Waking Olivia (26 page)

T
he good news
is that Sean lives in a nice section of town. I guess his parents didn’t want him to suffer while exploring his “craft”. The bad news? Sean is high as a kite, and I can see cocaine residue laying right there on the coffee table.

“Olivia!” he says. “Hey, hey, this is so awesome, so fucking awesome. You can totally crash here.”

He tells me he’s having a party. He asks if I like to party. I assume he doesn’t mean with cake and gifts. “I have a lot of parties,” he tells me.

I’ll just bet he does.

T
hings Sean is not
good for: providing a place I can sleep without finding a roaming hand sliding up my shirt, or providing a place where any reasonable human being could hope to sleep or stay sober before around 6 am.

Things Sean
is
good for: finding me work.

By Wednesday, I’m already working at some strip club where he knows the owner. I’m not old enough to tend bar for another week, and I’m technically not supposed to serve drinks either, but his creepy friend says he can overlook it. Of course, he seems to be overlooking it by instead focusing on me in a skirt that doesn’t entirely cover my ass and a shirt that covers little more than a bra, but so be it.

Obviously, I can’t keep living with Chris Cocaine for long, so I need to make some damn money. And fast. Nothing came today from the Fumito guy, which is troubling. He said he was overnighting it. An endorsement, even a small one, would be enough to get me out of here, but now the whole thing seems a little weird.

By 9 p.m., it feels like it’s already been a very, very long day. I’ve been here since three, and there’s nothing sketchier than guys who hang out at a strip club in the middle of the day. It’s finally starting to pick up, and with guys who
don’t
look like Jack the Ripper, but my feet are killing me in these heels they make me wear and I’ve got a whopping total of $35 dollars to show for the six hours I’ve put in so far.

“You can make a lot more money up there,” one of my customers tells me. “Or in back.”

Is that where this is headed? Am I eventually going to be desperate enough that I wind up on stage?

No. No fucking way.

I’m going to do this for a few weeks until I get enough money to head to Seattle, and then I’ll start training. This is
not
how I’m going to end up.

I refuse to think about Will. Okay, yes, I thought about him the entire bus ride and during Sean’s parties. And every two minutes I think of something I want to tell him, think of a joke he’d find funny or remember him above me. And every time I realize these things won’t happen, I grit my teeth. I’ve been stabbed before, I’ve been assaulted. I was hit by a car and broke 4 bones. I came home one day and discovered that my grandmother had no idea who I was. I survived all of that. I’ll survive this too.

“Come here, honey,” calls a businessman with three other guys, all in suits. “We want a lap dance.”

I shake my head. “Sorry, I just serve drinks.”

“Even better. A lap dance virgin. I’ll give you $500 to come dance for my friend.”

I shake my head again. “Sorry.”

$500. $500 for three measly minutes of dancing? I must be insane to turn it down. I just worked
360
minutes for $35 freaking dollars. They wouldn’t even be allowed to touch me, although this club seems to have a very
flexible
approach to the rules.

I can’t.

I take $500 for a lap dance tonight, and next time I might be rationalizing making a few grand to do something far worse.

The next guy swats my ass, and the guy after him asks if I’d consider going to the back room. And I have to stand here being cheerful and cute about it so I get my tips at the end of the night. Sean assured me this place was “cool” but I’m thinking he was talking about the customer experience, not the employee one.

As time goes by, The Suits are drunker, rowdier. Their leader flags me down again. Asks me again about the lap dance. “Come on,” he wheedles. “My buddy here’s getting married.”

I smile and put my hand on my hip, imitating the kind of girl I’ve always hated. “Now you know I can’t do that,” I say with an accent I don’t actually have. “How ‘bout I get y’all another round instead?”

I go back to the bar and wait for their drinks. All of them drinking whiskey on the rocks and chomping on cigars they aren’t allowed to smoke, the biggest caricature of all time.

“I’ll give you two grand,” he says when I return. “Two grand to give my friend here the best lap dance of his life.”

And I hesitate. Because I need to get out of here. Because I need to be in Seattle so I can maybe find a way to keep running and stop wishing I’d died when my brother did.

“$2500!” he shouts. “That’s my last offer.”

I set the tray down.
Hello, slippery slope
.

E
rin gave
me her brother’s address and promised she’d try to get a warning through to Olivia without tipping her off that I was on my way.

