Chapter Four
OLIVER SUGGESTS THAT we meet at a café in SoHo that evening, so I do what any reasonable person does: Google the hell out of both it and him.
The place we’re meeting seems nice. It’s one of those places that’s a coffee shop by day but at night serves wine and finger foods that arrive on boards instead of plates. It’s casual and cute.
Oliver himself, however, is much more difficult to pin down.
I’d already figured out that he does not have an Instagram, but there are basically no photos of him on the internet.
Even his IMDB page has a placeholder avatar where his headshot should be.
His name produces a ton of results, most of which echo what Rebecca already told me; he’s been working steadily, doing small-budget movies and writing for ballets and midtier symphonies.
But perhaps the most interesting thing I learn is that when I search for “Oliver Barlowe,” Google asks me, Did you mean Robert Barlowe?
I have no idea what to expect when I emerge from the subway that evening, clad in one of my favorite summer dresses, hair clean, face made up.
The effort I put in—I’m telling myself it’s an armor to protect myself from all the uncertainty I’m facing.
When I pause to check my reflection in a glass storefront, I have to admit that I look good.
This blue dress hugs my curves in all the right places.
My curls are holding strong against the humidity of the summer.
When I pull open the door to Jean’s Bistro, I scan the place for the man of the hour.
It’d be a lot easier to find him if I had any idea what he looks like these days.
I have no choice but to scrutinize every white guy around my age.
One man looks like he could be Oliver—if he’d gained weight and lost most of his hair—but he doesn’t look up when I approach. So, not him.
I adjust my tote bag on my shoulder and wander deeper into the café, which is a lot bigger than it looks from the outside.
The walls are papered with pale pink-and-white stripes.
It smells like coffee and fresh bread, though most patrons are drinking wine as they talk among themselves or work on their laptops.
Tired of awkwardly making eye contact with every stranger I see, I’m on the verge of pulling my phone out of my bag and just calling Oliver when I hear my name coming from somewhere behind me.
“Celia?”
I whip around, surprised at the correct pronunciation. What I find is a man standing next to a table, looking so unlike the boy I knew that my mouth drops open in surprise.
Gone is all the softness of youth that held Oliver in a viselike grip when we knew each other before.
Now his face is framed and sculpted by delicate lines, with cheekbones so sharp they look like they could cut glass.
Still, one thing that stayed soft is his mouth—which looks almost too big for his face now, with a full set of lips that preside over a clean-shaven jaw like some kind of king.
He’s taller than I remember, too. I have to crane my neck to look up at him, which isn’t unfamiliar to me; I take after my mother in that regard, who is the shortest of the Garcías, clocking in at just over five feet, two inches.
But he is wider than the gangly-limbed kid I remember.
He’s not built like a bodybuilder or anything—he’s just filled out now.
Honestly, if it weren’t for his midnight-blue blazer—a much nicer version of what he used to wear—I would have kept walking. He looks so different that I wouldn’t have recognized him otherwise.
“Oliver?” I finally respond. “Wow. You look different.”
“So do you.” His voice is still soft and gentle, just like I remember it from before.
But his face—that is a change. He used to be so closed off and cagey that I could never get a read on him, but now his brown eyes are open and bright as he looks at me.
He’s not exactly smiling, but he’s not scowling, either.
I don’t know if what he’s saying is true.
I’ve remained largely unchanged since college, unless you count the plushness that developed over the years as a result of a very sedentary job.
My hair is still the same rich, dark brown, kept long as usual; my style has evolved somewhat over the years, except for my signature items, like the gold hoops.
If anything, I’ve evolved into a better version of myself.
The best so far, actually. Somewhere along the course of my twenties, I lost the will to care about the things people usually consider flaws; so what if I have dimples on my thighs, so what if there are lines in my skin that mark my growth?
I like to think I carry myself better because I deposited that emotional, vain baggage exactly where it belongs: the trash.
It hits me then—that I’m supposed to greet him in some way. We know each other, despite a rough exit and a nine-year absence from each other’s lives. We were never friends. Now we’re going to work together.
Do I hug him? Shake his hand? Can I get away with avoiding it altogether? God, I hate how uncertain he makes me feel.
