“Olivia.”
I glance up and seriously have to blink a few times to make sure I’m not dreaming.
“Joel?”
His eyes rove over me, and I become totally self-conscious. My hair is pulled back in a ponytail. My white button down blouse is so boring and probably screams middle-aged when I’m not there yet.
“Oh, give me a minute.” I hold up a finger.
Clearly, he’s here to meet the girl I told him I’d hook him up with. And I would prefer him not to say it. So I pick up my phone and call to the back. Our last patient before lunch just left.
When she answers, I ask, “Cara, can you come to the front for a second?”
“Sure.” Her reply is bright and cheery, while I feel as though a storm cloud has formed over my head.
She’s a super sweet girl and the right person for Joel. I try and fail to convince myself. But it’s too late to back down now.
“Olivia,” Joel says, but thankfully Cara doesn’t take her time and bounds around the corner.
“Joel, this is Cara. Cara, this is Joel. I know this is weird, but I told Joel I thought you guys should meet.”
Joel glances at me before his attention turns to Cara, whose interest is obvious.
“Like Olivia says, she thinks we should go out. So why not? You have any plans tonight?”
Cara’s grin couldn’t get any wider. She’d be perfect for a teeth whitening commercial right about now. Maybe Orbitz gum. Mentally, I slap myself.
“No, I’m all yours. How about six? I get off at five, and we can meet for dinner.” Her eyes never leave his when she speaks.
They do the phone exchange thing then Joel leaves with a hasty goodbye. Janet comes flying around the corner, having spied the whole thing.
“Seriously, Olivia, that was so cool of you. He’s so hot.” Cara’s nearly bouncing off the wall with excitement.
“He sure is.” Janet gives her a fist bump.
Joel looks like the star of any current movie, so I don’t blame them for drooling. Though I have just eaten lunch, I do well by not hurling. Together they look like they could have stepped off the red carpet, despite her wearing scrubs.
Nice girl as she is, she’s prettier than I am and weighs far less, wearing her younger skin like a runway model. Damn her.
“And it’s hump day.” Janet winks.
Food stirs in my stomach at the thought. Yes, it’s Wednesday, a day commonly called hump day, and not for the reasons Janet means as she eyes Cara conspiratorially. Yay, I say with false cheer in my head. I’ve hooked up my neighbor to spend hump day with someone else. Go, me.
Thankfully, a mother comes in with her son, and it’s back to business. I do my best to not think about Joel and hump day together, but on the inside I want to cry.
Close to the end of the day, I’ve replayed their conversation in my head for the millionth time and don’t hear my boss walk up. Dr. T, as he calls himself, clears his throat in front of my desk shortly before I’m scheduled to leave.
When I glance up, he says, “Olivia, you wouldn’t mind staying late, would you? Dale’s coming by to work on my quarterly taxes. I know it’s not your job, but I have plans with the missus tonight and can’t be late.”
What he’s not saying is, “You’re a loser and have nothing better to do.” I nod. Besides, I don’t, and part of my job is bookkeeping. The good doctor has always been the one to meet with his guy at the tax firm, but I don’t mind.
I lock the door after he leaves and sit at my desk to wait for the old guy to show up. When the knock comes, it’s not a guy in his late sixties; it’s an attractive thirty-something man.
“Can I help you?”
He holds out his hand. “I’m here to go over the books.”
Dr. T’s tax man is an old-school guy who believes in coming to the client instead of the other way around.
“You’re not Dale Burns.” I give him a quizzical look.
He laughs. “I’m not. I’m Dale’s son, Paul.”
My jaw opens. I don’t want to consider what he’s saying. He’s an accountant named Paul. I shake my head. It’s just coincidence. Though I find myself looking at his hand for a ring and find none.
When I meet his eyes, I know I’ve been caught. I step back, and damn if I don’t trip over my own feet. His handsome face hidden behind black framed glasses matches a superhero’s secret identity. He reaches out and scoops me around the waist before I fall.
We stare at each other for longer than an average glance.
“Your name?” He still hangs on like he’s dipping me in a dance.
“Olivia.” It comes out breathy, and he grins.
“Can I take you out?”
And that’s how I end up with a date for the coming Friday night.
Over the course of the evening, I learn Paul is older than I am by two years, and single. He’s divorced, but I’m headed there too. I take it to be positive; at least he’s not opposed to long term relationships.
These are the lies I tell myself on the way home, unable not to wonder how Joel is fairing on his date. Then I think about what Madame Zelda said to me. A child could come between us, an accountant with a name beginning with P. Is Paul my soulmate? Could we have a child together?
I’m eating a salad and a dry piece of baked chicken, trying out the latest diet. My curves are a gift from all the hormones I had to take in an attempt to get knocked up, or so I tell myself. Losing the weight has been a struggle, even with diet and exercise. Sometimes I wonder if the pounds had been Corey’s reason for looking elsewhere.
Unfortunately for me, the television is on mute when I hear noises in the hall. I’d taken a phone call from Amelia and had silenced my background noise to share the news of my date this weekend.
