Olivia stared down into the white oval of the bathroom sink, following the trail of tiny black lines that scattered around the counter like fine sprinkles.
She spat the rest of the toothpaste water out of her mouth, and the tiny hairs flit around the basin to eventually get swallowed by the drain. Olivia watched with satisfaction before taking a tissue and wiping the rest with the care and slight snobbish disgust of an ex-cultivated Junior League debutante. Gingerly, the tissue was squished down into the tiny wastebasket next to the sink so that no facial hair could escape its plush papery prison.
Certain high society attitudes were hard to shake, no matter what crowd Olivia now surrounded herself with now.
Putting her toothbrush back in its cup next to its green neighbor, she wondered idly if she were to ask Sebastian one more time to clean up the sink after he shaved in her bathroom, he'd finally listen. If maybe one day that flippant, "sure, babe" would lead to some proof her words don't go in one ear and out the other. Olivia swore, sometimes Sebastian's willingness to take what she said into consideration mirrored her father's.
Sebastian and Olivia had been dating for months now, and she still found that being in a relationship with him- the real Sebastian- didn't differ from her past serious relationships.
Before any Hastings sibling had entered left stage in her life, the majority of her relationship experience had been with the mayor's son, Joshua Smith. The mayor was a 'family friend' as her mother liked to say and his strapping youngest son was closest in age (a mere three years older than Olivia).
Olivia remembers awkward dinner parties with the Smith family when she was just getting to the age of training bras. A red-cheeked Joshua would shoot glances at her from across the table as she tried to remember which fork was for salad.
With Olivia's parents all gung-ho for the relationship, it seemed inevitable that they'd court once she got a bit older.
She'd liked him. What wasn't to like, really?
Dreamy and sweet Joshua. Of course, he was also what you could call inattentive, but that wasn't necessarily unknown territory for her with the men in her life.
It still stung when junior year rolled around and she was broken up with. He'd took her aside in a crowded courtyard and said that she couldn't give him what he wanted. To a wide-eyed Olivia who was freshly sixteen, it sounded like a death sentence.
Unsurprisingly, her mother had been unpleased, and the whole school was buzzing. He wasn't supposed to have been the one to dump her. Not the boy who seemed so invested in her for so long.
"She was dating this college guy, but he dumped her. I hear she's a total mess now, really vulnerable."
"Confidence, self-esteem is way down."
"In man words, it's time to pounce."
She'd become haunted after Joshua. The whispers and concerns. The anxiety of what went wrong caused everything to shift around within her.
However, her fears had gone out the window, along with her inhibitions, after crashing into a certain green-eyed 'boy' years later.
At the time, her attraction to a guy like Sebastian was odd for her, but there was something about their interactions that burrowed deep into the corners of her. They'd talk and she'd feel like the whole world was holding its breath until the invisible tether between them broke. She couldn't help the fact that she was so hung up by this boy, and it was only enhanced by how relieved she was over feeling this way about someone, finally.
Josh had clearly been a fluke since she instantly desired this green-eyed 'boy' asking about her Anthropologie shoes. And she'd figured that if he was like every other boy then it shouldn't take much to make him hers.
The problem was that Sebastian hadn't made it easy for her. Like, at all. He spoke to her so sincerely and transparently with no ulterior motive... all of the time. He tried nothing with her. He spent time with her with only the purest intentions. It made her both even more invested and increasingly tortured.
Early on in their friendship, one of Olivia's friends, Alexis, had suggested Sebastian was probably gay rather than uninterested in her since he was "in-touch with his feminine side" and so blind to her blatant flirting. It didn't seem like anyone really heard her, and that theory was dashed after hearing about his string of ex-girlfriends through the school's grapevine.
Thinking about it now brought a bitter laugh to her lips. It seemed Alexis' inclinations were right in a way with how Viola drooled over Duke nowadays.
Olivia jumped at the slam of the dormitory door, interrupting her feud with Sebastian and his chin hairs in her mind.
"Honey, I'm home!' Maria, Olivia's roommate, best friend, and certified pain in her ass, singsonged from their room, "I'm covering my eyes, and by the time I open them, I don't want to see any naked men frolicking around!"
Olivia walked into their room to lean on the wall outside the bathroom. The morning light was just beginning to filter through the blinds, creating abstract shapes over the furniture and carpet.
"You're in luck. He just left. Something about cleaning Ms. Harold's pool."
