Gage
Chapter eleven
At breakfast on Saturday morning, Olivia unceremoniously drops her tray onto the table next to mine. “ Please come to town with me today,” she begs.
“Good morning to you, too, Olivia.” I smirk.
She rolls her eyes as she sits down on the bench. “Yeah, yeah. Good morning, blah blah blah. Will you come with me?”
I scrutinize her while I make her wait for my answer.
She’s wearing yellow yoga pants and a baggy gray hoodie.
Her hair is tied up high in a sleek ponytail again.
She’s worn it that way all week, at least whenever I’ve seen her.
It gives me the ridiculous urge to dig my fingers into her hair and slowly slide the elastic band out until all those golden strands fall around her face.
“Well?” Olivia prompts again, crossing her arms over her chest.
Orientation is officially over, and with campers not arriving until tomorrow, we get a day off today. Some of the staff who live in the area left last night to go home until Sunday. Others have made plans to go explore the nearby town.
I figured I’d relax around camp, maybe take a canoe out on the lake, but hanging out with Olivia sounds much more fun.
“Sure,” I finally answer.
“Okay, good. Here’s my plan.” She lowers her voice and leans toward me. I find myself shifting closer to her, too. “We’re going to decorate a new sharing stick and give it to Linda to, like, make amends. So, we need to buy supplies.”
I laugh. “Wait a minute, what do you mean ‘we’? I didn’t incinerate the sharing stick. I don’t need to make amends.”
She gives me a sharp look, and I know she’s trying to seem stern, but she’s too cute to pull it off, at least to me. “But if you help me get back into the camp’s good graces, you won’t have to keep hanging out with me all the time.”
That sounds like an incentive to not help her. Hanging out with Olivia has been fun. It feels a little like old times. Almost as confusing as old times too, with my body reacting to her in ways I haven’t felt since I was a teenager.
I can’t admit any of that, of course, so I laugh. “Sounds good.”
“Meet me in the staff parking lot at 01800 hours,” she says quietly, like we’re spies with a secret mission.
I shake my head. “01800 hours doesn’t mean anything. 1800 hours would be 6 p.m.” I look at my watch. “Do you want me to meet you at 9?”
She nods, her face serious. “Should we synchronize our watches?”
I laugh again. “I don’t think that’s necessary.” I unfold myself from the bench and stand with my tray. “I’ll see you then.”
I head back to my cabin to take a shower and change my clothes before I meet Olivia.
I’ve been wearing gym shorts or board shorts all week—we’re at camp after all—but if I’m going to spend the day with Olivia, I feel like I want to clean up a little.
I don’t have my nicest clothes with me, of course, and dressing up too much would look strange, but I can at least wear chino shorts with my T-shirt instead of basketball shorts.
I leave my beloved Longhorns hat behind and actually comb my shaggy hair. I even put a little mousse in it.
I start walking toward the staff parking lot a little early, figuring I’ll need to wait for Olivia. But she’s already there, leaning against her old sedan and twirling her key ring around her finger.
When she notices me walking toward her, she stops twirling, as if flustered, and the key falls onto the gravel parking lot.
I smile to myself. Clearly the chinos and mousse were a good idea.
Olivia bends down to pick up the key, wiping it against her pants to clean off the gravel dust. She looks down at her outfit.
She’s still in the same yellow pants but has removed her hoodie now that the day is warming up.
Her top is a cropped black T-shirt that shows off a slice of her stomach above the high waist of her yoga pants.
She looks pointedly at my outfit. “I didn’t realize we were dressing up.”
I grin. “I didn’t realize shorts and a clean T-shirt mean I’m dressed up.”
“Whatever. We’re just going to Walmart, right?” She tilts her head, and the hair at the end of her ponytail slides off her shoulder. “Let’s go.”
She’s in the car before I can even open the passenger-side door. I’m only halfway into my seat when Olivia starts the engine. Immediately, a deep voice comes through the speakers. “Chapter four,” it says.
Olivia yelps and fumbles for her phone, turning the audiobook off before the narrator says anything else. Her face is red from her cheeks all the way to the tips of her ears. She stares at her phone screen, not making eye contact as I settle into the passenger seat and buckle my seatbelt.
I didn’t look at the media screen on the front dash in time to see the title of whatever she’s listening to, but I can guess based on her reaction.
I smirk at her. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” she says quickly. “An audiobook I was listening to.”
I raise one eyebrow. “A smutty audiobook?” I tease.
Olivia’s forehead wrinkles for a split second, so fast I almost miss it. Then she’s all smiles, like a switch has flipped somewhere on her face. She tosses her head, swishing her ponytail from side to side.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she answers with a flirty giggle.
So, not a smutty audiobook, then. But she wants me to think it is, and I would have if I didn’t know her so well, even after all these years.
It’s embarrassing, and honestly concerning, how easily I’ve fallen back into reading Olivia’s every expression. After spending most of high school cataloging and interpreting each look, noting every emotion, even the ones she tried to hide, I became an expert in Olivia.
She’s changed, of course, in the five years since then.
Her hair is longer and lighter, her face more angular.
