Chapter 31 OLIVE
OLIVE
Writing Frenzy
By the time I get to Nina’s, my limbs feel like they’re moving through water.
Everything is dull.
Muted.
Like someone turned the contrast down on the world and forgot to turn it back up.
I climb the stairs slowly, dragging my suitcase behind me. Each step feels heavier than the last, not because of the weight of the bag, but because I’m heavier. Like heartbreak adds mass.
I don’t knock. Nina buzzed me in the second I texted her. I barely remember typing it—just a few words that probably looked more like keyboard smash than coherent English.
She opens the door before I even raise my hand to knock.
And the moment she sees me, her whole face softens.
“Hey,” she says gently.
I don’t answer. I can’t.
I just… stand there.
Blank. Silent. A hollow version of myself.
Then she wraps her arms around me, and I finally exhale for the first time all day—a slow, shuddering breath as I press my forehead to her shoulder and clutch the fabric of her hoodie like it’s the only thing keeping me anchored.
She holds on tighter.
After a minute, I pull back, eyes glazed and dry from holding too much in.
“He didn’t want me,” I whisper.
Nina’s face doesn’t flinch, but her jaw tenses just enough that I notice.
She nods once, stepping aside so I can come in. “Spare room’s made up. You remember where the mugs are. I’ll make tea.”
I nod too, but it feels like my head isn’t attached to my body.
I wheel my suitcase down the short hallway into the guest room—the same one I’ve crashed in a dozen times over the years. Back when Nina and I hosted movie marathons. Or that night I had a little too much to drink and couldn’t face my grandma seeing me like that.
I know this room.
It knows me.
But this time, it brings no comfort.
Nina comes in, holding a mug.
“Chamomile,” she says. “Didn’t have anything stronger, but I figured we’ll escalate to wine later.”
I give her a small, exhausted nod.
She sets the mug down on the nightstand, then sits on the edge of the bed beside me. Her weight shifts the mattress just enough to make me feel tethered again.
She looks at me for a moment.
"Why don’t you take a shower while I put a pizza in the oven,” she suggests.
I manage a whisper. “You’re a really good friend.”
She snorts softly. “I’m a moderately functioning adult with a stocked pantry and a well-earned hatred for emotionally constipated men.”
I almost smile.
Almost.
Instead, I nod again and whisper, “Thank you.”
She pats my knee gently. “I’ll leave you alone. Holler if you need anything.”
Once she’s gone, the silence wraps around me like a second skin—soft, heavy, inescapable.
I sit there for a moment longer, staring at the closed door, then push myself to my feet, limbs slow and aching.
I turn the knob in the shower and let the water run, then strip off my clothes and step under the spray—not hot enough to burn, just warm enough to pretend it can wash this off me.
The water hits my skin, slides down my back, and for a few seconds, I just stand there, arms limp at my sides, letting it fall over me.
Like maybe if I stay here long enough, it’ll rinse away the ache in my chest. The shame.
The sting of remembering I said I love you to someone who didn’t say it back.
The memory comes in sharp, unforgiving pieces.
My voice, soft and full of hope: I love you.
His stillness. The way he held me tighter, but didn’t speak. That pause. That long, echoing silence.
Like he was holding his breath.
The sob catches me off guard.
It punches out of me, sudden and sharp, and I double over, pressing both hands to the shower wall like it can hold me up.
Then the next one comes.
And the next.
Ugly, shaking, heart-splitting sobs that wrench their way out of my chest like they’ve been building for days.
My knees hit the tile. I sit under the spray, soaking wet and unraveling, and I cry harder than I have since my grandma died.
I curl into myself, one arm wrapped around my knees, the other clenched against the wall as the water rushes over me.
Maybe he never saw me. Not really.
Maybe I was just… convenient.
Someone easy to manage. Someone who didn’t ask for too much. Who could play the part, smile for the cameras, keep things clean and uncomplicated.
Just someone who could be picked up and put down again without consequence.
And God, doesn’t that just wreck me?
Because I let myself believe I could be irreplaceable.
I press my forehead against the wall, throat raw from crying, chest aching.
***
I’m sitting on the bed in Nina’s guest room, wrapped in a towel, hair still damp, skin pruned from staying too long under the water.
I haven’t moved much since I got out of the shower.
Just pulled on the first pair of leggings and oversized tee I could find from my suitcase and collapsed onto the bed.
Hedgehog Bernard is on my lap. My hands keep smoothing over the soft fabric, grounding me. You're still here. You're still whole.
There’s a quiet knock on the door.
I don’t answer, but I don’t need to. Nina pushes it open with her hip and enters like she’s been doing this for years.
Which, to be fair, she kind of has.
She’s balancing a fuzzy lavender blanket over one arm and holding a paper plate with two slices of pizza in the other. The smell hits me immediately—cheesy, garlicky, warm. My stomach grumbles, but my appetite is slow to catch up.
She walks over, sets the plate on the nightstand, and drapes the blanket around my shoulders like she’s tucking in a child. I let her. I don't move or speak, but something in my chest loosens a little when the warmth sinks in.
“Eat,” she says gently. “You don’t have to talk about it, but you do have to eat.”
I glance at the pizza and manage the tiniest curve of my mouth. “You’re really good at this.”
She shrugs and flops down at the foot of the bed, pulling her legs up crisscross. “I’ve had practice. I attract emotionally unwell women like moths to a flame.”
That earns a soft, shaky laugh from me—more breath than sound, but it counts.