With the remote in my hand, I’m just about to unmute it when a loud giggle can be heard on the other side of my door.
“Joel, you are so funny.” The voice is unmistakable.
I close my eyes and turn the volume up high. I don’t want to hear whatever else Cara has to say. He’s brought her home on hump day. That’s all I really need to know.
The thing that sucks is I can’t be mad at him. He wanted something with me, and I’d turned him down. Furthermore, I’d been the one to set them up. Good for him.
Liar, the invisible devil inside me shouts.
Eight
Earbuds block me from hearing all the painful details of Cara’s date with Joel that next day. Instead, I try to decide if I’m happy or disappointed I didn’t run into Joel at the gym this morning.
It’s my lunchtime visitor who throws me for a loop.
“Corey, what are you doing here?”
Cara and Janet watch. I’m sure they were about to dish about Cara’s night until my boyishly sexy ex shows up.
“Can I take you to lunch?”
There are so many questions I want to toss to the man, like how he found out where I worked. Then again, he’d been at Amelia’s over the weekend. I’m so going to kill my sister.
“Sure.” I don’t want to air our dirty laundry to the peanut gallery.
Once Corey’s hand lands on the small of my back, I hear snickering behind me. I roll my eyes, wishing I worked at a big corporation lost in a sea of cubicles and anonymity.
Outside on the sidewalk, crushed by the foot traffic of other lunch-goers, I grit out, “How did you find out where I work? And why aren’t you in Philadelphia at your own job?”
He doesn’t answer, only points at a café a few doors down. I nod and bide my time. Once we are seated in a corner near the front picture window, I ask him to explain himself again.
“Should I order your usual?”
Not that we’d frequent this café, but he reminds me that he’s known me long enough to order on my behalf.
Feeling little more than a bobblehead, I nod again. He walks toward the counter, and heads turn to take notice of him. He’s that good looking, but the jealousy I used to feel doesn’t manifest.
It’s like going to Belgium and eating chocolate and coming back to the States and having some here. It’s good, but it’s not the same.
If nothing else, my drunken, shameful night with Joel opened my eyes to something new and quite possibly better. Even though I can’t be with him, he’s inadvertently shown me what I’ve been missing out on.
Corey comes back to the table with a turkey and bacon sandwich on a succulent looking croissant. It is what I would have ordered before I moved to D.C. and decided to work on my weight. I say nothing, though. I’ll probably need the calories to make it through the upcoming conversation.
“Are you going to answer me?” I ask in a harsh whisper with my sandwich halfway to my mouth.
His heavy sigh and crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes spark worry in me. Has he been sleeping? Why do I care? I chide myself. He’s probably sleeping with someone else in our bed. That’s why he looks so damn tired.
“I miss you,” he declares.
I try not to choke as I laugh. “Really. Did your girlfriend leave you? She probably doesn’t want to wash your tighty-whities.”
He doesn’t wear them, but the words slip out of my mouth with a verbal slap.
His glare burns out as quickly as it fired up. “You’re wrong. She can’t wait for our divorce to be final so I can marry her and make babies.”
Disgust covers his handsome features as my bite of sandwich curdles in my stomach.
“You should.” I’m proud of myself for eking out my agreement.
“What?”
I swallow, holding back tears. “You should be with her. She can give you what I can’t.”
His hand covers mine. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want those things if I can’t have them with you.”
Slowly, I draw my hand back, to his dismay. Shortly after I left him, there were days when I’d wanted to hear those words and go back to the man I thought I would grow old with.
“We can’t.” Then realize my mistake. “I can’t.”
His brow creases and he looks like a defeated man. “Livvy, please.”
I shake my head. “Don’t you see? You broke us. If I went back to you now, which I’m not, I would resent you. I would always think about how you chose to experiment with others before making a decision about who you wanted to be with.”
“What are you saying?”
Our food, which looked so appetizing before, suddenly makes my stomach turn.
“I’m saying I want that opportunity too. I want to date other people and see what it’s like.”
His eyes darken, and I consider calling the fire department for the proverbial smoke curling out his ears. “You want to sleep with other guys?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. But I want the chance to make that decision for myself.”
“You’re saying you didn’t sleep with that Joel guy?”
I hold his gaze and feel really tired. Maybe months ago I would have thrown it in his face that I’d had the best sex of my life with a really great guy, but now I don’t. I know this man, and I love him still. So there’s no malice when I gently say, “That’s really none of your business.”
“Jesus, Olivia, what’s happened to us?”
I could so easily point the finger at him, but I prove how mature I’ve become. “We’ve grown up. Maybe our parents were right and we shouldn’t have gotten married so young.”
“Are you saying that people who dated in high school shouldn’t marry?”
Patience, I tell myself.
“Of course not. I’m talking about us, not the rest of the population. It didn’t work for us, otherwise you wouldn’t have found it necessary to sleep with other people.”
He doesn’t correct my use of the plural. I wait for the hurt to come.
“I’m sorry, Olivia, I made a mistake.”
“I’m sorry too.”
“So let’s try.”
I let the pause grow into silence before I answer him again.
