Breaking the Plan: Mill Street Series #1

by Calla, Jessica

  “Yep.”

  “Well please do tell, Oliver.”

  He half-smiled, the side of his lips curving up into an irresistible smirk, and I relaxed. I loved when I could make him smile. Made me want to take his cheeks in my hand and smoosh them together and kiss his lips.

  He touched his nose and then pointed to the dark sky. “You’re a hider.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Excuse me?”

  “You hide.”

  “Okay, I’m freezing out here, so if you’re going to stand there and not make sense, I’d rather just get back to my date, thanks.” I took off for The Study.

  He followed until I stopped again under a streetlamp. I had to look at the stupid papers. He peeked over my shoulder, his warm body heating mine from behind, his breath tickling my neck. “Here’s a list of everything you hide from.” Reaching around me, he flipped the page, and sure enough, there was a list. “Your pageant stuff. The flute. Your parents and your financial status. Your history. You hide your intelligence. You’re hiding your true feelings from me now. And from Violet.” He pointed over my shoulder at the scribble. “See the positive slope of the graph line? As your emotional stress rises, your defenses do too.”

  I twisted my shoulder away from him, squinting to read the papers from the light of the streetlamp. “You are such a nerd.”

  “Historically, you’ve hidden behind the hot-girl-who-hooks-up persona, even though the hooking up with random guys is going to stop real soon.” He glanced at me sideways.

  I chuckled dramatically. “You’ve got some nerve. You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, I’m serious.”

  Apparently, his confidence competed with his ego.

  “Now you’re hiding behind Grant. Again, another thing that’s going to stop.”

  “You are a piece of work.” I glared, my eyes widening in response to his audacity. “You’re telling me how to live my life now?”

  “Nope.” He shook his head. “Well, maybe. You’ve been pushing me to Violet, so why not? I think it’s fair for me to say that I don’t want you with anyone except me.”

  I loved what he was saying, but I also hated it. So what if I hid from things? Survival mechanisms were there for a reason—survival—and I’d done okay for myself in my twenty-one years. Ollie and his dumb list could go screw.

  I marched to the door of The Study and grabbed the handle to go inside. “This has all been enlightening, but I have someone waiting for me.”

  “I’m not done,” Oliver said, palming the door and shutting it on me. “See, you really were easy to figure out once I sat down and thought about it. You’re super brave when it comes to some things—moving to California, even though technically that’s probably a way to hide too, entering the Miss New Lovely Jersey pageant—”

  “Miss Lovely New Jersey—”

  “—but from emotional things, connections with people, you hide because you’re afraid of feeling stuff. You think if you can be the hot, tough girl, then people won’t bother you. You’ll never have to show weakness or be vulnerable. Which I’m sure comes from the difficult times when you were a kid, basically on your own and dealing with a grown-up world.”

  I rolled my eyes, but I had to admit that I couldn’t disagree with what he was saying. “Is there a conclusion to this nonsense about me?”

  “The conclusion is that if you be a little…” he held up two fingers, close to each other but not touching, “… teeny weeny bit brave—not just about your external self but your internal self too—you may find that your quality of life improves dramatically.”

  I spun to face him. “My quality of life is perfect, Oliver. How dare you for saying otherwise.” Maybe if I faked it, I’d manage a subject change before I bawled my eyes out and self-diagnosed all my psychoses. “And I’d rather be a so-called ‘hider’ than like you. You’re a …a…conformist.”

  “Conformist?”

  Crossing my arms, I lifted my chin. “You’ve never had an original idea in your life as far as things you’ve planned for your future. Until you met me, that is.”

  He nodded deliberately. “Continue.”

  “Your parents said, ‘Be a lawyer,’ and that’s what you’re going to do. Violet said, ‘Marry me,’ and that’s what you’ll end up doing. Happiness, for you, is making everyone else happy.”

  “What’s so wrong with that?” he asked.

  “What’s so wrong with hiding?” I replied.

