1 Olivia
March 22nd, 2022
I cocked my head to the side as I studied the poster plastered on the crumbling brick wall in front of me.
The main theme was black and purple, a beautiful woman standing center stage rocking out. It looked like an advertisement for a new band.
She had chopped black hair with a few bright neon colors, that hung just about halfway down her neck. Several piercings were scattered around her face. A lip ring, three in her nose, one in her brow, multiple along each ear. She had rings on every finger, and she was wearing leather and fishnets under ripped black jeans.
The picture had been taken in the middle of a note, her tongue ring prominent. She looked like she would be fun to be around. Exciting and upbeat. The kind of woman who made everything and anything an adventure—
“Hey!”
I flinched and whipped around to find Steven standing in the doorway of The Club, irritation in his light, wheat-colored eyes. He was holding the metal door open, waiting impatiently for me to quit wasting time staring at something I would never experience.
He rose a brow with this look on his face that portrayed the truth of how he felt about me. That I was absolutely and utterly stupid and didn’t deserve the breath he wasted on me. “Do you want to get me killed or are you just that dumb?”
I frowned, my jaw tightening. No, of course I didn’t want to get him killed, that was ridiculous. I didn’t even want to be here, but he didn’t want to come alone, so I had to play the part of security blanket, one that he loathed and loved at the same time, if you could call it love.
I glanced at the poster one last time before heading towards the door, swallowing every ounce of anger I felt, something I learned to do from a very young age. “Sorry,”
I apologized. “I was just—”
“I was just,”
he mocked and headed through the door. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself,”
he muttered. “It’s so goddamn selfish.”
I felt a blanket of guilt weigh over me but shook it off quickly. He was right, I shouldn’t have stopped. This was important to him. More than important. Life or death at times, which meant I couldn’t be playing around.
I caught the heavy door before it swung shut, and stepped into the small, dark room. It smelled of alcohol and stale cigars, and because the sun had yet to dip below the horizon, there weren’t many people scattered around.
This club was said to be private. So private, in fact, that it didn’t even have a name. Just ‘The Club’. About every other week, we would come here and Steven would disappear behind a tattered red curtain at the far end of the room, leaving me to sit at the bar and make nice with the bartender.
Which was fine because I had actually become decent friends with him, but how well could a person really become friends with a bartender? They were supposed to be friendly with everyone, it was a job requirement.
I glanced around as I made my way across the sticky puke green floor towards the bar that had to be over a century old. I couldn’t imagine why this place was so exclusive with the kind of people they allowed in here and the way it looked.
The people in attendance today were two men and a woman. The only man at the bar, sitting at the very end, looked like he had long since passed out.
I sent a warm glance over to the woman who looked like she was either clocking off or about to start her job as a lady of the night, the other man sitting across from her, watching her with lust in his eyes.
I gave her a small smile only to quickly look away when I caught sight of what looked like a thin silk scarf between her teeth, tightened around her upper arm, a needle in her other hand.
I turned back to the bar and quickly took my seat somewhere in the middle. The one place the bartender visited most often, which meant I would be constantly watched if any of the guests today decided to grow any confidence. Although, they usually didn’t.
“Hey, Olivia,”
the bartender greeted, drying a glass.
I gave him a smile. I always loved how cliché he seemed, at least to me. Hardly anyone here yet he was always drying a glass, flipping a towel over his shoulder, leaning over the bar as if he were preparing to hear my entire life story. “Hey, Jake, just my regular.”
“Sure thing,”
he nodded.
Jake was nice. He made sure I always felt safe here while Steven took care of business. With his kind blue-gray eyes and mess of light brown hair, I always felt comfortable. It was clear he worked out, and he always wore a black T-shirt and blue jeans. Easy to write into a book or two.
I adjusted my light jacket over my sundress as I folded one leg over the other, just in case. It was still cool enough to wear a jacket, but soon I’d have to figure out another way to cover up Steven’s bad days.
“So, what’s new?”
he asked, putting a glass of cheap scotch and Dr. Pepper in front of me. They didn’t even have expensive scotch here, which was fine. I preferred wine, but they didn’t carry that at all, which once again had me questioning if this bar was really as exclusive as Steven talked about or if it was something else entirely.
I pulled my cup over, watching the bubbles pop. “Not a lot.”
I took a sip and found his eyes. “It’s been pretty uneventful these last few weeks.”
