Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
LIAM
I ’m starting to think this whole night was a bad idea.
All I want to do is drop this tree off at her house and get back to the farm, away from complicated emotions and talking about them.
I park the truck in her narrow driveway, behind her VW Beetle, aware that my earlier plan to not look around at her house isn’t going to be as easy to execute this time. I’ll have to go inside her house. I’ll have to look around the living room. I’ll leave with the image of her on her couch, watching TV under whatever crazy blanket she’s got draped over the back of the sofa because I know for an absolute fact she will have one.
She turns to face me, cheeks still flushed after being outside. Thankfully, she talks as if nothing happened, business as usual. She still has the same cheery tone.
How does she do that?
“Hey, thanks for your help tonight. And for finding the location for the market. I can’t wait to draw a map once we have all the vendors! Maybe tomorrow we can measure the space? Break it all up into plots where the booths will go? That way I’ll know how many we have room for, and I can start assigning people as they register. Numbering them, might make it way easier.”
So much for keeping my distance.
“Yep.” I open the door, motioning that I’ll meet her in the front of the truck. I feel out of sorts, and everything I think to say sounds stupid in my head before I say it.
She pulls a face. “Shoot. I just remembered I need the tree stand. I’m not sure where that is.” She looks around the yard, as if it might be out in the darkness somewhere. “Oh wait! I think it’s in the garage.”
I watch as she fishes keys from her pocket, then opens the door of the garage. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to follow her, but I figure an extra pair of eyes won’t hurt, so after a few seconds I walk in behind her.
Most garages are reserved for lawn equipment and tools and maybe a deep freezer. Olive’s seems to be reserved for— “What is all this stuff?”
She spins around, visibly surprised I’m there. “Oh! I didn’t know you were—” Her shoulders drop. “It’s leftover inventory. From my store.” She looks away, a bit embarrassed.
There’s sadness in her voice as she says this, and while I don’t want to pry, I’m also curious to know more about her shop beyond the stories I heard when it closed. I didn’t ask my mom many questions when she mentioned it, but I was disappointed it was the one subject she didn’t linger on.
It sounds like it was a special place, and I want to know more, which is why I start looking around the garage for some clue of what it might’ve looked like.
I’m about to formulate some sort of question when Olive gives me a sad smile. “I don’t come out here much.”
Unlike me, Olive wears her heart on her sleeve. She doesn’t mind telling anyone how she feels about anything. I can’t imagine being that open. Especially with something as uncomfortable as my feelings .
But then again, I’ve always been the kind of person who smashes a lid on my emotions.
Haven’t I?
“You must think I’m a total disaster.” She doesn’t look at me when she says this, but I can see the humiliation on her face. Her default is upbeat self-deprecation, so this is a switch.
“Why would I think that?” I ask.
She walks behind a workbench, as if it can protect her. She picks up a stack of cello-wrapped cards and studies them. “Everyone I knew and trusted said it was a huge mistake—” she looks up— “opening the store. Venturing out on my own. To be fair, everyone said majoring in art was a huge mistake too, so I don’t have a very good track record when it comes to taking advice.”
I can relate.
She sits on a stool, and I close the door of the garage to keep out the chilly breeze.
“I’m kind of stubborn.” Her smile is weak.
“You? Really?” I say without smiling.
It’s not well-lit in here, and I get the sense that she’s shoved everything in this space so she doesn’t have to look at or think about it.
We have more in common than I thought, only my garage is mental.
“I know we didn’t really know each other in high school, but everyone had pretty high expectations for me,” she says. “I’m not the person you would’ve expected to end up bouncing around from job to job.”
I take a step closer, then sit down on a stool across from her. I don’t like talking, but I like to listen to Olive.
She shuffles the wrapped products around on the table. “I started college with this grand plan to major in architecture. It was something artistic but professional. A practical choice, right? Architects get jobs. ”
I watch her, as I try—fail—not to draw similarities to my own story. I know a little bit about trying to manage everyone else’s expectations with my own desires. “What happened?”
“I hated it!” Her eyes widen. “It was so wrong for me. I’m sure some people have figured out how to express themselves through architecture, but it just wasn’t my style. So I changed my major to art, much to my parents’ dismay, and here I am.”
Huh. She changed her direction, too.
“A sometimes barista-slash-dog-walker-slash-failed-business-owner.” She holds her arms out in a “ta-da!” motion and shakes her hands like it’s the end of a tap number in a musical.
“And now tree farm savior,” I add.
