Page 16 of Chasing After You
I look up, startled at the sound of another voice. This time, the person attached to it is several feet ahead of me, having stopped at a safe distance.
At least Oliver is paying attention even if I still seem incapable of it.
“Mind if I join you?” he goes on when all I can manage is to gape up at him speechless.
“Not at all.” I practically stumble over the words but at least I get them out. “Company would be nice.”
“Great.” He reaches my side and gestures for me to carry on walking.
I feel a little odd having him join me just to walk back the same way he came, but I’d feel odder still to deny him. Which leaves us here.
On an odd walk together.
“So,” Oliver says after we’ve been going along in silence for a while, “it occurred to me, that you may know as little about me as I apparently know about you.”
I assume he’s referring to the part where he only just discovered I was once married to a famous musician. I can’t imagine why my sisters failed to mention that to a man they were attempting to set me up with. Even my internal dialogue is flooded with sarcasm. Because, of course, I can imagine why.
“Should we scrap what we’ve been told and start fresh?” I offer, forcing a smile. It’s not that I mind the company, just that my head’s still spinning from the conversation I had before this one. With Matti.
“I’d like that.” He holds out his hand. Apparently, we’re doing this full-out. “I’m Oliver. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
I take his hand, making up for a lack of enthusiasm with plenty of awkwardness. “Nessa. And the pleasure is all mine.”
“Tell me, Nessa. What do you do?”
“Well, Oliver,” I start, slowly getting into the vibe of things now. “I own a yoga and wellness studio, which basically means I get to stress myself out trying to make sure everyone else is finding ways to ground and relax.” I make a face to let him know I’m joking. Sort of. Some days I do find myself enmeshed in the irony of having an internal anxiety attack due to overwhelm whilst leading a meditation class. “How about you? What is it you do, Oliver?”
As ridiculous as I feel having this conversation, part of me is curious to hear how he’ll answer. I always find it interesting to hear how people believe others will perceive their chosen careers. Especially having just learned the guy before him was a rock star, I can imagine it’d be tempting to lean into the prestige of his accomplishments in the medical field.
“Fittingly enough, I too have made health and wellness my life’s work.” He smiles. It’s charming, as is his answer. “We’re practically a perfect match,” he jokes. Though there’s a sweet twinkle in his eyes leading me to think, some small part of him is still hoping it’s true.
I choose to pretend I don’t notice and instead laugh, playing along. “It’s almost like my sisters put some thought into this setup.”
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, finally letting some of the tension this trip has caused melt away. “What was it that made you want to pursue a career in medicine?”
His joking demeanor fades, and he gets serious. “I come from a family of doctors. Both my grandfathers were doctors. My parents met at medical school. Following along with everyone wasn’t just a natural progression in my family, it was expected.” He kicks at some fallen pinecones in our path. His tale sounds oddly familiar, but I don’t say so. I just listen for him to keep going. “Wasn’t until after I’d been practicing medicine for three years and signed up to participate in Doctors Without Bordersthat I finally found my heart in it.” He smiles again. It’s different this time. Softer. More genuine. “Here it was easy to go through the motions, show up and do what was asked. Don’t get me wrong, I always worked hard, always gave my best, but it took being in a jungle with limited staff, limited medical supplies, and an excess of patients to fully understand the value of what I could offer. Suddenly, I wasn’t just going along with my family’s expectations, I found my own goals to strive for, my own dream in their grand design.”
“That’s beautiful.”
“That’s life.” He casually slips his hand into mine as we walk, and I have flashbacks of being thirteen and Mitch Havertown making that same move while walking me to school one morning.
Thirteen. Wow. Is that really the last time I was out in the dating scene?
I brush off the thought by blurting out the first thing that comes to mind, “Matti was supposed to be a lawyer.” Probably not the best thing I could have brought up, but there it is, so I’m going with it. “Every male in his family has had a career in the legal field. Most are lawyers, some are judges. One of his cousins is a paralegal.Hewas the family’s greatest disappointment...at least until Matti announced he was going to be a musician.”
If I’ve made Oliver uncomfortable, he doesn’t show it. If anything, he looks amused. “Didn’t go over well, huh?”
I grin. “It’s been over twenty years and half of them are still in denial.”
He shakes his head, chuckling. “That’s nuts. The dude is such a tremendous success. You’d think they’d be able to get over it after one or two world tours of playing for packed stadiums.”
“You’d think so, but no. Not so much.” I laugh too.
“So, you two are still pretty close, huh?” His tone is still as light as before, but I can see the weight of his question in hiseyes. It’s a fair request, wanting to know if I’m truly as available as my sisters implied I was when they duped him into coming here.
“We’re...familiar.” I shrug, letting my gaze sweep the ground at our feet. “It’s hard not to feel close to someone when you’ve known each other nearly your entire lives. But it’s a closeness rooted in the past, we’re hardly in touch now. We exchange the basics required for co-parenting, but outside of that, I wouldn’t say we’re particularly involved in each other’s lives. Hell, most of the time, I have to check the band’s Instagram account to find out what town he’s even in.”
“Is that why you two split up? Because he was always gone?”
