Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
OLIVIA
Olivia’s stomach roiled with the bad decisions of last night.
She smelled Pop’s hangover breakfast burrito before she saw it.
Her mother strode up like a spring chicken, sparkly glasses shining in the morning light like a beacon. “Have a good time last night, hon?”
She peered over her sunglasses in the far too loud Fairwick Falls town hall.
“You are very loud,” Olivia whispered, grabbing the aluminum-foil-wrapped burrito the size of a baby. The thought of cheese and potato and eggs made her stomach turn, but she knew she’d feel better after the first bite.
“I’m so glad you got out and had some fun. Finally,” her mom added, sitting next to her and patting her head, fussing with her hair in that way moms did.
She loved it even if it embarrassed her.
Olivia picked at the burrito. “You were dancing on the table. I’m telling Pop on you.”
“Already sent him photos, and it’s his phone background now.” Her mother beamed with an irritating cheeriness.
Pearl slowly walked in, wearing sunglasses, and plopped next to Olivia. She slid down in the folding chair like she’d liquified. “I will pay you a hundred thousand dollars for a bite of that burrito,” she said with what sounded like a teeth-grinding hangover.
Olivia passed it to her. Allison and Lily sat down on either side of Pearl and her mother.
“Look at us,” Allison said with a bright smile. “Hot Girl Group Chat in the flesh.”
“Oh,” Olivia realized. “Is that what HGGC stands for?” She’d seen the name but hadn’t remembered from last night.
“It was your idea. All the way home, you just kept yelling, ‘We’re the hot girls!’”
Olivia squeezed Allison’s hand. “You were a saint for putting up with me last night. The only currency I have to repay you with is this burrito.” Hearing this, Pearl offered Allison a bite, still clinging to the burrito like a lifeline.
Allison squeezed her hand back. “I’m good. Don’t want Pop’s Cure to go to waste on me.”
“Did you see Luca last night?” Lily said in a bright, teasing voice.
Oh god, not in front of my mother.
“You should have seen how swoony he was with her,” Allison added, a twinkle in her eye.
If they only knew how much I embarrassed myself. Kissing him even though I could barely feel my lips? Stealing the shirt off his back like an eighteenth-century pickpocket street urchin?
Dreaming of him wrapped around me all. Night. Long.
“Speak of the hunky devil.” Her mother nodded over her shoulder.
He sauntered toward them. Did he even mean to saunter? Probably not. Probably just his natural sexy state.
He held a tray of to-go coffees from Fox & Forrest. “Thought you all might need these. Got the good coffee after I dropped AB off at Girl Scouts.”
“You’ve always been my favorite brother,” Pearl said, grabbing a coffee and chugging it.
“Are you doing something with the festival?” Olivia asked, grabbing a coffee from his tray, barely able to look him in the eye. Just don’t think about how you threw yourself at him.
“He’s a sponsor!” her mom said proudly.
Luca started to say something, but a boom echoed from the front of the hall. A wooden gavel smacked against what had to be a brick of C-4.
Pearl passed the breakfast burrito back to Olivia, who took two bites.
Gerald, the mailman from Olivia’s childhood, cleared his throat and smoothed his mustache. “We are so excited to have all the vendors here to kick off the informational session for the forty-ninth annual Fairwick Falls Fall of Fairwick Festivities Festival.”
“Jesus Christ,” Pearl said, loud enough to have three rows of people turning around. “What? That’s a dumb-ass name.”
Was it a weird name? Olivia had never really thought about it. It had been such a fixture of her childhood.
“All right, first up, we have to kick off the festivities—”
A woman who was Luca’s neighbor raised her hand. “Should be the Festivities Festival,” she croaked in a whining voice. “Get ?er right, Gerald, goddamnit.”
“To kick us off with the Festivities Festival,” Gerald said in a long-suffering sigh, “we have Ms. Georgia’s ballet class led by Olivia Maroo.”
Polite applause sounded like a thunderstorm in Olivia’s head as she waved and smiled from the back, slinking down even further.
“Are you ready?” Gerald asked, looking expectant.
Everyone turned to look at Olivia.
Nightmare fuel. “Yeeeeees…?” she said slowly.
“Great! Stage is all yours.”
Cold panic sweat covered Olivia’s body. She wasn’t ready. In fact, she’d kind of stopped even trying to get the kids to do any semblance of a routine in the last few classes because it seemed impossible.
“What do you mean?” she said, hoping she was misunderstanding.
Pearl snorted with laughter.
Gerald scratched his head, embarrassed. “Miss Georgia gives us a preview of what the dance will be.”
“And the costumes!” somebody piped up from behind him.
“Oh, fuck,” Olivia whispered. She was going to look like a fool in front of every person she knew in town. She slunk off her purse and sunglasses, grimacing against the bright light.
“Ms. Olivia Maroo,” the man said, as everyone clapped politely. “Our world-famous hometown ballerina.”
Oh, that makes this so much worse. As she stood on stage, four smiling faces in the back row were trying to swallow their laughter. She couldn’t even look at Luca.
“So first, my first-grade class will come up. They…” She spoke slowly, trying to figure out what to do. “…will be wearing tutus.”
“Aw,” the crowd sighed.
Okay, point for tutus.
“Do you have a costume to show us?” June, her old second-grade teacher asked.
“Um, I am finishing… the touches. On the costumes.” She blinked through a wave of nausea.