She laughs ruefully and shakes her head. “Yeah, we’ll see. A leader who doesn’t have anyone following her is just going for a walk.”
If she thinks she’s shocking me, she’s wrong. She has just described so many of my own experiences it’s uncanny. I should tell her how much I relate . . . explain that she’s not the only one who feels like she tried to do something big and important and missed the mark.
She’s not the only one still trying to redeem herself.
But I don’t say anything. It feels like opening a door that I don’t want to open.
She hands me a stack of cards, and I flip through them, noting her clever, quirky sense of humor is captured on each whimsical design.
A sketchy, hand-drawn dog wearing glasses, sitting behind a computer with the words This could’ve been an email. underneath it.
Two sets of hand-drawn feet sticking out from under a cover. This one reads PajamasPlans.
They’re so . . . Olive.
“It’s not exactly fine art.” She looks away.
“Does it need to be? ”
She shrugs. “I didn’t think so. I never wanted to make the kind of art that would go on a gallery wall. I wanted to make art that made people think. Or laugh. Or both. I wanted to put joy into the world.” She stills. “The world is dark enough already.”
I turn one of the cards over in my hand. There’s an avocado staring back at me with a speech bubble off to the side. Somehow, the avocado has a personality, and in the speech bubble, in Olive’s artistic handwriting, is the word Bravocado !
The quality is good. It’s obvious she’s paid attention to every detail.
“Turns out nobody but me took me seriously.” She looks away. “I mean, how could they? I draw fruits and vegetables and anthropomorphic animals and make greeting cards. It’s hardly serious.”
“What do you think of it?” I ask, turning around the bravocado so she can see it.
She looks at the cheerful avocado and smiles sadly. “Oh my gosh, I love that one.”
“Then, what’s the problem?”
She laughs ruefully. “You don’t get it.”
“I kind of do,” I tell her.
She shoots me a look. “Please. Your castle game is huge. You must be, like, a gazillionaire by now. Meanwhile, I’m the person they call when the espresso machine breaks down.”
“That’s a critical skill,” I say.
She laughs.
I don’t bother correcting her mistaken assumptions about me. That would involve an admission of my own.
“My entire senior project was a series based on literature. I illustrated my favorite quotes from my favorite books. It wasn’t edgy or thought-provoking. It was quirky and fun. Like, one was ‘Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a diseased mind.’” She looks at me, as if I’m supposed to get the joke. When I clearly don’t, she explains, “It’s from a Terry Pratchett book,” and waves me off.
She goes back to thinking. “My professors and the other students told me I should consider giving up on art and going to work for a greeting card company.” She looks up. “They said it like it was an insult. Like I should be embarrassed or something.” Her laugh is wry. “Little did they know, eh?”
She holds up a card with what looks like two cats in a car, and the car is in a traffic jam. The cat driving, paw on forehead, has a speech bubble that reads You have cat to be kitten me right meow.
“That belongs in a museum,” I deadpan.
“Ha, ha.” She turns it around, and chuckles at her own pun. “I just didn’t fit there. I’m not sure where I fit, actually. I’m artistic, but not high-brow artistic.” She slumps a bit on the stool.
I don’t respond, partly because I don’t know what to say and partly because I still don’t want her to stop talking. I usually lose interest pretty quickly, or feel uncomfortable, which is part of the reason why I’ve earned a mom-labeled reputation as a chronic first-dater.
I haven’t met anyone who makes me want to know more about them.
Until now.
Crazy since I thought I already knew her, but there’s a whole section of her life I wasn’t around for.
I suppose a part of me has always been fascinated with Olive. I just thought I would’ve outgrown it by now.
“I think the idea for the store came out of some misguided need to prove them all wrong,” she says. “Like, I’ll show you I can make a living!” A sigh. “I was so stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” I tell her. “I kind of know what that’s like, actually.”
Her eyes meet mine, and I don’t look away.
Please don’t ask me to explain .
Or do. I just might talk about it.
I don’t think it’s stupid to do something to make people happy. I think of tonight. Her plan to make me love Pine Creek again. I know it’s not about the tree farm—it’s about me. It’s about her caring enough to remind me of something that used to be good.
Or maybe it was always something good, and I just didn’t have eyes to see it.
“Well, in this case, it sort of was stupid, because my business failed,” she continues, thankfully not asking me to expound on what I admitted. “I went into it without a real plan. I mean, I wrote a business plan—part of one anyway—I wasn’t completely out of my depth. But boy, I found out real quick all that I didn’t know about running my own business.”
