Nice Girls(40)

“Because I don’t know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Kevin shook his head like a dog trying to shake off a flea.

“It means I don’t know. Olivia was always . . . hard to read. I was never sure if she was flirting with me or making fun of me. It’s been that way since forever, you know?”

She’d been that way all her life. Olivia seemed to know her presence, how much people wanted her to simply like them. She didn’t have to keep sweet to anybody. It was easy for her, since she was surrounded by people like me and Kevin—outsiders who were desperate to be liked.

That was why Olivia always chose what games we played, what roles we took when we played with our Barbies. That was why she took charge whenever we were in the woods, heading in whatever direction she chose. And that was why, years later, in high school, Olivia didn’t balk when I found out she was bulimic. She knew I would cover for her.

And she treated Kevin like a toy. When we were kids, Olivia once dared him to lick a frozen pole on the school playground. Kevin had obliged. But his tongue was glued to the swing set for half an hour. When a gym teacher finally melted Kevin’s tongue off of the metal, he was in tears. He later said that his tongue was on fire, as if knives had cut through it.

People adored Olivia.

But it bored her, didn’t it? There was no challenge when other people keeled over. She was reckless with others, and she could keep pushing them, taunting them to lick that frozen pole. They would do it. But maybe she wanted a different outcome once in a while. She wanted someone to stand up to her, to tell her no. No one ever did.

“One weekend in August, Olivia and I were at a movie theater. One of those discount movie nights for some shitty comedy,” said Kevin, his voice getting lower. “We were like two of the five people there, we’re just sitting together in the back row. I’m just chilling, eating my popcorn, and then I feel Olivia coming closer to me. And then out of nowhere, she kisses me.”

“What?”

“Yeah. It never happened like that before.”

“It happened before?”

“A few times,” said Kevin, his eyes firmly planted on some spot in the distance. “Usually some high school party or a bar night downtown. But we’d always be drunk, and Olivia would be super wasted. It just happened sometimes, you know? We’d kiss each other. Like a quick peck on the lips.

“But this time was different. Olivia was kissing me, and it . . . escalated.”

The discomfort wafted around us like an odor, but I kept my mouth shut.

“Her tongue is down my throat, and her hands are all over me. She starts . . . caressing me. I thought I was in the middle of some dream, it was that unreal,” said Kevin, shaking his head. “But it was real, and I was holding Olivia. And even with three people around us in the theater, Olivia . . . went down on me.”

I flinched. Kevin’s face reddened. He avoided my gaze. None of it made sense: Why him? For years, he’d reeked of desperation around her. As Liberty Lake’s social media star, Olivia did not lack for men. She had been in a sorority in college, surrounded by hundreds of fraternity brothers. She knew guys with job prospects in finance. She knew rugby players and future doctors. Why would she settle for someone who was little more than a Podunk police officer?

I wasn’t sure. It was something only she knew, and the explanation could have been anything from boredom to recklessness. Perhaps in some way, she genuinely liked him.

“And then what happened?” I finally asked.

“I . . . I came.” Kevin was almost whispering now, as if he were in a confessional. “And after the movie, I dropped Olivia off at her house.”

“Did you guys—?”

“No. We didn’t.” He paused, dwelling on what hadn’t happened that day. “We never did, actually.”

“Okay.”

“And we never talked about what happened that night at the movie theater. Olivia never brought it up, so I didn’t, either. We just . . . hung out more, you know? We got coffee, went out for dinner, watched more movies together. You know.”

“It sounds like you guys were almost a couple.”

“Yeah, I thought so, too. Everything was going great for the two of us. We even talked about a ski trip together during her winter break. But then she went back to school. I didn’t even know she was home when . . .” Kevin trailed off, his eyes blinking rapidly. He turned away, lifting a sleeve to his face.

In a way, I felt sorry for him. Kevin had done what very few people ever did—get together with their unrequited love. Olivia might have truly liked him back, and for that brief period of time, his dream had become reality.

He sniffled and turned around. His eyes were slightly pink.

“You have any ideas of where to go?” he asked. “Anything big in the park?”

I looked around, trying to remember.

Olivia and I would swing for hours or dig large holes in the sandboxes at the park. Other times we caught bugs. Sometimes we pretended we were spies who stalked the older kids. We wondered why they ran from us whenever we tried to join them.

By the time we were ten, Olivia and I were old enough to bike to the reserve on our own. We would spend the rest of the day there. Olivia was given a flip phone and a whistle from her parents in case anything happened. But nothing ever did.