Incoming call: Brad
A pit formed in Olivia’s stomach, somehow hollow and heavy at the same time.
Her thumb hovered over the screen. It would be so easy to swipe the call away, send Brad to voicemail. But knowing Brad, he’d just keep calling, even though it was after ten p.m.
Almost a year after their divorce had been finalized, and Brad still called her when he’d had too much to drink, and other times when he couldn’t remember the name of the electrician they used or which company to call to service the heater. These were all things he should’ve known or been able to find out on his own, but he came to her instead, acting as if they were merely on a break, one more off patch in the history of their on-again, off-again relationship.
She took a deep, bracing breath and lifted the phone to her ear. “Brad.”
For a second, there was nothing but heavy breathing and then, “Livvy? Hey.”
She cringed at his co-opting of Dad’s nickname for her. “What are you calling for, Brad?”
More heavy breathing. “I miss you.”
Six months ago, Olivia might have felt a pang of . . . something. Bittersweetness. Nostalgia for what they’d had, a remembrance of early days, when Brad had still acted like he cared and she had believed they would grow old and gray together.
Now she was just annoyed. Not as annoyed as Brad would be when he woke up, hungover, but still pretty damn annoyed.
Brad wasn’t happy when he’d had her, and now he wanted what he couldn’t have.
“How much have you had to drink?”
“Not that much, Livvy,” he slurred.
She rubbed her eyes. “You can’t keep calling me like this. Drink some water and go to bed.”
“I miss you, though. I just—I need someone to talk to. You’re the only one I can talk to.”
A spike of irritation ratcheted her pulse. She should just block Brad. Block his number and spare herself this frustration. But she couldn’t. Not when there was always the chance that Brad would be calling because something had happened to Dad. Because Brad was a lot of things, selfish and arrogant and moody and not the person for her, but he’d always liked Dad, always gotten along with him. And he’d promised. Promised to let her know if anything happened. Olivia was obviously Dad’s emergency contact, but he was so tight-lipped, so reluctant to make her worry. He’d driven himself to the damn hospital when he’d started having chest pains at work, and she’d only found out when she had because a nurse had called her.
Despite thinking Brad was a piece of work for what he’d put her through at the end of their marriage, Dad was still friendly with Brad’s parents, was still polite when he ran into Brad around town. If something happened . . . Dad might not come right out and tell Brad, but maybe he’d let it slip. Or maybe Brad would hear something through the grapevine. He was Olivia’s best connection—last and only connection, save for Dad—to the town.
“You’ve got to find someone else you can talk to, Brad. Call your mom or something. I’m sure she’d love a call from you.”
“I don’t wanna,” Brad groaned petulantly.
The knob on the front door jiggled, and Olivia saw an out, an escape from this cluster of a conversation, a reason to end the call that wouldn’t weigh on her conscience. “Look, I’m sorry, but I have to go. Drink some water and go to bed.”
Olivia ended the call as the door swung open. Margot pitched her keys into the bowl on the entry table and shut the door, slumping against it, eyes closed.
Olivia set her phone down on the coffee table beside the shoebox full of keepsakes she was sorting through, screen side down. She cleared her throat. “Hey.”
Margot jumped, elbow slamming into the door. She hissed through her teeth, cradling her arm, and Olivia cringed in sympathy. That had to have hurt.
“Hey.” Margot stepped into the room and gave a self-effacing chuckle, massaging her elbow. “It’s going to take me a second to get used to that, living with someone again.”
Olivia smiled. “You’re home early.”
Margot had left a note on the whiteboard that read game night, and Olivia had assumed she’d be home late, midnight at the earliest. It wasn’t even a quarter past ten.
“Everyone has an early morning, apparently. Everyone except me.” Margot pressed the heel of her hand into her eye and sighed. “Sorry. Ignore me. Didn’t mean to rope you into joining my pity party.” Margot dropped her chin and laughed softly, staring at the floor. “Probably not the sort of party planning you had in mind, huh?”
Margot didn’t need to apologize, not to Olivia and certainly not for having feelings.
“Do you . . . want to talk about it?”
For a split second, it seemed like Margot might take Olivia up on her offer. She opened her mouth, then sighed and shook her head. “Nah. It’s nothing.”
“You sure?” Olivia prodded. “I’m happy to listen.”
