7. Olly
SEVEN
OLLY
In the lunchroom after a morning spent familiarising Clark to life here in the Information Complex, all I wanted was to eat my vegetarian chili and buttercream-frosted cake in peace, but I found myself faced with an epic conundrum.
Did I tell him about my visions, some of which I’m sure took place on alternate Earths?
And how I knew they did because of the differences, sometimes vast, between our world and theirs?
Oh my goddess, I couldn’t. He’d think I was nuts.
Just because I could tell the difference between a dream and a vision didn’t mean that I could adequately explain how to Clark, and what would I say?
Your old McGill team was right, Hawking was right, the multiverse exists—believe me, the English major without any proof! Fuck.
Just as I was about to devour a humungous spoonful of chili and momentarily put such worries out of my head, I heard someone walk up to my table and take an empty seat beside me.
I glanced over and groaned inwardly. I momentarily thought about initiating a fire drill, but decided that would be too disruptive to my coworkers just to avoid having lunch with an ass.
“So do you have any plans tonight, Olive?” Gilbert asked, once again annoying me by ruining the name of my first crush, Gilbert Blythe from Anne of Green Gables.
It wasn’t that this Gilbert was abhorrent, but he was most certainly not for me.
He was, by most societal standards, an attractive person.
He had blond hair, which he kept cropped close to his head, blue eyes, that chiseled jaw look, and lightly tanned skin.
He also went to the gym, which would be obvious even if he wasn’t telling anyone who would listen to him talk about it.
There really wasn’t an inch of fat on him, and I have to admit I was a bit surprised when he asked me out, back when I started at Rose.
I know better than to be caught up in what others think of my body, but I was more on the curvy end than what most people found attractive.
Gilbert had seemed charming at first. However, he had ordered for me without asking what I wanted to eat.
If I hadn’t intervened, I would have wound up with a beef Wellington while I was vegetarian at the time, and a large glass of red wine even though I didn’t drink alcohol.
Also, Gilbert refused to call me Olly, and I corrected him every time he said my name.
“It’s Olly, Gilbert.” I decided to invent some plans so I would have a ready escape hatch should he ask me out.
Again. “Yes, I have plans. My neighbour and I are watching Korean television and eating leftover takeout.” I was proud of my improv skills, but there was just one other thing my blabbermouth couldn’t resist tacking on.
“And if you can’t handle calling me Olly, use Oliver instead.
” I felt the blood rush to my face and moved my hands into my lap quickly so that he wouldn’t see them shake.
I had never, ever disclosed my true name in anger, and here I was, telling it to Gilbert just because he had pissed me off.
What in the bloody hell had I been thinking?
Would there be gossip? Would he even have caught on to what I said, considering how in love he was with the sound of his own voice?
My hands shook harder, and my legs were starting to get in on the action.
I needed to regulate my breathing ASAP, or I’d have to use my inhaler in public, which I hated doing.
He looked taken aback for a second, and I watched him scan me, head to toe. He must have decided to just ignore the “Oliver” I tossed in there, and continued being, well, Gilbert. “Ah, a little Netflix and chill with the new neighbour, hmm?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“I’m pregnant and just spent ten minutes making involuntary modern art out of vomit in the ladies’ room. But yes, let’s make all the sexual innuendos possible, please.” I huffed, and just then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I peered upward into the almost too-attractive face of Clark.
“I thought I might have lost you in here somewhere,” Clark said, concern clear in his voice as he scanned the half-full lunchroom.
I could feel his gaze settling on me, and my hands, still shaking a bit in my lap, started to calm under Clark’s concerned and steady gaze.
“You okay?” I knew this wasn’t just a question.
It was a check-in for me, and a message to Gilbert that he knew something inappropriate had been said.
Gilbert felt it too, because he became sufficiently embarrassed, muttered something about data mining, and left us.
The man-beast banished, I managed a smile of my own for my junior teammate.
“So we have plans tonight?” Clark asked, but he was more amused than anything that I had invented essentially a repeat of last night.
“Look, Clark, I’m sorry, but I was trying to get Gilbert off my case, and sometimes the only thing that works is if another man has prior claim to my time. He’s such a misogynist asshole.”
“Sounds like it,” Clark agreed. “Mind if I join you now?”
“Not at all,” I answered truthfully. “I like your company,” I said, as I finally shoved a spoonful of chili into my mouth.
“If you like my company as much as I enjoy yours, perhaps we should go through with those bogus plans you told Gilbert about. You could microwave up a bit of your leftovers, and I could pop over to finish watching the episode we started last night. Of course, if you aren’t feeling well, we can do it some other time. ”
“How about you ask me at four? I might be ready to crack on, then. I’d like to finish the episode.
Cutting media in half annoys me. This is why I spend so many nights up way late reading.
It’s always just one more chapter, right?
Anyway, we can decide at the end of our shift if that’s okay with you. ”
“Sounds like a good strategy, Boss.” He grinned and asked me how the chili was. The next fifteen minutes of our lunch period was devoted to whether or not beans actually belonged in chili. He was team no, and I was team why the hell not?
I decided to ask him if we did go forward with plans if he’d mind if I came over to his place, and earlier than last night, as in as soon as I was able to get out of this stupid suit with a skirt and wrangle myself into a pair of tights and an oversized sweater.
I asked, and he agreed, probably because I mentioned that I wanted to crash early tonight.
He was also keen to introduce me to Becky, and I was excited to meet her, too.
I hadn’t ever had a dog of my own, and I had always wanted one.
I had few memories of my life before age eight, when the accident happened that took the lives of my parents and older brother.
