Delayed

by Daniela Reyes

  Nick stood by, pretending to busy himself in the moving crowds around them. Olivia stopped stretching.

  “You can see the whole campus from here,” she noted.

  He nodded. “Where should we start our tour?”

  “Anywhere. Everywhere,” she said throwing her hands to the sky, then quickly regretting her attempt at humor.

  But Nick laughed, and it wasn’t a pity laugh. “We should narrow down our options.”

  “How about the Lawrence Theater? I think they’re having a convention on all the clubs and future performances.”

  They began to walk to the bottom of the steps. “Are you going to try out for anything?”

  “Will you come watch my performances?” she asked, a bit too casually. It felt strange to have such a long gap of time to talk with him in person. It was only the fourth time they were physically meeting. Nick seemed different, more open and forward, in his emails. The way he had spent paragraphs describing Mexico, and everything he had learned about his family history, it made it easy to forget he wasn’t as casual in conversation.

  “Of course. If you want me to,” he added.

  “You’ll go? Even if I’m a terrible actress?”

  “You’re not a terrible actress.”

  “How do you know? You’ve never seen me perform.”

  Nick stopped walking, and he looked directly at her. “I can’t picture you being terrible at too many things.

  Olivia cleared her throat. She looked around, trying to let the flush that her traveled to her cheeks go away.

  “Olivia. Hey Olivia,” someone called out. She turned back toward the top of the stairs. Nick followed her gaze. The two of them watched in silence as Simon ran down to meet them.

  He ran right up to her, holding his phone in the air. “I stopped by your dorm. I’ve been texting you. Do you want to grab dinner?”

  He kept his eyes on her.

  “I was going to answer back. And I can’t grab dinner, I’m heading to the main campus with Nick.”

  He tilted his chin. “Who’s Nick?”

  Nick took a tiny step forward, still hiding behind her. “I’m Nick. Olivia’s friend.”

  Simon raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know she had a friend already. I’m Simon, her boyfriend.”

  Olivia felt something rise in her chest. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to figure out how she could undo what he had just said. Why would she want to, though? Hadn’t it been what she wanted? The boy she had been pining over since last October had just moved her into girlfriend status, but something didn’t feel right. There were no butterflies or fireworks, not that she had expected there to be. There had never been any of those things with Michael.

  Nick took a step back. “So you guys are going to attend Glensford College, together.”

  Simon nodded. “We met last year while taking one of the tours around the campus. I took her on a paddleboat ride and everything.” He gave a cocky smile, reminiscing about a day Olivia barely thought about. She remained silent.

  “You should go have dinner with him,” Nick said to Olivia.

  She shook her head. “I said I would have dinner with you.”

  Simon shrugged. “He’s right. Boyfriend trumps friends, at least on the first day of college. Come on. There’s a whole bunch of stuff I want to tell you. And I want to stop by the Lawrence Theater too. You can see Nick later.”

  Olivia felt like throwing a punch across her body, maybe not directly to his face, Simon’s weakest spots were his shoulders.

  “I’m not cancelling plans,” she said to him.

  “Olivia. Go. We can talk later,” Nick’s tone had grown quiet, so that only she could hear him. “I’ll text you,” he finished.

  She felt her heart drop. She managed a nod before he walked away. With clenched fists, she turned back to Simon.

  “What was that for? And since when am I your girlfriend?”

  “Since…” Simons struggled with his mental timeline, “Since today I guess. When you didn’t text or talk to me, I realized how much I missed you.” He tried to wrap an arm around her, but she pushed his hand away.

  “I’m not your possession. You don’t get to call me your girlfriend because you see me with another guy.”

  He held his hands up in surrender. “I know the timing makes it seem like that. But Olivia, I really do want to be in a relationship with you. Why do you think I wanted to see you today?” His tone carried a bit of humor in it.

  Olivia felt herself calming down. The way he pretended to make cutesy eyes at her was something she couldn’t fight against. Nick was her friend, but Simon, he was something more. She intertwined a hand around his.

  “Buy me dinner first. Then we’ll talk about the whole girlfriend thing.”

  He nodded, smiling. “Whatever you want.”

  Olivia tried to walk off the fact she had just ditched Nick. They would text. Things would be better tomorrow. They were friends, after all.

  19

  Spring Semester 2009

  Friends. That’s what they remained. The word had bothered Nick once, but he realized it was a happy medium. He’d rather have Olivia’s friendship over having to wait years to see her again. Simon hadn’t warmed to him, at least not for the majority of the Fall Semester, but now he seemed indifferent to Nick. Whenever he dropped Olivia back off at her dorm and Nick was there, waiting so they could go about their friendly plans, Simon would pat his back.

  “Don’t keep her out too late,” he’d say. “She has an audition in the morning.”

  Sometimes it felt like Simon was Olivia’s manager, and not her boyfriend. Nick didn’t mind. It made it easier to hang around her. They went to a performance at the Lawrence Theater most weekends, and they carpooled when it came time to buy groceries.