I straightened. “Do you know anything about that poster out front?”
He glanced towards the door for a second before shaking his head. “I didn’t see any posters when I came in. What’s it about?”
I deflated. “Some girl band, I think. All it says is ‘Come Rock’.”
He rose a brow in slight concern. “You want to go to a rock concert by a new band in this city?”
I gave him a look. “Not all of them are bad, Jake, and no.”
I hesitated. “Not really,”
I corrected. “Sometimes it’s fun to disappear into a crowd of people who actually like the same things you like.”
Sometimes it’s nice to feel something other than guilt and anger.
He smiled. “Ah, I get it. The concert phenomenon. Everyone’s jamming to the same music, screaming the lyrics. You get a high from it. But,”
he went on, leaning over the counter as if he was about to give me life-altering advice, “what if she’s not the girl to do it? What if her music sucks? What if ‘rock’ is actually just a bunch of people getting together to read slam poetry at the Desmond?”
I laughed lightly. “Then I guess I’ll go see some slam poetry.”
If anything, it might be good inspiration for the novel I was supposed to be working on.
He chuckled and straightened. “You do that, but I don’t want to hear about it when you come back.”
He gave me a knowing nod and headed off to go do whatever it was he did when he wasn’t serving drinks.
I turned back to my own drink and took another long swig, wincing at the slight taste of the cheap scotch under the flavor of Dr. Pepper. Why could they never stock wine here? Wine would be so nice.
I released a breath and glanced towards the tattered curtain. Steven never told me what he did here, but I knew it wasn’t good. I wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t as great at hiding his injuries as I was at hiding mine.
Some days he came out with black eyes, other times he came out with money. My guess was he had some sort of gambling debt. He loved to gamble, which was one of the reasons I hid my own past from him.
I never asked about what happened behind that curtain and he never brought it up. I just tried to be the good little girlfriend he wanted and keep my mouth shut.
Why? I couldn’t fathom a guess. I was just that stupid, I guess.
I pushed my hair back and leaned over the counter as I pulled out my phone. I didn’t like being talked to here by anyone besides Jake. I lived alone with my dog in this city, and that’s how I preferred it. At least that’s what I was trying to convince myself of. It was easier than admitting how wrong I was and how badly I screwed my life up. Socially, at least.
Steven wanted me to move in, but even after three years together, I wasn’t ready for that. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be ready to pull that trigger with him. I liked my own space. I liked having that one little sanctuary. Away from my overbearing mother, away from my boyfriend. Just me and my space. Alone. Completely and utterly… alone.
I pulled up the book I had been working on and allowed myself to fall into the story, rather than the spiral of emotions I had been swallowing for as long as I could remember…suffocating on.
After a while, I started to wonder where he was. Almost 45 minutes had passed and that was long, even for him.
I looked up. Asking Jake was pointless, he never gave me anything other than a shrug, but he was busy helping a newcomer anyway. One I had never seen before.
The curse of a writer’s mind was how easy it was to notice everything. For instance, this male had a mess of dark brunette hair, darker than mine, shorter on the sides than on the top. He had long dark lashes, and a sharp jawline. He was wearing an expensive black pea coat with the collar slightly popped, and from where I sat, I could see some black ink crawling up his neck and tattoos on his hands, along with a single silver ring with what looked to be a raven imprinted into the metal.
He obviously came from money, and was more along the lines of ‘exclusive club’ material more than anyone else in this place, but here? He seemed out of place. And not just because of his expensive attire, but because of the mask he was wearing too. It covered the top half of his face and dripped down on his right side, clear to his jaw, hooking over it slightly.
It was all black, smooth like glass, and didn’t seem to be tied on with anything, telling me that it was made just for him.
Why was he wearing a mask in March? One of those wannabe creep types, I was sure. Someone who wanted to gather attention but wanted to come across as too terrifying to be approached.
The words ‘rich arrogant asshole with mommy issues’ came to mind.
Jake slid over a glass filled with what looked like liquid honey before heading my way.
“Need another?”
I nodded, glancing towards the red hanging cloth and back. “Yeah, make it a double please.”
“Coming right up.”
He pulled out what I wanted from under the counter and grabbed a new glass, putting my used one back under the counter as if it were some magical portal cleaning dishes on command.