Margot raked her fingers through her hair and offered Olivia a tired smile. “I’m sure. I’ll just sleep it off.” She squinted. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Olivia followed Margot’s bleary gaze to the coffee table. “Oh. I was just going through my boxes. Finally.”
Margot stepped closer, surveying the explosion of photos smudged with fingerprints, lucky pennies, and ticket stubs. Olivia’s corsage from junior prom, dried and brittle, rested atop a stack of notes scribbled in gel pen, once passed between her and Margot during class. The tassel to her graduation cap was knotted, tangled up with a macramé friendship bracelet. Margot’s hand hovered over the stack of folded notes before she shifted, lifting a picture from the table with a smile. “I didn’t know you kept all this stuff.”
“Of course I did.” The idea of the alternative, getting rid of any of it, had never even crossed Olivia’s mind. She nodded at the bookshelves against the wall. “I noticed you had some spare shelf space out here, so I put a few of my books on the bottom shelf. I hope you don’t mind.”
She mostly read on her phone these days, but she had amassed a collection of paperbacks she couldn’t bring herself to part with, novels she loved so much she reread them, new releases from her favorite authors, and well-loved classics with cracked spines and yellowed pages that had come loose from their glue.
“’Course not.” Margot crossed the room and kneeled in front of the shelf, tilting her head and studying Olivia’s contribution. She brushed the spines with her fingers in a sort of delicate reverence that reminded Olivia of how Margot had once touched her. “That’s what they’re there for.”
“Brad didn’t like the books I read,” Olivia confessed, chewing on the edge of her thumbnail while Margot plucked a book off the shelf, skimming the back blurb before replacing it, repeating the process with another and another. “So I kept them under the bed.”
For years, she’d kept them stacked neatly out of sight because Brad hadn’t wanted them on the living room shelves, visible to visitors. He had made fun of them, deriding the covers, scoffing and calling them shallow, predictable, poorly written. On several, memorable occasions, he’d cracked them open, folding the covers back roughly, reading from them aloud, making her blush. He would hunt for the sex scenes and laugh while he read, and too many times she’d laughed along with him, shrugging when he called them trashy, downplaying her interest. Brad had accused them of giving women unrealistic expectations. Eventually she’d gotten tired of his jokes that weren’t funny, of him glaring at her while she read, all his pointed huffs and none-too-subtle sighs. She’d tucked most under the bed, the rest split between the attic and her childhood bedroom, only reading them when he wasn’t around and sticking mostly to e-books so he couldn’t see what she was reading when he was.
Margot hugged the book she was holding to her chest and scowled. “Are you serious?”
Olivia drew her knees up and ducked her chin, feigning interest in the purple polish on her toes so Margot wouldn’t see her blush. “Unfortunately.”
She knew how it sounded, how it made her sound—pathetic. That this was Margot she was talking to only magnified her shame. Margot had always been so self-assured, so confident, so what you see is what you get, and if you don’t like it, tough. Olivia had wished she were like that, that she cared less about what people thought of her. She was trying, but it wasn’t easy, and with Brad, she’d never stood a chance, their relationship broken for so long there’d been no fixing it.
Giving in had been easier than pushing back, less exhausting than arguing. When she was in it, too close to see the forest for the trees, it was easy to convince herself that giving was natural, that it was what made a marriage work, last. It took Brad asking for the one thing she wouldn’t give for her to realize her concessions didn’t count as compromises, not when she was the only one ever giving. Brad never met her in the middle, never even came close.
Margot’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, and her scowl furious. Her jaw ticked, her nostrils flaring delicately. “He didn’t deserve you, Liv.”
Olivia’s tongue felt thick in her mouth. Maybe not, maybe Brad hadn’t deserved her, but he’d wanted her for longer than a week, which was more than Olivia could say for Margot. “I don’t know if it’s about deserving, but thank you.”
Margot turned the book over in her hands, scowl softening as she read the back. “Mind if I borrow this one?”
Olivia’s mouth popped open. “No. No, go for it. Help yourself.”
“Thanks.” Margot traced the swooping letters that made up the title. “I saw someone talking about it online. I guess it’s getting adapted?”
The tension knotting her shoulders loosened. “I heard that, too.”
She should’ve known Margot wasn’t going to judge her for what she liked or ask her to tuck away parts of herself like Brad had. Just like she should’ve known Margot wouldn’t call her weak for putting up with Brad and his bullshit for too long.
She should’ve known she was safe with Margot.