Maria made a disgusted noise, "On a Sunday morning? That's tough." Her backpack dropped down onto her spinny chair with a loud thunk.
Olivia just hummed in agreement as she strode over to her bed and seamlessly started folding the clean clothes that she'd left out before she'd gotten distracted with Sebastian.
His pool cleaning job was a punishment from his parents for going to London with his band without telling them. It seemed pretty merciful to Olivia, who's family might've disowned her if she'd done something like that. The privilege of divorced parents maybe?
After the Cornwall vs Illyria catastrophe, everything sped by Olivia faster than she could manage. The transition from pining for a crossdressing Viola to dating her real twin brother had been so sudden and completely unexpected that she'd just...gone with it. She certainly didn't have another option. No matter how unexpected, it was still expected that she shut up and count her blessings that the biological male in this situation wanted her.
They weren't the only new couple after the Cornwall game, as Viola fell into Duke's arms as fast as she could flick her actually very long brown hair over one shoulder.
Olivia's face scrunched as she plucked a pair of boy's boxers from her twisted up sheets. She was weary to handle them with anything but caution, even if their owner was her boyfriend.
"Olivia!" Maria had clearly spotted the article of clothing pinched between her fingers. "You bad girl."
Before Olivia could think of a response, Maria snatched the boxers from her, clearly not having the same reservations as Olivia.
"Is he not wearing underwear to clean Mrs. What's Her Face's pool?" She feigned a scandalized gasp and held back her laughter.
"Of course he is. He just started keeping extra here, that's all." She knew she should probably feel sheepish, but her mind was too preoccupied with other things. For some reason, everything about Sebastian was bothering her today, especially how imbedded he'd become in her life..literally!
Not to mention last night had drudged up a lot of unwelcome feelings. They hadn't done anything they haven't done before, but the whole experience was tiresome and she woke up feeling much the same.
Maria teasingly held the boxers up against her jean-clad legs. She swished them back and forth.
"Look, I'm Viola," Maria giggled at her joke, but when she looked up, Olivia didn't look so amused.
Embarrassed, and discomfort briefly forgotten, Olivia yanked the boxers away from her friend's crotch and wheeled away unceremoniously.
"That's not funny." Olivia's voice was flat and left no room for argument. "Why do you always say shit like that anyways?" The uncharacteristic curse word sounded loud in their room.
"...Geez, I'm sorry, I didn't know you'd get so upset about it."
"Yeah, well-" Olivia gave a chuckle that was anything but joyful.
Maria waited for her to finish the thought, but when it became clear that Olivia didn't have one, Maria eased herself down on Olivia's bed and reached out to stop the girl's furious tidying. Olivia drew back from the touch and used her arms to hug herself.
"Liv," the girl's voice took on a softer quality that Olivia wasn't used to hearing from her, "I know the whole situation was crazy with Sebastian and Viola. Do you want to talk-"
Olivia felt heat creep up her neck. "Why would I need to talk about it? That was months ago."
A sharp edge of defensiveness could be heard in her voice that didn't help her case.
"I didn't say need, I said if you want." Maria said, irked. She then crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow saying, "I mean, it's kind of something that someone should process, probably. I don't know. You always react this way when someone mentions it even a little."
"I don't need to process anything. It's not that deep."
"Okay, geez," Maria acquiesced with her hands up.
"No one else thinks so, so why should I?" Olivia snapped. "I mean, come on, Maria. It's nothing to get psychoanalyzed over or anything," Olivia sounded high pitched and squeezed, "It was just a weird mistake. A one-off. I have Sebastian now- like the real one. And he has a beautiful mind. He writes these poems and songs and- you know that I loved them when Viola was pretending to be him. I get along well with his family. So it all makes sense. And, anyway, I'm so," she felt a big, pageant grin stretch over her perfect teeth, "happy. With him- now that I have him."
Maria studied her, and Olivia stared back waiting for her to agree and move on.
"That was a moving speech. Although I wouldn't give Edgar Allen Poe that much credit," Maria chortled, using her favorite nickname for Sebastian. "His stuff is a bit melodramatic. And I feel like it's contagious too." She narrowed her eyes at Olivia meaningfully.
Olivia sighed, defeated, and went back to her cleaning.
"I hope it isn't," Olivia grumbled back pathetically.
Maria made some kind of sound and clapped her hands together.
