We Die Soon

Four

I don't know why I decided to tell Olivia how I felt about her. It was a stupid thing to do; it wouldn't get me anywhere. I could have just pretended not to feel anything and kept being a good friend, but something was eating me up inside, screaming at me to just tell her. I didn't actually expect much from her; it was like I just wanted her to know.

I couldn't ignore it anymore, so one day, soon after we started filming for season two, I went to her and I told her.

She sat with her legs crossed on the floor, her back against the wall, looking over her script. She had on my black beanie and some sweatpants. Her hair wasn't curled, just straight, and she hadn't gotten her makeup done yet. I couldn't dream up a girl that beautiful; Olivia was better than a dream. Olivia was surreal to me.

"Olive," I called her name (or, our cast's nickname for her). She looked up and smiled, and I took a seat next to her. "Hey."

"Hey," she said, furrowing her eyebrows in a weird way. She must have been able to tell how nervous I was. "What's up?"

"Uh..." I began, looking around us to make sure no one was there that could hear me. Teo and Dylan were on the other side of the room, but far enough away. "Well... I just wanted to... talk."

The confusion on her face turned to worry. "Oh, God. Why? Did I do something? Are you breaking up with me?" she joked, leaning forward and putting her hand on my shoulder.

I laughed awkwardly and shook my head. "No, I just... Um, I wanted to tell you that I... like you. Like more than a... friend, you know."

She raised her eyebrows at me and just stared for a quick moment, but then she laughed. She started laughing so hard she threw her head back. I didn't understand.

"Leo, shut up!" she said, shaking her head. She hit me in the arm.

My stomach twisted. I didn't get what was happening. I finally told her, and she was laughing, and telling me to shut up. I looked at the floor.

After a second, she stopped laughing, though.

"Wait," she said softly. "Were you being serious?"

I should have said no, acted like I was kidding like she thought I was, but I couldn't bring myself to say that. I just sat quietly and let the humiliation envelope me.

"Oh..." Olivia whispered. "Leo, I'm sorry, I thought—"

"No," I interrupted her, shaking my head. "It's okay; I just wanted to tell you. I mean, it's not like I expected this to go anywhere anyway. We're just friends and I'm the one who's trying to change everything. I know I can't make you feel anything that you don't feel." I stood up then, and I couldn't look at her. "Don't worry about it."

Then I walked away, and we never really talked about it again. It was just used as a weapon when we got into an argument. It meant nothing to her.

She'd throw it out just to hurt me when she was angry. She did it so well that I had to give her credit, though. She'd look me right in my eyes and with her coldest, harshest voice she'd let it go.

"I don't like you. I never will."

"You're just upset 'cause you're, like, in love with me."

"I can't help that you're still hung up on me."

It was just something like that every time.

It makes her sound like the devil; I know that. But really, she wasn't so bad. Not all the time anyway. She tried to hook me up with a couple of her friends before, which meant she might have felt a little sympathy for me, which meant she might actually not have been a cold emotionless bitch.

One time I visited her on set of her new show, I Didn't Do It (back when that was still new), and I met her costars and got along particularly well with a dark-haired girl named Sarah.

She was pretty, she made me laugh, she had a nice smile, all that. But I didn't think much about her. Olivia was there, so I guess her beauty distracted me from Sarah's beauty.

But apparently Sarah was flirting with me, and apparently Olivia noticed, because right when Sarah got up and walked away from me, Olivia ran over and sat by me.

"Oh my God, what is wrong with you?" she asked, punching me in the arm.

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

She rolled her eyes and ran a hand through her blonde curls like she was exhausted. "Leo! Sarah was hitting on you!" she informed me, lowering her voice.

"No she wasn't."

"Yes she was!" Olivia assured me, grabbing my hand and holding it close to her chest, so I could feel her breasts just slightly. "She wanted to fuck you."

That caught me off guard. I pulled my hand away from her grip and faced forward, shaking my head. "No! No she didn't. What? No."

I heard her laugh. "She did! Leo, she did. Believe me." She leaned forward, forcing me to look at her again. "You should, you know."

"I'm not gonna... sleep with her, Olive," I said, my voice quiet because I didn't want anyone to hear what I was saying.

"Oh, you are such a prude!" She squealed, pointing her index finger at me and getting up on her knees.

I looked around nervously, and I noticed Austin had heard her and turned around. He smiled then turned his attention back to Piper. I rolled my eyes and took hold of Olivia's wrists, pulling her back down to a sitting position.

"Will you be a little quieter?" I begged.

"As soon as you admit you're a prude!"

"I'm not a prude!" I defended. "I'm a... Christian..."

She let out another loud laugh. "That's really cute. But you're also a near-seventeen year old boy and you need to get some." She paused, moved close to me ear and whispered, "Fuck Sarah," in my ear before getting up and bouncing away from me.

I never had sex with Sarah. I never had sex with anyone, actually, I guess because Olivia was right and I was a prude. But Sarah and I became good just-friends (as if I needed more just-friends), and she was so nice and so un-Olivia like, and I always wondered why I couldn't fall for someone like her. Someone who had feelings and someone who cared about other people. It was like I was only attracted to girls who treated me like shit.

Back to reality, I looked at Olivia, sitting with her legs crossed on my bed. She was looking down at her phone with that numbness that she perfected. The one that made her look like a robot.

It reminded me of that old humiliating moment, and somehow she happened to be thinking about it too, and it lead us to our very first real conversation about it.

"That time you told me you liked me," she started. "It was forever ago, I know, but like... you never really gave me a chance to think about it. I laughed because the idea of it was weird, because you were like one of my best friends, but if you had given me time to think about it, things might have been different."

That wasn't meant to piss me off, but it pissed me off.

"Stop saying stuff like that, Olivia," I snapped, speaking slowly but strongly.

She looked surprised by my quick shutdown, but she recovered with an empty expression. "Stuff like what?" She asked, crossing her arms.

"Stuff like that. Stuff that makes it sound like you actually would have considered dating me if I had done something differently. We both know you wouldn't and it doesn't matter what I do or did."

There was a long pause before she said, "Okay."