I arrive in LA around 6:30 and go straight to the apartment. No one’s there, so I wait. And wait. When Sean does finally arrive, it’s almost comical how panicked he looks to find me on his steps.

“Hey man,” he says warily. “I’m empty-handed if that’s what you’re here for. I’m gonna party at Avalon tonight.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I tell him. “I’m here looking for Olivia.”

“Whoa, whoa,” he says, backing away as if he thinks I’m going to throw a punch. I guess I probably do look slightly unhinged right now. “My sister told me about you. I don’t need any trouble. She’s not even staying here.”

“I’m not her father, moron,” I seethe. “I’m her track coach. Do I actually look old enough to be her dad?”

He laughs nervously. “Ha, that’s funny. No, sorry, you’re right. Erin did say it was her father after her.”

“Look, I appreciate you helping her out, but I really need to find her. And I’ve got to see her in person. Otherwise, she’ll run before I get a chance to talk to her.”

“How do I know you’re not some dude she’s got a restraining order against?”

I sigh. “You don’t. Why don’t you ask Erin?”

He looks at me and shrugs. “Whatever,” he sighs. “I’ve got a party to get to. She’s at Wet-n-Wild, this strip club on Fifth Street.”

“
Strip
club?” I don’t even recognize my own voice.

“It’s not that far away,” he says, as if my actual concern was the distance.

I catch a cab and lean my head back in dismay. This is my fault. It’s my fault I gave Jessica so much ammunition, that I never let Olivia know how I felt. She should have realized she meant more to me than losing than this job, but she had no idea. It’s my fault that she’s in a strange city, broke and desperate.

A strip club. “Oh God, Olivia,” I say quietly to myself. “What have you done?”

W
ell done
, Olivia. Only you could manage to lose a job on your first day of work.

So now it’s barely 10 p.m. and I’ve got $40 in my pocket instead of the $2500 I’d planned on after a full day’s work. And if I call a cab, I’ll be down another $20.

It sucks, but I can’t bring myself to regret it. I can’t believe that asshole thought he could put his hand
there
and get away with it. Maybe some of my rage was just at how fucking arbitrary it all is. What kind of world do we live in where Will can’t do that but a complete stranger can?

I start walking. It’s just a few miles. I’d prefer to run but I’m not that great in heels and this skirt is so damn short it’d show my whole ass with every step I take.

It’s 11 in Colorado right now. I wonder what Will and Dorothy are doing. I wonder if they’re still angry or maybe they’ve just moved on to being relieved. Eventually, they will. How could they not? Poor Will’s barely had a decent night’s sleep since I joined the team.

But I miss them. My eyes burn and blur as I think of Will sitting there on Dorothy’s couch alone, probably feeling guilty since that’s how he is. I miss him. I miss everything I had and everything I never got with him and I’m pretty sure that I always will.

By the time I get back to Sean’s, I’m beat. Not from the walking or the long day, but from my own misery. I find the keys he left me under the mat and walk in, dropping my heels off to the side of the kitty litter box and flipping on the light.

I step forward, and I hear a voice, one I have heard a thousand times in nightmares.

“Hello, Olivia,” says my father.

If he were anyone else, I’d lash out. I’d attack, or run. Instead, I stand here, still as a statue aside from my hands which shake so hard I can hear Sean’s keys rattling against each other.

If this were a movie, I’d ask him why he’s here, but in real life, my voice has stopped working. There is a just a creaking sound coming from my throat instead of words. And I don’t need to ask anyway. I know exactly why he’s here.

My entire life the nightmare was faceless, blank, something purely evil and inhuman. And now, in a single second, it’s standing before me — and I remember
everything
. Where I’ve seen him so many times, the part of my dream I could never recall in the morning.

M
y mother told
me to hide in the closet. She told me not to watch, but I did. I saw him grab her arm and twist, heard the bones snapping. He had his knife, the one he used to gut fish. It dove into her, sinking into her soft flesh, and when I ran from the closet to stop him, throwing myself onto her as if I could do anything at all, the knife went into my back and I slid to the floor. My mother began screaming at me to get up, to run. She had something hidden under her leg—scissors—and the last thing I saw was her pulling them out.

I scrambled off the floor and ran, expecting that he would chase. I ran hard, I ran so hard that the world seemed to close in on the edges and even the moonlight was squeezed out of my vision.

I woke up in the dirt. My mother wasn’t there. She didn’t come to get me. That’s when I knew I should never have left her.