I have not started.
“Could you preview the dance? Georgia always gave us a preview,” Margie in the front row called.
Olivia mentally sent her mother and Lily a message to start a fire so she could leave, but they weren’t getting the hint. In fact, Pearl and Lily had tears of laughter running down their faces.
Oh, fuck it. How bad could making it up be?
“So, it uh… starts off with a kickball change and a grapevine,” Olivia said, doing basic moves. “Then, uh, they do this.” She moved her hand from side to side, wobbling like a children’s character at an amusement park. “Their costumes will be leaves.”
A man raised his hand. “The tutus will be on the leaves?”
“Uhhhh.” Crap. “Yep. Giant leaves wearing tutus. And then guess what else happens,” she said, realizing how she could fix all of this.
“And then they dance in a circle,” somebody yelled.
“That’s exactly right! How did you guess?” At this point, Lily had fallen off her chair, her great snorts of laughter coming from the back. “Then they… take real leaves from their baskets.”
“Do they throw them out into the audience?” somebody else called.
“Oh, my gosh. That’s exactly right,” Olivia said, smiling and sweating out pure whiskey. “Then they dance in a circle like this.” She skipped, holding her arm out as if running around in a circle with other girls. “And then”—Don’t throw up—“they take a bow.”
Beaming faces stared back at her, clapping politely.
Georgia was going to kill her for ruining her dance class.
She risked a glance at Luca, who looked at her like she’d hung the moon.
Still? Even after looking like an idiot?
“Oh, this is going to be wonderful,” the man up front said. “We can’t wait to see it.”
Phew. She breathed out a sigh. She walked back to her seat, happy to be done.
She pulled out her chair to sit back down in it as her best friend, mother, and two new friends wiped their eyes.
“I’m glad you all are finding this hilarious,” Olivia said, swallowing a smile. “I’m never going out with you again,” she said to Pearl and Allison.
“But we have Bitch and Stitch next Saturday at my house,” Allison whispered, looking at her with pleading, earnest eyes.
“I’m making my special cocktail,” Pearl added. “Gin.”
“No shots, and you got a deal,” Olivia said, sitting back and sinking her teeth into the rest of her burrito.
It was going to be so hard to give this up.
She hadn’t had a real life in… maybe ever?
Drinking too much with girlfriends, her mother taking care of her, the man she had a raging hard-on crush on bringing her coffee, and the stakes feeling so low that she could be her ridiculous self and it didn’t matter.
She looked over her shoulder at Luca, who was standing in the back, leaning against a wall. He winked at her, giving her a mischievous smile. She couldn’t wipe the dumbest smile off her face at how adorable he was.
She turned around, exhaled a long, cheek-puffed breath, and tried not to fantasize about him for the next twenty minutes. Lily and Allison spoke on stage about what Bloom would be doing, and Pearl represented her pop-up, Blackbird Bakery.
As the atom-bomb gavel was rapped to dismiss them, her eyes found Luca again. She excused herself from the Hot Girl Group Chat and beelined to him. She had to clear the air.
“Some performance earlier,” he said as they wandered outside.
She curtsied. “Fueled by only the best coffee and flop sweat in the county.” C’mon, you can do this. Be a grown-up. She finally looked him in the eyes. “Hey, I’m sorry about last night. I…”
“Drank a little too much?”
“Got hammered,” she finished at the same time, laughing so hard she snorted, slapping a hand over her mouth instinctively. He chuckled with her.
“I just wanted to apologize. I didn’t mean to, um… tempt us. By kissing you. Or coming onto you. Making you uncomfortable.”
He laughed a little too loudly.
She smacked his arm. “You don’t have to laugh like that. As if I’m being ridiculous.”
“I mean, resisting you normally is…” He gulped, keeping his voice low as people filed out around them. “Hard. But I’m only tempted when you can enthusiastically consent. And, you know, walk a straight line. And walk up a flight of stairs. And take off your shoes—”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” She rolled her eyes. “Thank you for being a gentleman, though.”
He looked embarrassed by that comment, and she loved the little blush on the tops of his ears as they walked out in the late-morning sun.
She smirked. “Can’t blame me, though, for wanting to relive the best—” Eep. She cut herself off.
He stopped in his tracks. “Best what?”
Her entire face lit on fire as she realized he was going to make her say it. She looked everywhere but at him. “Luca, come on.”
He looked incredibly confused.
She fiddled with her hair as they walked outside. “That was the best kiss of… my entire life the other night.”
He looked pleased with himself. “Entire life?”
“Oh, don’t look so smug about it,” she said, playfully pushing him. “Anyway, I’m sorry drunk Olivia got too greedy and wanted another one.”
He nodded but stood taller. “For what it’s worth, I think I agree with her.”
There was a tender cruelty in knowing someone wanted you but you couldn’t be together.
“Ah, there you are,” her mother called. “Allison and I are going to the fabric shop in Elliotsville. Want to come along and figure out how to give leaves tutus?”
She probably should have gotten started on them weeks ago.
“I should go pick up AB anyway. See you tomorrow morning,” Luca said, giving Olivia a wave.
She fell into easy step with her mom and Allison but looked back over her shoulder to see Luca staring at her before he hopped into his car.
She waved, and despite being the most hungover she’d ever been in her life, she decided she wouldn’t mind if she were home for just a little bit longer.