Olivia lifted her head off George’s chest and looked into his eyes. There was a world of different emotions colliding behind his irises, but the major one was pain.
“Why did you say no?” she asked.
“Because I was scared,” he admitted with a sad shrug.
“What were you scared of?”
“Everything. My feelings for him were intense, and that scared me. I was scared of the possibility of being intimate with him for the first time. I was scared of admitting to other people that I was gay. I was terrified of losing my friends or the respect of the professors. I didn’t want to tell my mom, and there was no way in hell I was ever going to tell my dad.”
“Why not? Was he a jerk or something?”
“No, he’s actually a really great guy. I love him to death. And that’s why he will never know that I’m gay,” George said.
“I don’t understand,” she said with a shake of her head.
“My dad has very strong views on religion and politics, and a very solid code of ethics that he lives by…” George tried to explain but when he saw the confusion on Olivia’s face he changed his approach. “Think of my dad in terms of Eugene. Eugene lives solely on his three C’s. If you took even one of those away—say he could no longer eat Cheez Doodles—and you cut him off cold turkey, what would happen to him?”
“He would go for a walk and never come home,” Olivia said with certainty.
“For my dad, having a gay son would be like taking away his Cheez Doodles.”
“Oh,” Olivia said, still not truly understanding, but trying to.
“I didn’t run into Nick again until my junior year. I literally bumped into him by accident, and all of those feelings I’d had came slamming back, stronger than ever. As we got to talking, I realized I was a chickenshit and would always regret it if I didn’t at least get to know this fascinating guy a little bit better. This time, I was the one who asked him to dinner, and he said yes.”
“But I thought…”
“I know. It was one of those split-second decisions. I wasn’t thinking about anything other than how he made me feel and how much I wanted to get to know everything about him. I would figure out what to do about my dad and everyone else later. In that moment, all I could think about was Nick. We went to dinner, and then another dinner and another one, and pretty soon we were sort of a couple.” George shrugged. “Like I said, he was confident in himself, but he understood that I wasn’t. We took things very slow, and we kept our relationship a secret.”
“A secret? Oh, how sad,” Olivia interrupted. Her heart broke for him, and she squeezed him in comfort. “Wasn’t there anyone you trusted to share your joy with?”
“Yeah, there was someone… Two someones actually. My best friend, Mia, and her boyfriend, Jason,” George said. Olivia’s face must have revealed her surprise over hearing Mia was the best friend, instead of Jason, because George smiled with a bit of a mischievous gleam in his eye. “I know all about Izzie’s little investigation. She’s not exactly discreet, you know.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” Olivia declared with her hands up in innocence.
He tweaked her nose. “I know.”
“Did your mom suspect anything other than Izzie was doing a news story on you?”
“No, but she’s disappointed the newspaper scrapped the story. She actually subscribed to the Gazette to make sure she didn’t miss the article since Izzie was so evasive about the publication date.” George laughed. “She thinks Juliette is a boring little town, by the way.”
“It is,” Olivia agreed.
“She doesn’t understand why I’m here.”
“Why are you here?”
George closed his eyes and sighed heavily. “Because I can’t handle running into Nick, and as long as he lives in Omaha, it’s a possibility I might.”
“What happened between you two?”
“I don’t know…” George shrugged, and then sighed again and shook his head. Olivia stayed quiet while he hunted out the words that would hurt the least to say. “Basically, he grew up and I didn’t. We both wanted the same things, but he wanted to do it in the real world, like an adult, and I preferred living our pretend life. He understood my insistence that we keep our relationship quiet while we finished college, and for the first few years after college he still understood, but I could tell he was getting frustrated with it. As far as my parents and co-workers and friends knew, Mia was my ‘girlfriend’ and Nick was a good friend, and I was content to live the rest of my life like that. But Nick wasn’t, and once Mia and Jason decided to get married, it was obvious that I couldn’t keep using her like I was. Nick thought I would finally ‘come out of the closet’ so to speak, but I refused and he said he had to move on and find someone who would. He found that someone in the drummer of his band and—”
“Nick’s in a band?” Olivia’s memory flashed in dollops of devil’s food cake. “Holy crap! I think I’ve met him!”
“What?” George asked, confused and starting to panic. “When? Where—was he here?”
“No, no, it was in a restaurant in one of those casino boats on the Missouri. The singer looked really familiar and when he passed my table I stopped him and talked to him for a bit to try and figure out how I knew him, and when I mentioned I lived in Juliette, he got this weird look on his face… I bet that was him.”
“But…how would you know…?”
“I found a picture of you and him standing in front of a house when I was snooping around in your desk drawer that first time you invited me over,” Olivia admitted with a cringe of guilt. “I could kinda tell you two were more than friends.”
“You could tell?” George asked in a rush, his face ashen grey.
“Um…yeah. Kinda.”
George fell silent while he lost himself in his fears. Olivia knew he was worried that if she had been smart enough to figure it out, then someone else might, too—like his parents. She cupped his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. “I could tell because I was jealous. I really don’t think it’s something that a parent would pick up on.”