  They watched movies in her dorm sometimes, but Nick only stayed if Kate was there. Olivia’s roommate had asked him out first, sometime in October, to which he had agreed. They’d gone out to a Halloween Carnival back in town. It turned out they didn’t have anything in common, and as an added bonus, their views on everything were different. They spent the afternoon debating, and agreed to never talk about the date again.

  He’d gone home for winter break, and his Abuela had flown back from Mexico. For once, his dad hadn’t been too busy to spend Christmas Eve with the family. They’d had a traditional Noche Buena, opening the gifts at midnight, and watching old Mexican Christmas specials. Mimi gave Nick an album filled with pictures of all the matching outfits their mom had made them wear in childhood.

  “Why would you unearth these?” he had asked, in between laughs. There was picture of him dressed in a yellow spotted shirt, to match a then two-year-old Mimi’s dress.

  Mimi smiled, something she rarely did anymore.

  “Looking at them helps me to remember her. Sometimes I’m jealous, “ she’d added.

  “Why?” Nick asked, closing the album.

  “You got fourteen years with her, I got nine.”

  That’s where their conversation had ended, right until it came time for the family picture. Mimi stood right next to Nick, her head rested at the height of his shoulder. She turned and whispered something to him.

  “Come back to visit more often, I miss hearing your laugh Nico.”

  Nick had gone back home every weekend after that, sometimes he brought Olivia, but most often he came back by himself.

  It turned out Olivia was in his World History class. They’d spent the majority of the semester studying and working on their papers in the library.

  “Nick I can’t fit any more information into my head. If I have to memorize one more date my brain’s going to swell,” Olivia said.

  She sat across from him, her head hidden behind a textbook, and her voice raspy. The final was in two days. They’d been in the library since ten in the morning; it was almost six. Nick yawned. His back cracked as he stretched his arms out. Every joint in his body ached.

  “I think it’s time for
a break,” he said, standing up. His knees cracked.

  Olivia shut her book and pushed it to one side, nodding. “Agreed. I have an audition tomorrow, and if I don’t stop now, I’m going to end up reciting the dates of all the major wars instead of my lines.”

  She packed her things up into her bag. He followed her lead. They turned the lights off and locked up the study room.

  The library was packed tight, students sat together like sardines, low on energy, trying to make it through the most dreaded week of the semester.

  “Where should we go?” he whispered as they crossed the entrance. He didn’t realize how much he had missed walking. The sun was getting ready to set in the sky.

  Olivia shrugged. “Anywhere. Anywhere but here.”

  He didn’t want to sit somewhere to eat or talk. His body yearned for movement. A thought popped in his mind. The lake had just reopened for recreational activities.

  “Let’s get a paddle boat. We can get some exercise and relax,” he said. Although, he knew the exercise part was barely true.

  Her eyes lit up. “I want to stop by my dorm and change first.”

  He nodded. “We can leave our backpacks there too.”

  They both ran toward Smith Hall. Nick had made the tread across campus many times. The path was almost natural to him. He liked it better than his dormitory. Two of his three suitemates had already switched out to other buildings, ones without shared bathrooms that were barely ever in service. And during the winter, the heat had gone off on more than one night. It was rumored the school would be closing the building down for repairs soon.

  They made it to Smith Hall, breathless and reenergized. Nick waited for Olivia to unlock the door. The sound of her keys made him look down, and he noticed a palm tree hanging from a loop.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked, too quickly.

  She held up the keys in midair, pointing to the tiny palm tree. It was identical to the one he still had somewhere in his dorm. It had been a while since he had even thought about the keychain. Spending time with Olivia in the flesh, made him forget that it even existed.

  “I found it in my dorm. It was the weirdest thing. I hadn’t seen this in years and then it was sitting on my bed one day, completely out of no where.”

  Nick thought back, when had he last carried around the palm tree? He couldn’t even remember. It had become a habit, like a good luck charm of sorts. He hadn’t seen it since… well since a few months back, before Christmas Break. He’d stopped by to say goodbye to Olivia. He’d taken off his jacket on her bed, and then his thoughts clicked. It must have fallen out. In the same way the little good luck charm had found its way to him, it had found a path back to its true owner.

  Olivia watched him. “You okay?” she asked.

  He nodded. She unlocked the door, pushing down on the rusted knob.

  The door swung open. She stopped walking, making Nick have to stand behind her, halfway in the room and halfway out. There was a rattling of metal as her keys hit the ground. He looked up just in time to see two bodies flinging themselves off a top bunk, Olivia’s bed. There were strangers on her mattress, only they weren’t strangers.

  “Simon,” she managed. Her voice was calm, far too calm. “Kate.”

  Nick took in the scene now that movement of naked bodies had settled. Simon jumped off the bed, pulling white sheets over himself. Kate hid her head in a pillow, not ready to confront anyone.

  “I thought you were studying,” Simon said. He was walking toward them now, his pale arms visible over the sheets. He looked like an ill portrait of a toga wearing fraternity brother.

  Olivia remained still. Nick didn’t know where he was supposed to go, or what he could do in the situation. They’d been caught: the boyfriend and the roommate. How could they?

  “We wanted to take a break,” she said coldly. “This entire time. This semester. Every time you called to see if I was studying with Nick, it was because of her. Wasn’t it?”

