Wish (14 page)

Olivia smiled and shook her head. Maybe she could belong after all.

“‘W
hat is
The Great Wall of China
?’ Are you kidding me? Somebody get this guy an encyclopedia.”

It was Friday night and Olivia was curled up on the living room couch watching TV. Her dad was angled back on the leather recliner beside her, dipping pretzel sticks into a container of fat-free cream cheese, alternately berating
Jeopardy!
contestants and laughing at Alex Trebek’s crooked toupee. Normally, Olivia might have been embarrassed to spend a Friday night hanging at home with her dad, but after a week of fashion-show planning, chasing Violet around the city, and staying up late to whisper on the phone with Soren, she was so flat-out exhausted it was about all the excitement she could handle.

Violet was stretched out with Olivia on the couch, her head resting between Olivia’s L.L.Bean-slippered feet, only inches from Mac’s hand and the remote. It was one of only a couple of times that they had been so close, and every so often Olivia
would catch Violet glancing over at Mac, as if to make sure he was still there.

“Come on,” Mac groaned, waving a hand at the screen. “Where do they find these people? The official language of Brazil is
Portuguese.
”

Olivia looked up from the copy of
Vogue
Bridget had brought back from the salon and shared a quick look with Violet. Watching
Jeopardy!
had once been a school-night ritual. Mac would make sure dinner was in the oven by seven before sitting down in the living room with the girls to wait for Bridget to get home from work. He had very little tolerance for wrong answers, which was not to say that he had many of the right answers himself. Usually, he’d wait for Alex to correct a bashful guest, and then passionately underscore the correction.

“You tell him, Alex,” was a Mac favorite.

Violet rolled her eyes and nudged the small of Olivia’s back with her bare foot. The blue squares on the screen went blank and the telltale jingle faded into a commercial for organic dog food.

Mac took a loud chomp of a pretzel and looked over at Olivia. She’d gotten used to him sneaking glances in her direction at every commercial break, taking shallow breaths, raising an eyebrow as if about to say something, and then stuffing food in his face instead.

This time, he held the open bag out in her direction.

“Hungry?” he asked.

Olivia wasn’t, actually, but she pulled herself over to the other side of the couch, leaning over Violet’s lap to reach into the bag for a handful of salty sticks. Mac offered her the cream cheese to dip in, but Olivia politely declined.

“You’re crazy,” Violet muttered, longingly eyeing the snack. Cream cheese and pretzels had been a Mac-and-Violet tradition.

“I don’t blame you,” Mac said, holding up the blue and silver container. “This fat-free stuff your mom makes me buy tastes like chalk. If everybody’s so worked up about being healthy, why can’t somebody make healthy food that actually tastes like food?”

Olivia thought about telling Mac about the farmer’s market but decided against it. He’d pretend to be interested, but she knew he’d never be able to handle the crowds and massive selection. He was a by-the-book kind of guy, and had already memorized the aisles of the nearest Safeway, bragging about how he could get in and out of the market in twenty minutes flat.

“Here we go,” Mac said, as the theme song returned and Double Jeopardy began. Olivia was considering helping herself to more pretzels when the sound of her mother’s kitten heels clopping down the stairs interrupted them. Both Mac and Olivia reflexively straightened in their seats, as if watching TV was only acceptable from an upright position. Even Violet brought both feet to the floor.

Bridget stood in the doorway to the kitchen, looking shiny and sleek in a black pantsuit. A mandarin orange sweater snuck out from under the lapel of her coat, a splash of color picked up by the little orange bows on her black patent leather heels.

“Is that what you’re wearing?” Bridget said, assessing Mac in his flannel pajama bottoms and Boston Celtics T-shirt.

Mac, held rapt by a Daily Double clue, grunted with his eyes still trained on the screen.

“Huh?” he asked. “I thought I was sitting this one out.”

Bridget crossed her arms and stood behind his chair, her eyes blinking and darting from the screen to the top of his head.

“Sitting it out?” she repeated. Her voice was almost completely void of emotion, and the lack of anger was what scared Olivia most. “What am I supposed to tell Frank?”