But sometimes memories floated to the surface, and I recall that when I was very young, I let it slip that I also wanted to see if the dog and I could talk to each other, mind to mind.
I remember a tall man with black hair—my father?
—slapping me on the cheek, hard, and sternly telling me to never say something like that again.
To not even think it! And a redheaded woman, who was probably my mother, crying and talking about sending me to a place called “The Organization” for a while.
They were the only ones who could help me get my mind under control.
Whose control, I couldn’t say.
We had a relatively quiet drive home, punctuated here and there with compliments from me to Clark. We agreed to decompress for about fifteen minutes in our own places and then meet to continue our binge watch at Clark’s place.
When he opened the door for me, I could tell he was getting a kick out of my clothes, which were literally the first two things I grabbed from my comfy drawer.
I wore an oversized sweater that said, Librarians: Demons In The Stacks combined with Star Trek leggings depicting all the major Starships/Stations in the various series.
My curly red hair was put up in a messy bun again, and this time, a pen and a pencil held the thick hair together.
I thought I looked a proper mess, but with that whole leaky pipe syndrome Clark had with his thoughts, I knew he felt quite differently.
He felt bad for me that I looked so sickly most of the time, but in general, I was beautiful in his eyes.
Me, beautiful, in a way that screamed attraction.
I’d only had that once before in a non-creeper way, with Shepard.
Did I want to have that with someone else—with Clark?
Clark took the tower of leftover take-out containers, and I shut the door behind me with my foot. He just kind of waved in the direction of the TV and couch in the main room and took the food into the kitchen.
The books in his living room built-ins had rather quickly caught my eye, and within moments, I was lost, murmuring under my breath and pointing at the shelf here and there.
Who was it that said you should check out the books in a date’s house before deciding to sleep with them?
Something like that, anyway. Not that this was a date and I was thinking of sleeping with my junior teammate!
I would freely admit that there was a bit of chemistry brewing between us, but it was moving way too fast. Well, I was stepping off the gas pedal right frickin’ now.
I was not sleeping with Clark tonight or any night because it would be completely and totally inappropriate.
I finished salivating over his personal library and joined him in the kitchen, not noticing the way the light from this time of day pouring in through the window accentuated the best of his features.
He was so handsome, not like Superman—or Clark Kent—but like a character from a Jane Austen novel.
Someone who didn’t wholly belong in our time, with how he carried himself, and someone who I’d bet would put their name on my dance card, along with anyone who was obviously a wallflower.
That was the perfect time for Becky to awaken from her nap and run into the living room.
And oh my goddess, she was like my dream dog.
So cute and very friendly. I bent over and let her smell my hands, and she danced around me practically in circles.
When Clark came in with two full plates, she of course ran over to him, but I knew we’d be fast friends.
Clark pointed with his head to the blue recliner in the corner, and he followed me with my plate.
I lowered myself into the chair, which, despite looking a bit ratty, was the most comfortable thing I’d ever sat on.
I was quickly getting a bead on all of Clark, on who he was as a person, and I liked what I had discovered so far.
I was picking up little things, such as idiosyncrasies that our handshake or my drawings hadn’t had time to pick up on.
Like how he tapped on his desk when concentrating or trying to solve a problem.
He had once known how to play the piano, because he tapped in Beethoven.
I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but I found myself humming and tapping out “Für Elise” with my right hand at the end of my shift today, so I must have been given lessons before the accident.
He was also competent, kind, and thoughtful of others’ needs.
He gave more consideration to creating a warm, cozy home for himself, surrounded by worn furniture and his book collection, than keeping up appearances.
It would be fair to say that I wanted to be and stay his friend very much.
When the credits rolled on the episode, Clark, who was seated on the comfy-looking couch, turned to face me, not the TV, and asked, “So what’s up with you and Gilbert?
Did you two date?” Embarrassed, I felt my cheeks flame red, and I groaned as I covered my eyes with my free hand.
Clark chuckled a little, obviously trying to keep the mood light.
“Yes, but only twice. Sometimes it’s hard to spot a slimeball right away, and Shepard and I were doing this thing where we were going to try dating other people, but not bring them into our bed. When Gilbert asked me, I was flattered. I don’t get asked out a lot, unsurprisingly.”
Clark seemed to consider this. “Why do you say ‘unsurprisingly?’ You’re a highly intelligent, beautiful woman.
” I just stared at him, unable to process why he was asking such a basic, stupid question.
Could he not see what everyone else noticed right away about me—that I was fat?
“Well, in the battle for awful exes, I win anyway.
I-I recently had an ex who didn't want to let go. It made things very messy, rather scary, and she is the main reason that I moved halfway across the country.”
“Bunny boiler?” I asked, intrigued.
“Actually, she did make death threats against Becky. That was the scary part, mostly. And the main reason we’re here.
I should have told you this earlier. I’m really sorry I didn’t.
I just thought of Claire as my problem, and didn’t consider how she might impact you.
I have a pic somewhere on my cell, just a sec...
there, you’ve got it. You see that woman, you start going in the opposite direction, and you call the police, okay? ”
“Okay,” I said, committing the face on my cell to memory.
Claire. I understood about it being hard getting dumped.
I’d dated very minimally before Shepard, and that was mostly just Joey, Maya’s father.
I cared for him so much, and he’d dropped me like a hot potato right after Maya died.
When they found out I was pregnant, my foster family at the time eventually calmed down and decided to keep me, but dating of any kind, even girls, hell, especially girls, was strictly forbidden.
Clark carried his empty plate over to me and collected mine as well. Then, slowly, he bent down and ran his hand from my forehead across the top of my hair, so softly it was like a whisper.