Margot crawled across the carpet on her knees and set her borrowed book down on the edge of the coffee table before dragging one of Olivia’s half-unpacked boxes closer, two fingers tucked around the edge of the cardboard. She peeked inside. “You’ve got more books in here.”
Olivia’s heart crept inside her throat. “Those aren’t—”
Too late. Margot had already reached inside, plucking one of the books from the depths of the box, brows inching their way toward her hairline as she scanned the cover. “Hole-Hearted to Whole-Hearted: Moving On and Starting Over.”
Heat licked at the sides of Olivia’s face. “That’s not mine.”
Margot stared.
“Okay, it’s mine,” Olivia amended, squirming under Margot’s curious stare. “But I didn’t buy it.” She coughed. “My, uh, my dad bought it. For me. He thought it would be helpful or something. He’s supported all my decisions, but he only understands not being married anymore from the standpoint of . . . grief. And there is that, but for me it’s all tangled up with relief, too.”
Margot flipped the book over, skimming the back, just like she had Olivia’s romance novels. “Was it?”
“Was it what?”
Margot looked up. “Helpful.”
“Oh.” She tucked her hair behind her left ear and shrugged. “I guess? It talks about setting boundaries and looking to the future instead of wasting time playing the blame game. That just because your ex wasn’t the right person for you doesn’t mean that person isn’t out there.” She smiled. “Nothing I didn’t already know.”
Whether she believed it was a different story. Or if they were out there, what were the chances she would be the right person for them, too? Life was far from fair; it would be just her luck that her perfect person would find her wanting.
Margot set the book back into the box before she reached out and plucked her old friendship bracelet off the table, rolling it between her fingers. The knotted ends were frayed, the black letters on the pastel rainbow beads faded from wear. Her lips quirked at the corners. “Watch out using that phrase around Brendon.” She huffed gently. “Right person.”
Brendon had created a dating app, sure, and the way he looked at Annie with total moon eyes certainly supported his reputation as a hopeless romantic. But Margot made it sound as if there was more to it than that. “Why do I get the feeling there’s a story there?”
“Brendon, Brendon, Brendon.” Margot laughed and shook her head, managing to look both fond and exasperated. “He loves his job. He takes it very seriously. Very personally.” Margot rolled her eyes. “He thinks it’s his mission in life, his calling practically, to help everyone around him find love.” Her nose scrunched on the last word. “The fact that he successfully set up Darcy with Elle only made him more dogged about it, more . . . confident that he’s meant to be this—this matchmaker.”
He sounded well-meaning, but she could see where that could get old fast. Joining a dating app and searching for love was one thing; having potential love matches foisted on you when you weren’t interested was something else altogether. “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’ve been the . . . victim? Of one of his matchmaking schemes?”
Margot’s face did something complicated, scrunching as if she’d sucked on a lemon, before her brows rose and she sighed, shoulders slumping. “He’s tried. I’m usually pretty good at putting him in his place, gently yet firmly, but I’ve been known to cave on occasion. I’ve never let him set me up with someone, but I go through the motions if we’re out somewhere and he introduces me to a friend of his. When Brendon inevitably wanders off to give us time to chat, I make it clear if I’m not actually interested.”
Not actually interested in the friends Brendon tried to set her up with, or not interested in dating, period? “So you aren’t seeing anyone?”
Olivia held her breath. That was probably something she should’ve asked before, when they were having their roommate chat. She’d had the perfect opening when she’d asked about having people over, but she’d flustered too easily. Margot made her fluster too easily.
“No.” Margot’s tongue darted out, wetting her bottom lip. “I’m not.”
Do you want to be? sounded like a cringe pickup line even if that wasn’t how Olivia meant it. But when Margot didn’t tack on a helpful adjoiner, she had to ask something. She wouldn’t be able to sleep otherwise, her curiosity niggling at her. “Are you interested in finding someone?”
Had it been a question of wrong time, wrong place when they were younger, or was Olivia just the wrong person?
Margot slipped her fingers beneath her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “I’m not not interested. I just don’t feel like I need someone. Like I’m lacking without my special other half.” Margot scoffed softly, brow knitting harshly, her scowl returning. “I’m a whole person. And the idea of needing to find someone to make you complete seems like bullshit to me. The right person shouldn’t complete you, they should love you the way you are. And it’s cool if they make you want to be better, but they should never make you feel like you’re too much or not enough exactly as you are.” Margot took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Sorry.” She chuckled. “Soapbox. I have a lot of feelings, I guess.”