I turned back to my phone and released a breath, unsure of how I should continue with this one. The writer’s block was strong today. Too many things going on in my head to focus on the next words.
“What’s on your mind?”
I shrugged, sitting up straight. “I just don’t know how well this works,”
I replied, mostly under my breath. “Can I run something by you?”
I found his eyes in question.
“Always.”
“Okay,”
I nodded matter-of-factly. “I think I sort of understand where she was going with this, but I need to see if it makes sense to anyone else.”
“Another author you’ve discovered?”
Nobody knew I was a writer. The pen name I published under had nothing to do with the name I took when I left Denver and moved to Colorado Springs. Abigail Ross was just a writer. She wasn’t Olivia Rose, beaten and bruised, and she certainly wasn’t Olivia Lemont, daughter of Mary and Trenton Lemont, oil tycoons.
Abigail Ross was stronger, fearless. She wrote hard, deep truths within the lines of her psychological thrillers. She was unbreakable.
“So, this is the gist,”
I began, meeting his eyes for half a second before turning back to the phone. “All souls were created when Earth was, right? Out of collapsing stars, exploding gas clouds, unfolding galaxies, and so a soul is born, but,”
I went on, finding his eyes again, “after these souls are created they are split in two on their way to earth. So her theory, or the theory, is that those souls are cursed to wander the world always feeling as if they’re missing something. Twin flames, better than soulmates in her eyes. Something far deeper, far more important. Does that make sense?”
He pondered my words as he slid my new drink over. “Interesting. What’s the author’s name?”
Not that it really mattered because I didn’t think he had ever read anything of hers. Mine. “Abigail Ross. She writes fiction, psychological thrillers, crime stuff, but with a deep kind of rom-con twist,”
I explained.
His brows furrowed. “Rom-con? With an ‘N’.”
I felt my cheeks warm. “Yeah, like romantic but edgy. Kind of against their will falling for each other.”
His face twisted. “How does that work?”
I stared at him for a long time, wondering if he was serious. When I realized that he was, I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter,”
I waved off. No way was I going to sit here and try to explain to him this whole genre. Besides, nobody called it rom-con, that was just me, and it was slightly embarrassing.
He chuckled, a slight smirk touching his lips. “Okay, explain to me the difference between soulmates and twin flames and I’ll see what I can do.”
I drank half of my cup and set it down. “Top it off?”
He did as I asked and slid the bottle back under the counter.
“Okay,”
I began, locking my phone, the buzz of my drink finally hitting me. “Everyone misunderstands soulmates. Soulmates, in my opinion, are more like your friends, family, mentors. People have a connection to them, but it’s not ‘you’re the one I’ll marry’, it’s more like… ‘I can tell you anything, but I’ll never fall for you’.
“Twin flames are very much that whole cliché of ‘I saw them and I just…I knew’. Love at first sight. It’s when you see a person, something inside of you just smiles. The whole ‘oh, there you are, I’ve been looking for you’ ideal.”
He nodded, thinking over this as I took another sip. “Okay, but the chances of finding that person?”
I shrugged. “Almost nothing. There’s 8.1 billion people in the world, the chances that your twin flame would be in the same state as you, let alone the same city?”
I scoffed. “No, this is her theory, not mine.”
I sort of believed in it, I suppose, but Abigail Ross? She believed in love and dreams and all of that gushy stuff. She had to in order to add the ‘love’ aspect to the stories we wrote. I wrote. I didn’t have multiple personality disorder, probably, I just had different frames of mind depending on the people I was with.
Different versions of myself to keep me from doing something stupid or saying something stupid. A survival technique, I suppose. One I had developed long before I ever should have had to.
“I don’t know, I guess it sounds like a romantic idea,”
Jake started.
“It’s bullshit.”
We both looked over at the low, silky voice of the new guy who had straightened up just enough to become part of the conversation, his eyes still locked on his drink.
He clearly didn’t want any part of this, so why he had inserted himself into the middle of it, I wasn’t sure.
Jake and I exchanged a glance before he turned back to the man. “Why?”
Better question: why did Jake feel the need to encourage this?
“Because believing that there is one single person out there who is meant for you is a theory created by people who don’t want to believe that they are completely and utterly alone in this world. Which they are. Everyone is. Forever,”
he replied without a hitch, as if he had recited it in the mirror and had perfected his flawless delivery.
