Chapter 18
18
OLIVIA
“ C an you believe that it turned out he was the underboss of the Mafia family responsible for her own father’s death?”
“I know ,” I respond to Summer, leaning towards her over the middle couch cushion, my eyes wide. “But Nikolai had nothing to do with that!”
Summer tut-tuts, shaking her head after taking a sip of her wine. “Still. I don’t know if I could have forgiven him.”
“Come on,” I say. “After the way he groveled?”
She sighs. “You’re right. Of course I’d have forgiven him.”
Summer’s officially pulled me into the world of smutty romance novels. It’s Friday night, and we’re spending it with a bottle of wine, on the couch, yapping about a Mafia romance book we just devoured together.
I finished the book when I got home from classes this afternoon. Summer finished it yesterday, and for the past twenty-four hours she’s been a ball of impatient energy, eager for me to catch up so we could talk about it. We’ve been obsessing over it together since I finally did.
The book’s been a great distraction from the shitty mood I’ve been in over Tuck.
In the time I’ve had to stew on it, I’ve recognized that maybe I overreacted a little. I mean, I understand from his point of view that he was only doing something nice. Something that was easy for him that would help me.
At the same time, it still doesn’t sit right with me. How entitled he felt to involve himself in my business. It’s like him taking a big step closer to me than I feel comfortable with.
Granted, maybe it’s a little silly to worry about being too close to a guy who I grinded against at a club, who I let pull me into a dim hallway and thrust his hand into my panties, giving me the most incredible orgasm of my life.
A hot blush races up my neck and into my cheeks at the memory.
Summer clearly notices my darkening face and wiggles her eyebrows. “Ah, you must be thinking about the kitchen scene,” she says, referring to one of the spiciest chapters in the book.
Thanks for the lifeline, bestie. “Oh, yeah,” I say. “Definitely. That scene was so hot.”
In terms of believability, my reply certainly doesn’t measure up to the standard I hold myself to on stage. But it’s enough to keep Summer from suspecting that there’s something else making me turn crimson.
Salsa jumps onto the cushion between Summer and me. She rolls onto her back and stretches out, clearly demanding tummy rubs.
Summer and I laugh and oblige, which has Salsa purring with delight. She’s a big, fluffy Norwegian Forest Cat. She was a stray, living in an alley in town last semester. Hudson found her and decided to take her home.
But Tuck was allergic, so he had to give her up. This set into motion a series of events which involved Summer taking her in to live with us, in exchange for Hudson pretending to be her boyfriend. Along the way they fell in love for real, and our house has become Salsa’s permanent home.
No complaints from me. She’s a sweetheart. Hudson says she was vicious when he first found her, but I don’t buy it.
After polishing off a generous portion of our wine, we’ve pretty much exhausted everything there is to talk about when it comes to the book we just read.
Summer takes the opportunity to spring a big topic change on me.
“Still mad at Tuck?” she asks.
I roll my lips. “Yes.”
She sighs, sinking back into the couch cushion. “Honestly, I get it. Swiping your keys like that, making such a big gesture when you’ve only just started to be friendly …”
“Who says we’re friendly?” I interject.
Summer waves my protest away, like she knows even I can’t deny that Tuck and I have been on a different footing than we were last semester. “I get how it could come across as sort of a violation of your privacy,” she finishes.
I take a sip of my wine. Somehow, the alcohol already flowing through me helps me put into words one major reason I’m upset with Tuck. “I don’t like feeling like someone who needs saving.”
“I don’t think Tuck thinks that about you,” Summer says. Ever since I first made my distaste for Tuck McCoy clear—the very first night we met—Summer’s chimed in with words of defense for him.
As a roommate of her boyfriend, she knows him better than I do. She likes him and thinks he’s a good guy despite the cocky playboy act. I guess she has good reason to. I heard about the way he drove out late at night to help her and Hudson look for a bracelet that she dropped that has a lot of sentimental value to her, when she and Hudson were on a hike in the middle of a forest trail.
“Needing help isn’t the same thing as needing saving,” Summer continues. “No one who knows you even a little bit could ever dream that you need saving from anything. But you actually did need help. You know what? You didn’t even need help. Missing out on those second-round auditions wouldn’t have killed you. But why should you have missed out on them?”
My eyebrows draw together as I take a thoughtful sip of my wine. Summer is making too much sense. She’s making me think I should soften my stance towards Tuck. I’m not sure how I feel about that right now.
After all, I did end up using my car to go to those next auditions in Burlington. I mean, not doing so would have been a level of petty that I haven’t quite reached.
And they went well. Great, really. I’m still waiting for them to call me back, but I have a good feeling. Even if I don’t land the lead role, just being chosen as an understudy for a role like Lady Macbeth by an organization like the Champlain Theatre Company would be a major feather in my cap at this stage of my career.
“Know what I’m kind of looking forward to?” I say, changing the topic. Summer’s given me thoughts to ponder, and right now I just want to move on to a Tuck-free conversation. “That gala in New Hampshire the department asked me to go to.”
There’s this fancy event that the organization of New England colleges that Brumehill is a part of throws every year. Each school sends a couple of their students each year, and this year Brumehill is really banging the drum about its drama department because an alumnus of ours recently starred in a super successful production run of a play on Broadway that got national attention. They asked me to attend the gala as a student representative of the department.
“Yeah?” Summer replies.
“Mhm. I mean, it’s not like a night in Concord, New Hampshire is a weekend in Paris or anything, but I feel like it’ll be nice to just, you know … get away from it all.”
“I hear you,” my friend says. “Sometimes it’s nice to just take a step away for a little while. Recharge your batteries while you have some distance between you and your day-to-day life.”
“Exactly. I don’t expect the gala will be all that fun, but it’s supposed to be fancy, so the catering should be good at least. Have a nice dinner, get a little buzzed on free champagne, maybe order room service dessert when I get back to the hotel room they’re paying for. And just be a state away from everything that’s been stressing me out.” I take another sip of my wine and nod slowly. “Yeah, it sounds pretty nice.”
Plus, it’s a guaranteed Tuck McCoy-free weekend.
Here, even when I go days without seeing him, the possibility always exists that I’ll walk out of a building on campus and see him right there strolling towards me on one of the walkways, or that he’ll end up behind me in line at a local store, or sitting at the table next to me at a café.
Next weekend, I’ll have the time and the distance to just relax and let my brain slowly work out the knot that’s been pulled way too tightly in my mind where Tuck is concerned. I’ll come back with a clearer head, recharged.
It’s exactly what I need.