She’s sunken deeper into the persona she cultivated in high school, the one I associate with the name she prefers—Delaney: athletic, shallow party girl who takes nothing seriously unless she’s on the pitch.
Too cool to care—about her grades, about her future outside of soccer, or about the herd of guys she strung along.
I always knew better. The front she put up at school faded away when she was at our house hanging out with Annie and, by default, me.
I may have been one of the many guys at school in love with Olivia Delaney, but I had a sense of satisfaction knowing I was the only guy at school who knew who she really was behind the facade.
Not anymore, though. Her facial expressions and body language may have stayed the same, or close enough that I can still decode them, but I’m not her safe space like I once was.
I can tell she’s hiding something with that audiobook, but five years ago I would have known what, because she would have told me, and we’d probably be listening to it together.
I steer us back to safe conversation as we drive to town. “How are your parents doing? Are they enjoying being empty nesters?”
Her cheeks blaze again. “They’re doing great, but I’m still at the nest, so it’s not quite empty yet.”
Okay, maybe that topic of conversation isn’t as safe as I thought. “After the summer, I’m moving back in with my parents, too,” I tell her.
She glances at me quickly before turning her eyes back to the road. “Really? Why?”
“The school I’m going to this fall is actually right on the outskirts of our neighborhood. It didn’t make sense to get my own place and pay rent when they already have space for me so close to school.”
She bobs her head up and down. “It is a cost savings.”
We fall into an awkward silence, which is unusual for us. Even this week, with all the weirdness of our past haunting us, conversation has come easily. I don’t know if it’s the close quarters of being in the car together or what.
I am acutely aware that I’m sitting less than two feet away from Olivia, and it feels strangely intimate.
Maybe it’s because the smell of her shampoo—a mixture of rosemary and mint—is so strong I can imagine what it would be like to bury my face in her hair, to brush my lips across the skin on her neck, to gaze deeply into her blazing green eyes—
“Stop staring at me,” Olivia orders.
I abruptly turn my head away, looking out the passenger-side window instead. “Sorry,” I mutter. “I wasn’t staring at you. I was zoned out.”
Olivia smirks knowingly. “Uh-huh.”
Soon the pastures outside my window shift into gas stations and restaurants as we drive into town. Olivia pulls into a spot in the shopping center parking lot, and we head into the store.
She makes a beeline for the craft section—four whole aisles of various paints, beads, fabric, buttons, ribbons, and glue. I have no idea where to start.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask Olivia.
“Okay, so I already found a good stick. It’s about a foot long with plenty of room for decoration. We need supplies. I was thinking bedazzled, maybe with some cute ribbons?” She puts her hand on her chin as she assesses the options in front of us.
Forty minutes later, I’m carrying a basket stuffed with rhinestones, ribbons in Camp Prairie Star colors, paints and paintbrushes, and a hot glue gun. She has a vision, she says.
“Why did you need me here, again?” I ask, though I’m not at all disappointed to be spending time with Olivia.
She levels a glare. “Your stellar company, of course,” she deadpans.
I laugh. “Glad I could help.”
As we walk toward the front of the store to check out, we pass the women’s clothing section. Right out front along the aisle are a collection of colorful muumuus and bathrobes. I stop in my tracks and step toward the display, setting the basket down at my feet.
I pull out a silky orange-and-yellow nightgown with an obnoxious pineapple pattern in the largest size available.
“Gage,” Olivia hisses, but I’m already tugging the garment on over my clothes.
I smooth the draping fabric around my hips and then rotate slowly for my audience. “Well, what do you think?”
Olivia has her hands pressed against the sides of her face, her shoulders shaking with silent laughter. She opens her mouth, and a gasping breath comes out. “Oh my gosh, Gage!”
I feign a frown as I look down at myself. “Do I need a bigger size?”
She shakes her head. “No,” she answers in between giggles. “It’s perfect. Like it was made for you.”
I beam. “So, I should get it?”
“Definitely.” She steps closer, reaching for the muumuus hanging on the rack. “But if you get one, I’ll feel left out if I can’t buy one, too.”
“Ah, of course, madam.” I sort through the various colors and designs. “Let’s see…” I unhook a hanger from the rod and hold it in front of Olivia. “This one would look divine on you.”
It has a V-neck and a dark green background with a loud, neon floral print. “Really brings out your eyes.” I’m joking around, but when I shift my gaze from the nightgown to her face, her eyes do have me in a trance.
I realize how close we’re standing to each other, the garment and a couple of inches between us.
Olivia stands frozen, her wide eyes locked on mine.
My fingers, holding the hanger near her face so the shoulders of the dress line up with her shoulders, brush softly against her cheek of their own volition.
It would be so easy to lean in, angle my head, and kiss her, especially when the look on her face says she wouldn’t stop me.
My foggy brain clears enough to remember our surroundings. I can’t kiss Olivia for the first time after five years standing in a Walmart wearing a muumuu. That’s not the memory I want.
I force myself to step back, my breath ragged. I slide the hanger back on the rack. “We should probably get going.”
Olivia shakes her head, as if waking up after a dream. “Yeah.”
I strip the muumuu off and hang it up before grabbing Olivia’s basket of supplies. I force a languid smile and extend my hand to guide Olivia ahead. “After you.”