“I like your feelings,” Olivia blurted, face heating. “I mean, your feelings are valid.”
Margot blushed, the tops of her ears turning a darker shade than her cheeks. She laughed under her breath. “Thanks. As much as I love my friends, sometimes I feel like they don’t get it. They’re all in relationships and so happy and I’m happy for them, but based on how they talk sometimes I get the feeling they wish I were in a relationship because it would be easier for them. Like it would tie our friend group up into a nice little six-way bow. No loose strings.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way. No one should ever take your friendship for granted.”
Not any friendship, but certainly not Margot’s. Margot had been the most loyal friend Olivia had ever had, and she knew from experience what it was like losing that, missing it, wanting it back.
It was funny. Well, perhaps funny wasn’t the right word. Ironic, maybe—Olivia always used that word wrong—how she hadn’t regretted sleeping with Margot, but she’d absolutely regretted the aftermath. How, without meaning to, it had complicated everything, something she’d thought had brought them together instead adding distance between them.
Margot wrapped the ends of her friendship bracelet around her narrow wrist and shrugged. “I’m not saying they’re taking me for granted, but it just sucks to think that they potentially rank our friendship lower than their relationships when they aren’t comparable, you know? Love isn’t supposed to be quantifiable, relationships held up against one another, pitted against one another. That’s a shitty thing to try to do, like asking someone to compare their love for their mother to their love for their partner or their best friend.”
When Margot frowned at her wrist, unable to knot the ends of the bracelet together with one hand, Olivia reached out to do it for her.
“It’s like, I don’t care about you less because I don’t want in your pants, you know?” Margot paused and lifted her eyes, a low creak escaping her parted lips. “General you. Not you specifically. Not that I’m not saying . . .” She turned her head to the side and chuckled. “Wow, I’m going to shut up.”
Olivia bit her lip, smothering her smile at how flustered Margot sounded. Whether Margot had wanted in Olivia’s pants had never been the question. Or it had been, but only until it had been answered. It wasn’t the prevailing question now. “I know what you were trying to say.”
“Do you?” Margot laughed, a flush creeping down her neck and disappearing where her slouchy crewneck sweater draped beneath her collarbones. “Because I think I got lost somewhere in there.”
Olivia finished tying the bracelet, but let her fingers linger, adjusting the way the braided rope and beads sat. Olivia’s thumb grazed the fragile skin over the inside of Margot’s wrist, making her shiver, and Olivia could’ve sworn she felt Margot’s pulse skip. “You value your friendships. It’s—it was always one of my favorite things about you.”
Margot’s throat jerked. “Yeah?”
Olivia nodded and went for broke. “I feel like a dork, but no one really teaches you how to make friends as an adult. Would you . . . maybe want to be friends? Again?” She laughed. “God, I feel like I should write this down on a piece of paper. Check yes or no.”
Margot rolled her lips together. “I don’t know.”
Olivia’s heart stalled, then sank.
“It’s not like we aren’t living together. I mean, hell, you’ve gotten acquainted with my, uh, my sex toy collection. I have some friends who can’t say the same.” Margot’s lips quirked and, whew, okay, joking. Relief flooded Olivia’s veins.
She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead and laughed. “This is true. Although”—her lips twitched—“acquainted is kind of an overstatement.”
And if they were going to discuss qualifiers of intimacy, there was the fact they’d slept together.
Margot’s teeth scraped against the swell of her bottom lip, her brows rising. Her flush had yet to fade. If anything, it had deepened, turning her dark pink from her hairline all the way down to where her soft-looking sweater met equally soft-looking skin. “Fair. I guess collection might be a bit of an overstatement, too.” The front of her throat jerked when she swallowed. “You’ve only seen one.”
God. Okay. It wasn’t like that was an invitation. Even if Olivia wished it were—no. She had no business going there, down that path. She’d been down it before, and look where it had gotten her. She’d literally just thought about how she’d regretted the complicated aftermath of their coupling, the consequences. “True.”
Margot smiled, all dark eyes and flushed cheeks, and Olivia tried to ignore the throb between her thighs, how everything south of her navel was suddenly hot and ached.
“So.” Olivia blinked hard and pasted on a cheery smile. “Friends?”
“Sure.” The left corner of Margot’s mouth tipped up in a smirk, erasing Olivia’s efforts at ignoring the ache between her legs. “Friends.”
