The Absence of Olivia(29)

“Really?” Some of her exhaustion left and was replaced with excitement. They were never allowed to eat anywhere except the table.

“Really. But you have to promise to keep an eye on your brother for me while I help your daddy clean this up.”

“Okay,” she yelled happily, as she skipped back up the stairs.



Three hours passed, in which I’d made sandwiches for the kids and brought them up with grapes, crackers, and juice boxes, calling it a ‘picnic’. They’d eaten and watched their movie while Devon and I worked together to suck up the standing water. Once most of the water was gone, all we could do was use towels to try to dry the floor and the walls. After inspection, Devon concluded that the hose that hooked up to the back of the washer had broken, causing all the water to flow out onto his beautiful hardwood floors.

“We’ve got a few fans in the attic, I’ll go get them.”

I heard his footsteps go up the stairs and I focused all my mental energy on his use of the word ‘we.’ He’d meant him and Liv. The we he thought he’d be using for fifty or sixty more years. He wasn’t a we anymore, but, to me, he always would be. Liv and Devon. My best friend’s husband, regardless of whether or not she was alive. For a reason I only assumed was for my personal torture, I’d been totally fine with Devon and Liv as a we when she’d been alive, but now that she was gone, the fact that he still attached himself to her in that way made me feel sad and heavy.

When I heard him clear his throat a minute later, I turned to see him looking at me with soft eyes. “There were so many times when we were younger, before life really happened, when I’d imagined you in my clothes. I’d have these fantasies of coming home from my big important job to find you in one of my button up shirts, or just in one of my ties.” I could feel my cheeks burning at his words, but couldn’t move my gaze from him, didn’t want to shatter whatever was happening between us, because I knew it was fragile, like spun sugar.

“Then things got serious with Liv and me and the fantasies sort of turned into forbidden thoughts. Thoughts I knew I shouldn’t have, and managed to turn off all together for the most part, aside from the few moments when you were absolutely too beautiful to push to the back of my mind. Just little snapshots of heaven I tucked away and only thought about when I was really happy, because thinking of you when things weren’t going well with Liv was too close to infidelity. I couldn’t think about you when, perhaps, I wanted to most because I was afraid of what that would do to my marriage. So, I tried not to. And it worked, for the most part. I still got to see you often. Still had you in my life, our lives. Still got to tell you that you looked nice, or that I liked your new hair style, still got to know you were safe and close by.”

I could remember practically every compliment he’d given me in the last nine years. I’d tucked them away too. Tried not to read too much into them, because it felt too much like I was betraying my best friend.

“And then I come home one night and there you are, in my kitchen, wearing my basketball shorts, and Liv is nowhere to be found.”

The air in the room crackled with his words, filled with the regret of the enormity of the thought. Olivia was nowhere to be found, but she was still everywhere.

“And the mind boggling part is you’re even more unavailable to me now than you were before. Olivia’s absence took you so much farther away from me. Even though you’re here, in my house, every day. You’re here, but you’ve never been more out of reach.”

“Devon,” I managed to whisper, not really even knowing what I wanted to say, just needing to stop his words.

“Unless-?

“Devon, no.”

“Unless it’s you who’s keeping yourself away for her sake.”

“I’m here, Devon, but we can’t-″

“There’s no reason we can’t-″

“Yes, there is. Olivia-″

“Is dead.”

His words hurt for so many reasons I couldn’t even begin to count them. Olivia was dead; there was no reason to deny him that fact. I stood up, finally finding some feeling in my body besides the pounding of my heart. I walked to him, stopping just far enough away so that he didn’t get any ideas about reaching out and touching me. Surely, that would break me.

“Olivia being dead isn’t the reason we can’t be together. But, it can never be the reason we are.”





Chapter Nine


Summer between Sophomore and

Junior Year of College



“So, when you decided to get an apartment on the third floor, was it always your master plan to make me do all the heavy lifting?” Elliot’s voice rang out through the semi-empty apartment, and I smiled automatically as I always did around him.

“Well, first of all, it wasn’t my plan to get an apartment on the third floor, that’s just what was available. But, yeah,” I said, turning and leaning my backside up against the kitchen counter, “I kinda knew you wouldn’t let me haul my stuff up two flights of stairs.” I watched, a little breathless, as he dropped a box full of textbooks on the floor of my soon-to-be living room, then turned toward me. His t-shirt was beginning to stick to his body, just slightly damp from working up a sweat carrying boxes upstairs. I knew from personal experience what the landscape of his chest looked like, but something about it being covered in cloth but still visible had my heart rate pounding.