I
’ve been living
with this in my head for nearly 15 years, with him, this monster I was scared to look in the eye. And I will now be what Will lives with. He’ll think about my death a million times, the way I have my brother’s. The image will never leave his head, and though it has nothing to do with him, he will blame himself for it. Erin’s going to tell him why I left when it all comes out, and he’ll see blood on his hands for the rest of his life.

My father bridges the distance between us and wraps his hands around my throat. They are gentle, though, almost a caress. “You went to the police, didn’t you?”

“No,” I whisper. I’m not following the rules. Don’t apologize, don’t show fear. I can’t help it. Desperate people apologize and show fear, people without another option, and right now I’m one of those people.

His hands tighten, ever so slightly. “But you told someone something, didn’t you?”

I grab my father’s wrists and attempt to pry them off, but my grip strength is no match for his. “Let go,” I hiss. Instead, they tighten further.

I think of him breaking Daisy’s neck…

And Matthew’s neck…

I pull harder at his hands, just enough to drag air through my throat, to push it back out. And to scream as loud as I possibly can.

I
arrive
at the strip club, scared that I will find her on stage, or worse, and I leave trying not to smile over the fact that she punched a customer.
That’s my girl
.

The cab driver has left, and I’m too anxious about her to wait for another. I start running, still carrying the backpack I brought on the plane.

I hear her screaming just as the apartment complex comes into view. I thought, at that moment, that I couldn’t be more scared, but I was wrong.

The scariest moment was when she
stopped
screaming.

I run harder than I’ve ever run in my life. I fling the door open and find her there—silent, limp, her hands swinging by her sides and her father’s hands around her neck. He starts to turn just as my fist makes impact, crushing the side of his face.

The two of them fall together. They lie crumpled on the floor. Lifeless.

I drop, pulling her to my chest, but she is boneless and still in my arms. Terror invades my chest, so acute that I struggle to breathe. I want her back — not this shell, but
Olivia
, with her smart mouth, her bad attitude, her wary smile. I want everything back, everything I had and took for granted, all of the bad, all of the good, and I’m shouting at her, pleading, knowing it’s too fucking late and that the moment I stop shouting I will have to accept it.

And then she gasps.

There has never been a sweeter sound than her gasping inhale.

I lower her just enough to see her face. She’s confused for a moment, as if she’s just coming out of a deep sleep, and her small smile, the pleasure on her face when she sees me, breaks my heart a little. The fact that I’m capable of putting that look on her face amazes me, and I’m even more amazed that I ever thought I could ask her to wait. That I thought
I
could wait. I know only now that nothing matters more than keeping that look on her face, and nothing ever will.

And then she looks at her father, still unconscious, and seems to remember everything, all the things that wouldn’t have happened if I’d just pulled my head out of my ass a few hours sooner.

The smile fades.

I pull her to my chest and cling to her. I’m not even trying to comfort her. This time, she’s comforting me. “Fuck, Olivia. I thought … fuck.” I can’t even say it. I just know that I don’t ever, for the rest of my life, want to feel that kind of terror again.

“I’m fine,” she whispers.

“You could have died,” I reply, choking on the words, realizing how close we were to that being true. “I’m sorry,” I murmur into her hair. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Her voice is raspy, barely intelligible. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I did everything wrong,” I reply. “And I swear I’m going to fix all of it.”

Once she's sitting up, I reluctantly let go of her to call 911 and bind her father's wrists, though I doubt he's going to be conscious anytime soon. That punch I threw was aimed right at the corner of his jaw and would have killed him, as I intended, if he hadn't turned his head. And when I'm done I go to Olivia again, cradling her in my lap. We are silent, shocked by what’s occurred. I can't believe she's really okay, and how close she came to
not
being okay. I can’t believe I ever let her go in the first place.

T
he police arrive
, shouting and with guns drawn though I told the dispatcher her father was unconscious. They point their guns at me instead, and it’s not until Olivia screams at them that they realize I’m not the culprit.

She is taken by ambulance to the hospital despite her protests. She’s on a stretcher, then moved to a hospital bed, and not for a single moment of that time do I let go of her hand. She seems fine, but I don’t think I’ll ever get over seeing her the way she looked when I ran into Sean’s apartment.

The police take statements from us both and the process feels endless, interrupted by nurses and doctors and a trip to get x-rays. Olivia is attached to monitors tracking her heart rate and oxygen levels, every unusual noise they make drawing her ire and bringing back a small taste of the panic I felt when she was lying in my arms, still and pale.

