Who We Once Were - A Jolivia Story

Chapter 8

"Sweetie are you alright? You've barely said a word since you got in the car. Did something happen at work?" Her mom asked with her brows knitted tightly in concern.

"No, no I'm fine mom don't worry, just thinking. Tim asked us to review this one scene a bunch of times for tomorrow and I've just non-stop been going over it in my head." She said a small laugh escaping at the end in a meek attempt to cover-up for her uncharacteristic quietness. It wasn't a total lie, she really was just deep in thought and yet it had nothing to do with any sort of scene or running lines. Her mind just kept replaying the image of Josh's text in her head like a broken record stuck on repeat. 

I'm sorry

She hadn't responded. Of course she hadn't responded, how are you even supposed to respond to a text like that? Was she supposed to text him back, call him, pretend she never got the message? Olivia had never before been in a situation anywhere remotely similar to the predicament she currently faced and therefore, felt grossly under qualified to be making the right choices here. She was debating FaceTiming Madison about it when she got home but she had to start memorizing lines for tomorrows scenes. Explaining the entire situation to her best friend would most likely take hours and that would be failing to account for the distracted and off-topic conversations the whole thing would lead to which in turn would lead to many more hours on the phone. She would've told Maddie earlier but if she was being honest she felt a little pathetic about this whole situation to begin with and it wasn't something she wanted people to know about. She hated pity.

So as she had been doing with a lot of things recently, she decided to try work through her issues with Josh on her own. As the car pulled into the apartment complex, she decided her best plan of action would be to ignore it for the time being and if he really wanted to talk about it they could tomorrow in person, after filming. She didn't want to risk anymore distractions or strain on their relationship before shooting the day's scenes because she knew she wouldn't be able to focus on anything else if she did.

Olivia spent the rest of the night running lines with her mom and alone in her bedroom, only taking small breaks throughout to scroll through Instagram and TikTok. She fell asleep early that night after an emotionally draining day, closing her eyes, her thoughts drifting to him like they tended to do most nights these days.

-

She arrived on set early the next morning anxious to start the first day back of filming. They were shooting at the school for the day and she was happy to be back, it was incredibly nostalgic. She went through rapid testing and then was cleared to enter the building. She decided to first make her way to her trailer to drop off her things for the morning, and lucky her, that trailer happened to be just beside Josh's. As she made her way to the steps, the gravel below her feet seemed to be making as much noise as humanly possible every time she took a step. The door to his trailer swung open.

The first thing she noticed were his eyes. Those brown eyes that she used to adore so much, were now rimmed with a slight redness. Then his smile, it was no where to be found, completely gone from it's typical permanent spot on his face. He was wearing his pink San Francisco hoodie and a pair of light grey jeans she knew he really liked.

"Olivia, hey." He said sounding slightly apprehensive as he shut the door behind him and made his way down the steps. She took a deep breath and walked down her own steps to meet him in the middle. 

"Hey," she said simply.

"I um, I texted you yesterday. I don't know if you got it because you never responded and well I-" he started but she cut him off before this went any further.

"Ya I-, I got your text." She said trying not to let her nerves show in her words.

"Oh," A look of realization following by a look of hurt spread over his face for a split second before he masked it but she saw it. She felt bad, she really did, because no matter what had happened to them, she never wanted to see him hurt and least of all she never wanted to be the one to hurt him. "Do you think we could talk about it? Not like yesterday, I mean a real conversation." He spit out his words running a hand through his hair and keeping his eyes trained on the ground. Olivia sighed.

"Joshua we have work to do, scenes to film and I don't want anything messing that up for either of us. We can talk just, after work today?" She suggested a little hopeful. She knew it was stupid letting herself get her hopes up about this but he seemed genuinely sorry and as much as she wasn't one to forgive and forget, maybe they could work through things, maybe he had a reason for doing what he did.

"Oh I actually can't after work today, my friend- um Sabrina's coming to pick me up." He said with a small awkward smile and Olivia's new-found hope started to shatter. 

"Oh, um okay, maybe tomorrow then?" She offered quietly. 

"Yeah tomorrow, tomorrow sounds good." He nodded and uttered her a quick goodbye heading back to his trailer while she headed back to hers. 

Their first day back to filming went pretty well as a whole. Olivia had her fair share of scenes with Josh but they were both professionals and they both managed to put on a good show. Later that night when she would lay in her bed drifting off to sleep, her thoughts would once again find their way back to Josh and his stupid text. He was sorry, what for though? For ghosting her, for letting her think they were actually friends, for Sabrina? She wanted to feel at peace, she wanted to feel like he would apologize the next day and things would finally reach a semblance of normalcy between them but for some reason, she just wouldn't be able to shake her nagging feeling that things were just going to get worse for the two of them.

A/N - Hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Just a heads up, confrontation about the text will be next chapter for sure and I promise it will probably not be what you're thinking. More angst to come haha :) As always I love hearing your feedback so please comment and vote, ily all!!!