"Okay, well just know you can always talk it out with me cause-" Maria's voice dipped into a conspiratorial whisper, "I know that if I was the one who found out I'd been totally mooning over a girl for months without knowing, I just wouldn't know how to feel." Maria laughed and Olivia's stomach curdled.
She'd been trying to not think of this, damnit, and here Maria goes throwing the words around like they were cheap. The result was something visceral. Like Olivia was going to punch her best friend at any minute just to gain some control in the situation. Get her to slow down.
She really had been spending too much time with Viola if she was getting urges to punch people.
Maria was still talking, now more to herself, "It's like catfishing? Plus, I don't know if I could look at Viola the same without seeing the crossdressing. I know we all just accepted that she'd done that, but if you really think about it, it's kind of crazy. I mean it was in the local newspaper for crying out loud!"
Olivia was caught between being relieved someone was bringing it up and also wanting to throw up at Maria's candidness.
And, well, if she were to be honest with herself, she would admit Viola's feminine qualities had always been her eyes focus. On top of that, Viola hadn't actually tried to alter much of her true personality if you don't count the last second "guy stuff" she tried to implement for damage control. And Olivia had just found that cute at the time, like Viola had been doing a bit.
"Like, now that I know Viola, she's like my sister. We're soul sisters; she's one of us, you know? Not weird like you'd expect because of the crossdressing" Maria continued, apparently happy to release her bottled up thoughts from the drama all those months ago.
"She's kind of still weird," Olivia felt the need to say, although the words felt a bit bitter on her tongue.
"Yeah, true," Maria flicked a brown curl off her forehead thoughtfully, "But I know you two really get along. You guys should have a talk so you can make it clear that you're totally not into her and it was a freak accident. Just for clarity's sake." She ended with a pleased smile.
Olivia blinked.
"I don't think-"
"Eh- no. Who's Aunt Mable is a certified therapist?"
"Yours?"
"That's right. So you should trust me on this because that little display of emotion earlier?" Maria pointed at her, "Yeah, Psychology 101: that means you need to clear the air."
Olivia scoffed like she always did when Maria used her 'communication' instead of Olivia's preferred method of 'smile and pretend everything is fine until it is'. But she slowly nodded and Maria took it as an invitation to continue. "I think it'd make you feel much better to leave that whole weirdness behind you guys because-" she lowered her voice conspiratorially again, "sometimes I get this vibe from you two-"
Olivia stopped nodding and her unfocused eyes honed back in on Maria's.
"-that tension that hasn't disappeared. I don't know, but it's probably because you guys somehow stayed friends after it all. Whatever it is, you know I'm here for you." She took hold of Olivia's hands dramatically. "We can get through this."
"Thanks."
"And, who knows, maybe prince charming is right around the corner and Edgar Allen really isn't for you-"
"You're right."
"I am."
"Yes."
"Yes?"
"You're so right," Olivia found herself grinning again hoping it met her eyes. "Thank you so much, Maria. I'm so grateful to have a friend like you." Maria gave a satisfied smile. "I just think I need to reevaluate a few things. Maybe you're right about needing to set the record straight..."
"I am!" Maria tapped Olivia's blonde head twice and situated herself on her own twin bed, happily opening a PopStar magazine with Jesse McCartney's smiling face on the cover. (Olivia personally preferred the Lindsay Lohan release from last week.)
The conversation apparently over, Olivia stood suspended until Maria glanced expectantly at her. Olivia's fingers fiddled with the checkered boxers and the brunette took pity on her friend who looked like a video game character idly waiting for someone to control her.
"Well? What're you waiting for? Go talk to Viola."
"What, now?" Olivia's eyes widened in fear at the prospect of actually addressing something she thought of as a source of shame.
"Yes! You'll lose your nerve."
Flustered, Olivia quickly laid out the rest of her clothes so that they wouldn't get wrinkled in her absence. She hurried back into the bathroom to check her hair and double check what she'd put on this morning. Then, she grabbed her tote bag with her books. It still looked a little dewey out there so maybe a sweater too.
Her hair must have shifted when she bent down because Maria goes, "Woah, honey. You've got-" she pointed to the side of her own neck, and Olivia's hand flew up to cover the space.
Maria chuckled into her PopStar magazine as Olivia's beet red face fled into the bathroom to cover up the hickey.
"That girl is so lucky to have a friend like me," Maria mumbled into her magazine.