Chapter 33
33
OLLIE
‘Okay, what’s going on? You’re acting weird and you’re saying strange things and if you’re on drugs, it’s not too late to get you into rehab,’ Kara said.
‘So it’s a “no” on the relationship thing then?’ he asked her, deflecting the question, because it was easier than delving into what was going on in his mind. Why had he only just realised today that he could have those kind of feelings for her? Jealousy had been eating him up when she’d been talking about spending those nights in a hotel with that Zac bloke and then he’d bloody turned up! And now she was looking at him with those huge green eyes and he honestly had no idea where she was going to go with this.
‘Ollie, you don’t want that,’ she told him, her voice oozing concern and confusion.
Ah. That’s where she was going with it.
He ran his fingers through his hair as he took a couple of steps, turned, then paced back the other way. ‘But maybe I do. I mean, have you ever thought about it?’
‘No!’ she said emphatically, as if it was the most ridiculous question in the world. She followed the denial straight up with, ‘Tell me the truth, Ollie – have you ever thought about it before tonight?’
He opened his mouth to answer in the affirmative, then immediately realised that it would be a lie. ‘Well, no, but?—’
‘And let me ask you another question,’ she demanded, and he recognised that this was why she’d been captain of the debate team in school. ‘Have you – and answer me honestly – ever had a burning desire to rip my clothes off and do the naked stuff? With me, for the avoidance of doubt.’
He could see where this was leading. ‘No, but?—’
‘And have you ever thought I’d be the perfect person to impregnate and then watch a child emerge from my nethers?’
‘Actually, not specifically, but I have thought that we’d have great kids. I just didn’t dig into the details.’
She slumped back against the wall. ‘Ollie, you don’t want me,’ she said. The captain of the debate team had hung up her hat and now his best mate was back and talking to him with her whole heart. ‘You’re just having a really shit day and you’re feeling a bit blindsided and untethered. And I’m your tether. Just like you’re mine. You don’t want me, because you already have me. I think what you want is a place that you feel is home.’
‘You think?’ The truth was, he didn’t even need to ask because he immediately recognised that she was right.
‘I know for sure,’ she said, with firm, but gentle conviction. ‘Now I’m going to go into those loos there, and you’re going to stop Drea barging in and dragging me out by the hair. And then we’re going to go to Hawaii and we’re going to have a great time because I love you and we deserve this because both our lives have tanked. Okay?’
The relief that this felt normal, and just the way it always had, felt so much better than whatever was happening in his head an hour ago. He was going to put that down to a temporary, Sienna-induced, cerebral blip.
‘And are we going to have any conversation whatsoever about the encounter we just had with your sleepover buddy back there?’
He watched as a flash of something he didn’t recognise went right across her face.
She shook her head. ‘No, we’re never going to speak of it again.’
‘Understood.’ Wow. That came from the woman who needed to talk about everything, who over-shared even the smallest details, who’d never kept a secret from him and Drea in her entire life until it involved this guy.
‘Now guard the door, and don’t let Drea shout at me.’
With that, she swerved into the toilets, and he took her place, leaning against the wall, his mind flipping back through everything she’d just said. She was right. It wasn’t a person he wanted. It was something stable. Somewhere to belong. Somewhere that he didn’t arrive and then leave again two days later. He had the house he shared with Sienna in LA, and that would no longer be home. They’d also had the flat they rented in New York, that they’d given up now that she was no longer working there. Then there were the temporary homes in Vancouver and Croatia when they were filming. The only house he truly felt a connection with was the one in Glasgow, but even then, it still didn’t feel like home because he’d only spent about twelve days there in the last year. Time for changes. Time to find something that gave him a real sense of purpose.
He pulled out his phone and rang the person who was offering him at least some of that.
Calvin answered on the first ring. ‘Hello lovely. Are you okay? You haven’t called me at this time of night since you were waiting to hear about that part in Taggart . I think you were fourteen.’
The memory of that made him laugh. This was what he missed. People who’d known him for a lifetime. ‘I never did get the part either,’ he said, remembering.
‘You wouldn’t have wanted it. You were dead by the second scene. So tell me… do you need me to help with something?’
Ollie got straight to the point. ‘No. I just wanted to say I’m in on the church. The theatre school. I’ll provide the funding for the building, and I’ll help you to raise more, and I’ll put my name to it and support you all the way. It’s a great project, Calvin. I’m really proud of you for taking it on.’