Designing your own game can be a solitary existence. I’ve taken classes that outline how to support yourself as an indie game designer. Most of what they teach is to create content online, so there’s no brick and mortar store, and even that was time consuming and overwhelming. I can’t imagine what it would be like with people and inventory and insurance and staff and bills.
“I had a very small online following,” she goes on. It feels like she needs to talk about this—so I let her. I’m not terrible at listening.
“My grandparents had given me some money after I graduated,” she says. “I put it all toward the store, but I still couldn’t get a loan on my own.” She half-laughs, as if remembering. “My parents co-signed.” Now, when her eyes meet mine, I see pain behind her eyes.
“I, uh . . . I have a lot of debt.” Her face falls. She looks up at me briefly, and then looks down again. “Like, a lot.”
For the first time in a really long time, I empathize. I feel horrible for her, and my mind starts racing about how I can help. I don’t know what that would look like, and I don’t even know where to start, but in this moment, I really care about what happens to Olive Witherby.
“I really believed that if I worked hard enough, I could make my store a success,” she admits. “And I really believed that people wanted to feel happy. What I didn’t count on was how expensive it was going to be. Rent and inventory and utilities? I borrowed Wi-Fi from my neighbors. I picked which utility to pay each month based on how overdue it was. It’s pathetic, mostly because everyone was right. It’s a dumb way to try to make a living.”
She takes one more look at the card she’s holding and tosses it back into a cardboard box full of them.
“I think more than anything—more than proving people wrong—I wanted to be a part of something. A community.” She shrugs. “I’m still trying to figure out where I fit in.”
Immediately I picture her in my mind, behind the counter at Pine Creek, wearing that horrible Christmas sweater and a Santa hat, laughing and handing out hot chocolate.
She could fit right there.
The pointless thought hits me out of nowhere. Pine Creek isn’t going to exist the way anyone knew it for much longer, and it feels cruel to bring it up.
So I don’t.
Instead, I cross my arms over my chest and arch a brow. “You know borrowing Wi-Fi is actually stealing, right?”
She shoots me a look. “That’s the part of my sob story you decide to zero in on, you psycho?”
I resist the urge to smile. Mostly, I want to know how it’s possible that this failure hasn’t broken her spirit.
And can she teach me to do the same?
“So, there you have it.” She does a little curtsy. “I’m in debt up to my eyeballs, I’ve got a useless college degree, and I currently have no marketable skills. I know. It’s shocking I’m still single. ”
She walks over to the corner and starts digging around in the bins on the ground.
“If I still had my lucky four-leaf clover, I bet my entire life would be different.” She shoots me a look that seems like a challenge—like do I remember the day she gave it to me even though I know she was ridiculously excited to find it.
She holds up a card. On it there’s a hand-drawn four-leaf clover in the style I now recognize as uniquely hers. “Just kidding, I made one for myself.” She grins and goes back to rummaging around. I’m glad she doesn’t seem to expect a response from me.
While she’s occupied, I glance down and see a notepad with some of Olive’s doodles on it. There’s one—a little guy wearing a propeller hat—that I’m instantly drawn to. She’s drawn him in a series across the top of the paper, like he’s on the ground at the start and then takes flight.
Whirlybirds .
The word pops in my head, and I can see it. The hook my game has been missing. A character that makes its way through mazes and puzzles, propelled forward by his practical, magical hat. Not just hats though. What if he could put on other items of clothing that do various things? Spring shoes to get over higher objects? A coat that becomes an invisibility shield?
My mind starts spinning on a creative axis like it hasn’t done in years.
X-ray glasses to see through obstacles. Muscle shirts to lift blocks to access hidden areas. Sweaty socks to wall climb. Combining outfits would stack abilities. Multiplayer. Competitive or cooperative. Race to the finish while punching your friends off the sides of ramps. Kids would flip out about it. Whimsical and fun and appealing to a younger audience.
I need to write this down.
“What about you?” she asks. “What was it like to be an instant success straight out of college?” She continues rummaging through bins.
The question is there, waiting for me to do the polite thing and answer it.
“Ah. Well . . .”
Conversation only works if it’s reciprocated, and yet, I can’t bring myself to get into it. Even though she’s just demonstrated that she might be the only person in the world who understands.
I search my mind for a way to change the subject, but I’m saved when I spot the Christmas tree stand on the bottom of a tall shelving unit. “Found it.” I pick it up as she turns around. “Now we can unload the world’s ugliest tree.”
She smirks. “Oh, I’m not letting you off the hook that easily, my friend.”
I’m surprised that a small part of me is thankful she’s not.