Page 5 of Semi Sweet
Evan shook his head and put his hand out to stop her from talking. “Relax, Olivia! It was just time for me to grow up. It’s going to be less painful for all of us if you do, too.”
Olivia was taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“Come on, Babe. This writing crap, it’s time to hang it up. Get a better job. I’m sure my parents can help you find something.”
I refused to accept it. How could it be time to give up the things we loved? How were we too grown up if we weren’t old enough to buy the bourbon he drank every night?
Around the time Evan started to feel like a stranger, my fellow cashiers and service clerks turned on me. Russel had applied and even interviewed for the job that the Quitteros had just gifted to Evan. I could see why the man was bitter. Evan would come into the store with newfound authority and boss his former supervisor around. When he started to tell Russel when to put me on the schedule and give me breaks, the damage was irreparable. Maybe Russel couldn’t get back at Evan for his ego, but he could certainly hurt me. I got the shifts that worked best with Evan’s needs and my college classes, but I was shunned. When he knew the Quitteros were not coming in, Russel would give me every tedious side job he could think of. Hell, he probably pictured Evan doing it instead of me.
I’d still do a million painful odd jobs if it stopped the gossiping.
“Olivia spreads her legs to get all the courtesy desk shifts.”
“She has Evan wrapped around her finger and has him bark orders at Russ.”
“Don't be nice or talk to Olivia. She spies on us and reports back to the royal family.”
“Of course she's going to marry him, she'd be stupid not to.”
In the beginning, I tried to stop any rumors when I heard them. Now I was just tired. Tired of pretending, tired of trying to work hard when they were going to dislike me anyway. The courtesy booth had its benefits, though. I got to be alone, the customers were mostly harmless, and I was able to write when it was slow. Now that my passion was “childish,” I had to get creative about how I worked it into my life. As I tried to dab my eyes inconspicuously, I smiled softly at my defiance. How writing was my refuge even if Evan didn’t approve.
Olivia wrote on slips of paper, she worked on her stories instead of taking extensive notes at her classes, and she’d gotten really good at having multiple tabs open so she could switch easily if Evan suddenly became interested in what she was doing and wanted to take a peek. She wasn’t going to give up on her dreams. Not yet.
“How do you feel about Italy for our honeymoon?”
Evan’s voice made me jump. I was so focused on avoiding the state of my life that I’d lost track of reality. He was sitting in his leather armchair where he spent almost all his time post work. That’s right, we were planning a wedding. Well, supposedly. We’d been attempting for almost two years.
“Italy is nice, I guess.”
“Grandma Detta gave me some suggestions,” Evan replied, eyes still on the segment on his political news show I’d learned to tune out. “She offered to fly us out in a few months to check some places out and make a decision.”
Grandma Detta tried to have good intentions, but she was actually meddlesome. Just like she pretended to be nice, but it came off as forced and fake. That was how Evan and I ended up in the Caribbean at twenty-one, all-inclusive resort. Why have feelings when you could just have money?
I smiled a tight, thin line, not that it mattered. Evan’s eyes were on the TV, not me. He barely looked my way these days unless I was bothering him somehow. “That was nice of her.” After that, we went back to our separate worlds.
There were times where I wondered if anyone sensible would think I was insane for living like this. If I was miserable, why didn’t I break up with him?
I’d loved Evan once. There was a part of me that thought I still did. Maybe someday Evan would get used to all of this. He’d find a work-life balance where he didn’t need vices to fix him. My old Evan would come back. One that was happy and supported my goals, even if they were lofty.
Yes, I told stories to escape, but I couldn’t run from the biggest thing that made my tale a tragedy. I’d burned so many bridges to be with the fun Evan. Now that I had this version, I had my back to the bottomless pit where the bridge had been. That visual hurt too much, I looked back down at my laptop and resumed typing.
Olivia had made her father angry and he’d been true to his word about disowning her. Her sisters stopped calling and the family stopped shopping at the store even though they lived around the corner from it. Olivia had wanted to call, not just to beg for forgiveness, but because she was just lonely. She was too afraid of what she’d meet.
The very small group of friends Olivia had began to diminish the more time she spent with Evan. He never wanted to go out and he was painfully dull if she had people over. Eventually the invites fizzled out and she fell out of contact with every single one of them.
For a while I tried to keep up appearances and make up excuses for why I couldn’t do things or why Evan behaved the way he did. After a while, it got exhausting, so I gave up. The sting of losing who I’d been once coursed through me as I started to wrap up my writing exercise.
On Christmas Eve when they were twenty-two, Evan dramatically dropped to one knee at his grandmother’s house. Olivia had said yes. It wasn’t with hesitation or with excited squeals, only a soft smile and a shallow nod. She’d said it for financial stability. She’d said it for the seventeen-year-old boy she’d fallen in love with.
My hope was that someday I would learn to love my life as a Quittero. Or at least make peace with it. Maybe with enough time, I wouldn’t resent his grandfather's death for killing the old Evan. It was that or homelessness.
Chapter Three: A Diamond in the Rough
Afewdayslater,CashValue Market was buzzing as employees cleaned and readied their posts. Giovanni Quittero had come in first thing in the morning and told the managers the two words all employees feared: Diamond Walk.
It was a fancy way to describe when Evan's family picked a store to visit and it needed to be as perfect and pristine as it was the day of a grand opening. In Grandma Detta's words, it needed to "sparkle like diamonds." Since Denver was their home store, the Quitteros did Diamond Walks here most often.
"You could have warned me about this," Russel snapped when I checked in for my shift. "You do live with a Quittero."
