“Yeah, it would,” I finally say.
Our eyes lock for a few moments.
He’s insinuating something.
I refuse to engage.
He won’t tell me he loves me.
I won’t tell him I love him.
He won’t tell me that he doesn’t have any money.
I won’t tell him about my past stealing paintings.
“So, are you in?” Nicholas asks.
18
Olive
When we make a compromise…
I think about it for a moment. I don’t want to want to do this but it would be a lie if I’d say I didn’t.
Suddenly, I have an itch to scratch again.
But this offer is also more than that. This would be a way out. This would be enough money for all of us to disappear. Together!
Now, that’s an idea! The only person who doesn’t need a reason to flee is me and yet if I want to keep both Owen and Nicholas in my life, going away together is the only way.
Nicholas has it all planned out.
I ask him to go over the details twice just to make sure that they all sound right.
The thing about coming up with these kind of plans is to think of all the things that can go wrong.
It’s not enough to just lay out the steps of what to do, you also have to lay out the steps of everything you would do if a hundred other things happened preventing you from doing the thing you planned on doing.
“We need Owen,” I say.
“Does that mean you’re in?” Nicholas’ eyes light up.
“I’m in if he’s in.”
He’s not happy to hear this.
I’m not surprised.
“Okay, hear me out. We need a third person and we’re doing this partly for him. So, what’s the point of sharing in the loot with a stranger when he is the one who would benefit?”
“That’s hard to argue with him,” he says after a moment.
I let out a sigh of relief.
“But I’ll give it a try,” Nicholas adds. “Owen hates my guts.”
I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t.
“So?”
“So? Is that not enough?”
I inhale deeply.
“No, it’s not,” I finally say. “In most cases, it would be, but not this one.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you see that I’m stuck in the middle here? He’s my brother and you’re my boyfriend. You two have reasons to disappear, I don’t. But if I want to keep you in my life, both of you, we have to disappear together. All three of us.”
He looks at me as if I’m saying something ridiculous when we both know that he has thought about this a number of times before.
“You could disappear by yourself and he could also and you would never to have to deal with one another again, but if you want me then we have to do this thing together.”
Nicholas rubs his temples and stares out into the distance, somewhere past me.
“He’s not really your brother,” he says after a moment.
“That doesn’t change our history. It doesn’t change the way I feel about him.”
“It changes the way he feels about you, Olive. He’s in love with you.”
“I don’t care about that,” I say quickly, trying to change the topic. “He hasn’t said anything to me about it and he’s nothing but my brother in my eyes.”
Shaking his head, Nicholas makes his hands into fists until the whites of his knuckles appear.
I leave it at that for now. As long as he is not outwardly rejecting the proposition, it’s good enough for me. Now, I have another problem to deal with: convincing Owen to get on board.
That afternoon, I meet Owen in a bookstore. I haven’t been to a bookstore in ages and have forgotten how much I missed the smell of paper and the feel of it under my fingertips.
It was his suggestion to meet here and I get here half an hour early to browse through the selections.
There is nothing like getting lost in a bookstore.
I make my way slowly through the aisles, picking up books by authors I had forgotten and judging the books, not only by their covers but also by the size of the print and the texture of the pages.
I look up some of my favorite authors, the ones I’ve discovered on Amazon, but of course they are nowhere to be found.
Since all of them are independently published, few if any of the chain bookstores stock the titles. That’s probably why so few ebook readers don’t bother with going to real bookstores anymore. Why would they?
It’s unfortunate really because those readers read two or more books a week.
Still, I find the outing satisfying.
I lose myself in the blurb by a female author I’ve never heard of before and am pleased when the words on the first page flow easily and rapidly to keep me turning to the next, and the one after that.
“Hey, I was looking for you,” Owen says, bumping into my shoulder and breaking me out of my deep trance.
As I close the book, keeping my finger in between the pages where I stopped reading, the lights above my head seem to grow in intensity along with the humdrum noises around me.
“Kind of lost myself in this for a bit,” I admit.
“Totally get it,” Owen says, showing me his haul of three rather imposing hardbacks.
“Is that what you’re getting?” I ask, becoming keenly aware of the cost of buying these hardcovers in this store.
I’m tempted to quickly look up the prices on my phone and order him the books from Amazon but I fight the urge.
I’m not going to be one of those people. We found the books in this store, so we’re going to pay the prices set out by them.
Not doing so would lead to the exact problem that’s taking place everywhere in America; the closing of all the bookstores in lieu of people only online shopping for books.
“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” I ask. “I need to talk to you about something.”
19
Olive
When we argue…
The sound of the machine milling coffee beans irks me as we stand in line behind a couple of chatty teenage girls.
Owen gives me a warm smile as he asks me if I have read any good books lately.
I tilt my head and let out a little shrug.
I hate to admit it but I am a little embarrassed to tell him what I’ve been reading.
Even though romance books are some of the most popular books on the planet there is a big stigma associated with them. Even those who enjoy them often refer to them as trashy or some other demeaning adjective.
There was a time when I thought that myself. There was a time when I only read books by critically acclaimed writers and those that have been approved by the gatekeepers in the publishing industry.
But then I stumbled upon a whole other world of fiction that I never knew existed.
In this place, writers weren’t censored by editors and publishers and just wrote and published books that they wanted.
Some left much to be desired but others surpassed all of my expectations.
Owen and I have talked about a lot of things during his time in prison but we haven’t talked about this.