Frank, Olivia had gathered from snippets of her mother’s tired complaints, was one of the partners at the firm, and had invited Bridget and Mac to his newly renovated town house in Noe Valley for dinner.

Mac leaned toward the screen, holding his breath until the contestant, a cat-lady type with librarian bifocals, managed to eke out the correct answer at the last minute.

“Wow,” he muttered, shaking his head when the wager, a measly two hundred dollars, was revealed. “Too bad you didn’t bet like a man.” He slowly rolled the top of the bag of pretzels, the plastic crinkling for what felt like a solid hour, before kicking the footrest back into the cushioned seat and heaving himself up to his feet. “Give me a minute,” was all he said as he started up the stairs toward their room.

Olivia kept her eyes on the television, feigning interest in a glowing celebrity endorsement for acne cream. She could feel her mother’s eyes on the side of her face but couldn’t bring herself to look up.

“Do you have any plans tonight?” Bridget finally asked. Every question her mother asked was delivered in a way that left no ambiguity as to which answer she preferred. Usually, Olivia sensed that answer intuitively and quickly offered it up, eager for her mother’s approval. But tonight, it was the exact
opposite. Olivia knew Bridget desperately wanted her to move on, to make friends, to start fresh in a new city, with a fantastic new life. And in a way, she was. But why should her mother get the satisfaction of knowing anything about it?

“You’re looking at it,” Olivia said, lying back against the couch and propping her feet up on Violet’s legs.

A tight smile grew on Bridget’s lips and she tapped the back of the armchair with her long, buffed nails. “Tell your father I’ll be waiting in the car, all right?” she said. “We shouldn’t be home too late.”

Bridget paused a moment, as if she wanted to say something else, before turning on her heels and clip-clopping down the hall and out the heavy front door.

Olivia rolled her eyes, grabbing for the bag and tearing it back open. But when she looked up, Violet was frowning.

“Poor Mom,” Violet said, stretching out on the couch.

Olivia nearly choked on a pretzel and turned to her sister with narrow eyes. “What?” she whispered. “Poor
Mom
? Can you imagine being dragged around to every one of her stupid events? Thank God I only had to go to that
one.
”

Violet pointed her toes and shrugged. “Dad’s being a baby,” she said flatly. “He knows she doesn’t have a choice. It’s part of her job, showing up at these things. All he has to do is go and eat free food. He just likes to be difficult.”

Olivia stared at her sister, jaw frozen midbite. In the old days, Violet had never stuck up for their mom. She and Mac had been a team; frankly, it had always made Olivia a little bit jealous the way they got along. Sure, Olivia and Bridget had more in common, and talked more about things like school, colleges, clubs…but they didn’t “get” each other the way
Violet and Mac had. And now, all of a sudden, she was turning on him?

Mac bounded down the stairs, looking boyishly handsome in a baby blue golf shirt and loose-fitting corduroy pants.

“Mom’s in the car,” Olivia called to him as he passed through to the kitchen.

“Thanks,” Mac called back, opening and closing the refrigerator door. “There’s leftovers in here if you get hungry later.”

Olivia perched up on the couch to wave as her dad hustled down the hall. “Thanks, Dad,” she said. “Have fun.”

She watched him disappear down the stairs through the window before turning back to her sister. Violet had been watching him, too, and Olivia saw now that her eyes were wet at the corners, the tip of her nose turning red.

And that was when she got it.

Maybe it was easier this way. Maybe it didn’t hurt as much to see the flaws as it did to remember the good.

“Hey,” Olivia said, wobbling her sister’s shin with one hand. “Are you okay?”

Violet sniffed quickly and shook her head, her wild hair bouncing over her shoulders. “I’d be a lot better if you got out of those sweatpants and invited Soren over.”

Olivia rolled her eyes and smiled. “I told you,” she said. “I’m too tired to do anything tonight.”

Violet stood and motioned for her sister to get off the couch. “That was before you had the house to yourself,” she said, pointing toward the stairs. “This is a whole new ball game. And we gotta get you suited up.”

