‘The waitress.’ Olive noddedtowards the bar where the brunette was twirling a loose strand of hair around her finger and flicking her eyes in Oscar’s direction.
‘Annie?’ he whispered, pointing so that Annie couldn’t see.
‘You know her name?’ Olive’s heart sank.
‘Only because she told me when I bought a coffee the first day we got here!’
‘I’m sure she did.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’Oscar said, a little stung.
‘Why me?’ she blurted out and then wanted to kick herself for sounding so needy. ‘I mean… I know that sounds like I’m fishing. I’m not fishing, I swear, I just… you’reOscar Bright.’ Olive splayed her fingers to the sides of her face and wiggled them like jazz hands. ‘And you’re sat here with… Olive Green.’ She stuck out her tongue like she’d tasted somethingfoul.
‘No. I’m Oscar Bright.’ He gestured to himself in his scruffy tracksuit which he’d already managed to spill baked beans down. ‘And I’m sat here withOlive Green.’ He smiled at her and reached across the table for her hand. It was the most affection he’d ever shown her in public and whether he’d forgotten himself or whether he was deliberately making it known to those in the vicinitythat they may be more than just friends, Olive didn’t care and then she instantly gave herself a stern talking to.Stop feeling grateful that he’s showing you the affection you already deserve, she thought. He’s got you wrapped around his little finger and you’re thanking him for letting you be there? She wriggled her hand out of his grasp and put it back in her lap, giving him an apologetic smileso not to appear too cold.
‘I’m here with you, because I enjoy you,’ Oscar clarified. ‘Because I love your company and there’s no one else at this present time that I would rather be here with.’
At this present time.
‘Okay.’ She nodded.
‘I don’t know what more I can say to convince you.’ Oscar sighed, sticking his fork into a sausage. ‘Besides, there might be someoneyou’ve got your eye on. How am I to know? And that would be fine, by the way.’
‘It would befine?’ Olive’s heart sank further.
‘Yeah… I mean… if you decided you’d prefer to… spend your time with someone else. That would be fine.’ He cut the sausage with a little more intensity than he expected, and the knife squeaked against the plate.
‘Well, there isn’t. Anyone else, I mean.’
‘No?’ he said, not looking up from the now-massacred sausage.
‘No, of course not. Is there someone else you’d rather spend your time with?’
‘I’ve already told you there isn’t. That’s where this all started.’ He stuck a large chunk of meat into his mouth with such vigour that he almost choked on it.
‘I know. I’ve just… I don’t know. We’ve all got demons, I guess.’ Shepicked up her knife and fork again. ‘Sorry,’ she said it so quickly it was almost as if she hadn’t said it at all. She gathered food onto her fork but noticed a lack of movement from the other side of the table. She glanced up. Oscar was holding his knife and fork aloft, on either side of his head like horns. When he saw her looking, he furrowed his brow, crossed his eyes and stuck out his bottomteeth. Despite herself, Olive laughed.
‘Is that supposed to be one of my demons?’
‘One of them? How many you got in there?’ He stretched out his arm and tapped the side of her head.
‘Too many,’ she said with a small smile.
‘We all do,’ he muttered.
‘Huh? What was that?’
‘Good food?’ he asked.
‘Reallygood.’ She was pretty sure he’d said somethingelse, but she’d let it go. For now. She wiped away a bit of yolk that had dribbled over her bottom lip. ‘We should come here more often.’
‘As often as you like.’ He smiled, stroking her leg again.
If only Olive knew just how Oscar felt. It was rare these days that anyone wanted to know who Oscar really was. Everyone thought they already knew him once they’d read the magazines andwatched his countless interviews and what they saw, they loved. Being papped at glamorous parties, premieres and press nights drew a certain type of woman his way. So when they discovered he only attended those parties for twenty minutes before going home to his little one-bedroom flat in Bow, and he only attended the premieres of the things he really wanted to see rather than going to everythingfor the exposure, the word ‘disappointed’ didn’t cut it for the high maintenance girls he had a habit of attracting. Oscar thought it was fine to wear designer gear, to eat out in central London every night and to want to be in every magazine Tesco had to offer but often when the girls he dated found out that wasn’t who Oscar really was, they’d only stay with him for their image, making him feelmiserable until he eventually ended things… and then they’d sell their exclusive story about how he’d broken their hearts. Oscar was beginning to wonder if every relationship would be the same.
Then he met Olive. Olive who cared about what he thought and made him feel like a person rather than a prop in a TV show. He could talk about how he actually felt, not how he was supposed to feel.He could say what he actually thought instead of having to carefully craft answers, and instead of striking poses for cameras and donning his designer clothes, Olive happily accepted him with his uncombed hair, his creased tracksuit bottoms and his T-shirt that was full of holes. He could be silly, and she didn’t bat an eyelid. In fact, it made her laugh which made him want to behave that way evenmore, just so he could see her smile again. They’d go out after rehearsals and it would be Olive who suggested going somewhere quiet because she knew he hated feeling like he was being watched. He’d known her for just over a month and he felt more at home in her company than most of the people he’d surrounded himself with for years. However, as Oscar’s TV star had risen he’d been trained to onlyever give away a little of himself. As soon as you part with too much of yourself, you lose ownership of your own privacy and he was fighting against giving himself entirely to Olive. Nagging voices in his head told him not to trust her too much and they spoke of all the things that could go wrong if he did. Oscar Bright, star of stage and screen, was too good to be true – but Oscar Bright who livedin Bow and went to bed each night desperately alone didn’t feel like he could ever live up to who the magazines said he was.
A wave of Olive’s hair fell over her face and the end caught in her egg yolk. Oscar’s heart swelled at the sight and Olive glanced up, obviously hoping his eyes were elsewhere. He coughed and averted his gaze just in time, but his heart remained happy. The waitresshad reappeared, for no rhyme or reason, and asked, ‘Enjoying?’ To which Oscar looked at Olive and said, ‘Yes. Very much so.’
