Chapter Eight
“Hannah.”
Olivia had called her agent despite the clear instruction the previous week
“Just go find him, and when you do: don’t call me. Write.”
And she was. And she did.
She was sitting on her sofa, her phone tucked under her ear, the older style landline cord wrapped around her fingers.
She had spent the majority of the day writing at a café in Brixton, and the early afternoon doing a small grocery shop before settling back into her flat for a relaxing night of bubbly and watching cheesy romance movies. Another form of research.
Somewhere during the mid-morning, between the obscene coffee consumption and spending far too long in Sainsbury’s biscuit aisle toying between Digestives or Hobnobs, she had finally brushed the cobwebs off her laptop and had the guts to begin typing.
Nimble fingers flitting quickly over black keys, she was finally getting somewhere.
Finally dotting i’s and crossing t’s. After rambling and sharing a blueberry muffin with the handsome man who promised to help her, Olivia had officially written two more chapters.
Although not much, it was still something.
For the first time since the meeting in her literary agent’s, she swore she could see an inkling of light at the end of this tunnel.
A rope had slowly lowered into the pit of despair and the small voice in her head told her to hold on tight as it heaved her up out of the dark writer’s block that she had fallen into all those months ago.
“Olivia.” Hannah’s voice filtered through the phone receiver. “How’s the writing going?”
“How’s the writing going?” Olivia spoke as though it were a rhetorical question. “I’m writing. I have written. That’s how it’s going.” The words fell out of her in a waterfall of excitement.
“Oh, thank God.” Hannah let out an exaggerated sigh of relief.
Despite being her literary agent for the past three years, she was also one of Olivia’s closest friends.
As an author, one’s social life could often become a shell of what it was, unless you actively made the decision to integrate yourself into the world of those with the same passions, the same interest in creative endeavours, the same goal-orientated mentality.
Together, Olivia, Hannah and Danielle were three peas in a pod.
They shared similar pastimes, and although they all had schedules reflecting their extreme girl boss energy, they still got together and laughed.
Hannah had always encouraged Olivia, and it wasn’t for the pay cheque.
It was for the late-night-over-wine therapy she had given throughout Olivia’s previous break-up, or the random text messages saying she had met an actor on the subway and how integral it had been for her to ask the B-list celebrity for a photo.
Her job title firmly out the window as soon as it reached 5:00 p.m. on a Friday, Hannah swapped from business to party mode and had no problem dragging Olivia along to the hip new clubs and drag queen shows that the London nightlife had to offer.
“Seriously?” Olivia felt like Hannah should have been a bit more enthusiastic about the fact that she was writing, but then again, this was Hannah.
Her support was delivered like her advice.
Abruptly and with brutal honesty. “I tell you I’m writing again, and the first thing you say is ‘thank God’? ”
No longer was she sitting alone in her apartment and wallowing over the thought that her writing was mediocre and unrelatable.
That her characters were all made of utter fluff and facade.
No depth or authenticity in their descriptions or actions.
Nothing solid to connect them to the readers as they should. Writer’s block sucked. Majorly.
“Need I remind you of the urgent, impending deadline you have creeping up? The more words you pump out, the less likely I am to get fired. So yeah, hallelujah.” Hannah breathed. “Anyway, how’s the research going? Has your leading man spoken to you yet?”
Olivia had a dirty big grin on her face at the thought of Theo. How she had gone home and written something for the first time in a long time. “He’s spoken to me.”
“Come on, I need a little more than that.” Hannah muttered. “How’s it all really? The research, I mean. It must have helped something because you sent those pages pretty darn fast.”
Olivia kicked her sock-clad feet up onto her coffee table and grinned as she curled further into her plush sofa cushions. “It means Danielle told me to download every dating app that has ever existed, and I ended up meeting a stranger who has agreed to help me find my leading man.”
“A stranger on an app?”
Olivia frowned. “ A stranger as a result of the app.”
“What?”
“The app was the catalyst, but I met Theo…” Quite randomly, really. He had just waltzed up to her table and sat down like it was his. “By chance.”
“By chance?”
“Yes.” Olivia couldn’t fight the new smile that had begun to turn up her lips at the thought of Theo. “It was all rather serendipitous really. He just kind of showed up.”
“That sounds like the beginning of a horror film, Liv.”
“I’ve met him, obviously, and he’s agreed to help me. He’s going to set me up—”
Combining online dating with the dates Theo was setting her up on, she felt as though she had been constantly swiping, talking and deleting men.
It might sound cold-hearted and completely unlike her bubbly, friendly self, but Olivia now had no shame after speaking to some of the shocker men on the sites.
“Wait, he’s setting you up?” Hannah asked, her voice distant on the phone. “Why doesn’t he just do it?”
“That’s what Danielle said too, but I’ll tell you what I told her.” Olivia rolled her eyes. “He helps me find my leading man through dates, and I step in as his plus-one at his sister’s wedding. Simple.”
“Okay,” Hannah replied sceptically. “As long as I get the chapters required by Monday I am excited for you.”
“Hannah, that means so much to me, you don’t even know—”
“Yeah, yeah. Go write a masterpiece and I’ll see you soon.” Hannah let out a chuckle before hanging up.
Olivia was sitting in a shabby chic armchair in the back of one of her favourite coffee shops in Soho.
Artisan Aroma sat in the space between the local Chinese takeaway and a small London souvenir gift shop.
She sat with her green notebook in front of her, highlighter poised at the ready.
For a writer, she was what you called a walking contradiction.
When she was in the middle stages of writing, she hated it.
When she wasn’t in the depths of a novel and didn’t have the itch to write – the moments where she would wake up randomly at 2 a.m. and hurriedly scribble words onto a page under the blinding white light of her phone’s torch before rolling back over, reading the mysterious notes she had written in her half-dream state the next morning – she missed it.
