13. Olivia
OLIVIA
Olivia was just hitting the Apply button on a sales job at a camera company, exactly the kind of thing she didn’t want to do, when she heard the whir of the elevator.
Her heart raced as though she were about to be caught red-handed doing something she shouldn’t, even though she was just sitting on the couch with her laptop.
There was the sound of footsteps in the hall, then Leo appeared in the living-room entryway. He’d changed at some point between dropping her off and now, though he still looked tired. He managed a smile, but it wasn’t the same bright smile she’d seen that morning or the night before.
“How did your meeting go?” she asked.
“It was fine.” Leo stifled a yawn, “Normally, I’d be more excited, but it’s been a long day.”
“Yeah.” Olivia closed the lid of her laptop and set it on the side table. “I wouldn’t blame you for going straight to bed.”
“I’m tempted, but I think I need to eat. What do you say we get some takeout?”
“That sounds great.” Olivia stood and stretched. She’d been hunched over her laptop for longer than she’d realized, and her back wasn’t pleased with her. “Do you have a place in mind?”
“How do you feel about Indian food?” Leo asked.
“I love it.” Olivia smiled, “You?”
“Same.”
“Maybe that’s why we got married,” Olivia joked, picking up the thread from earlier in the day.
Leo smiled, but the expression didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Something had definitely changed since she’d last seen him, though she wasn’t sure what it was.
Maybe he was really just tired after a very long and unexpected day, like she was.
Or maybe this was how Leo normally was, and the man he’d been last night and this morning had been the anomaly.
Olivia just didn’t know him well enough to tell.
“I’ll pull up a menu, and you can pick what you’d like,” Leo said. He took out his phone, tapped the screen, then handed it to Olivia.
“Thanks.” She scanned the options and added butter chicken and garlic naan to the basket. Leo took the phone back and tapped a few more times before putting the phone away.
“It’ll be here in half an hour,” he said. “I’m going to go freshen up.”
Olivia nodded, and Leo disappeared down the hallway. She found herself staring after him as though she might learn something from the now empty room.
There could be any number of reasons for Leo’s different attitude — maybe this was how he was when he was sober.
Maybe he was tired from a long day. Maybe his meeting hadn’t gone well.
But a part of Olivia couldn’t help wondering if Leo had looked her up, just the way she’d looked him up, and found her lacking.
She tried to distract herself with more job applications, but she was tired and her eyes were heavy.
About twenty minutes later, Leo returned, now wearing a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt with a UCLA logo on the front.
His hair was neater, and he looked refreshed.
He’d shaved, too, and the five-o’clock shadow she’d seen that morning was gone from his strong jawline.
He smelled faintly of aftershave, something masculine that Olivia couldn’t quite place.
“Did you go to UCLA?” she asked.
“Hmm?” Leo blinked at her as though his thoughts had been far away.
She gestured. “Your shirt. Did you go to UCLA?”
Leo looked down as though he hadn’t noticed what he was wearing. Then he nodded. “Yes.”
“That’s nice,” Olivia said. For a long moment, there was silence, and the feeling that she was being judged increased. She glanced at Leo, who was looking out the window as though the view of the sunset over the skyline were completely fascinating.
Which, truthfully, it was. But he must see it every day, so it felt like he was trying not to look at her. Although maybe that was just Olivia’s own tiredness and feelings of inadequacy making her read into things that weren’t there.
The tension was broken by the sound of a doorbell ringing.
“That must be our food.” Leo headed for the door. Olivia stood, too.
“Do you need help?”
“No, it’s fine. I can get it.”
“Okay.” Olivia settled back down onto the couch. A few minutes later, Leo returned with a brown paper bag that smelled of spices and garlic.
“Let’s eat in the dining room,” he suggested.
Olivia followed him into another room, which had a long glass table with eight chairs and another view of the skyline.
They sat across from each other as Leo unpacked containers of food.
He handed a plastic container and a bag of naan to Olivia, along with a plate.
“What do you have?” she asked as he unpacked his own containers. He had what looked like a long, crispy crepe filled with potatoes and accompanied by several containers of multicolored sauces.
"It’s a dosa,” Leo told her. “It’s a typical south Indian breakfast. I started eating dosas when I visited India for a business deal, and I’ve loved them ever since.”
“You’ve been to India?” Olivia asked.
“It’s been a few years, and I didn’t get to look around much, but yes.” Leo flashed a smile at her. “Have you?”
“No.” Olivia looked down at her food. “I haven’t been many places.”
“You still have lots of time.”
“Sure,” Olivia said. She picked at her butter chicken with a fork.
The fact that Leo spoke so casually of travel emphasized the differences between them yet again.
Not just financially, but as far as what they each expected out of life.
For Leo, things like travel and beautiful city views seemed to come easily.
For Olivia, just flying back to Idaho to visit her sister was a big expense that required saving up and careful planning.
“How’s your food?” Leo asked. Maybe he sensed that this was a touchy topic, too.
“It’s great,” Olivia smiled. It wasn’t Leo’s fault that he came from a wealthier background than she did, that he’d traveled, or that he owned a beautiful penthouse.
Just as she wouldn’t want him to judge her for not having as much money as he did, she shouldn’t judge him for the opposite. “Thanks.”
“No worries.” Leo took a bite of his dosa. “So, tell me more about you.”
“What do you want to know?” Olivia asked.
“Everything I should know about my wife,” Leo said, and he winked, just as he had before.