“Yeah,” he whispered in agreement, but she could tell he didn’t believe her.
“Are you still in love with Nick?”
He closed his eyes as he admitted, “Yes… So much so it hurts like hell.”
“So why don’t you try it again?” she suggested. “Maybe it’s time to tell your parents. If they love you, they’ll understand.”
“He’s moved on. He sent me a Christmas card about a year after we broke up. There was a long letter in it, actually thanking me for indirectly helping him meet Michael. They got married in a civil union out-of-state a few weeks later, and last I heard from Mia they’re looking into adoption,” George said, his voice cracking as tears threatened. “She’s even considering being a surrogate for them if the adoption thing falls through.”
“Oh.” Olivia breathed out slow.
George did start to tear up a little and Olivia’s heart squeezed tight in response to his pain. She leaned in to kiss him again, but he brushed her away. She backed up to give him space, and suddenly he came after her, kissing her with a fiercely-heated passion, the likes of which he probably had not unleashed on anyone since Nick. Olivia met that passion as best she could, desperate to give back to him everything he had given her over the past few days, but George was trying to find something she couldn’t possibly provide.
His heart pounded against Olivia’s breast, his breath ragged as he whispered against her neck, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for being in love. I know how bad it sucks.”
“It does suck,” he agreed as he struggled to force back his emotions.
She held him and kissed him, ran her fingers through his hair and stroked his cheek, and when he was ready she asked, “Yvette?”
He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “I’m an ass.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m using her, Olivia,” he
said without meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Using her?”
“To get Kitty’s.”
“I don’t understand,” she said with a shake of her head.
“I fell in love with that stupid bar. I was only supposed to come in and run it for awhile… I jumped at the chance to get out of Omaha thinking I’d figure out what to do and where to go while I was here, but goddamn it I fell in love with all you crazy people in this messed up little town—especially you, Olivia… I love you so much, Baby Girl.” He choked up again as he said her name.
Olivia’s eyes filled with tears and she shook her head in confusion. “I don’t understand George, please stop confusing me.”
“I was losing the bar. And the only way I could think to save it was to create a permanent connection to Juliette. I have to prove that I’m in this business for the long haul—that I’m not going to just up and sell it if I win. Helen’s kids have this lawyer who’s a shark. He’s killing my guy in court and… the judge, he’s… when Izzie set me up with Yvette, I kind of… God, I don’t know how to explain this…”
“You’re going to marry her, aren’t you?” Olivia asked, figuring it out on her own.
“Yes.”
“To stay in Juliette?”
“Yes.”
“And keep Kitty’s?”
He nodded.
“Because of… me?”
He shrugged and opened his mouth but Olivia cut him off.
“Why couldn’t you marry me?” she cried in frustration as her chest tightened in pain. “I love you, George. I’ve always loved you! I’d marry you tonight if you asked me.”
“I know you would and that’s why I couldn’t do it to you.”
“Do what to me?”
“Force you to live a life knowing I can never give you one hundred percent of my heart. You deserve better than that,” he said.
“What? No… George, I understand,” she stammered. “I don’t need a hundred… I deserve you!”
“No, Liv,” he said firmly. “You deserve so much more than me. You deserve the world.”
“George,” she protested and tried to kiss him but he pushed her away.
“Stop.” He held her arms to her side and looked straight into her eyes. “Just listen for a minute.”
“I—”
“No. You listen to me… Olivia, you are special. You have this incredible spirit that I have never seen in anyone else ever before. I’ve known since the moment I first met you that you are that one-in-a-million type of person that changes lives. You’re beautiful and loving and smart and funny and incredibly tenacious. You make me smile just by walking into a room. I used to look forward to midnight just so I could see you and argue with you and kiss you and dance with you… Oh, my god, Liv, I really miss dancing with you. It was so erotic, it was like…” He closed his eyes as he shook his head and swallowed hard. When he opened his eyes again they were moist with tears. “I won’t let anyone else play ‘Jack and Diane’ because it’s not the same if you’re not the one singing it. Hell, I took it out of the jukebox because Kenny tried to get Yvette to sing it with him one night—it hurt so bad to hear her sing your song I actually cried.”
“You cried over me?”
“I’ve cried over you more than once, Baby Girl.”
The way he said it made her heart ache for him, ache to comfort him, ache to touch him. “But…if you love me so much…”
“It’s not enough to simply love you. I wish I knew the words to make you understand.”
“I don’t, I just don’t.” She stroked his face. “I love you, George.”
“I know you do. That’s why I can’t do this to you.”
“But you can do it to Yvette?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“Because she doesn’t love me.”
“What?” She huffed in confusion and frustration and anger and all around exasperation. “How can she not love you? You’re perfect—Is she gay, too, or something?”
