Chapter 19
Olivia
Online dating was a wild ride. In a week she’d gone from being certain she’d never find a partner to being so overwhelmed with options she had to quit swiping.
Connor knocked on her bedroom door. She stood in front of her open closet in the most boring underwear she owned.
Her stomach hurt, pain radiating through her reproductive organs.
She wouldn’t be putting out, regardless of how well her first date went.
She debated throwing some clothes on, but she’d be asking his opinion anyway. She yelled for him to come in.
“Christ, Livy, you could put on some clothes.”
Olivia frowned. He’d never been squeamish about a little nudity.
“I have nothing to wear. This is horrible. All my clothes look like a ninety-year-old grandma bought them for me.” She pulled out a pair of pleated khaki pants with an elastic waistband and held them up for Connor to inspect.
He grimaced. “Who even bought that? Please tell me you didn’t spend actual US dollars on those things.”
Olivia was relieved to inform him she had not, in fact, paid real money for most of the boring items in her wardrobe.
“I haven’t bought clothes for myself in years. Lance insisted on picking out my wardrobe. It was easier to wear what he said than to fight with his mother about what would be appropriate for a social function. The only things I’ve chosen for myself since college were leggings.”
“You could wear leggings; that would be hot.”
She rolled her eyes and whirled to face him, hands on her hips, the ugly old-lady pants abandoned on the floor. “I’m not wearing leggings on a first date.”
Leggings might be her only option. She had a collection of cropped band t-shirts, leggings, and spandex shorts that served double duty as gym clothes and pajamas.
He gave her a shit-eating grin and stuck his hand in the pockets of his sweats, shrugging. He raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
Olivia scrunched her nose. “Because I want to look nice. For once in my life.”
He hummed and backed out of her room, holding the door wide. “You always look nice.”
“You know what I mean.”
Connor bit his lip and studied her. Olivia did her best not to stare at his mouth. She cleared her throat and shifted under the weight of his gaze.
“Maybe I have something you can wear,” he finally said.
She crossed her arms. Connor’s eyes tracked the movement, and if she didn’t know better, she might have thought they lingered on her chest. “I’m not wearing your workout gear on a date either.”
“Hey, that could also be hot. Little booty shorts and a sweatshirt you drown in.”
“You said yourself that wearing your name on a date would be off-putting.”
Connor flipped her off and headed down the hallway, expecting her to follow. When she didn’t, he shouted, “It’s not my clothes. Seriously, I might have something.”
She still didn’t follow. Instead, she dressed in a pair of black pants and a white blouse. It looked…fine. Not cute. Not sexy. And definitely not fun. She sighed.
Connor brought back a big, black tote bag. He plopped it on the bed.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Not business casual, that’s for sure,” Connor said. He overturned the bag, and a mountain of fabric fell out.
“You wear business casual to everything. Didn’t you wear the same game-day suit to every event you went to for like five years?”
“Daisy beat the habit out of me. I wore a suit to a backwoods country bar one time and never heard the end of it.”
Olivia bit her bottom lip in a hopeless attempt to hide her amusement.
“You did not.” She stripped out of her office attire, agreeing that business casual wasn’t the move.
Connor rifled through the mound of clothing on her bed. “I did.” One side of his mouth hooked up into a smirk. “The ladies of that podunk little town loved it. Some of the gents, too.”
She threw her balled-up shirt at his head. “I’m sure they did.”
Connor caught the garment before it hit him in the face and dropped it on the floor. He held up a soft-looking emerald-green sweater that might fit her.
“Where did all this come from?” she asked.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” he said. Hilarity danced in his eyes, and Olivia waved her own question away.
“Ugh,” she said. “I don’t want your weird hookup leftovers.”
“I washed everything!”
“What did these poor guys and gals wear home?” Olivia asked.
Connor shrugged. “Something else from the bag. Or something of mine. But you said you didn’t want that, so…” He stuffed items into the bag. Olivia groaned and snatched the green sweater before he could shove it away.
“Fine,” she said. “It’s better than whatever the hell all this is.” She waved a hand toward her nightmare of a wardrobe.
Dressed in an acceptable date outfit of the sweater and a pair of jeans one size too small to be comfortable, Olivia sat at the guest room’s desk, the contents of her makeup bag spread out in front of her.
Connor stood behind her and watched her in the mirror. He turned on the curling iron, and Olivia’s heart did a little flip. She ignored the useless butterflies and spread mascara over her eyelashes; her mouth popped open in an O shape.
He leaned his cane against the side of the desk and tapped her shoulder.
She screwed the cap onto the mascara and vacated her seat so he could sit.
Understanding his intent, she sat on the floor with her back to him.
The position was so familiar they could have been transported back in time to her childhood bedroom.
When Livy was fifteen, she started cramping so badly she couldn’t function during her periods.
Sometimes the only thing that helped was lying flat on the floor.
During those bad days Connor lay on the floor with her and held an iPad directly above their faces so they could watch something while they waited for her to feel better.
He always let her choose what to watch. They spent countless hours watching hairstyling YouTube videos.
One night he’d asked, “Why do you watch these? You don’t even do the styles. ”
Olivia had shrugged. “It’s fun to think I could do them.”
“We should try one.”
They ended up trying dozens of styles and colors on Olivia’s hair.
Her own attempts mostly failed. But Connor’s were often perfect.
He even did her hair for her first high school dance.
He’d also saved her from her disastrous date and comforted her afterward with a bowl of Cocoa Puffs and Phineas and Ferb in their treehouse.
Connor ran a brush through her hair and followed each stroke with his other hand, smoothing it. “Your hair is super soft,” he said.
“I’ve been using your fancy shampoo.”
“That shit works,” he said. He separated a section of her hair and began weaving pieces together.
It had been years since anyone had done her hair. The last time had probably been before he moved away from their hometown. “Thanks for your help. I’ve missed this.”
“Me too. Funnily enough, doing hair isn’t a skill hockey players tend to need.”
“Hmm.” Olivia luxuriated in having his fingers scrape her scalp.
She blindly grabbed at the pile of makeup on her desk.
“It’s still a good skill to have. Maybe you’ll have a bunch of daughters someday.
” She managed to locate a tube of lipstick and applied it without a mirror.
She’d learned the skill around the same time Connor learned to do hair.
“One can only hope,” he said.
Olivia frowned. Did he want a bunch of daughters? She could see the vision. Connor, surrounded by a hoard of tiny, impeccably dressed little girls. A twinge of grief ran through her chest. He would be the best dad. She hoped whoever he ended up with would allow her to stick around to see it.
He secured the end of her braid with a tiny rubber band. Olivia swiveled on her butt to face him, enjoying the familiar routine. He pulled artful pieces of hair out of the careful twist to frame her face and curled them.
Connor set the curling iron aside and wiped a thumb over the side of her mouth, fixing a lipstick smudge. Maybe she hadn’t quite mastered the mirrorless application. His hand lingered on her face far longer than necessary before he wiped his thumb on his pants.
“Beautiful, as always,” he said.
She climbed to her feet and examined herself in her full-length mirror. She sighed. “Good enough.”
“Nobody is forcing you to go out,” Connor said. “You could stay in with me.”
“I’ve stayed in with you every night for the past eight weeks.”
“And we’ve had a great time.”
Olivia laughed. They did have a great time.
That was the problem. Life didn’t get much better than hanging out, laughing, and playing games with Connor.
If she stayed in their little bubble, she’d get confused about their relationship again.
She was already reading way too much into every little glance and touch.
As much as she wanted him, he’d never be hers.
“I need to get back out there,” she said.