“We should try, but not together. We should date other people, move on. If it’s meant to be, will find each other again.”
In no way am I trying to sound poetic. But there it is.
“How long?”
There’s something desperate in his question, and a crack begins to form in my heart. I answer before I lose my nerve.
“I don’t know. A year or so…”
“So in a year, you’ll come back to me?”
His voice comes out rough and broken, sounding more lost than I’ve ever heard him.
“I’m not saying that. In a year, you could have moved on, or maybe I have. But I need this time to figure out what I want, who I am without you.”
“I fucked up, didn’t I, Livvy?” I don’t answer. “Can you at least let me try to win you back? Take you out on a date or something?”
“I don’t know. Certainly not any time soon.”
“But maybe?”
There is so much hope there, I nod in agreement. “Just not in the next several months, please.”
The lunch with Corey leaves me in such a fog, I don’t hear anything Cara and Janet say as they hover around my desk animatedly talking. In fact, the next few days until my date with Paul go by without notice except for one thing. I haven’t seen or heard a peep from Joel since the day of his date with Cara, and I have to guess he’s avoiding me.
Nine
Limping up the stairs, growling the whole way, I’m sure all I need is a pirate hat and clothes to finish off my Long John Silver impression. Oh, that, and a parrot. Maybe I should get one. I’m pretty certain dating is off the table for me.
“Olivia, are you okay?”
I glance up into impossibly blue eyes which remind me of the sky on a clear, sunny day. In their depths is kindness and everything that made me love him as a friend.
“Joel.”
Swiftly, he’s got me supported under my arm and pulls my keys from my hand as we walk the several feet to my apartment. It’s been so long, or so it feels like, I say nothing as he helps me inside to sit on my couch. He gets some ice into a bag and brings it to me.
I sigh while he plants himself on my coffee table to sit right in front of me. He extends my injured leg to rest beside him and places the ice on my ankle before he speaks.
“What happened?”
“Everything,” I mutter. “I think I’ve decided I don’t want kids, but maybe a parrot instead.”
His face screws up in confusion.
“Never mind.” I fall back to let my eyes aim at the ceiling while cushioning my back against the sofa.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
I blink and remember all the times over the past year that we shared our secrets, little bits of our lives that wouldn’t interest anyone else. And I’d ruined that by sleeping with him. Maybe if I just tell him, our friendship can get back on track.
“I went out on a date.” I expel air from my lungs and summon the courage to explain the rest.
Unwilling to look at him, I have no idea what he’s thinking when he says nothing for longer than a pause.
“How’d it go?”
“Great.” I sound sarcastic when, in reality, everything had gone well.
“But…”
I suck in a deep breath, knowing I am going to sound slutty with my next breath.
“I invited him over, not wanting the night to end.” I pause for a second. “He then informs me that he has to get home to relieve the babysitter. He’d told me about his daughter, so I wasn’t surprised. He offered for me to go with him to hang out at his place, since it was late and his daughter would be asleep.”
“Did he hurt you?” Joel growled, obviously coming to the wrong conclusion about why I had a limp.
“No, of course not. After we got there and he paid the sitter, his daughter came flying into the foyer where we still stood.” I sigh. “I don’t think he expected to introduce me, as it was just our first date.”
My mind replays the events as I tell them to Joel.
“Daddy, who is this?” the tiny girl says with so much snark she sounds twenty years older than she is.
“This is my friend Olivia.”
“Isn’t it too late to have her here? I’m going to tell Mommy.”
Paul bends down to talk to his daughter at her eye level. “We’ve talked about this. Mommy and Daddy are divorced.”
“I don’t care,” the girl yells, running in place and throwing a tantrum. “I want my mommy, not this stupid woman.”
With surprising strength, the little girl kicks me on my shin before stomping on my toe then running off, wailing all the way.
“Shit,” Joel says, bringing me back to the present. “What did the guy do?”
“Well…” I breathe. “We mutually agreed it was best I go.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad.”
“No, but when he didn’t offer to call me a cab or ask me to call him to let him know I got home safely. That pretty much ended any interest in him on my part.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
I raise my head and meet his gaze. “Do what?”
“Date?”
“Yes. I’ve never really been on a date until tonight.”
“Corey?”
“I don’t think it counts when your first date was getting together on the playground, him asking if I wanted to be his girlfriend, and me saying sure.”
“Okay.” He sounds thoughtful.
“I do know now that kids hate me.”
He rubs my leg, and suddenly my lady parts are screaming, Up a little higher. But he keeps it PG, much to my regret.
“Kids don’t hate you. She sounds like a brat. Anyway, I have an idea.”
I wait for him to speak, and when he doesn’t, I prod him. “And?”
“I know someone who would be perfect for you.”
“For real?” I’m intrigued and a little disappointed. He’s given up on me. I tamp that down. “Who is he?”
He squeezes my hand. “I’m not telling. I’ll set it up, like a blind date.”
“A blind date,” I squeak. That scares the shit out of me. I’ve heard horror stories from my friends.
Blinded by You Page 19