I settle for the latter, extending my hand toward him, which he shakes with a quirk of his eyebrow. His skin is cool and soft, save for the scruff of calluses on his pinkie and thumb. The marks of a dedicated pianist.
On closer inspection, his hair is the same color: a light brown, just like his eyes that are giving me a thorough once-over.
He did manage to tame his hair somewhat since we were in school.
It’s still shaggy on top, but he must have seen a proper barber because the messiness is much more artful than I remember.
It looks like he constantly runs his hands through it.
When our hands separate, he motions to the table he was occupying previously. There’s a white paper cup already there, sitting next to his cell phone and a pair of tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. Since when does Oliver Barlowe wear glasses? “Shall we? Or do you want something to drink?” he asks.
“No, I’m good,” I reply as I take my seat opposite him, slinging my tote over the back of the chair. I really have no need for caffeine, especially when I’m this nervous. I can hear my pulse in my ears, bright and staccato.
There’s a lot riding on this meeting—both of us are determining whether we can work with each other, all while navigating the ghosts of dislikes past. There is no doubt in my mind that Oliver basically hated me in college, but the question remains: Can both of us move beyond the mutual animosity from when we were younger?
I dredge up some of the hospitality I’ve been taught all my life and ask, “How have you been? It’s been, what—like, almost a decade?”
He considers this for a moment, his mouth pressed into a flat line, those full lips pulled between his teeth. “I can’t believe it’s been that long,” he says finally. “I’ve been well. I was working in London until last year. I’ve only been Stateside since May.”
I brush past my own annoyance at this—how nice it must be to hop between countries. “Rebecca mentioned you were living there. What brought you home?”
He clears his throat before answering. “A breakup.”
“Oh,” I say, trying to mask my genuine surprise. Prior to that declaration, I’d never given much thought to Oliver’s romantic life. He never dated anyone in college, as far as I knew. I don’t know his sexual orientation.
As if reading my mind, he adds, “My girlfriend and I parted ways amicably. It was just time for me to come back.”
I don’t miss the way his eyes flicker over me, assessing the reaction I’m working very hard to mask. “Oh.” Scrambling to find something more substantive to say, I add, “I’m sorry to hear that—but you said things ended amicably, so I guess that’s good. Right?”
The corners of his lips tug up, as if he’s fighting a smile. “Right. And you? How are things?”
If I’m understanding him correctly, that morsel of information about his breakup was his olive branch.
He’s trying to find common ground with me, to establish some sort of baseline in a tentative truce.
But to be vulnerable with Oliver, to share with him that this job we’re mutually gunning for is the key to solving my professional and financial woes?
Hell no.
Instead, I shift in my seat, letting the ambient noise of the café fill the space between us for a moment. My fingers tap the table, finding the rhythm of some song piping in from the speakers. “Things are good. Staying busy, you know.”
“Good.” He nods, takes a sip of his coffee, and crosses his long legs under the table. “So, this meeting on Monday—what has Rebecca told you so far?”
“Just the basics, really. The show is a drama about a rich family. Chris Ross’s first TV series. A big deal, et cetera et cetera. Limelight is throwing a lot of money and weight behind it according to Deadline.”
“Yeah, I saw that article, too,” he says. “I’ve never met Chris Ross. Have you?”
This comes as a surprise to me; I would have assumed that Oliver had encountered him at some point, given his close connections to Hollywood bigwigs. “Nope.”
“It’s my understanding that this is sort of an informal interview and pre-pro meeting all rolled into one.
Well, technically it’s just a production meeting since they’ve already started filming.
” His gaze goes distant for a second while he collects his thoughts.
“I’m writing up some questions about the show and his process, but beyond that, I don’t know what to expect. ”
I twist around in my seat to pull a notebook out of my tote, dangling it in the air for a moment before dropping it back into my bag. “Yep, same. Homework for the weekend.”
“Have you done a TV show before?” he asks, and even though he sounds genuinely curious, I bristle at my own lack of experience.
“No. Have you?”
“No.” He finishes off his coffee as he contemplates something behind me.
I resist the urge to turn around and look.
“I’ve only done a couple of smaller budget movies.
Never something of this magnitude. I spoke to a friend who did all four seasons of The Man in the Tower and he said it’s pretty grueling.
