Olivia (12 page)

And that’s why Olivia raised her hand and said, “Right here.”

The minister’s eyebrows shot straight up as Olivia pushed through the crowd, his hand flying to his chest as though he was in the throes of a massive coronary. He recovered quickly, his surprised expression transforming into furious glower as his eyes raked her head to toe. “Carl Jr., I assume?”

“Yes?” Olivia answered the question with a question. She had no clue who she was. She hadn’t thought past the raising her hand part. She was totally winging it.

Melanie’s eyes shot from Olivia to the minister and back to Olivia. “Uh…”

“Mel, darling, you look beautiful.” Olivia air kissed Melanie on the cheeks like a Frenchman. “So sorry I’m late. I had some technical difficulties getting dressed.” She leaned into the minister, and, in the deepest male voice she could muster, she whispered conspiratorially, “I don’t know how bad this heat’s affecting you today, but my balls are hangin’ like overripe watermelons in a fat man’s hammock.”

She regretted it as soon as she said it.

The minister turned purple, smoke rolled from his ears, and Olivia blushed. Crap.

“Carl,
darling
,” Melanie said on a growl. “May I speak with you for a moment? In private!”

Melanie didn’t wait for an answer. She yanked Olivia by her arm, dragged her into the corner of the room and hissed, “What the hell are you doing?”

It was the first time Olivia had ever heard Mel cuss. Oh man, she was pissed.

“Do you want to get married in spirit to Carl Jr. or not?” Olivia asked.

Melanie looked as though she were about to burst into tears. “Yes.”

“Then shut up and follow my lead,” Olivia whispered. She turned toward the arch, but Melanie grabbed her again, her grasp remarkably strong. “
Ow!
”

That was going to leave a mark.

“We can’t do this, Liv!”

“Why not?” Olivia pried Melanie’s fingers out of the flesh of her upper arm.

“It’s lying to God,” she whispered and frantically pointed upward, as if Olivia didn’t have a clue where God lived.

“We’re not lying to God, Mel,” Olivia assured her. “God understands. Carl Jr. understands. Everyone here understands… Well, almost everyone… Give me a sec and I’ll figure out a way to explain it to the minister…”

“I can’t…” Melanie’s eyes filled with tears. “Reverend Delany is a good man, Liv. A real good man. He helped me find God when I was sure He was gone for good, and if he thinks it’s wrong…”

“It’s not about right or wrong, or black or white, Mel. It’s about loving and honoring and cherishing. It’s about you promising to God in front of all of these people that you will be faithfully committed to the man you love—for better or for worse—for the rest of your life.”

Melanie opened and closed her mouth, but no sound came out except a whimper of the anguish seeping from her heart.

“Think of me as the vessel of Carl’s spirit. Close your eyes if you have to, and imagine you’re saying the vows to him instead of me, and hold those words in your heart until he comes home and can whisper them to you himself.”

“I can’t…” Melanie faltered as her eyes drifted over toward the minister and his futile attempts to escape. Bless Sam’s heart; his wide girth and stubborn stance made it impossible. The guy truly was a brick shithouse, and he guarded the exit of the Pizza Hut with every crumb of mortar in his arsenal. “What’ll my babies think?”

Olivia looked over at the gaggle of children screaming and carrying on as they played with the balloons. She had no idea which of the munchkins were Melanie’s, but if she had to guess she would say they were the four dressed head-to-toe in pink and purple. The oldest looked to be five at the most, and even she was more interested in the balloons than in what was going on under the arch.

“We’ll explain it to them together after the minister leaves if we have to—”

“No, no, no,” Melanie interrupted with a determined stomp of her foot. “I can’t lie to the reverend and pretend you’re Carl Jr. when you’re a… woman.”

“You didn’t have any problem with Carl Jr. being a coat rack. Saying I’m him is the exact same thing, but at least with me you’ll have a warm hand to hold.” Olivia clasped Melanie’s hands in hers and squeezed tight to prove the healing power of human touch. “And these are only vows of commitment anyway. The real vows come later, at the real ceremony, with the real man.”

“But…”

“Ok. How about we ask Sam to fill in instead?”

“No!” Melanie shook her head so fast Olivia was sure it would fling off. “I could never marry another man!”