  We stared at each other for a second. The tip of his nose was red, and his warm breath made clouds in the cold air. “I guess we both have issues,” he said.

  “Ya think?” I rolled my eyes, feigning annoyance. Really though, all I could feel was my heart squeezing and my knees wobbling. I wanted to plop onto the ground and get sucked into some vortex where I could disappear. Obviously, Ollie was right about me hiding from everything. The pain of feeling, of this, was too much. “Listen. Go conform and I’ll go hide, and everyone gets on with their life, okay? It was just a weekend.”

  Behind me, the door whooshed open. Ollie stood up straight, his shoulders stiff, as he looked past me.

  “What was just a weekend?” Vi’s tiny voice spoke from behind.

  I spun around, my breath quickening as I thought about how to cover. “Nothing, Violet.”

  “I saw Grant inside,” she said. “He told me you were both out here. You look really intense. Can you fill me in?”

  “Actually,” Ollie said. “There’s something we need to tell you.”

  Whipping around to face him, I glared my death stare. “Don’t you dare,” I whispered. There was no way I was letting him ruin my friendship with Violet and kill her dreams on the sidewalk outside the damn bar.

  Violet stepped between us, making herself the corner of our little triangle. “What’s going on with you two?”

  Ollie and I glowered at each other.

  Violet nudged him and he stumbled, ending our stare down. “You’ve both been acting strange since I’m back, and I know something’s up. I wish you’d just tell me.”

  “You’re right.” Deciding on a half-truth, I grabbed Violet’s shoulders and turned her to look at me. “Ollie and I sort of made a deal when you were gone. He was going to help me with my paper, and I was going to help him get you back.”

  She scrunched her face. “You two…talked? To each other?”

  “We did a hell of a lot more than that,” Ollie added.

  My cheeks heated against the cold air and I gulped. “He means…we fought, Violet. A lot.”

  “About what?” she asked. “Me?”

  Ollie walked around her and looked me in the eyes. “Don’t hide, Taryn. We should come clean.”

  With Ollie silently begging me, I considered it for a minute. Telling Violet, right there, that we’d somehow managed to go from enemies, to friends, to lovers could have a bunch of different consequences. I thought about Ollie and me never spending another night apart. But even in my wildest scenario, that couldn’t come true without one of us giving up our dreams, and without Violet being hurt in the process.

  Violet shook her hands as she looked between us. “What in God’s name is going on? Come clean about what?”

  The door slammed behind me.

  “About me.” A male voice. I turned to see that Josh had joined the party.

  We all looked at him. Oliver’s shoulders sagged. “I’m trying to tell Violet the truth, Josh.”

  “The truth being that,” Josh said, without missing a beat, “I’ve had a thing for Taryn, and Ollie didn’t want me with her. They’ve been fighting about me.”

  Violet looked between the three of us. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Nothing,” I said, hopping on the Josh Story Bandwagon. “It’s between me and Ollie, and me and Josh. We didn’t want to bother you while you were away, and I thought it was resolved.” I glared at Ollie, silently begging him to play along. “See, Ollie…he doesn’t think I’m good enough for Josh, that’s all. We’v
e been back and forth about it all semester. Christmas is coming up, and things need to be let go. Fresh starts need to be made. You don’t want to break hearts over the holidays, right, Oliver?”

  He pressed his lips into a frustrated line, holding my stare. Finally, he said, “Yeah. New starts.”

  “All good?” Josh asked, the worry on his face obvious as he looked at Oliver.

  Ollie huffed, flung up a hand, and walked away. Vi looked between Josh and me, then took off after him.

  “Thanks,” I said to Josh, when they were out of hearing range.

  Josh stared after them. “I did it for Violet, not for you.”

  “Ouch.”

  He turned to me. “Ollie thinks he loves you Taryn. Whatever game you’re playing here isn’t fair. Not to him, and not to Violet.” He pulled the handle to the door to The Study, and held it open, waiting for me to step inside.

  I couldn’t move though. The enormity of what we’d done, the lies that we’d built to cover it up, overwhelmed me. A tear slid down my face.