As Calvin cheered, Ollie relished the feeling that this was right. Every word of that was true. He’d be proud to be part of it. The other people who were already committing their names and their time were people in the industry that he had real respect for. Or at least, most of them were…
‘But I have two conditions.’
‘Pierre, put the cork back in that champagne,’ Calvin shouted, before resuming his telephone voice to Ollie. ‘I’m really sorry, Ollie, but I was joking about the hall pass. I’m not sleeping with you. At least not more than once.’
‘Good to know,’ Ollie chuckled, ‘but that wasn’t one of the conditions.’
‘Dammit. Okay, go for it.’
‘Was Corbin Jacobs part of this project?’
‘Yes. Although I just heard he got bumped from The Clydeside today, so there’s something going on there.’
Ollie didn’t elaborate. ‘I’ll match whatever he was contributing, but I want him to have nothing to do with it. He’s not using the school to get a single line of positive press. And while you’re at it, I want you to spread the word that I mentioned I’ll never work with the prick. No specifics. Just that. Spread it far and wide. I want a stink attached to his name that he won’t be able to wash off.’
‘Okay, I’m not going to ask why, but you’re the second person who’s said that to me today.’
Ollie got it immediately. ‘I’m thinking the first one was Casey Lowden, and I’m on her side all the way with this.’
‘I hear you.’ Calvin had been in the business long enough to give an educated guess as to what was going on, and he was discreet enough never to share it.
‘What’s the second condition?’
‘I’d like some part of the school to be dedicated to my mum and my gran. They both have the same name, so that makes it easier. The Moira Chiles Recording Studio. Or maybe the auditorium. I don’t care what it is. I just want them both to be part of it, so people will know that they’re special women.’
‘I could not love you more,’ Calvin said softly.
‘Right back at you.’
He spotted Drea waving at him from the gate. ‘Calvin, I need to go catch a flight – I’ll call you tomorrow to get everything organised. See ya, pal. Go drink that champagne.’
He’d just hung up when Kara came out of the loos. ‘Just in time, she’s about to come hunting for you,’ he said, nodding to Drea.
‘Okay, let’s do this,’ she said, with a sigh that didn’t correlate with how most people would be acting when they were setting off for Hawaii.
He stopped, put his hand on her arm. ‘You okay?’ he asked, searching her face for clues.
‘Yeah. I think it’s just hit me that I’m supposed to be going to my wedding, and now I’m not. I’ve spent almost three days being so bloody angry that it’s kind of numbed me to the bits that hurt. Josh keeps calling and I’m ignoring him, and?—’
With perfect timing, the phone rang again and there was that photo of Josh, on the beach, when she loved him…
‘Answer it,’ he suggested. ‘One way or another, just hear him out. It’ll either hurt or help.’
‘You’re really rubbish at this, you know that?’
‘I do.’
But still, she answered, and then she pulled him close so that he could listen. ‘Are you still going?’ were the first words out of Josh’s mouth.
‘I am,’ she replied.
‘With Ollie?’
‘And everyone else in my family,’ she retorted. Maybe it was her tone, but he suddenly flipped to a different energy.
‘I was going to come to the airport to see you, but since Drea cancelled my ticket, I knew I wouldn’t get past security.’
Ollie decided the first thing he was going to do in Hawaii was buy Drea a pina colada for protecting her sister. When Kara didn’t respond to that little nugget of information, Josh kept on going.
‘Kara, please don’t go. Please just come back. I’m so sorry. I know I fucked up, and I should have had your back from the start, but I fixed it…’
‘I know. Casey Lowden said you helped. I’m glad you did that. It was the right thing to do.’
‘I should have done it from the outset.’
‘Yes.’
‘But that’s the thing, Kara. You always know what the right thing to do is. It just takes some of us a heartbeat longer to get there.’
There was a click and Kara pulled the phone away from between their ears and checked the screen. ‘Shit, my phone died. Aaargh! He sounded really upset, Ollie.’ She was now standing still, as if frozen to the spot, just a few yards away from the gate. ‘What should I do?’
Ollie shrugged, genuinely at a loss as to what to advise her, in case it was the wrong thing, which, let’s face it, was likely to be the case.
‘I don’t know, Kara. But what did Josh say? You always know what the right thing to do is. Just decide what that is and do it.’