Olivia threw her hands up in frustration. “What do you want to do then, Mel?”

Melanie burst into tears. “I want to marry Carl Jr.!”

“Oh, Honey…” Olivia wrapped her arms around Melanie and stroked her hair. “I know you do, but he’s not here. If you want to marry Carl Jr. today, this is how it has to be.”

She let Melanie cry it out until the sobs downgraded into sniffles. Once they did, she gently lifted Melanie’s head off her shoulder and wiped at her tears with her thumb.

“I’m not trying to force you into anything here, Mel. This is your call entirely. I would be honored to stand in for Carl Jr. for you, but if you don’t want to do it, we won’t.”

Melanie stared slack-jawed at Olivia while she processed what was going on. Finally, she nodded her approval.

“Good.” Olivia smiled then leaned in and whispered, “But when the minister says to kiss the bride, no slipping me the tongue.”

Melanie gasped in horror. “Oh, no! I would never do that!”

Olivia laughed and linked her arm with Mel’s, and they returned to the arch as a happy and united, albeit unusual, couple. As Reverend Delany stepped up to them, Olivia opened her mouth to plead their case, but he silenced her with a sharp shake of his head. He turned to Melanie, his expression softening at the sight of her tear-streaked face and the unshed tears still shining in her eyes. His closed his eyes and stood silent for a long moment as though listening to an inner voice, then opened his Bible, and began. 

The ceremony was short—
extremely
short—but it was intimate and it was personal, spiritually beautiful in both meaning and intention. When Olivia slipped the thin, gold band onto Melanie’s finger, her heart actually felt as though it could take wing and fly. In that moment, she fell in love with Melanie, just a little bit.

At the end of the ceremony, they kept their tongues to themselves as they fumbled through the kiss. Kenny wore a huge, shit-eating grin while he snapped hundreds of pictures of it from every possible angle, and Sam wolf-whistled and called for an encore. As soon as Izzie and Carla signed the commitment certificate as witnesses, Reverend Delany headed for the door.

Olivia started to chase him down so she could apologize for her stupid hammock comment, and thank him for being so understanding, but Kenny grabbed her by the arm and whipped her back around.

“Best to leave it alone for now, Liv.” He handed her a beer. “I think your mouth has done enough damage for one day.”

“Yeah… I suppose.” Olivia pressed the cool glass bottle to her overheated forehead. Man, what a day. Who knew weddings could be so exhausting? “Maybe I’ll send him a Christmas card… in a year or two… when he forgets who I am.”

Kenny laughed as he flung his arm around Olivia’s shoulders. “Hate to break it to you, Liver, but I highly doubt that’ll ever happen.”

The reception was a blast. The beer flowed freely, copious amounts of pizza were consumed, and with all the balloons floating about the room, there was more than enough helium to go around. Love, laughter and chipmunk voices overflowed from the party room of the Pizza Hut, until one of the kids pulled the fire alarm and set off the automatic sprinklers.

They burst out of the restaurant in a dripping, drunken mob with the desire to party harder and nowhere to go. When Kenny suggested Kitty’s, Olivia was all aboard—until she actually set foot inside the bar and she caught sight of George.

His eyes locked with hers from across the room. So many emotions slammed into her chest with so much intensity she panicked and took flight.

“
Liv!
” Izzie chased after Olivia as she flew out of the bar.

“I can’t do this!” Olivia cried.

“Do what?”

Olivia paced the sidewalk and tried to calm the seizures of pain and heartache quaking through every molecule of her body. “I can’t look at George and pretend everything’s ok between us knowing he’s with Yvette.”

“Why?” Izzie asked as she tried to calm Olivia’s violent trembling. “What the hell happened between you two?”

“Nothing! Absolutely nothing happened between us because he told me he was gay! And I believed him! And now he’s sleeping with Yvette. He lied to me to push me away and now he’s rubbing my face in it with
her!
”

“Olivia,” George warned in a low tone inches behind her ear.

Olivia jumped out of her skin at the sound of his voice. In her panic to escape, she ran straight into traffic. Car horns blared and tires screeched as cars swerved to miss the hysterical Olivia. She dodged left and dodged right and slipped in her heels and fell in the street right in the path of an oncoming semi. Two muscular arms lifted her up and out of the way seconds before the bumper met her forehead.

