now. When you talk like that I don’t know, I just get stimulated mentally and physically. I love your brain.”
Holland was in the past. It was silly and juvenile, a passing fancy that ended in a wonderful friendship. One that I hoped was still intact after so little tending.
“But yes, it was mutual.”
“Oh boy,” she sighed, looking down. “I don’t think I like to know that,” she said. “You’ve mentioned her before. Every time I’ve been scared.”
“Vi, it was literally a silly middle school thing. We’re best friends now. We laugh about it. There’s nothing there. We kissed once and it was weird. It never happened again.” I pulled her close. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. No one can have me but you.”
“You say that now,” she said, eyebrow raising. “Why was it weird?” She wondered. “The kiss?”
“Because there was nothing there. It was like kissing my sister in a weird way.” I made an ick face. “Ugh. Don’t make me think about it.”
“Sorry,” she said.
“It’s fine.” I shrugged it off. “We’re still friends and we used to talk all the time but not so much anymore. I’ve only seen her once since we moved.”
“I dunno,” she sighed. “She sounds really important to you. I’ve thought that for a while. You talk about her like you talk about...” She stopped talking.
“Like I talk about who?” I shook my head. She couldn’t be any farther off base.
“I don’t know if you want me to say his name.”
“Ben?!”
“Ew. No! Adam,” she said, angry with me.
“Oh, yeah, because she’s like my sister but I’m really not into incest so you have nothing to worry about.”
“More like because she and him are both your closest friends,” Olivia explained.
“Yes, and I refer you back to the part where we were like siblings.”
“Be honest though. She’s important in your life. No matter what the feelings were or are. She’s really important to you.”
“Well, sure she’s important but that’s not a threat to you in any way,” I explained. “She’s my friend and if you ever meet her you’ll see that’s all it is and I wish you didn’t even need to see t
hat to know that I’m all yours no matter what.”
“I’m not talking about it as a threat,” she told me. “I’m talking about it as something you have that I can’t be a part of. That’s all. Parts of you that others have and will always have. You have those with me to. Don’t try and sugar coat it. That’s not what I want.”
“Right, so when I talk about that tennis coach or Nat or that boy I almost went somewhere with there’s nothing in you that’s uncomfortable and out of place.”
“Okay, fair point.” I sighed, deeply aware of what she was trying to say now. “I get it.”
Paper Dolls [Book Three] Page 15