“You already know that I’m currently between jobs,” Olivia said.
“I do. But what about you personally? Do you have siblings? What are your hobbies? Where did you grow up? That kind of thing.”
“I have an older sister,” Olivia said. “She has two kids and lives in a small town in Idaho, which is where I grew up. My biggest hobby is photography, but I haven’t been doing as much photography as I would have liked lately, like I said.
I also like to hike and read. What about you?
I still don’t know much about you, either. ”
“Well, I grew up in LA. After college, I moved to New York and started a company with my older brother. Now I run the company. As for hobbies, work doesn’t leave me a lot of free time, so I’d say working is my hobby.
” He laughed self-deprecatingly. “I also like traveling and being outside. Oh, and I’m kind of a history buff. ”
“Are you?” Olivia leaned forward, intrigued. This felt like a personal detail, the kind she’d like to know. “What kind of history do you like?”
“All of it,” Leo smiled. “I know — that, along with the programming, makes me a real nerd, but I can’t help it.”
“So, tell me a history fact,” Olivia suggested.
“Are you really interested?” Leo tilted his head as if to look at her from a new angle.
“Sure.”
“Okay.” Leo seemed to consider, his brows drawing together and his blue eyes narrowing in thought. “Did you know the shortest war in history was only thirty-eight minutes long? It was the Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896.”
“I did not know that. But I did know that Cleopatra lived closer to our time than to when the pyramids were built.”
Leo’s eyes sparkled as he smiled. “That is a really good one. I remember when I first learned that, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The length of Egyptian civilization really puts the problems we face in our lifetime into perspective.”
“Have you been to Egypt?”
“Uh-huh,” Leo nodded. “For business, as well, and a few days of looking at the sights. I thought the pyramids were amazing, the tombs were fascinating, and the heat was intense. But I actually learned that fact from a documentary. I love history documentaries, the more obscure the better. My brother used to tease me no end.”
“Used to?”
Leo looked away, then took a big bite of his dosa.
He gestured apologetically to his mouth, which was enough of a hint for Olivia to know that he didn’t want to talk about his brother.
Maybe they didn’t have a good relationship.
Something tickled at the back of her mind, like there was something she should know that was just out of reach, but Olivia let it go.
“I’m kind of a nerd, too,” Olivia admitted.
“Out of college, I tried to take a job as an event photographer. You know, weddings and baby showers and that kind of thing. But my photos were always too artsy, and I didn’t enjoy trying to make them mainstream.
I love studying composition and color theory and trying to make my photos look like works of art, which I think makes me pretty nerdy. ”
“Do you take artsy black-and-white photos of open manhole covers and shoes on telephone wires and stuff like that?” Leo asked. His eyes were back to sparkling, and Olivia was relieved.
“No, nothing like that. I did more close-ups of flowers or birds in motion or a falling leaf against a blue sky.”
“So, you’re a nature photographer.”
“I would like to be.”
“Will you show me some of your pictures?”
Olivia flushed and looked down at her food. “You’d laugh.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Well… maybe. Sometime.”
“I’ll have to accept that for now.” Leo tilted his head again, “I am curious… do you know much about my company?”
Olivia’s blush deepened. “I kind of looked you up this afternoon. I do know that you’re the CEO of Palasa, but I promise I didn’t snoop too much.”
“You didn’t know before we got married?”
Olivia frowned. “No. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious, like I said. I’m still trying to piece last night together.”
“So am I,” Olivia agreed.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Um…” Olivia imagined her cheeks must be as red as strawberries by now. “I remember us kissing in the hallway. And then we headed back towards the casino, and I don’t know what happened next.”
“I remember that we went to a little restaurant on the top floor of the building for shrimp cocktails, because you said you wanted a shrimp cocktail and I said we needed more champagne.”
“That does sound like me.” Olivia bit her lip. “I wish we remembered more. It must have been a pretty magical night if it led to marriage.” She wanted to ask if Leo remembered the kiss, too, and if he remembered it being as breathtaking as she did. Of course, she didn’t ask.
“It must have.” Leo took the last bite of his dinner. “If you remember anything else, let me know.”
“Same to you.”
“Of course. For now, I’m afraid I’m quite exhausted. I need to head to bed.”
“I understand. I’ll probably do the same. It was a very long day.” Olivia paused. “But we’ll talk more tomorrow, right?”
“We will,” Leo agreed. “Is it still okay with you to stay here for a little bit while we get everything sorted out?”
“Yes,” Olivia said. “For a few days.”
“Good. It’ll give us time to get to know each other and sort out the divorce. Hopefully, it won’t be too difficult to figure out the paperwork. After all, it’s not like we’ve been married long.”
“True.”
They both stood. Olivia still had most of her food left, but she didn’t feel hungry.
Instead of eating more, she put it in the fridge for later and headed to “her” room, Leo’s guest room.
She sat on the white sheets of the bed and breathed in the scent of laundry detergent.
For a moment, she felt very far from home.
Her first fully sober conversation with her new husband had been a little stiff, and at times confusing, but it had been fascinating, too.
Olivia couldn’t help feeling drawn to Leo, and the more she knew about him, the more drawn to him she felt.
She imagined him in his room now, picking out a documentary about the history of the Peloponnesian War or something else she knew little about, and smiled to herself.
They would talk more tomorrow. And hopefully, Olivia could get to know this man she’d married a little better, before it was time for them to get divorced.