  Josh finally let go of the door when he noticed me crying. “Oh shit. Please don’t cry. I hate when chicks cry.”

  I wiped a tear from under my eye. “I know you think I’m playing him, but I love him too, Josh.”

  “Ah, damn it,” he muttered. “You do? When did that happen?”

  My chest heaved and I pouted as I tried to hide the sobs that wanted to escape. “I…I didn’t mean to.”

  Lifting his arms up, he waved me to him. “Come here.”

  I stepped into his arms and leaned against his winter coat. Kissing the top of my head, he said, “I didn’t think you were serious about him, and you know I have to watch out for the guy. He’s like a brother to me.”

  I sniffed into his jacket. “It’s okay. You’re just protecting him, and it makes sense that you wouldn’t trust me, given our history.”

  Releasing me, he looked into my teary eyes. “Our history was just a blip, okay? I’m sorry if I’ve been bitter about it, but we’ve both moved on anyway. But this with Ollie? You loving him makes things difficult.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  A few seconds later, Grant joined us. Seeing me wiping at my face, obviously having been crying, he asked if everything was okay. I asked him to walk me home. He agreed and acted as sweet as I’d ever seen him.

  Thankfully, the apartment was empty. Who knew what Oliver and Violet were doing at the moment and where they were doing it? I didn’t want to think about it.

  When I took off my cape coat, Oliver’s nerdy papers flew out of the pocket. I picked them up, walked to my room, and plopped onto my bed. His terrible handwriting stared back at me from the pages. There was a sheet titled TM. The list under my initials said, “Smart, talented, beautiful, ‘wanderlusty,’ runs away. What is she running from? Herself? Hiding from achievement, commitment, stability?”

  Damn did he just sum me up. I loved that he wrote “smart” as the first item on his list though. But if I was so smart, then why was I pushing him away?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Oliver

  After the shit show outside The Study, Violet followed me back to my apartment and asked me a million questions about Josh and Taryn. I didn’t want to lie to her—apparently, I was the only one who didn’t want to lie to her—so I didn’t answer.

  The next morning, I felt like a super-douche for blowing her off, so I called her first thing. Josh grunted approval over his cereal bowl at my plan to take Vi to breakfast at the diner. We hadn’t talked yet about his little performance outside The Study, but I was sick and tired of all of them and couldn’t deal yet.

  At breakfast, Violet chattered on and on about her music symphonies, Rachel, her parents, and Vienna. I watched her butter her toast with a fork, like she always did. It made me crazy, but it was just one of the cute things about Vi that had made me fall in love with her. When she stopped talking to look at me, she smiled. I relaxed instantly. Everything with Violet was so damn easy.

  Yes, I thought to myself. Love is supposed to be easy, and that’s why I love Violet. That was the point of all this. Everything. College, law school, even my agreement with Taryn for help getting Vi back. Pissed off at the world for fucking with me the past few months, I blurted out the words, “We’re still going to Cambridge this summer, right?”

  She lifted her eyebrows, freezing mid-bite. “Um, I thought you weren’t sure about moving forward.”

  Shrugging, I pushed aside the thoughts of Taryn that I’d been so focused on the past few weeks. Obviously, even Taryn thought I should be with Violet, so fuck it. The logic of it made the pieces of the puzzle of all our lives—mine, Vi’s, and Taryn’s—fit together. “I’m sure about sticking to the plan, and the plan is Cambridge. With you. If you still want me.”

  She put down her fork and came to my side of the booth. Squeezing in next to me, she wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek. “Of course I do.”

  But instead of making me feel better, her words only made me hate myself more.

  * * *

  On Christmas Eve after the last of our finals, Vi and I went back to New York for the holiday break. I hadn’t heard from Taryn, although Vi and Josh had, which pissed me off. She could let me go, yet she chitchatted with Violet and Josh all the time. Then I remembered my data. She was scared, she wanted out, and I was an anchor to the city and the life she was trying to leave behind. The data never lied, but sometimes it offered no solutions.