The spontaneous side of writing, the unpredictability of getting the best ideas at the most inconvenient of times.
To finish this manuscript in time, Olivia had set herself a strict word goal.
Achieve it, and her novel would be finished with time to plan a second and write a first draft of it within the end of a year: her Virgo brain required everything to read through perfectly before she even considered it a semi-reasonable final draft.
She had roughly fifteen hundred words left to write before the weekend, but her brain still felt fuzzy from yesterday’s meeting with Theo, and every word on the page in front of her seemed to mush together into a whole lot of jumbled nonsense.
She was still waiting for his text – eager to know when they would meet again.
To say she was excited was an understatement.
Olivia had enjoyed the man’s company far more than she thought she would have.
Theo had huddled close to her in the coffee shop, listening to her ramble.
Something that few men had had the guts to do and even fewer able to remain attentive enough to ask questions as he had.
Olivia came to the conclusion that she needed to up her standards for men.
If she were to meet her ideal goal of being married with one point five kids by the time she got to thirty-five, a goal that she had pushed back year after year, she had to find one fast. But now she was an established career woman.
The goal had never seemed achievable when her economic success had so heavily relied on the, at the time, new writing venture.
On this creative outlet that she had been fortunate enough to undertake full time as of last year after quitting her tutoring job.
Although her savings account was far from starving, there was always room for a gooey chocolatey dessert with extra whipped cream. Aka, the additional extra on top.
Looking up from her notebook, Olivia watched the busybodies enter and exit the coffee shop, eyes focusing on a group of girls at the front, thin strips of their stomachs showing over the top of their low-rise jeans. Apparently, those nightmares were back in fashion.
Olivia cringed as she thought of her classic 2008 mid-washed jeans and tight T-shirts that were the same style and shook her head.
Nope. Never again. She refused to go backwards in the realms of fashion.
It had taken her a few decent years to filter down her colourful and sometimes unique style to a sustainable amount of clothing.
Let alone be able to look back at pictures of her teen years without cringing.
Olivia liked to call her wardrobe a capsule wardrobe.
If capsule wardrobes looked like a rainbow threw up in them and came with crochet cardigans.
Even if they did hit the pages of Vogue in the near future, Olivia swore at that moment that she would never again submit herself to such a crime of fashion as the low-rise denim. She’d rather wear a bootleg.
Biting the end of her highlighter, she reread the scribbled dialogue she had written on the small page.
Adjusting her earphones, she pressed skip on the song that was playing and finally put pen to paper, scribbling notes in the thin margins and squeezing them between the lines of her already mediocre writing.
Finally making headway, her phone buzzed, the music dimming enough for her train of thought to fly out the window and never return.
With a sigh, she flipped over her phone on top of the table, her heart thudding as she read the message notification.
Theo
Are you free tonight?
Dragging the pen through some dialogue, Olivia stared hopelessly at the rest of the passage.
Jotting down another random sentence on the side, she hoped the words would materialise into something, some scene or pivotal moment between the two leads.
Olivia cried internally as she continued to skim-read, realising that it made absolutely no sense and that she might as well cross out the whole paragraph. Retrieving her phone, she replied.
Me
Sorry, not quite at my word limit for today. My brain is fried, but I really need to get this done.
Theo
You’re writing?
Me
Attempting to, yes.
Theo
Look at you, bestselling author.
Olivia watched as the three dots remained on her screen.
So, there’s no chance of convincing you to go to Robbie’s and grab a beer with a potential suitor?
Clicking on the phone app, she pressed the call icon. Theo picked up almost immediately. She had barely been able to register the shock of his one ring answer when the smooth baritone of his voice came through the phone in a hurried breath. “Hey.”
She could hear the station announcement system in the background behind him. “You could’ve started with I’ve got a potential suitor for you, Olivia.”
“I could have, but I wanted to know if you were free first.” In the background there was a swift click, and the distinct swipe of his card before metal dividers turned. “So, what do you say? Robbie’s at 6:30?”
Olivia sighed, glancing pitifully at her notebook, accepting the knowledge that she was not going to be able to write any more that evening.
This was her first mission. The first set-up.
Feeling the twist of her stomach, Olivia didn’t know if it was the tuna sandwich she’d had for lunch, or the nervous energy of potentially meeting her leading man this evening.
“Details first: who’s the potential suitor? ”
“His name is Taylor. He works in human resources at my mate Finn’s company, and is, potentially, your leading man.” Theo’s voice filtered hastily through the line. He was out and about, the sounds of bustling London alive and thrumming behind him.
Olivia couldn’t help the smile that began to tug at the corner of her mouth. “Taylor. Okay.” Taylor was a nice name. Strong. Unisex.
“I’ve digitally vetted him, and you have my number if it all goes south.” Even the thought of Theo stalking this Taylor guy on the internet gave Olivia a sense of peace.
After their meeting a few days prior, she felt more confident in their ability to work together. To find a leading man in just under two months she had to start taking chances now.
“Uh, alright. Robbie’s Bar did you say?” Olivia uncapped her pen and scribbled the address down on her small notepad. “Perfect. Be prepared for some potential drunken texts afterwards though, if it’s the Robbie’s I’m thinking about, their Apple Martinis are my weakness.”
Theo’s deep laugh was like music to her ears, the sound making her lower stomach pull in a way that made her squirm in the plush chair.
“So I’ll tell him you’ll meet him there?” Theo asked, making Olivia glance down at the time on her watch. It was already 5:30. If she packed up now, she could make it to Waterloo just in time.
“Sounds good. Cheers,” she said in a faraway voice.
“Olivia?”
“Yes.” She blinked.
His voice softened, his reassuring words swarming the anxious muscle in her chest. “It won’t go south.”