I
nviting a boy over when her parents weren’t home probably wouldn’t have been Olivia’s
top
choice for the world’s most comfortable second date.

But Violet was convinced it wouldn’t be such a big deal, and to prove it, she gave the following three reasons:

1. Technically, it was the third date. Even though the first time they’d hung out at the farmer’s market had been an “accident,” they’d spent an awful lot of time alone. And while they were getting all technical with the date defining, shouldn’t all of those gym-class runs and late-night phone calls count for something, too?
   
2. They weren’t really going to be alone, since Violet would (half) be there, too.
   
3. Really? Did she really need a third reason? Had she forgotten how freakishly cute and practically perfect he was in every way?
   

If she had forgotten, it didn’t take much more than Soren showing up at her door, armed with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Heath Bar Crunch and the entire Wes Anderson catalogue on DVD, to jog her memory.

They were halfway through
Bottle Rocket
when Olivia decided she was starving. Also, she had basically zero idea what was going on in the movie, since every time Soren shifted on the couch to tug at the bottom of his jeans, or cleared his throat or, you know, breathed, her heart swelled up to the size of a watermelon at the thought that maybe this would be it. Maybe this would be the second when she would finally get kissed.

She wasn’t really sure what came over her. It wasn’t like she was especially experienced in the kissing department, unless she counted the time she’d met Micah Greenberg behind the athletics shed for some choreographed pecking and teeth-gnashing. Which, usually, she didn’t.

During the Roxie dog-umentary, she had been perfectly content with holding Soren’s hand, and probably wouldn’t have known what to do if things had progressed beyond that. And in the quick little rendezvous they’d had over the last week, at the lake after gym, or in the alley near school, she’d been too paralyzed with fear that Calla or someone would turn the corner at any time to even entertain the possibility of making out. Even when Violet had brought up the idea of inviting Soren over to an empty house, Olivia’s first thought had naturally been:
But what will my excuse be when he leans in for a kiss?

So she was a little confused by the fact that every time he looked in her direction, the overriding sensation tingling through her veins and making it nigh impossible to focus on
anything else wasn’t exactly
fear,
so much as mind-scrambling, heart-blasting, pulse-quickening
anticipation.

Olivia fumbled around on the coffee table for the DVD remote and quickly found the pause button. “Are you hungry?” she asked, hopping over the back of the couch and rounding the corner island that separated the living room from the kitchen.

Soren pushed a handful of honey-colored hair back from his forehead and shrugged. “I’m always hungry,” he said, his crooked smile twitching into place as he palmed the tops of his knees. He was wearing the same dark jeans Olivia loved, and a light gray waffle shirt with a thick red stripe at the bottoms of the sleeves. It wasn’t supertight, but she could definitely make out the narrow lines of muscles beneath the fabric when he stretched his arms out all the way.

Olivia found a pile of delivery menus in a drawer by the sink and hopped back onto the couch, tucking her knees beneath her. Violet had talked her into wearing the pale yellow, sweatshirt-material American Apparel skirt they’d bought the week before, paired with a gauzy button-down with tiny purple flowers and short, frilly sleeves. Violet insisted that the outfit said “casual” and “feminine,” but Olivia was now regretting the skirt decision, since she was constantly pulling the garment down over her knees, terrified that it might ride up whenever she shifted positions.

“What do you feel like?” she asked him, automatically organizing the menus by cuisine.

Violet, who was settled into the overstuffed armchair across the room, dramatically cleared her throat.

Olivia looked up to find Soren staring at her from across the couch.

“What?” she asked, checking to see if anything was amiss. It was her skirt again, wasn’t it?

“I’d say he’s hungry for something else,” Violet stage-whispered, and Olivia cringed. She was already regretting allowing Violet to stick around, and wondered if her sister would ever give the running commentary a rest.

“Nothing,” Soren said, quickly shifting his gaze to the menus. “Sorry, I was just—I actually ate at home.”

Olivia looked quickly to Violet, who shrugged.

“Oh,” Olivia said, dropping the menus into her lap. “Okay, well, we don’t have to order anything…”

“No, you should,” Soren encouraged. “I could probably eat something. My parents made me try these satay things they’re learning to make in their Indonesian cooking class.”

