Lindsay and Oliver skipped the thrift store and went for the towels first. Then they stopped at the grocery store on the way back.
“Are you going to make me dinner?” Oliver asked as he carried two bags with his good hand up the long flight of stairs that led to Lindsay’s apartment.
“If you’re cool with avocado toast for dinner, then yes.”
“I’d love that,” he answered as they came into the apartment. “Ricky is working late.”
They were greeted inside the apartment by a blonde woman screaming. She shrieked as if surprised and then calming down enough to form words, she wailed in alarm, “What are you doing here?” She looked between Lindsay and Oliver like they couldn’t possibly be robbers with groceries.
Oliver smiled his smile that was all charm and no sleaze. “Excuse us,” he said sweetly. “But you are the most beautiful squatter I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m not a squatter!” she yelped. She was surprised and upset at being barged in upon, but her temper made her cheeks rosy and pretty. It wasn’t what she looked like that made Oliver compliment her. Oliver was the type of man who would have said that to a bag lady.
“Well, you’re standing in Lindsay’s kitchen,” he pointed out.
Lindsay dropped her bag of flour and flicked him in the ear. She had never seen this woman in her life before, but if she was willing to bet (and she was), Lindsay knew who it was. “This is Marissa, Gavin’s…” she wanted to say ex-girlfriend, but the sight of Marissa in her apartment made Lindsay stop.
“Fiancee,” Marissa filled in the blank.
Lindsay would not have finished the sentence that way, but Marissa became about a thousand times more interesting when she finished it that way.
“Umm… Well, this apartment was in Gavin’s name and it was empty. He said I could live here until the lease expired. Is there going to be a problem with that arrangement?” Lindsay asked, keeping her voice simple and light.
“Are you…” Marissa started, looking at Oliver.
Lindsay wasn’t sure which way Marissa was going with that, but she didn’t let her finish. She had to keep the conversation on neutral facts. “This is Oliver, Gavin’s brother. I guess you two haven’t met.”
“Sorry, I haven’t had the pleasure,” he said, letting a little sleaze ooze. “I’ve been on the mainland for the last three years.”
Marissa nodded. “I remember now. I’ve seen pictures of you at your mother’s house.”
“And I’m Lindsay,” she said, trying to figure out how to explain the situation further or get Marissa to explain what she was doing there when she had already moved out. “So… is there a problem with me bringing the rest of my stuff up?” The towels were still in Ricky’s truck.
Marissa didn’t answer. She bit her lip like she didn’t know what to say. In truth, she was perfectly lovely. From Gavin’s description, Lindsay had not been expecting perfect loveliness. She had been expecting someone ordinary. Marissa was older than Lindsay, approaching thirty, but it didn’t stop her from being exceptional. She had short hair that was shaved up one side and bleach-blonde curls topped her well-shaped head. Her purse was a work of art. Marissa dived into it to retrieve a tissue to blot her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” Lindsay said, rushing to help the other woman.
“Nothing. It’s just… I misunderstood. I was told something that was clearly wrong. I didn’t know Oliver was in town or that he brought a girl with him.” She finished dabbing at her eyes. “Everything is fine.”
Lindsay rather objected to being called a girl. It was that woman’s way of putting her in her place by making her sound lightyears younger when she was three years younger at the most. Lindsay was about to voice her feelings when she glanced at Oliver.
He was suffering.
Lindsay smirked and bit her lips together to stop herself from laughing. Marissa was acting teary and Oliver longed to pull her in his arms and comfort her. Lindsay had seen it many times, not just with herself, but with other women in their actor camp. He was an incurable sucker for a crying woman. His jaw clenched tightly as he held back.
Lindsay wanted to correct Marissa’s second misunderstanding. Yes, Carleen had misunderstood when she dropped Gavin’s things off at the cabin. She saw Lindsay in a nightgown and Gavin’s shirt and she had jumped to conclusions, but now Marissa was jumping to another conclusion that was just as wrong. She thought Lindsay was there as Oliver’s side piece because that made her happier than to think that Gavin had replaced her so easily.
Lindsay was about to open her mouth to explain that everything this woman thought was wrong when Gavin reached the top of the stairs and joined them in the now suffocating kitchen.
“Whoa!” Oliver said, moving so his brother could get the door open. “Hey man, we’re just meeting your fiancee.”
“My what?” Gavin said, carrying a hex wrench case and peering over Lindsay’s shoulder to see Marissa standing by the stove. He’d clearly come to help her assemble the dresser they’d bought.
“Hi, Gavin,” she said with the air of a woman who had unfinished business and she was about to finish it. “Your face looks good, without the beard.”