She smirks and grabs the remote from the nightstand. “No pressure, but I did queue up Love Island: Australia, and I feel like watching someone else’s trainwreck of a relationship might be exactly the brand of healing you need.”
I raise a brow. “Didn’t we swear off that show last season?”
“Yes,” she says. “But then we said the same thing about boxed wine and that one ex who owned a snake.”
I blink. “Oh my God. Ryan.”
“Exactly. Sometimes we make terrible decisions. But at least this time, it’s just TV.”
She turns on the show and leans back against the headboard.
Onscreen, a guy named Chad with too many teeth and not enough shirts tries to convince a girl named Maddie that he’s “really here for the right reasons,” even though he was just kissing someone else by the pool fifteen minutes ago.
Normally, I’d be screaming at the TV. Nina would be making snarky commentary with her mouth full of wine and crackers. We'd both be rolling our eyes and mocking their definition of “soulmate vibes.”
But tonight, I just stare.
And Nina doesn’t push.
She watches with me, occasionally muttering things like “oh honey, red flag” or “that’s not how you use the word integrity,” but mostly she just… stays.
The comfort isn’t in the pizza or the blanket or the bad TV. It’s in the absence of expectation. The silence that doesn’t demand I fill it.
I nibble at the crust of one slice and put the rest down.
Nina notices, of course. She always does.
But she doesn’t say anything.
She just reaches over, pulls the blanket a little tighter around my shoulders, and lets me lean against her side like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
***
The sun is barely up when I blink awake.
My eyes are puffy, my head dull and heavy, and my body feels like I spent the night being dragged behind a truck emotionally. But underneath all of that is something worse.
Restlessness.
It’s crawling under my skin like an itch I can’t reach. My thoughts are jittery, my legs twitchy. I want to pace. Or scream. Or—God, something.
I toss off the blanket and sit up, blinking at the mess of clothes I never unpacked. My suitcase is still mostly zipped. My phone is face-down on the nightstand.
I don’t reach for it. I don’t want to scroll.
I try to read instead. I pick up one of the paperbacks Nina stacked beside the bed like comfort food, but the words slide off my brain like water on glass.
Too much noise in my head.
Too much Ash in my head.
I stand, then sit, then stand again. My body doesn’t know what it wants. My heart definitely doesn’t. All I know is I can’t keep holding all of this in. It’s pressing against my ribs like something sharp and urgent.
I spot my laptop in my tote bag on the floor.
For a second, I just stare at it.
I ended the last chapter with my heroine standing at a crossroads: between the safe choice and the risky one. Between the guy who makes sense and the guy who makes her feel.
Now I know exactly what I will write next.
I pull the laptop out, plug it in, and sit cross-legged on the bed with the screen glowing faintly in the early light.
I place my fingers on the keys. And the words pour out.
Like a dam breaking.
Like I’ve been holding back a flood and now it’s crashing through me, fast and relentless and honest.
My heroine sits on the edge of a hotel bed in Paris, mascara smudged, heart cracked in places she didn’t know existed. The man she thought might be different—the man who made her laugh and touched her like she was sacred—walked away from her.
He made her feel like too much and not enough all at once.
Too complicated to love. Too easy to leave.
She didn’t expect forever.
She just thought maybe… she’d be worth staying for.
I type until my fingers ache. I don’t stop to think, don’t stop to edit. Just bleed onto the page, line after line of heartbreak and hope and all the things I didn’t say out loud.
Every moment from the past few days is there, disguised in fiction but so clearly mine.
The words won’t stop. They keep coming, one after the other, faster than I can process. I’m writing like a woman possessed. Or maybe like a woman trying to survive. Because that’s what this is now—writing my way out of the wreckage.
Hours pass, but I barely register them. The only way I know they’re moving is by the way the sunlight shifts across the floor and the number at the bottom of my Word doc that keeps climbing. One page becomes ten. Then twenty. Then thirty-five.
My laptop is hot against my thighs. My fingers ache. There’s a growing dent in the cushion where I’ve been sitting cross-legged all day, my body stiff and sore—but I don’t care.
Nina came in earlier with a tray of snacks. Crackers and grapes and slices of cheese she cut into stars because she knows I forget to eat when I’m like this. She didn’t say anything, just kissed the top of my head, set it down, and left me to it.
I haven’t touched the food.
There are three coffee mugs on the nightstand now. Two half-full, one empty. I don’t remember making the second or the third, but my veins are buzzing with caffeine and adrenaline and something that might be grief, or clarity, or both.
I’ve written over ten thousand words.
Then more.
It’s a mess. A raw, tangled, emotional wreckage of dialogue and heartbreak and aching silence—but it’s honest. It’s real. It’s mine.
There’s a soft knock at the door.
It creaks open an inch, then a little more, and Nina pokes her head in.
Her eyes take in everything in one glance—the pile of coffee mugs, the untouched snacks, the avalanche of tissues on the floor, my smeared eyeliner and the open Word doc glowing like a battlefield on my screen.
“You okay?” she asks, gently.
I look up at her.
My throat tightens, but I force the words out anyway.
“No,” I whisper. Then after a beat, “But I think I’m writing the best thing I’ve ever written.”
Nina smiles. Not wide, not pitying. Just soft. Solid. The kind of smile that says, I see you.
She nods once.
“Then we’re calling that a win.”
And just like that, I believe her.
Even if only for a moment.
Even if it still hurts.
Even if I’m still wrecked.
Because the writing is messy.
And I am too.
But I’m still here.
And the story isn’t over yet.