  Simon tried to answer, but his expression gave him away. She lunged toward him before he had a chance to answer.

  “Wasn’t it?” Olivia pointlessly asked, shoving him against the frame of the bed. Kate got out from under her pillow hideout and began to yell in protest.

  “Stop. It wasn’t like that Liv. It really wasn’t. We didn’t want you to find out this way.”

  Kate’s words made Olivia shove Simon with a greater force. He let her get in a few more shoves before grabbing her by the wrists, holding them in midair.

  “Don’t overreact. You should’ve seen it coming,” he said, coldly.

  Olivia stopped fighting his grasp. Nick could only see her back, but he could feel her, thinking. She tilted her head.

  “What are you talking about? We’ve been together for almost a year. How could I have seen this coming?” She managed to break free of his grip, pushing him again. “Tell me you jerk.”

  Kate grabbed what remained of the sheets and jumped down from the bunk. She stepped on the other side of Olivia, and held her back, without any gentleness.

  “Stop it. Now,” she said. Olivia turned to face her roommate.

  “Move your things out before I get back. Throw away those sheets and don’t ever come back here. I’m not wasting my time talking with you two idiots.” She turned back to Simon. Her voice was emotionless. “Don’t ever try to contact me again.”

  She began to walk away; her eyes almost met Nick’s.

  “You weren’t even that good of an actress. That’s why you failed all those auditions. It’s why I stopped liking you,” Simon said.

  Olivia stopped walking. Without a word, she turned back and threw a fisted hand in the air. He didn’t even have time to react. The punch hit Simon square in the jaw. He fell back against the bed, as Kate ran to his rescue.

  Nick took a step forward. He was the one who should have thrown the punch. Olivia walked out the door, right past him.

  “Let’s go,” she said, without looking back.

  He ran after her in silence. Down the stairs, through campus, and out to the lake. She walked straight ahead, her hands still fisted, her knuckles red. She untied a paddleboat from the dock, and jumped in. He followed.

  They began to paddle, away from shore. The silence lingered.

  “Olivia,” Nick whispered. He kept his eyes on her hand. A red bruise had formed around her thumb.

  “He said the same thing to her,” Olivia said. She stopped paddling. They were in the middle of the lake.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “My dad. The day my mom and I walked in on him and Jocelyn. He said the exact same thing. You should have seen it coming.” She hugged her knees, letting her head rest on top of her hands.

  Nick didn’t know what to say. He’d always known Olivia’s parents had been divorced. She’d told him the first day they met. But that was as far as his knowledge of her family life went.

  “You couldn’t have seen it coming,” he said. “No one can see these things coming.”

  Olivia shook her head. “I could, though. The way they smiled at each other, and the way he became okay with us hanging out so much. I knew. I just didn’t want to believe it.”

  She turned to him, stretching out her legs. Nick felt his heart beat as she took his hands into his. His legs stopped paddling.

  “What is it?” he asked. His voice cracked as he spoke.

  She gave him a soft smile, barely moving the corners of her mouth. “You’re one of the good ones,” she said. “I need to keep you. If I don’t I’m going to end up not trusting any guy.” Her voice carried a disillusioned note. “Promise me, Nick.”

  “What?” he asked, as her hands wrapped tightly around his.

  “Promise me, that we’ll always have this. Whatever it is. I don’t want it to change.”

  He felt his heart dropping. This. Friendship. He thought about the keychain. He’d lost his opportunity to return it to her. He took it as a sign. For now, this was enough. He didn’t want more, just
as long as Olivia remained there.

  “I promise,” Nick whispered.

  20

  Sophomore Year

  Olivia never forgot, and she never forgave.

  She spent the summer attending audition after audition, while taking a job as a counselor a local theater camp in Glensford. She did anything to keep herself distracted from thinking about Simon. Yet, the more she delve into acting, the more present he became.

  “You’re a natural. The stage is your home,” he would say. “Mention me in your first acceptance speech.”

  How could she have believed him? He filled her mind with compliments to distract her from the person that he truly was.

  Scum. Simon was scum. Just like her dad, and just like every other cheating man out there. She’d known it before, but now, now it was engraved on every surface of her heart. Trust few and love few, it was her new motto.

  Then a blessing came to her, in the form of a new job prospect. One of the trainers at the theater camp said Olivia might be able to make it on stage. What she needed was training, and to perform more often. There was a position available for a small company in New York. She could take classes at a local college for credit back at school, and spend her afternoons working and training with the company.

  They gave her a stipend, and she performed on weekends, mostly in extra roles. Even then, the position gave her what she yearned for, experience, space from home, and a fresh start. In such a huge city no one knew her name. She didn’t need to worry about bumping into Simon on the street or at auditions.

  Olivia spent her sophomore year training her voice, learning dance, and working. Her mom came on weekends by train. Her dad, well they hadn’t spoken in months. She hadn’t seen him in over a year and half. He called to wish her luck, and that was it. He didn’t do more. She didn’t need him to.

  Nick called most days, always brimming with some new gossip about his other Political Science majors. He moved into a new apartment building, getting a room the size of a shoebox, but finally living on his own.