I grimaced, another little stone growing in the pit of my stomach. This time out of realization rather than guilt. That was an incredibly jaded way to look at it…but maybe he was right? Steven was almost always right about that stuff, and—
But this wasn’t Steven. It was some ass who inserted himself into a conversation he didn’t even want to be a part of. “Why is wanting to find something worthwhile in this screwed up world so terrible?”
I challenged, straightening my spine. “It’s the only way some people survive.”
“It’s the only way to fill your head up with delusions.”
What crawled up his ass and died? “And as unhealthy as it sounds, sometimes what some consider delusions, others consider the only thing keeping them alive.”
He angled his head towards me just enough for me to see the color of his eyes, the kind of eyes that always expected people to cower.
I felt a spear of nerves force my spine to go rigid as my eyes instinctively fell away from his. They were such an icy blue, they almost looked silver in the dim light of The Club. They were unforgiving and cold. Hate-filled, I would say and begging to be challenged.
“If they’re so weak that they can’t handle the real world, perhaps they shouldn’t be living in it.”
My lips parted, my act of confidence shattering as fear filled me to the brim at the pure disregard for human life he had. I turned back to Jake, trying to find solace in his suddenly dry eyes. Who thought like that? Who believed in things like that?
Jake shook his head and continued drying the glass I hadn’t seen him pick up. “Do you believe in twin flames?”
I swallowed, folding my arms on the bar, letting my hair curtain my face. I suddenly felt far too uncomfortable with this man sitting a few stools down from me. “No, I don’t,”
I replied, trying to keep my voice low, hoping that the conversation would stay between us.
“Why is that?”
I shrugged, twisting around my glass. “Because stuff like that only exists in fairytales,”
I answered bitterly. “All we get is messy, mismatched people praying that they can find some sort of connection in someone in their city long enough so they won’t have to die alone.”
Jake set the glass down and leaned over the counter, folding his arms under him, his head less than a foot from mine. “Sounds like you don’t believe in love.”
Bartenders were all the same. Every single one of them.
I met his eyes evenly. “It’s difficult to believe in something that doesn’t exist.”
His eyes flicked to my lips and back. “Don’t let that guy get to you, Liv,”
he said under his breath. “He’s just some soul looking to drown.”
Maybe, but he irritated me in a way that didn’t quite seem rational.
I glanced back towards the tattered curtain, wondering why it was taking Steven so long.
“You should go see that band,”
he stated when I didn’t respond.
I turned back to him as he straightened. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Maybe you two will become best friends.”
I gave him a look and he laughed. “Maybe you’ll find something there that’ll help you shift perspectives,” he added.
“You want me to believe in twin flames now?”
He shook his head. “I want you to believe that love comes in all shapes and sizes. Not just ‘in love’ but love of music, love of art, love of something.”
I rolled my eyes dramatically. “Such a romantic,” I cooed.
He flipped his towel over his shoulder, something I swore he had done not minutes before, and beamed. “Someone in this room has to be.”
“Fucking pathetic,”
the masked man muttered around his glass.
I turned back to him, glaring at him, although my nerves were causing my hands to tighten. “What is this to you?”
I asked bitingly.
His eyes flicked to me, roving over me only to turn back to the wall behind the bar a second later. “A conversation between strangers.”
“Nobody is having a conversation with you,”
I replied and turned back to Jake. “Who is he?”
I mouthed at him.
He shrugged just as the man said, “You’re a terrible liar.”
Liar? What the Hell did I lie about? But before I could respond, the sound of the curtain ripping back met my ears.
I straightened and looked over, finding Steven stalking towards the door, his eye already bruising, a smear of blood wiped under his split lip.
My shoulders fell, real fear dripping down my spine. Without meeting Jake’s eyes, I finished my drink. “I’ll settle next time,”
I mumbled, and slid from the stool without waiting for a response.
I fixed my dress and headed after him, noticing the man out of the corner of my eye watching after Steven who was waiting by the door with the patience of a toddler.
“What happened?”
I asked when I reached him.
His face twisted as if he had smelled something terrible. He ripped the door open and stormed out.
My blood ran cold.
I closed my eyes and worked my hands at my side, releasing a slow breath, forcing the irritation and fear down. It was fine. He only took this out on me when things got really bad. I just had to smile and show compassion, and everything would be fine.
Soft voices, slow motions. It’d be fine.
Everything would be just fine.