 George dumped her onto the sidewalk in a heap. “
Are you insane?
” He glared at her with his hands on his hips and his feet spread shoulder-width apart.

Olivia opened her mouth, but no words came out. Her heart had wedged itself tight in her throat, partly from the fright of almost dying, but mostly from the sight of seeing him again after so incredibly long.

Tears came to her eyes as she swallowed hard and nodded weakly. Yes, she was indeed insane, or at least pretty damn close to becoming insane. God, she loved him, so much so it physically hurt to look at him and not be able to reach out and touch him.

He threw his hands to the sky, cursed and screamed at her for being so stupid and stubborn, then stormed back into the bar.

Izzie crouched at her side and fussed over her skinned knees, scraped palms, and torn dress, asking her again and again what she meant about George being gay. Olivia stared at the door to the bar, silently praying for George to come back outside and take her in his arms again, to kiss her in the backroom, and dance with her until dawn. To hold her, and touch her, and love her, and make her feel alive again…

But he didn’t come out. And Olivia couldn’t bring herself to go in.

In the end, she limped home, threw her ruined dress in the trash, and spent her wedding night polishing off a bag of Cheez Doodles and a six-pack of Bud while watching
Two Mules for Sister Sarah
with Eugene. So much for the honeymoon.

Chapter Six

Izzie became obsessed with the possibility of George being gay. Since Olivia refused to talk about it, Izzie set out on her own to get to the bottom of things. Every night at Garretson, she grilled Yvette on George’s comings and goings, who his friends were, what kind of music he liked, how he held his fork when he cut his steak, how often he showered, whether he wore boxers or briefs, and a million other topics she believed would reveal George’s true sexual orientation without being obvious.

When Izzie crossed the line and asked if George had an obsession with any particular farm animal, Yvette went to Sam and complained.

Sam stuck his head out of his office. “
Isabel Bergman!
Get in here—
now!
”

Izzie skittered in with her head low and her face flushed.

When she came back out, she was an even deeper shade of red. From that moment on, she kept a fifteen-foot radius from Yvette at all times. She let the George issue drop, at least at work, and went back to talking only about her unsuccessful attempts at getting pregnant.

The rest of May and all of June became a blur as one mandatory-Saturday merged into the next. Olivia’s life revolved around working and sleeping and pretty much nothing else. She barely had the energy to shower every day, but she managed it. Sundays were spent slumped on the sofa watching mind-numbing programming on HGTV and the Food Network in preparation for the day she finally grew up and became somebody, until one fateful Sunday when she was flipping channels during commercials and happened across the end of
Boogie Nights
.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” she uttered in awe and sat up a little straighter.

She hit the rewind button on her DVR so she could watch the frame again. And then she hit pause and just stared. Holy fuck! From that moment on, Olivia was absolutely, positively, one-hundred-percent head-over-heels in love with Mark Wahlberg.

Her new obsession was born.

Sunday nights became “Olivia and Mark’s Date Night.” At seven o’clock, on the dot, she showered and fussed over her hair, put on a little makeup and selected a nice dress or a flirty skirt to wear for Mark. Sometimes she wore underwear, sometimes she didn’t, depending on her mood, but she always wore perfume.

Once she was ready to go, she’d call and order take-out from Tomas Juan’s, pick up a bottle of Barefoot Moscato from the liquor store on Greeley Street, and then swing down to Movie Mania to make a selection from Mr. Wahlberg’s fine array of cinema classics. On her way home, she’d sneak over to Carla’s house and snip one single rose off the massive rosebushes in front of her house. She’d stick the rose into a jelly jar full of water, sit on the floor behind the coffee table, and settle in for a night of dinner and wine with her sweetheart.

One night, toward the end of June, Olivia was feeling particularly frisky. It was a pantiless night, and she had ordered a chili relleno to go with her usual enchilada, beans and rice. The food smelled marvelous and sat waiting for her in her Buick while she ran into the liquor store for her bottle of Moscato. She couldn’t stop thinking about her cutie-patootie Markie-Mark, and couldn’t stop smiling as she set the bottle of wine on the counter.

The girl working the register asked, “Have you seen your boyfriend’s new movie yet?”