There’s a lot of music to write for eight hours of screen time. ”
I find myself nodding along as his gaze slides back to me; these thoughts have already occurred to me. “Makes sense that Ross would want two composers in Schneider’s place. If we do this, it will be all-consuming.”
At the word we, his lips part just briefly.
He recovers quickly, the look of surprise—or was it disdain? It’s so hard to tell with him—replaced by the cool, careful mask I remember from college. “Yes. I have some thoughts on how we can accomplish this and where we can work.”
My face flushes at his presumption. I want to tell him that I have ideas, too, that I know where we can do this. The lie is half formed on my tongue when I open my mouth to speak.
But I reel it in before it has a chance to escape. The fact is I have no idea where the two of us could sit for hours on end, with all the resources we need at our disposal, as we plow through a massive project. Instead, I simply ask, “Oh?”
“My family has a studio. It has everything we could possibly need—”
At the mention of his family—meaning his dad—I try to straighten my spine and recross my legs to make myself look less small. What happens is I accidentally kick him and the table in the process, effectively cutting him off as the table skids on the hardwood. Also, I probably bruised his shin.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Ah, sorry—”
We speak over each other while he grabs the table to keep it from falling over. I’m so off-kilter and embarrassed that I don’t even ask why he’s apologizing. I’m the one who just nailed him in the leg with my shoe.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat. My face is on fire. “Tight space.”
“It’s fine. Really.”
When his eyes meet mine, I see he’s blushing, too. Pink blooms on his cheeks. It forces me to notice a smattering of freckles across his nose and the planes of his face.
I wish I had ordered a big glass of wine.
“So you were saying something about your family?” I say, scrambling to move past whatever awkward thing just happened between us. “Why are you doing TV anyway? Isn’t film more your thing?”
He blinks, surprised, before replying, “It’s my dad’s thing, not mine.”
“Oh. When we were in school, that’s what you said you wanted to do, so I just assumed…” I trail off and finish with a half-hearted shrug.
“Things change, Celia,” he says, eyes sharp, voice low and not particularly warm. “So, we are in agreement, then? If all goes well with Ross tomorrow and we do this, we’ll work at my family studio?”
Seeing no other option—at least not one that’s free—I chew my bottom lip. Oliver notices; his eyes drop to my mouth before darting away to his now-empty coffee cup. “Yeah. Okay. If we get this job, that’s what we’ll do.”
“Great. I’ll see you Monday.”
He rises to stand and I follow suit. We exchange another stilted handshake before he gathers up his things and disappears into a crowd of people that have gathered near the entrance.
As he walks away from me, I notice that he’s wearing a full matching suit—and that he has a paisley pocket square dangling out of the brown leather messenger bag he’s carrying.
Rebecca was right; Oliver isn’t as stuffy as he used to be. He’s more conversational now, overall a little less arrogant. At the very least, I think I can work with him for the foreseeable future, if only for the sake of my career.
But despite what he just said to me, seeing that outfit (even on his adult body) complete with a matching pocket square, I’m reminded: Some things never change.
Client: YUMMIES CAT FOOD
Title: PICKY EATERS
Job No: 5490
Length: 30s
Platform: Streaming & TV
Voiceover Artist: Erin Campbell
Music: Celia García
Date: August 14
VIDEO
AUDIO
We open on a cat sniffing a bowl of food. It turns its nose up at it and walks away.
MUSIC: Sad solo violin
The cat sits in a window, looking out at the street.
Life is HARD
The cat is now winding through its owner’s legs, meowing.
Especially when it seems like no one is listening to you
The owner pets the cat and points to the food.
MUSIC: Sad violin builds
The cat turns away from the food. It doesn’t want it.
For those picky eaters in your life, give them what they want
[cut to] YUMMIES WET FOOD SPECIAL MIX on the counter
MUSIC: Shift to upbeat, happy strings
Owner places bowl of YUMMIES WET FOOD SPECIAL in front of the cat. It starts to eat right away.
YUMMIES WET FOOD SPECIAL—perfect for the ones who are hard to please
[cut to] Owner and cat snuggling in the kitchen, YUMMIES WET FOOD SPECIAL box behind them
MUSIC: Fun and happy