Who We Once Were - A Jolivia Story

Chapter 20

"What did I say baby?" Her mom asked clicking her tongue and shaking her head. "Boys are stupid, all they do is act like complete idiots most of the time, alright?" She exclaimed.

"What about dad?" Olivia asked with a small laugh even as the tears continued to fall.

"Oh no missy, don't you go thinking that your father is all perfect. Did you know, that man brought me to a college basketball game on our first date?" She said laughing and rolling her eyes. 

"Well that doesn't sound so bad, which one of your school's was it?" She questioned a little curious.

"Hun, we had both long since graduated, it was some random school in the middle of nowhere." She sighed heavily. 

"Ohhh," Olivia grasped her chest like she was taking a hit. "Never mind then, that's pretty rough." She agreed with another tearful laugh. "Dad did that? Really?" She asked again. 

"Oh honey that's just the tip of the iceberg, remind me to tell you about the time we went to his ex-girlfriend's wedding reception." She said shaking her head. "Now that's a story for after I've had a glass of wine." She laughed and Olivia let out a small smile. 

They were currently huddled under a bunch of blankets sitting in front of the TV and enjoying their Thai feast from that little restaurant around the corner that Olivia adored so much. Episodes of New Girl were playing in the background while they talked but she wasn't paying much attention to the show anymore. Besides, she pretty much had every single episode memorized word for word by now. 

When her mom picked her up from work, she didn't really want to talk in the car, still mostly in shock of everything that had happened in the past 24 hours. It all started with Ethan's blow up, then came Josh getting involved, going home with him, her blow up at Josh, then came Ethan's breakup text and the cherry on top of it all had to have been her rather dreadful conversation with Josh. When they got home with the food though, she opened up a bit about what had gone down. She spoke about her breakup with Ethan and her fight with Josh, about how he'd been lying to her for months. She skipped most of the details on that one though because she was pretty sure if her mom knew everything, she'd drive down to his apartment and put Josh in the hospital. Sure she was upset, but not quite that upset. She did consider it though.

She was mostly just grateful that she didn't have to work for the next two days. Usually they would work through weekends depending on different factors for shooting and availability but given that the premiere was in less than a week, most of the work being done at the moment was with post production so Tim gave the cast the weekend off. They weren't done shooting episodes yet, to her knowledge, the first six were completely finished, meaning they still had a few more to shoot even while they released an episode each week. She was just happy to have two days before she had to deal with all her drama again.

-

Saturday morning had been a much needed refresher for her. She slept in, ate a nice full breakfast and took a long, hot shower. She hadn't looked at her phone too much since the night before because she was trying to keep her mind off of everything. Around noon she finally decided she'd bite the bullet and assess the situation. There was only one text from Josh, which wasn't what she expected, but she opened it up anyways. 

Joshua: Hey, I know you need space and I totally respect that. Just remember I'm here to talk whenever you're ready ❤️ 

Despite everything and how upset she was, she appreciated that he was giving her time and space to herself. That was something Ethan was never really good at and as much she knew she shouldn't be comparing them, she couldn't help herself. She had some other unanswered text messages from the night before so she decided to open a couple more. Most were boring updates on things she didn't really need to know about but there was one more that surprised her.

Claire: Hi Liv! Josh told me what he did and I just wanted to say I'm so sorry. My brother is clearly the biggest idiot in the world :( I know this doesn't mean much coming from me, but he really does care about you a lot. He has no idea I'm texting you about this and would probably murder me if he did but I just thought you should know. I'm not making excuses for him, but just know, Josh tends to do stupid things with good intentions when it comes to the people he loves. I miss you and I hope we can catch up sometime ❤️❤️❤️ 

She didn't really know how to feel about that text. Claire and her had actually been quite close the year before while they were filming and doing press events. Obviously they met through Josh but seeing as Olivia was only a year younger, they got along pretty well. It was nice to have a friend like that, they got so close that at one point it felt like she almost had a sister of her own which was pretty much everything she craved for as a child. Then of course when quarantine hit and Josh stopped talking to her, the two girls had pretty much fallen completely out of touch. It would explain why she never knew Claire was the girl with Josh during that FaceTime call, well that was if she believed him. Claire refereed to her as 'the people he loves' and Josh had pretty much straight out told her he loved her. The whole thing was confusing and messy and she didn't understand any of it.

There was one thing she did understand for sure though. Throughout everything, even with all he had said and done, the way she felt about him hadn't really changed, that much was clear. Maybe if she didn't care about him anymore, the whole mess wouldn't have been affecting her so much but she did and it was. She was not about to just forgive and forget but maybe it was just the type of person she was and maybe it was because somehow, she still did care about him, maybe it was just because they were coworkers and she didn't want to mess up their work. Despite the reason why, something inside her was compelling her to want to work through things. She didn't want to just give up on them, on their friendship, relationship, whatever one would call it. What they once had was special to her, special enough to be worth another shot. So she sent a text.

Joshua: Hey, I know you need space and I totally respect that. Just remember I'm here to talk whenever you're ready ❤️ 

Olivia: Sunday night, 9 pm at our In-N-Out parking lot. We can talk.  

She knew he would know exactly where she was referring to. If he really wanted to fix things, he'd be there tomorrow night.

A/N - Hey guys here's an Olivia centric chapter, hope you enjoyed. Also I know I said only like 3 more chapters before this one butttt, I needed to add one more so after this there will be 3 more!!! Very exciting stuff hahaha. As always please comment and vote if you can, it means so much to me and Ily all!!! Also yes it appears I'm sometimes updating twice a day now so ya there's that :) Enjoy