Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
OLIVIA
As Olivia looked up to see her mother dancing on a table at the Thirsty Beaver dive bar, she realized she should’ve come home more often.
“Your mom is cool as fuck,” Pearl yelled in her ear over the loud thumping music. Olivia had been nervous to join them at ladies’ night, but she’d broken the ice with Lily when they first got there.
The dive bar at the edge of Fairwick Falls was packed shoulder to shoulder with all the women in town. In fact, the president of the credit union, Olivia’s second-grade teacher, and her stepaunt were currently cheering her mom on as she danced on one of the sturdy tables.
“You’ll hurt yourself,” Olivia yelled up at her mom.
“Everyone’s gotta die some time!” her mom yelled, swinging her sequin-covered wristlet in the air to the sound of whoops.
“Don’t worry.” Pearl patted Olivia’s shoulder. “Tiny’ll catch her.” She pointed to a large man in a denim vest and a camo bandana who stood behind her mom. “Come on, I got shots!”
She was going to need about seven of them to stop thinking about the make-out session that had been running on a loop in her brain for the last twenty-four hours.
Luca’s hands on her ass. Tugging her hair.
Biting her lips. Feeling his biceps—fuck me, was it everything I always thought it would be—and wanting to bite them.
He’d tossed her up and taken what he wanted.
She’d been ravaged, plain and simple. She hadn’t even waited to get her vibrator; she’d had to just come right there in the kitchen after he left.
Pearl lifted a tray of shots over the crowd as they wound their way through the packed bar, kicking up sawdust on the floor as they went.
She came back to the table, scattered with glasses, where Allison sat knitting a pastel yarn.
Olivia was incredibly curious about the woman who had her hotshot brother terrified.
“Some ladies’ night.” Pearl jerked her head at the back of the bar where Lily made out with her enormous husband.
“They are nauseatingly romantic,” Allison said, shaking her head. She was their DD and stone-cold sober. Olivia didn’t know how she could handle being here.
Olivia’s tongue already felt a little heavy in her mouth from the two buttery nipple shots she’d had.
“I think it was that third nipple that made her cling on like that,” Pearl said, twisting her head as she looked at Lily and Nash. Olivia burst out laughing and Pearl smiled with her.
“Who are all these shots for?” Olivia said, looking at the tray in horror.
“They’re for us,” Pearl said, lining them up on the small table.
“There’s like twelve glasses here! You tryin’ to kill me?”
“Half of them are maple syrup. You shoot one, and then you chase it with whiskey. Or vice versa, if you’re a pussy,” Pearl said with a snort.
“All right, well, I’ve got to impress you,” Olivia said, trying to turn all her charm on. She desperately wanted Pearl to think she was cool.
Pearl rolled her eyes. “I’m already impressed. My brother likes you, and the coolest person I know, AB, thinks you’ve hung the fucking moon. I’m very jealous,” she said, picking a shot glass, “but also impressed.”
Olivia picked up a shot glass and yelled over the music to Allison. “Thanks for being DD!”
Allison cheersed her back with her sparkling water and lime. “No problem. I’m hoping no booze will make the latest round of sperm work.”
“Let’s get you pregnant!” Pearl yelled out. Allison covered her face, mortified, and laughed, her wavy, short hair shimmering in the neon lights.
“This is the last one I have money for for a while, so let’s hope this one sticks!” She pointed with both fingers to her uterus.
“That sounds so nerve-racking,” Olivia said, thinking about how nervous Allison must be.
“I’m sure you don’t want to hear about my drama. Your life sounds so cool. You’re a famous dancer. You’re going to go live a big life in a big city after Christmas. I’m just trying to make a baby with ‘provider’ 785-A.”
Olivia looked at Pearl in confusion. “Who’s that?”
“A six-foot college grad who likes chemistry. That’s all I know about him.” Allison laughed in exasperation.
Olivia wanted to ask more but didn’t want to offend her. Did Allison have a partner? Did they have struggles getting pregnant? It sounded scary to put all your hopes on a random sample every month.
Since none of that was her fucking business, all she did was squeeze Allison’s arm affectionately and say, “All of my fingers and limbs are crossed for you. And I am not that fancy.” Olivia’s mood dropped. “I’m actually—”
“Come on—shots,” Pearl interrupted, scooting glasses toward Olivia, trying to get her back in a festive mood.
Olivia looked at the six shots in front of her. “No way.”
“I will tell you anything you want to know about my brother,” Pearl said with a challenging glint in her eye.
Damn, now that’s tempting.
“Okay, but you have to take some, too.”