He nodded at her, and said stiffly, “I didn’t see your car downstairs.”
“My sister dropped me off.”
“Why? It’s over an hour's drive back to Victoria from here and there isn’t a bus until tomorrow morning.”
She looked at him meaningfully. It was a trap. He had walked into the apartment and fallen into it. Not that the exact details of the trap mattered so much. If he hadn’t been there at that moment, she would have simply called him and told him she was there. From her perspective, he wasn’t going to be able to leave her alone in an unfinished apartment until the next bus came. When he took her home, she’d have a whole hour to talk to him and he would simply be a monster if he sent her home in a cab.
The look on his face was monstrous, and Lindsay could see he was running scenarios through his head as to how to orchestrate avoiding the conversation she wanted to have.
“Are you going to Victoria?” Lindsay chirped, smarter and faster than he was. “If you’re going, we should all go on a double date. I haven’t been to any of the spots in Victoria since I got to the island. What restaurants are good?”
“That’s a terrific idea!” Oliver joined in. He slipped his arms around her waist and drew her into a back hug. Lindsay knew he did it partly to annoy his brother, but also to double the amount of available floor space.
“Yeah. I bought four plates, but can you see the four of us having dinner here? We’d be cramped like sausages! Let’s go out!” Lindsay and Oliver looked at Gavin with encouraging smiles.
At long last, Gavin seemed to figure out what the two of them were offering. If they all piled into his truck, he wouldn’t be alone with Marissa and he could avoid the conversation if he desired.
“Sounds fine to me, as long as the two of you keep your PDAs to a minimum,” he grouched.
“I make no promises,” Oliver said, tugging on the edge of Lindsay’s ear with his canine.
She shrieked with laughter. Gavin frowned and held open the door for Marissa, who allowed herself to be guided down the stairs and out the door.
Over Oliver’s commotion, Lindsay heard Gavin whisper to Marissa, “I didn’t know you still had a key.”
“The door is broken,” she replied. “If you know how to fiddle with the lock, it opens every time.”
“I’ll have to get that fixed,” he grumbled, annoyed by everything.
The ride to Victoria was joyful. Oliver kept pinching and tickling Lindsay. If the conversation lagged, her squeals kept the truck noisy and intimate conversation impossible. To Marissa’s credit, she was not a wet blanket. She immediately fell into a rhythm where she treated Oliver like he was her younger brother as well as Gavin’s. She even threatened to sit between Oliver and Lindsay if he didn’t keep his hands to himself. He responded by pinching Marissa’s side, and she enjoyed it twice as much as Lindsay did.
“I love being tickled,” Lindsay said. “If I didn’t love it so much, he wouldn’t do it.”
“You do sound like a puppy when you laugh,” Oliver agreed.
Gavin placed his rear-view mirror so his eyes didn’t see the road behind them, but Lindsay. She sat directly behind Marissa. It was a different kind of flirting, completely different from Oliver’s pinches and giggles, but effective nevertheless. She found herself getting warm under his gaze. It made her scream louder when Oliver tickled her.
At the restaurant, a beautiful building called the Stone Steakhouse, Marissa reminded them to be well-behaved as they went in. “I’m not sure you two are mature enough for a place like this,” she cautioned.
“These people handle drunks all the time,” Oliver said. “I’m sure they can handle us stone-cold sober.”
Lindsay remembered the two drinks he had before he crashed her car and felt like getting rowdy with him for an altogether different reason. “I swear, Oli, if you cause another car accident, I’ll…”
“Break up with me?” he taunted. “Go ahead. You can break up with me as many times as you need to. And don’t call me Oli.”
“Why?” she asked with her arms crossed sternly.
“Try saying my name properly. Oliver,” he demonstrated for her.
“Oliver,” she repeated.
“Now that you’ve practiced, you can try saying it at level two. O..”
“O…” she said obediently, expecting a gag at the end.
“Lover.”
Lindsay choked on a laugh. “O-lover?”
“Yeah. Sounds perfect when you say it like that,” he chuckled as he opened the door to the Stone Steakhouse for her.
Once in the restaurant, there was no need for conversation. The place was a cacophony with too loud music playing on the speakers overhead, and since they were dining late, the place had a more adult crowd than it would have had a few hours earlier.
Oliver tried to be charming and make jokes and Lindsay encouraged him, but it was completely impossible once their food arrived. Lindsay was exhausted and the food in her stomach had been too long coming. At the least, she should have shoved one of the bananas they bought in her face before they left to go to Victoria. It made her a ravenous beast once their food arrived. She felt sick eating so much so fast.
Comments (0)
See all