Time passed. Ollie and I carried on the way we always had. If he was upset that I never returned the feelings he’d admitted to me, hedidn’t show it. Sometimes I wondered if it had really happened. But then I’d feel the medal around my neck and know it had. A year later, when the conditions on Ollie’s green card were removed and I’d rebuilt my credit enough to start managing on my own, Ollie asked me if he should get his own place when our lease was up. I told him to do whatever he thought was best, not realizing he was seriously considering moving out until he passed me his phone one evening to show me photos of the apartment he’d leased.
“The kitchen is huge,” I said, only half taking in the images as I flicked through them.
“All the cabinet doors open all the way. Every single one of them.”
I glanced over to our kitchen, with its awful cabinet doors. Our apartment wasn’t the best, but it wasn’tthatbad. “Our kitchen is fine,” I said, and passed back his phone.
“Yourkitchen as of next month,” Ollie said.
The excitement in his voice made me want to sneak into his new apartment and glue all the cabinets shut. I willed myself not to be annoyed, because Ollie wasn’twrong. Itwouldbe my kitchen next month. His new kitchenwasnicer. Cabinet doorsshouldopen all the way.
It wasn’t until I found Ollie cooking dinner a few nights before he was supposed to move out that I understood why I was so bothered by his fancy new kitchen. I’d just returned home from helping Jo go grocery shopping before her nieces and nephew arrived to spend a few weeks at her place. Ever since the night Ollie told me he loved me, I’d slowly pulled away from him, and my fast friendship with Jo filled the gaps. The distance I put between myself and Ollie hadn’t been intentional, and if Ollie noticed, he never said. I hadn’t realized what I was doing until Ollie told me he was moving out, and in those last few weeks of living together, I found myself both constantly annoyed withhim and wanting to spend as much time as I could in our apartment together.
Ollie didn’t notice my arrival. I lingered at the edge of the kitchen, watching him as he stood before the stove and sautéed something I couldn’t see. He wore that angry look he always had whenever he cooked. When he flipped the food, a stray bit of oil jumped from the pan, landing on his hand. He leapt back with a “Fecking hell,” and stuck the knuckle of his index finger in his mouth, cursing under his breath as he continued cooking.
Perhaps I made a sound, or maybe he simply felt someone was watching him. When he turned and spotted me, his expression smoothed, except for the little groove between his eyebrows. It didn’t used to linger like that. How was it possible I knew Ollie well enough to notice the appearance of his first wrinkle?
“Hey, Neen,” he said. He pulled his finger from his mouth and shook out his hand. “Didn’t know you were home.”
I love you. The thought appeared suddenly, surprising me with its surety. Was it really that simple? One moment you don’t know a thing, and then something small, something as trivial as a wrinkle, pushes you over the edge. That was exactly how it felt, as if I’d been shoved off the side of the yacht, the ocean beneath me, ready to swallow me whole.
“Just got here,” I said, hoping Ollie couldn’t sense the chaos that had broken loose within me. I was in love with Oliver Dunne. Probably had been for... God knows how long. How ridiculous!
Ollie nodded to the pan on the stove. “You’re just in time. I made stir fry for dinner. Are you hungry?”
“Oh,” I said, not fully tuned in to the conversation.
An amused look crossed his face. “You good, love?”
I blinked, forcing myself back into the moment. “Sorry. What did you say?”
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” I said. The wordsI love youwelled up in me again, but got caught in my chest, too heavy to force out. I did love him. There was no denying it, at least not to myself. And why admit it out loud and risk ruining things? Love was risky. It had ruined my life. It had been a completely different type of love, but love nonetheless, that had kept me from pressing charges against my father and freeing myself from his mistakes. Love had brought me to a place where every choice I made felt like a last resort: quitting gymnastics, getting into yachting, marrying Ollie.
But being with Ollie didn’tfeellike a last resort, and I had no idea if that was because emotion had clouded my judgment or because what we had was different.
***
I tried to be optimistic when I helped Ollie move into his new place a few days later.Putting some space between us is a good idea,I told myself. But it didn’t feel like such a good idea when I carried his boxes out the door. Or when I helped him unpack his things in his new place with its perfectly functional kitchen cabinets. Or when it grew dark out and I realized I ought to go home to my apartment. The apartment I’d shared with Ollie for years and where he no longer lived.
“I better get going,” I said, hauling my purse over my shoulder as I lingered at the edge of Ollie’s new living room.
“You don’t have to go,” Ollie said. “You can stay over, if you want.”
I wanted to, but I knew I shouldn’t. I shook my head and gave him a small smile. “Don’t want to take over your bachelor pad on your first night. I’ll just... use the restroom and get out of your hair.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. He ran a hand through his hair and turned away from me to sit on the couch. “Better use the one in the bedroom. Haven’t cleaned the hall bathroom yet.”
I nodded and stepped inside Ollie’s room. It was so strange seeing his bed, his dresser, his clothes, so familiar to me, but now in this unfamiliar place. After using the restroom, I caught sight of myself in the mirror as I washed my hands and noticed the gold of the chain I wore the Saint Valentine medal on when it glinted in the light overhead. Some nights, as we lay naked together in bed, Ollie would take the Saint Valentine medal between his fingers and run it back and forth along the chain. I’d pretend not to notice, talking about everything but us as we drifted off to sleep. Ollie never brought up the medal, but I always wondered what he thought when he saw me wearing it.
I dried my hands on the hand towel I’d placed there only a few hours ago and unclasped the Saint Valentine medal from around my neck, leaving it on the bathroom counter for Ollie to find. It was impulsive, a way to say goodbye to the way things had been between us. We couldn’t possibly continue on in the same way now that we didn’t need each other. Looking back, I see so clearly that I should’ve asked him to stay. But nothing was clear to me then. What did I have to be afraid of? I hadn’t expected Ollie moving out to be so hard on me. He was only fifteen minutes away. The distance I was creating between us only made my life harder than it had to be. But it had never even crossed my mind to ask Ollie not to go. I couldn’t imagine a world in which you could love someone without damaging them. All I could see was that Ollie and I had been living in an illusion. Letting go of the medal felt like letting go ofhim. In my mind, it was the best housewarming gift I could give him.
It was a good idea. At least that was what I told myself.
But it didn’t feel like such a good idea when I returned home to my half-empty apartment and Ollie’s tea was no longer in the shitty cabinets that didn’t open all the way. It didn’t feel like such a good ideawhen I didn’t have his butt to keep my toes warm as I watched TV by myself on the couch.
Suddenly I wasn’t sure which ideas were good anymore and which ones weren’t. They all seemed pretty bad to me.
