Who We Once Were - A Jolivia Story

Chapter 3

Olivia woke up to the blaring of the alarm coming from her phone on her bedside table. She reached her hand over lazily, wanting to savour the last few minutes of sleep, and smacked the off button. Streams of golden light were flowing through her open window and hitting her eyes directly, forcing her to finally pry them open. She sat up with a stretch and a yawn as she glanced at her phone and groaned at the time. 6:00 am was much too early to be up on a Monday morning for her liking. Nevertheless, she pulled herself out of the bed and clobbered her way to the kitchen.

"Morning Liv Liv," her mom said with a smile looking up from her phone to greet her daughter. 

"Hey mom." She said back with as much enthusiasm as she could muster this early in the day.

"Coffee?" her mom asked sliding her favourite mug across the kitchen island and Olivia accepted with a grateful nod. "You gotta be at the studio at 7:15 so no dilly dallying this morning." She sipped the liquid gold as she let the hot drink warm up her body.    

"Okay I'm gonna grab a quick shower. Oh and can I pleaseeee drive today Mama." She asked dragging out the pleading tone in her voice with a pouty smile. 

"Fine! But only if you're out the door in the next half hour!" She called after a fleeing Olivia with mock indignation.

"Can't hear you already in the shower!" She yelled back laughing as she ran to her bathroom.

-

They pulled into the studio lot at 7:10 and Olivia turned off the keys tossing them to her mom in the passenger seat. 

"Have a great first day back sweetie and please be safe. Text me when you need a ride home." Her mom said with a kiss planted on her cheek. 

"Thanks mom, love you." She called out as she opened the door and headed towards rapid testing. After the test cleared her for work, she walked through the old studio doors that she missed so dearly the past eight months. She found her way through the familiar beige hallways, waving friendly hellos to crew members as she passed them by. She finally reached the door to the board room and took a deep breathe as she stood outside for a short moment. She was so happy to be back of course but the thought of seeing Josh again had her heart sinking her chest. She took a deep and steadying breath as she pressed on the squeaky door and pushed it open.

"Olivia's here!!!" She heard a familiar voice call out from across the room and all heads turned to her. Within a second there was a flurry of noise, laughter and greetings coming her way. She ran towards the group abandoning her backpack by the wall. 

"Sof! Jules! Oh my god I've missed you guys so much!" She yelled with a smile overtaking her face as she threw her arms around two of her best friends.

"Liv Liv!!! I'm so happy!"

"Same, I'm so excited!" Her two friends yelled excitedly.

"Olivia Isabel Rodrigo!" She heard Frankie another voice from behind her.

"Frankie! Ahhh I missed you so so much!!!" She called out engulfing him into a hug.

"Girl not as much as I missed you!" He said smiling and practically bouncing up and down excitedly.

The next 15 minutes went by around the same, ecstatic reunions with Matt, Kate, Seb, Dara, Larry, Mark and the rest of the cast and crew. Somewhere in that time, Josh had pushed opened the door the board room. As much as she tried not to, Olivia found her gaze following him as he made his rounds saying hello to everyone across the room. When he turned his head in her direction and their eyes met, time seemed to slow down for her. She could've sworn he looked somewhat sad and surprised but maybe it was just her eyes because in less then second he was smiling and heading over to her with a wave. She felt her heat rate triple in speed in an instant and was starting to panic. As if some higher power had taken pity on her, that was the exact moment Tim, their producer, decided to make his appearance and ask everyone to settle into their seats. 

Josh shot her a quick look she couldn't decipher before he headed to take his seat across the long boardroom table. She was seated between Dara and Julia and for that, she couldn't be more grateful. She didn't think she could handle reading aloud about how much Ricky and Nini loved each other while having to sit directly next to Josh. 

"Welcome back everyone!" Yelled Tim as the entire room erupted into cheers and applause. "We are so excited to finally be back to work and I'm so happy to see all your beautiful faces once again. It has been far too long!" That brought out a couple shouts of agreement. "So as you all know, we finished filming for episode one back before the break and we are here today for the episode two table read. Now without further ado, let's begin!"

The first half of the table read went smoothly and the script was great, there were some great scenes that Olivia was excited to bring to the screen as Nini. Tim had everyone stop about halfway through, to go over the details of one of the more emotional scenes between Ricky and Nini. The scene focused on Nini breaking the news to Ricky about the arts school and Tim wanted to know how Olivia and Josh felt their characters were going to handle themselves in the moment. Josh spoke first, bringing up a point of Ricky feeling emotionally caught between his pride for Nini and his fear at the realization that she might be leaving him again. Then Tim asked her.

"I think Nini would be in a similar position, as Joshua said..." She kept speaking but she wasn't too focused on her words anymore. Josh was looking at her weirdly and furrowing his brow. She hadn't called him Joshua since the first week of them working together. His friends called him Josh and everyone else called him Joshua. She wasn't his friend anymore and so she'd figured she might as well start acting the part. 

When she finished speaking and they went back to the script, a scene between Kate and Mark, Josh shot her another look and she tried to avoid his gaze as she watched him mouth Liv? in her direction.

A/N - Hey guys so here's chapter three, enjoy! Let me know what you think in the comments. Just an fyi I don't know how everything works for the filming with covid so just pretend this makes sense. Also I'm pretending that the whole holiday special thing never happened for the sake of my story!