Chapter 6 The Whip #2
“So that’s a plan.” His voice is not entirely steady, and I suspect he is feeling what I’m feeling right now.
Never have I wanted him more than at this moment, when I can’t even kiss him.
It’s like the very forbidden quality is amplifying the feeling.
He runs his thumb lightly across my wrist. “So in the meantime,” he says softly, his eyes so warm they seem to be lit by a fire burning somewhere within him, “can I ask you on another date?”
“Yes.” My heart flutters like I’ve been asked to the prom. “We’ll just need to be extremely well-behaved in public.”
“Only in public?” There’s that mischievous look again.
“Only in public,” I repeat, and his gaze grows so intense that I can still feel it on me as I slip out of the booth to leave. I can still feel it on me for the entire subway ride home.
“Let me get this straight,” Vivi says at lunch as we watch Ollie getting into line at his favorite lunch cart across the street. “Neither of you thinks you’re ready for a relationship?”
I always knew that Vivi was going to be the hardest person to convince, but I feel obligated to stick to our story. The goal is not to tell Destiny and the committee one thing and our friends another—not when everyone circulates around the same water coolers. That’s a recipe for getting fired.
“So he must be the problem, right?” she asks. “Because you are definitely ready for dating.”
“He told me he doesn’t trust women.” I figure I should stick as close to the truth as possible.
“Oh. Huh.”
“Yep.”
She ponders this. “Hey! Ollie!” She calls loudly above the sound of traffic. I glance over at Ollie, who is gathering his lunch to head back to the office. “Ollie!” she shouts a second time.
“Vivi, stop it!”
“Come eat with us!” she calls to him. He nods and approaches with his lunch.
“Hi,” Vivi says, gleeful in the way she always is in the face of conflict. “So Laura told me you’re not ready for a relationship?”
Ollie glances at me and smiles. “I think we agreed to take a few months off while we’re working on a committee together, so that the whole relationship doesn’t blow up in the middle of it.”
“Sit down. I want to talk to you about this,” Vivi replies.
Ollie sits down, a grave, polite smile on his face. “Okay.”
“So Laura is great, right?” she asks.
Ollie nods, his eyes flickering to me. “Laura is amazing.”
“So what’s the problem?”
Ollie laughs. “The problem is that I need to take a couple of months to deal with some personal stuff and I thought the timing meant we should delay the start of this.”
“Bullshit,” Vivi says. “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. What’s the real problem?”
“Vivi, please?” I beg.
Ollie sighs. “I had a panic attack on our first date when I saw my ex-wife. And realized I need more therapy.”
“Oh.” Vivi looks skeptical for a moment.
“Laura has been very kind about not mentioning it. There may have been some tears involved.” Ollie is absolutely committed to the bit, I’ll give him that much. “So I figured, I don’t want to waste Laura’s time until I get that worked out.”
“We should let Ollie go back to his lunch, Viv,” I add.
“No, no, no. I want to talk to him. So. Oliver. Some questions. Let’s get to know you.”
Ollie shoots me a look, but fortunately, he still seems entertained. He settles in with his lunch as she considers him.
“So where did you grow up then?” she asks.
“A suburb of Melbourne called Toorak.”
“In Australia? What’s that like?”
“It’s like…Beverly Hills, maybe? The closest I’ve seen around New York is probably Upper Montclair, New Jersey.”
“So fancy as hell,” Vivi replies.
“Yeah.” He hesitates for a moment. “My dad is a successful businessman, and he wanted everyone to know exactly how successful he was.”
“Melbourne is in the southern part of Australia, right?”
“Yeah. There are palm trees there. A lot of swimming pools.”
“Do you miss it?”
He shakes his head. “I fell in love with New York when we moved here.”
Vivi considers him for a moment. “So your parents are still there, or…”
“They live on Long Island now. In Great Neck.”
“How Gatsby of them.”
“I think that was exactly the idea.”
“So what would your parents say if you brought home a divorced single mom?”
“Vivi—” I feel a little appalled at her bluntness, and faintly worried she’ll scare him off. I remind myself that in Vivi’s mind, he has already been scared off.
“Well,” Ollie begins, “I’m thirty-seven years old, and I don’t really talk to my parents, so I don’t have much interest in what they would say.”
Vivi looks impressed. “Okay. Once you’re done with your spiritual journey, you can date Laura.” Vivi stands up. “I’m getting an iced coffee. Talk amongst yourselves.”
“She’s a lot,” I begin as Vivi walks away.
“She’s looking out for you,” he says.
“So did you tell Katy that we’re not dating anymore?”
“Yes. It was a little simpler than that.” He chuckles ruefully. “She knew about all the stuff with Phoebe and pretty much assumed I was too screwed up to date anyway, so convincing her wasn’t hard.”
I take a breath. “I wanted to tell you…Hannah will be away a bit this summer. She’s spending three weeks with my sister Abby in Newfoundland. So if you can wait until then, I’ll have a few weeks where I’m pretty free, and we can figure out something to do.”
“You’re already taking West Coast Swing.”
“I mean something like, I don’t know, a weekend away or something. To show you I can actually be a fun person.”
He has a strange look in his eyes as he shakes his head. “Why do you keep…”
“What?”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I know.” I feel puzzled at the wary look in his eyes. Is it so hard for him to believe I like him enough to do something nice with him?
He sighs. “It feels like you feel guilty for what you said about me at the party, and you’re trying to compensate for—”
“I don’t feel guilty, Ollie. It just wasn’t true.”
Vivi returns then, and we drop the conversation. “Okay, one last request,” she adds. “Oliver? Don’t waste her time.”
Ollie nods solemnly.
“Hey,” I say, “even if we do start dating again, no one is wasting anyone’s time in the first four months of a relationship.”
“Lies,” Vivi says. “If you want my brutal opinion, I think most people are pretty sure how they feel by the second date.”