Page 11 of Love, Lilly

Oliver

As I watch Lilly walk away, leaving wet footprints in her wake, I sit back down and put my head in my hands. I can’t believe I hurt Lilly like that. I close my eyes and can still see the angry red mark from where my foot connected with her chest. Still torn, I think about waking Amy up just to run her through what happened, to get her expert opinion. But I hold off, knowing I need to give myself some breathing space from Lilly and that little bikini. Boy, the image of Lilly in that bikini is going to be burned in my mind forever, along with a catalogue of Lilly looking beautiful and sexy over the years.

This is what I get for taking time out of all the things I had planned for the day and instead spending an hour playing in the swimming pool with Lilly. I should have been working on the presentation that is due on Monday morning, but of course all thoughts of that flew out the window when I saw Lilly in that pink bikini. And that is what Lilly does to me, what she has always done to me. She is a distraction. Bright and colourful, and full of laughter. But a distraction nonetheless. She is also the person who makes me laugh like no one else. I cannot help but smile when she is around. But with the amount of power she has always had over me, she tends to leave me feeling unbalanced and unsettled. Feelings I have never been comfortable with.

I think that is what originally drew me to Emma. She is the polar opposite of Lilly. We first met when her firm was doing some legal work for one of our clients, and I felt immediately drawn to how poised she was. She was always so well put together; she seemed so solid. Some would say this is not a romantic way to think of a partner, but she seemed to fit so well into the life I envisioned for myself. And after years of pining for Lilly, with that moment between us at her last birthday party almost a year ago going ignored, I decided to embrace the predictability of someone like Emma and asked her out. And, if I think back on it, it has been pretty smooth sailing ever since. Granted, we went from newly dating to being like an old married couple in a week, to the point where even I can admit the passion disappeared (if it was ever there to begin with?), but I always knew where I stood with Emma. And where we were going. And I thought that would be enough to keep us together.

Lately, though, I have been feeling dissatisfied with our relationship. Which seems to have coincided in the recent months with a new side of Emma that has suddenly appeared. She now tends to snap at me more often and is frequently rude to the people I love. And when I saw the way she treated Lilly last night, well, that made me angry in a way I don’t often get. I’m not prone to big emotions, but when it comes to Lilly, they just come out.

Like, for example, the amount of anxiety I felt upon finding Lilly in that broken-down car last night. Or the fact that I was awake half the night worrying about her alone in that apartment, somehow being protected by a thug with blue hair. It all goes to show that with Lilly, I cannot completely control the way I feel about her, and again, this is not something I am altogether comfortable with. My well-ordered life is something I take great pride in. I’m not sure where this inherent need to have everything “just so” came from—my mum often jokes that I came out of the womb already neat and tidy—but I do know that when I am with Emma, things feel orderly and pleasant. And I guess therein lies the problem. A relationship should feel exciting and passionate, at least some of the time.

So, after dropping Lilly off last night, I did what I knew I had to do. Once I acknowledged that my feelings for Lilly had not in fact disappeared, I attempted to break up with Emma. She did not take it well. She told me to take some time to think about things, that I wasn’t acting like myself, that I needed to think about this in a rational way, and only after I pushed back did she agree to “take a break.” I guess this is what I get for dating a lawyer. She tried to put together a logical argument for why we work as a couple, when in reality, I don’t think we ever worked. Emma was like a dog with a bone though, something I thought I admired in her, so we settled on time apart. She now wants me to spend this time putting together a list of reasons we should break up (she is going to bring a counter argument), and we are going to meet to discuss our future prospects. I cannot believe she has given me relationship homework. How has it come to this?

“Hey, Ol, where’s Lilly?”

I look up to see Amy walking towards me, a pillow mark indented across her cheek.

“I woke up and all her stuff is gone.”

“She went to get her car. The mechanic called, and they were able to fix it. It is ready to be picked up now.”

“That’s good news,” Amy says, giving me a strange look. “Why don’t you look happy?”

“I hurt Lilly—”

“Ollie, what did you do to Lilly? Did you say something to upset her?”

As I wonder what I could say to Lilly to upset her, I tell her, “No, I mean, I physically hurt her. We were swimming, and I kicked her, and she got hurt.” Just thinking about it again is making my stomach twist into knots. “Can you call her tonight and check on her?”

“Of course, but I am sure she is fine,” Amy tells me with a dismissive wave of her hand. She sits down at the edge of the pool, dangles her feet in the water, and spears me with one of her looks.

“Speaking of getting hurt, what is going on with you and Emma? Is all OK in paradise?” It would seem that the issues between me and Emma are also evident to the people who know me the best.

Not wanting to get into any details with Amy, who has never hidden her dislike of Emma, I give a noncommittal shrug. “It will be fine,” is all I offer before changing the subject. “Lilly has popped up quite a bit in the last twenty-four hours. It feels like I’ve seen her more in the last two days than I have in the last two months.”

Amy, never one to sugar coat things, tells it to me straight. “That’s because you have a jealous girlfriend who can’t handle you being friends with a gorgeous girl like Lilly, so Lilly has stayed away to keep the peace.”

I feel a twinge of guilt that my relationship has impeded both my friendship and Amy’s friendship with Lilly and vow to do better in the future.

“Well, we won’t have to worry about that for too much longer,” I tell Amy as I get up and walk back into the house.

“What does that mean?” Amy yells after me, a hint of excitement in her voice.

I avoid answering this, not wanting to spend any more time examining my failed relationship, and instead yell back as I walk into the house, “Don’t stay out here too long, Ames! Wouldn’t want you to get burned!”

I smile as Amy screeches, “Oliver!” As I walk up the stairs, picking up the wet towel Lilly left hanging over the banister, I think to myself, what am I going to do about you, Lilly?

CHAPTER 7

Lilly

The next morning, as I lie in bed putting off the inevitable start to the day, I think about my encounter in the swimming pool with Oliver. As I poke at the tender bruise I am now sporting on my chest, I picture the look in his eyes as he touched my chest with gentle hands, and my heart races. Over the years, Oliver and I have had several moments that made my heart hopeful but that all ultimately came to nothing. One particular time comes to mind: almost twelve months ago, a what-if encounter with Oliver, one I try to avoid thinking about altogether.

It was the night of my twenty-third birthday, a week after the disastrous romantic breakup weekend from hell. I had known my now ex-boyfriend Sebastian for a couple of years, through mutual friends, and we had become casual friends ourselves for about six months before he had asked me out. It had surprised me at first, since I hadn’t considered him romantically, but he was persistent, and eventually we started dating in earnest. We had been together for about four months when he convinced me to go away for a romantic weekend with him, and I saw this mini break away together as a positive step forward in our relationship. A private cabin in the snowy mountain tops signified we were getting serious about each other. Unfortunately, Sebastian did not see it this way, and on the second day of the trip, he took the opportunity to break up with me, bruising my heart and shattering my ego. And he did this just before my birthday, the jerk.

And so, the weekend after my birthday, I was not in the mood to go out. However, Amy was having none of this. She convinced me that I had to go out and celebrate my birthday properly or Sebastian would win. She made me get all dressed up, forcing me into a curve-hugging black mini dress (one I had bought on a dare!), plastering my face with make-up, and giving me a sexy hairstyle. With pure determination, she forced me to celebrate my birthday in style. I had given in with some reluctance and only agreed to do it to get her off my case, but also with the caveat that I intended to spend the evening replacing my total blood volume with 100 percent pure vodka.

To my misfortune, Oliver was not on board with this plan and insisted on substituting a glass of water for every other drink.

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