Chapter 1: First Day Jitters.
Olivia’s POV.
“Olivia, I’m getting confused.” Katie’s soft voice filters through the phone. I can imagine her rubbing her forehead as she tries to keep up with my ongoing pursuit for the right combination.
“Okay.” I slowed down, literally stopping in the middle of my bedroom only in my panties and bra, raising my voice so it carried to the phone on the bed.
“So far it’s between the black pencil skirt and blazer with the silk camisole, in either black, cream, or, we go daring and do leopard print, and the navy-blue shift dress and cream heels.”
“Liv. Honestly?” Katie hesitated, and I loved every second of her searching for the right words to tell it to me nicely she hated every option. Our entire friendship was Katie trying to preserve feelings I didn’t have. But Katie was the best of us all, and I missed her more than she would ever know. “None of them. They don’t feel like you. You need to make an impression.”
“I can’t walk in there naked; I mean, I could, but I don’t think it would give the right first impression. Or would it?”
“Olivia!” Katie feigned shock, but she wasn’t. She wouldn’t put it past me to walk into my new job at Carmichael and Philips completely bare, but in complete honesty, my clothes were my armor, and I would need the perfect statement walking in my first day.
“What’s Marcell’s vote?” Katie asked me.
I wasn’t mad at her question. It was a natural question to ask someone. Especially if they were under that impression for the last two months, that you have been in a blissfully functioning relationship, and especially since you’ve been giving them a very different impression of your very different reality.
But once the train had left the station, there was no getting it back in control. In all honesty, I wanted the life that had been created purely out of assumption; I wanted the doting boyfriend, I wanted the life that led in such similarity to what Katie and Diego had been living, and it killed every single ounce of my pride to admit that I had let her assume things were going well. When, in actuality, they weren’t going at all.
When everything seemed to level out two months ago, Marcell and I just got caught up in our lives. We didn’t have time to do what we had promised each other we would do. We didn’t start over, we just fell into the new rhythm of whatever the hell that might be.
“Olivia?” My best friend's voice sounded concerned as it filtered tiny through the phone. “You there?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s going on? You got all quiet when I mentioned Marcell, and don’t you dare lie to me, and tell me it’s nothing. I know it’s something.” Katie had grown herself a set of balls since she and Diego, for all intents and purposes, died two months ago. Her new identity afforded her the luxury of starting over, and she was thriving under, not only that freedom but the love she and Diego had the space to explore.
“It’s different.” I vaguely confessed, knowing damn well that it would not satisfy her, but how do you just come out and say what you need to say?
I wasn’t like her; I couldn’t say those things in my soul. No, I left them there, letting them either crush me or strengthen me. I had become so immune to ignoring that part of me; I tuned it out, but Katie had a way of pulling at the threads until I unraveled.
“Different how? Marcell’s different?”
“It’s not how I thought it was going to be. I mean, he barely graces me with his presence and if he does, it’s just… it’s not bad. The times I get to see Marcell aren’t bad, and I understand. I do sincerely understand the pressures he has glaring at him in the face that keep him away from being with me like he wants to be. But there is that part of me that-- well, misses him. That selfishly wants him to pick me over his job. But it isn’t just a job, is it? It’s his life. His family.”
“Because you want more.” Katie patiently provided
“I sound like such a b*tch, Katie.” A cynical laugh barks out of my lungs. “But yes. Because I want more. I want more than the heated make-out sessions that get interrupted by phone calls; I want more than the quick sex that gets slipped in late at night. I want—”
“You want a relationship.” Katie interrupts.
“Yeah,” I confirm quietly. “I want to feel like I’m more than just a fling, or temporary.”
“Have you told him any of this?”
“When would I be able to tell him this? I don’t see him, and I’m not mad about it, because I understand it all. I understand he’s busy, and it’s not been easy. He’s not the same, Katie. He’s worn down and stressed out. Marcell doesn’t laugh as much as he used to. He’s lost himself to the syndicate.”
“Liv. Nothing I can say is going to make any of this easier for you to watch the man you love—”
“I don’t love him.”
“Okay.” Katie laughs. “The man you have feelings about.”
“That’s a little bit better.”
“Why are you so scared about caring for him, Liv?” Katie asks me, all humor gone from her voice.
“It’ll make it harder to let him go if he doesn’t choose me,” I confessed.
“Why does it always have to be a choice, Liv? Why can’t it be both?”
“Because that’s not how the world works, Katie. There’s always a side. A defendant and a prosecutor. Guilty and innocent. Wrong and right. There’s no in the middle.”
“That’s why you’re such a brilliant lawyer, no one can argue with you.” She meant it as a compliment, but I felt the offense all the same. People didn’t get close to me because I didn’t let them, and my talent for arguing was my protection to keep them at arm’s length. To protect us both.
“Well, I will be Chicago’s first naked lawyer if I don’t pick out an outfit for my first day.” I reinstated the reason why I called her, pivoting the conversation back to neutral territory. The safe conversation.
“Do the navy dress, but do something different with the shoes, you still have those floral heels?” Katie asked.
“The ones with the rhinestone bows?” I asked for clarification as I dug into my closet.
“Yeah, those. Don’t let working in some dingy office break you off from expressing yourself, Liv.”
“You’re a genius, Katie,” I said, pulling the shoes out of the back of my closet and pulling them on my feet while I yanked the dress over my head.
“Nah,” Katie said. “I’m just your best friend, I know you.”
“I miss you, Katie.” My voice sounded pitiful and sad, as I let my carefully guarded emotions slip.
“I miss you too, Liv.”
“Tell that husband of yours to treat you right, or I’ll come put cement in his shoes or something.”
“He’ll be petrified.” Katie laughed “Let me know how your day goes tomorrow, Liv.”
“We can’t call frequently, Katie. You know Diego would have a cow if he knows you called me tonight.”
“You leave Diego to me… Liv?”
“Yeah, Katie?” I sat on my bed, noticing the shift in my best friend’s voice. “It’s okay to be each other’s safe zones, Liv. Nothing in your life has ever been conventional, so don’t make your relationship with Marcell fit into a box it wasn’t meant to be. Let whatever version of love you’re supposed to have with him evolve on its own and don’t expect anything other than what you can give.”
“When did you become the wise friend?” I asked her, using sarcasm to cover up the emotion building in my chest.
“I’m not wise, Liv. I just know what it feels like to blindly trust a man who’s not used to trusting even himself. Be patient, Liv, most of all, be patient with yourself.”
“Love you, bestest.”
“Love you most,” Katie said before the phone disconnected.
Life has a funny way of proving that you’re not in control, especially when it comes to the things you vie for control over. Things like trust, patience, and love. Those three things are left up to life to find a way to make them happen. Like everyone else, I’m just along for the ride, hoping that on this rollercoaster, I have Marcell’s hand to cling to. I just hoped that I had the chance to hold his hand, that our story would be different, and wouldn’t mirror that of those who came before us. Or worse yet our story wouldn’t end before it even got started.