“No. She’s just so in love with herself she’s incapable of loving anyone else.” George grunted in disgust. “I’ve known that about her from the moment she first opened her mouth. On our ‘date’ she talked of nothing but her hair and her clothes and her problems and her feelings and her dog. Everything was about her. She didn’t ask me one thing about myself and she didn’t have anything nice to say about anyone else. She put down her parents and her brother and had some really mean things to say about her grandmother. She doesn’t want kids and…”
“But—”
“Olivia.” George sighed. “I would never wish a life with me on anyone that I actually care about. And I’m not going to give you false hope that you can ‘change’ me. I am gay, I will always be gay, and I can never give you all of me because I will always be looking for the one thing that I am missing. And that ‘thing’ is the way that I felt in my heart and in my soul when I was with Nick. No matter how much I love you, Baby Girl, I loved him more. It’s as simple as that.”
George stopped talking and Olivia used his silence to process what he’d said. George was right about one thing. If they got together, if they married, she would spend the rest of her life hoping he would one day love her in the same way he had loved Nick. She would wonder if she had finally become enough for him, or if he was still missing what she couldn’t be. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t have a good life together, a long and happy life where they both loved and respected each other for who they were. She wished Eugene was more than he was, but she couldn’t imagine loving him any more than she already did. Yes, she was jealous of other father-daughter relationships—sometimes extremely jealous—but what they had worked, and it was right for them. She couldn’t imagine growing up any other way.
If it could work for her and Eugene…
“George?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you be willing to try being with me? Only until you get Kitty’s? If it isn’t working out for either of us, we can part ways as soon as you win the bar,” Olivia suggested.
“No,” George answered with a firm set to his jaw. “That is exactly what I would never do to you.”
“But—”
“I refuse to use you for my personal gain. Not even for one single breath in time.”
“But you wouldn’t be using—”
“You are not someone to be experimented with, Olivia. That’s why I never came after you when you ran from me that night at Kitty’s, and why I didn’t go looking for you any night after that. I was afraid that if I took you in my arms again, my emotions would take control and I’d unknowingly trick you into accepting less than you deserve. You deserve to be loved one-hundred-percent by a man’s entire heart and soul. You have too much to offer the world to settle for less than everything.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m some sort of special person! I’m not special—not to anyone but you! Don’t you see that, George? To everyone else I’m that girl who’s good for a few laughs or a one-night stand. They look at me like I’m some annoying little twerp they’d love to flick away like a mosquito or one of those stupid paper footballs. You think I’m special, but no one else does! Why don’t I deserve to be with the one person who loves me because I’m me?”
“Because I can’t be everything to you.”
“Eugene can’t be everything to me, but that doesn’t mean I love him any less or feel any less loved,” Olivia said, suddenly realizing that those words were true, spoken straight from her heart. “I think I love him more because I know he gives me everything he can give me—probably more than he ever thought he was capable of giving to anyone.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not the same,” he repeated with emphasis. “I wish to heaven it was, Liv, but it’s not.”
“So you would rather enter a loveless marriage where no one is getting anything they want or need than enter one where we love each other as deeply
and as truly as we possibly can and part as friends when it comes time to end it?”
“I love you too much to use you and if I lost you as a friend when it all was said and done…” He trailed off with a shake of his head and his jaw set. “No.”
“But you’re not using me!” she insisted. “I know what I’m getting into here. I know that one day you’ll find a Nick who you’ll fall so madly in love with won’t be afraid to tell anyone about him, even your dad. And when that day comes, I’ll move on, too. And I’ll be fine.”
“No, Olivia.”
Whether right now, by choice, or eighty years from now, by death, she would one day lose him, and her heart, forever. She was as powerless to stop him from leaving her as she would be to stop the sun from setting, but before he slipped completely away, and she was set adrift into the chasm of life without him, she had to know the answer to the one question he had avoided.
“What did you mean when you said ‘until you’?”
“What?” he asked, taken aback by her sudden change in direction.
“You said no girl made you feel the same as kissing the boy did—until me. What does that mean?”
“It’s one of those things that can’t be put into words,” he said.
“Try.”
He thought about it for a moment and said, “When you walk into the room there’s this sudden energy that wasn’t there before. My heart speeds up, and it’s like the air tastes just a little bit sweeter. I want to touch you all the time… and when you kiss me I never want you to stop.”
“Are you attracted to me sexually?” she asked.
“Yes… in a way,” he admitted. “But it’s not about sex with you. It’s more than that, Liv. A lot more.”
“Then what is it?”
“You make me feel… alive.”
She moved into him and cupped his face in her hands. “That’s exactly how you make me feel.”
Slowly, she brought her lips to his. As she did, he closed his eyes. He let out a sigh that was neither relief nor defeat, but possibly a combination of both, as he pulled her roughly onto him so she straddled his lap, and deepened her kiss to one with a purpose. His lips were firm, his tongue demanding as he commanded her to keep up with his pace. She did so without missing a beat. She pushed his shirt up, and he ripped it the rest of the way off, and then he froze, staring deep into her eyes as his chest heaved with his struggle to breathe.
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