“Cooking class?” Olivia asked.

Soren rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s Wednesday night’s activity,” he said dryly. “They sign up for every papermaking workshop and Farsi language class in the Bay Area.”

Olivia tucked her finger underneath the elastic of one short sleeve, tugging it down toward her elbow. “What do you your parents do?” she asked. It seemed weird that she didn’t already know this. It also seemed weird, she realized with a jolt, that Soren had parents. He seemed to exist completely independently of anybody else…friends, family, anyone. It was like Soren was part of his own little universe, and she still couldn’t believe she’d been invited inside.

“They’re graphic designers,” he said. “They have a business designing logos for websites and things.”

Olivia nodded, wondering when somebody was going
to answer this question in a way that made sense. In Willis, everybody’s dad was in finance, and everybody’s mom stayed home, or maybe sold real estate on the weekends. Mac and Bridget had been the exception. In San Francisco, Olivia hadn’t met a single person whose parents did anything…normal. They were all ambassadors or filmmakers or web designers or puppeteers. Olivia had never known these things were actual jobs.

“They used to be artists,” Soren continued, pushing up the faded sleeves of his shirt. “I mean, they still are, I guess. My mom paints and my dad does these weird wire sculpture things. They have a studio in the backyard.”

Olivia smiled. “They must really get along,” she said, trying to imagine her parents taking classes together or working together in the same space. It was such a foreign concept she couldn’t even envision what it would mean. Would they eat lunch together, too?

“They’re like one person,” Soren said. “They even kind of look alike. It’s ridiculous.” He sank back into the leather couch. “They’re pretty lucky, though,” he conceded. “If I had one wish in the world, it would be to be able to do all the things I love, all the time. I guess that’s why my parents started their business. All they ever want to do is make things and hang out at home. And that’s basically all they do.”

Olivia imagined a life of hanging out with Soren at home and making things. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know how to use a glue stick, let alone paint or play an instrument or ride a skateboard. She’d learn.

“What about you?” he asked, tapping the top of her knee with the side of one finger, a sly smile turning up the corners
of his mouth. “If you could have anything,
anything at all
…what would you wish for?”

Olivia’s eyes grew wide and found Violet across the room, frozen and staring back at her sister, her eyes round as saucers. “Hmm,” Olivia pretended to consider. “I don’t know. Pizza?”

Soren smiled, propping one elbow up on the back of the sofa and tilting his head closer to hers.

“I’m serious,” he said. “Haven’t you ever thought about it?”

His words settled in the air between them. Olivia felt her smile fading and lowered her chin, a cool tumble of still-damp hair tripping over her shoulder and covering one side of her face.

Right then, if she had been wearing a magical dress, she would have wished for words. Words to be able to tell him that not only had she
thought
about it, but she’d already made a wish, a pretty big wish, and the result of that wish was sitting across the room from them, watching their every move.

Or maybe words to tell him that she still had two wishes left, and despite all of Violet’s suggestions, and all of the early-morning hours when she should have still been sleeping spent searching the farthest reaches of her brain for inspiration, she couldn’t even think of anything to wish for.

She looked up and saw that Soren had inched just slightly closer, so that his chin was centimeters from her face. He reached forward, tucked the strand of escaping curls back behind her ear, and Olivia felt a shock travel up her spine, a swirling tingle at the base of her neck.

There it was. Her answer. If she could do anything, right there, right then, it would be to kiss this boy, sitting across from her, apparently waiting to be kissed.

And so she did, leaning forward just enough to press her lips softly against his. His mouth was open a little and he tasted like warm toothpaste, his cheek smooth and cool against her chin.

They were kissing! And suddenly she was full of wishes. She wished this moment would last for the rest of her life. She wished she could jump up and down (without having to stop kissing). But mostly, she wished Violet would leave the room.

As if on cue, she heard Violet pulling herself out of the chair. Olivia opened one eye and peered out over Soren’s shoulder, to where Violet was standing at the door.

“Good answer,” Violet said, tossing her sister a knowing wink as she hurried up the stairs.