  Instead of continuing my futile efforts to make Taryn love me back, I decided to concentrate on Violet and the future. But whenever Violet touched me, I recoiled. She said she’d be patient and she understood that I had to learn to trust her again. I went with it, even though that wasn’t my issue at all.

  At my parents’ house for the holidays, Mom got on my case the second I walked through the door on Christmas Eve. “So you’re back with Violet? She told her mom to scope out apartments in Cambridge.”

  I dropped my head back. “Shit, Ma, can I put my bag down before you start grilling me?”

  She walked over, took the duffel bag out of my hand, and threw it to the floor. “There. Bag’s down. Now get in here and fill me in.”

  I followed her to the kitchen and sat on the stool next to the island. She poured me a glass of wine that matched hers. “Talk,” she demanded.

  I told her that I was sticking to the original plan. Taryn wasn’t interested in a relationship with me and Violet was, and I didn’t want to go to Cambridge alone.

  “Back up,” she said. “I thought you didn’t want to go to Cambridge at all.”

  “Well, yeah. That’s another issue I’ve resolved.” I finished the glass in a series of giant gulps. My mother looked disgusted but poured me another. “I’m learning that it doesn’t really matter what I want because my life is on autopilot. I’m a conformist. It’s not a bad life. I shouldn’t be bitching about being able to go to the best law school in the world and being with a nice lady like Violet.”

  Mom groaned as she gulped down her wine, then plopped her glass onto the granite island countertop a little too hard. “Oliver Randall Stoneridge. I’ve never been more disappointed in you in your entire life.” She poured herself another and sat on the stool next to me.

  “Join the club,” I murmured.

  She stared at me with those dark eyes. “Let’s try a different approach. Tell me what you want. First thing that pops into your head.”

  Taryn, I thought, but I didn’t say that. “Happiness.”

  “Next question. What makes you happiest?”

  Taryn. “Nothing. Nothing makes me happy.”

  “Liar,” she said, shaking her head. “If you don’t want to work with me here, then that’s fine. You’re a big boy, and you have to turn your life into what you want it to be. We’ll be glad to have you at the firm.”

  I cringed. She noticed. “See? You can’t even picture yourself there.”

  I hid my face in my hands as the effect
s of the wine starting to take hold of me. “You’re right. I can’t.”

  “Well...” She grabbed my hands and held them on her lap. “Trust me here and talk to me. If you still want to go through with your Cambridge plan after, I won’t judge. But let’s have the conversation, okay?” She squeezed my hands and sat up straighter, looking me in the eyes. “Now tell me. What do you want?”

  Without hesitation, I answered, “I want to hike. Be outdoors.”

  She smiled, her posture relaxing as she reached for the bottle. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  * * *

  Taryn

  On Christmas morning, I shuffled through my parents’ apartment in my flannel NJU pajamas in search of only one present—coffee. Black, strong, hot coffee. Luckily, I found some right where it belonged.

  I also found my parents sitting at the kitchen table, looking all serious and anti-Christmas-y. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Merry Christmas, baby,” Dad said. He stood and kissed me on the cheek.

  I hugged him, then Mom, and asked again, “What’s wrong?”

  Dad puffed out a loud huff, like he always did when something was bothering him. “Come talk to us. We want to give you your present.”

  Mom nodded and shot me a reassuring smile.

  After securing my mug of joe, I followed them to the living room. Mom and I sat on the couch while Dad went to his little desk in the corner. He opened a drawer, took out a cigar box, and then joined Mom and me on the couch.

  “We were going to wait to give this to you for graduation,” Mom said. “But given how the past couple of months have been so difficult, we thought we’d offer it now. But you don’t have to use it.”

  I eyed the box. “Um, okay?”

  Dad took my hand. “All we ever wanted was for you to be happy. We don’t care about college or any of that stuff. I mean, we do, and we would like you to graduate. But your happiness matters more. And you don’t seem happy.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Did you both finally lose your minds?”