“If I get three questions about you.” The steely glint in Pearl’s eyes met Olivia’s.
She raised a shot glass and clinked it to Pearl’s. “What was Luca like as a teenager?” Olivia asked, taking the first shot of maple syrup and then chasing it with a burning whiskey. It tasted like her night with Luca, and she squeezed her thighs together.
“He was kind of a troublemaker. He started getting tattoos around sixteen because he could pass for older. School wasn’t a big deal in our family, but he managed to graduate.
He was a troublemaker, but not an asshole, you know?
Got really into cars. And then at eighteen, started doing body work for his buddies’ cars, and he’s worked on that ever since. ”
The whiskey warmed Olivia’s belly as she thought back to what he would have been like in school. A bad boy with a heart of gold. She sighed over it. “Your turn.”
“Are you really leaving in four months for a fancy new job?” Pearl said, double-fisting the maple syrup and whiskey.
Olivia sighed. “I don’t know.” She shrugged, feeling sad all over. “I have to audition, and then I’ll move anywhere that’ll have me. I actually lost my job in Salt Lake this last spring.”
The whiskey had settled into a gooey warmth in her limbs, making everything feel a little better.
“Oh, no,” Allison said, leaning in with concern as her knitting needles click-clacked. “What happened?”
“I turned thirty-three. My fouettés can’t fouet like they used to,” Olivia said, tossing her head back and laughing at herself. “I thought I had more time before I’d have to retire. I’m going to give it one last shot. Unless AB needs a nanny for the next, I don’t know, thirty years?”
Pearl pushed two shot glasses at her. “You.”
Olivia thought through the whiskey haze. He was a troublemaker in school…hmmm. How could she know if Luca’s white knight stuff was just an act? She’d fallen for plenty of ‘white knights’ who’d really just been regular dudes coated in bird shit. “What would Luca spend a million dollars on?”
Pearl waited until Olivia took the two shots. “Easy. Annabelle. He might make me get some new baking equipment and would probably buy some fancy book collection for Reed.”
“Nothing for himself?” Olivia said. “New tat or unicorn apron?” Her insides warmed at how adorable he was.
“No,” Pearl said, “not his deal. He kinda has to be made to spend money on himself, unless it’s for work.
He wants everybody else to be taken care of, which is annoying as fuck because he is a pretty amazing big brother.
Sometimes I just wish I could figure out how to make him happy, you know?
” Pearl’s eyes went misty, and she angrily wiped the tears away.
Olivia filed that away in what she knew would be a foggy memory. Luca needed to learn to put himself first, though she kind of knew that already.
She scooted two shot glasses at Pearl.
Pearl arched an eyebrow. “How badly do you have the hots for my brother?”
Allison scream-cackled as Pearl took two shots simultaneously of syrup and whiskey, smiling as she gulped them down.
Olivia thunked her head on the table. “So…fucking…baaaaaaad.” They all cackled. “We kiiiind of kissed last night.”
Pearl whooped, standing up and punching the air as Allison screamed “I told you,” at Lily in the corner.
A cold glass was pushed into Olivia’s hand. She skipped this syrup this time.
“Last one,” Pearl said.
“Urgh, I’m going to hate you in the morning,” Olivia said as she shot it back. “What’s his dating history?” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
Pearl shrugged. “Nada. I mean, obviously, he was in love with Marcy. And then, I don’t know, he's kept it quiet to himself, not dating anyone I know of. I’ve tried to set him up with people.”
Allison raised her hand with embarrassment as if to say me. “Talk about a blow to my confidence. I practically threw myself at him.”
“You did not throw yourself at him,” Pearl countered. “You asked if he wanted to grab a drink. And he said, ‘No, thanks.’”
Allison looked flabbergasted. “That’s throwing myself!”
“Oh, my gosh,” Pearl yelled. “That’s just, like, how dating is. She’s been out of the game for a while,” Pearl said, throwing a thumb at Allison.
Allison did some sort of complicated looping of her pastel yarn on her knitting needles as she talked.
“I was married to an asshole for a long time, and then the last year, I’ve been trying to get out there, but…
” She shrugged. “Dating in a small town is hard. Especially when you’re a six-foot lady who feels so awkward trying to date anyone who’s not taller. ”
Olivia nodded, understanding it deeply. “One of the reasons I was excited to leave Fairwick Falls. I grew up with the same thirty boys. Dated a third of them”—she cheersed her water—“in middle school and high school and decided: No, thank you.”
“Last one,” she said, practically feeding Pearl the last shot.
“What’s stopping you?” Pearl asked.
“From what?” Olivia tried to evade the question.