Olivia’s father is also in the hospital somewhere. He was just gaining consciousness when they took him away. He’s under police guard, but I’m not going to feel secure until she’s far away from him and he’s in jail.

It’s not until the police are done and the doctor has left to get the discharge paperwork ready that we are finally alone.

“I guess Erin told you,” she sighs. “I knew you’d feel guilted into coming after me if you found out what Jessica did.”

I look at her in astonishment. “I’m not here because I feel
guilty
. And I don’t know how the hell you thought I’d choose my job over you.”

“You
did
choose your job over me,” she replies. “You chose it when you sent me off the night of the banquet to pretend like everything was normal. I understood why you did it but …”

“I quit, Olivia.”

“You
what
?” she demands, springing forward, twisting the blood pressure cuff in the process. “You can’t do that! Jessica got what she wanted. I left. She’s not going to tell.”

“It had nothing to do with Jessica,” I reply, lowering the railing on the side of her bed so I can sit closer to her. “I knew the night of the banquet that I was going to quit. I just had to do it in a way that wouldn’t jeopardize your scholarship or get Peter in trouble.”

“You
can’t
,” she insists. “What about the farm? What about Brendan?”

“Olivia, I made my choice when I followed you at the banquet. I put you first then. Everything else will have to work out somehow.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she argues. “It was sex, not a promise ring. You never once suggested it was anything more than that, so stop trying to do the honorable thing and go get your job back.”

“I’ve been far from honorable for a long time,” I tell her. “I’m here because I love you. Because I’m so in love with you, I can’t see straight.”

She turns away from me. I don’t know how I thought she’d react, but it certainly isn’t like this.

“I don’t see how that can possibly be true, Will,” she finally says, avoiding my eye. “We both know how fucked up I am. How could you want to be with me knowing what you know?”

I rest my palm against the curve of her cheek, gently forcing her to look back toward me. I wish I were more eloquent. I wish I had some way of explaining it to her, but right now what I feel seems so deep, so vast, that I could sit here all night and never manage to describe it all. My thumb brushes her lower lip, lingers there as I struggle to find the right words. “Olivia, I’d give anything to change your past,” I finally tell her, “but at the same time it’s made you who are. The things you think are so terrible? I
love
those things. That fragile part of you, the way you freeze when someone tries to hug you or compliment you or acts like they care. I can’t separate that from everything else now, so I love all of it. I don’t want some other version of you. I want the one in front of me, and I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my entire life.”

She doesn’t reply, just looks at me wide-eyed as if everything I’ve said to her is a surprise when it shouldn’t be. Everyone but the two of us saw it months ago.

I run my hands through her hair and lean in. “In case you haven’t done this before, this is the part where you tell me you love me too.”

“Have
you
done this part before?” she asks.

“Yeah, about five seconds ago. And she didn’t say it back.”

She takes a deep breath, looking terrified, as if she’s about to dive into a stormy sea. “I love you too.”

I lean down, brushing her lips with mine. “That was pretty good for a first time,” I whisper against her mouth.

She smiles and I lean back in. I mean only to seal our words — a quick kiss, a promise of things to come. But her lips are so damn full, and soft, and it’s been too long, so I don’t pull back like I should. Instead I deepen the kiss, tease her mouth open, and find myself sinking into that place I always go to her with her, the one where there is no thought, only impulse and action. Where nothing exists but the soft skin just beneath her jaw, her mouth, the sounds she makes, my hands tracing her curves as I follow her gasp with my tongue, her body arching toward mine …

An alarm goes off and we both startle, opening our eyes to discover I’m alongside her, the blankets thrown off entirely, my knee wedged between her thighs and my hand on the verge of sliding under her gown.

Jesus Christ. She’s in a
hospital bed
and I’m on practically on top of her. I’d be ashamed of myself if I wasn’t so damn turned on.

“Don’t stop,” she says.

“I have to,” I groan, climbing out of the bed and returning to the chair beside it, “or that doctor’s going to walk in on something she can’t unsee.”

In fact, that doctor’s still going to get an eyeful unless I get a cold shower or change of conversation
fast
.

“You sure?” she asks, with a smile that goes straight to my dick when the last thing it needs is more encouragement. “I’m not wearing
anything
under this hospital gown, Will. It’d be so easy…”

I groan aloud.

This girl is going to be the end of me. But I guess I’ve known that since the day we met.