Chapter 5
Olivia
Ican hardly open the message without feeling a whirl of anxiety hitting me, my knee immediately starts to bounce. I feel like I’m back in high school new, anxious, shy, and sitting at a giant table in the cafeteria.
Sitting at that large table during orientation introduction freshman year.
We live on different sides of town, but all went to the same high school based on proximity.
They divided us into groups so we are required to mingle and meet new people at the school.
Each group has an upperclassman assigned to it to help facilitate discussion. Noah is assigned to my table.
“Great. My brother’s best friend. At least it’s someone I know,” I think to myself. The other part of me is nervous because I’ve always wanted to be part of Noah and Cole’s inner circle, but Noah always shuts it down.
We’re sitting across from each other along with five other students and are assigned various tasks and boring icebreaker games.
I hate icebreakers, I would much rather keep to myself, nose in a book, or be out on the soccer field running.
Noah is chatting with the freshman guy next to him, they’re both on the soccer team so they have been acquainted for weeks.
“Just keep to yourself and this session will be over soon,” I think to myself as everyone in my group is laughing at a joke.
“Play along and then you can get ready for practice,” my inner monologue talks to myself through this dreaded moment that is too loud, drowning out the sound of anyone talking to me until I hear.
“Olivia, it’s your turn…Olivia…hey...Ollie?”
I snap back to reality. Noah is sitting across from me, staring at me reading and my name tag, as if he didn’t already know my name.
I want to roll my eyes, annoyed he is pretending to not know me when I realize he called me Ollie.
No one has ever called me Ollie before, it reminds me of a boy’s name.
But it sounds so natural and feels so right out of his mouth.
“Hi, sorry, I was just thinking. I'm Olivia, and I live in Fisher Creek on the Bennett Family Farm. I play soccer too,” I say, quickly coming back to reality and realizing we’re actually participating in this icebreaker game.
“That is so cool, four of the seven of us play soccer!” another guy says.
Noah and I are still looking at each other. The corner of his mouth starts to curl into a smile as he says something about us all practicing together one day.
I have known Noah for as long as I can remember. He and Cole met on the soccer field in kindergarten rec ball and have played together since. But even after all these years of knowing him, I’ve never really looked at him. Like, really looked at him and soaked in all of his features.
His eyes are a light blue, like the color of the sky when it’s filled with those beautiful white wispy clouds.
He’s moderately attractive, not cute like a little kid, but also not the hottest guy in the class.
His brown hair is not buzz cut short, but not long and shaggy in his eyes.
The most attractive part of Noah is his smile, it’s like opening a portal into another world, where there are no outside problems. You can feel his kindhearted and humorous self bleeding into a room when he smiles.
The rest of the day is a blur as I’m so sucked in and mesmerized by him.
The faint jingle of the door, paired with a wall of joyous, bubbly laughter fills the small coffee shop, snapping me back to reality.
It’s hard to forget that it’s Christmas time in this small town.
The old brick buildings are decorated with dark green pine wreaths, each with a beautifully handcrafted bow tied around it.
You can smell the fresh pine with every step you take outside.
One of my favorite aspects of Fisher Creek is the peacefulness of being in the middle of nowhere.
The lake is small enough that we have tourists all summer, just not an overwhelming amount.
And even when the weather is unbearable, the humidity makes it difficult to walk outside without the sting of salty sweat dripping into your eyes.
But no matter what time of year, the weather, or life, you can always head out to the lake for some much-needed rest and relaxation, especially when you’ve spent the last ten years living in the city and have avoided coming home.
Which is why I'm planning on hiding out in the coffee shop for the next few hours.
Although I'm done with school and loving practice, I still take time to volunteer within the community by attending career days, volunteering at the school, and assisting the city community in any way possible. Caroline would tell you I don’t have an off button and am struggling with the overwhelming desire to be needed by someone.
So I pull out my laptop and continue to work on the community luncheon I have in two weeks. I sit there, peppermint mocha next to my laptop, the opening slide of my PowerPoint staring back at me, unable to quiet my mind enough to start planning my next presentation.
Noah: “Drinks tonight?”
He’s never been a man of few words but the last few years have been hard, distant even.
It doesn’t help that I didn't reply to his last message about getting together tonight.
Pausing for a second, taking that big deep breath I practice with all of my patients when their exercises are difficult, I type back…
Me: “Sure, where ya thinking?”
Before I can even put my phone down, those dreaded three dots pop up, and I freeze waiting for his reply.
Noah: “I’ll meet you at FishyBar at 7:30 pm?”
I can’t tell if he’s asking me or telling me. After the last time I saw him, I shouldn’t be surprised by this. I shake that feeling quickly and respond.
Me: “That works, see you tonight!”
Then I quickly shove my phone into my bag so that I could get back to work.
FishyBar, I still do not understand who thought up that name for a successful business that has a reputation of being a busy spot, with a huge variety of drinks, poorly made drinks, that is.
They trend on the side of strong, so strong you notice the taste of rubbing alcohol before anything else.
The type of drink that you “who-wee” and crinkle your nose before you even take a sip.
At least the wooden barn-style building was recently outfitted with a new heating system.
Fortunately, in the summer, Fishy’s is significantly busier with tourist lake traffic coming from the bed and breakfast located at the far end of the lake property.
They are known to the locals for their spectacular Christmas decorations that often illuminate the entire property, and with the new snowfall the reds and greens will reflect perfectly.
For a small town with very little population, we are fortunate to have a large area so everything is spread out aside from the town center. Heck, I’d argue there are more producing cranberry plants on our farm than there are people in Fisher Creek.
Our family cranberry farm is on the northeastern side of the town, the town center in the middle, and then the lake and FishyBar are on the opposite corner of Fisher Creek.
A few hours later I feel the faint grumble of my stomach and look down at the time on my computer, 1:30 p.m. The shop will be closing in thirty minutes and I'm sure my family is wondering where I’ve been hiding for most of the day.
Plus, I should probably tell them I won’t be home for dinner, and to certainly not wait up for me.
I finish checking off my to-do list and pack everything back into my bag to head back home.
My car does not like the snowy, hole-filled dirt driveway as I drive toward the house.
We have lived on this property for as long as I can remember.
My parents, siblings, and I live in one house toward the front of the property, and my grandparents toward the back of the property.
Our house is a white-paneled farm-style house, a dark green roof, with a beautiful wrap around deck.
The dark wood panel deck reflects light perfectly into the main floor of the house through the giant windows surrounding the first floor.
The property is mostly at the top of the hill and when you look down over the back there is an old, blue-green filled pond that my great-grandfather dug to fish with the kids over the years.
Now this pond is covered with a few inches of ice and snow and hasn’t been cleared off in ages.
I will always remember when the boys would employ me to help shovel the snow off as payment for being able to hang out with them and their friends in the winter.
We would skate in circles around rough ice, getting endless scrapes from the roughness and contemplating ways to create an at home Zamboni for the next day.
Our ancestors' vision for the farm came to fruition over the years and I can only be so grateful that they planted a large family of coniferous trees lining the front and side yards of the house to protect the privacy of our family during tourist season.
Now, as I pull back into the driveway those beautiful full green trees are dropping with the heaviness of the white snow, wearing it like a loose, droopy sweater to stay warm throughout the winter.
They were set up as if they were two separate properties sharing the same driveway.
Since losing my grandmother earlier this year, the whole family worries about Gramps in that big house all alone.
We have tried to convince him to move in with my parents now that I’m in Milwaukee and Pen is in Georgia.
But the best we’ve been able to do is get him to eat dinner with us every night.