Make Time For Me

But it didn’t have to make sense to her for it to make sense to the letter writer. Their brain obviously worked differently.

She supposed she could always ask…

“Livvy! There you are! I was looking all over for you! Congratulations!”

Angela came up, all smiles, and Olivia changed her mind about asking Angela for her opinion. Goodness knew what it would be like if Angela knew of it – she would insist on tagging along everywhere for Olivia’s protection, like a pint-sized bodyguard. No, definitely not. If anybody was to be told, it should be Ellie.

“Livvy? Are you listening? I’ll take you out when this is all done and we can celebrate! Ellie should come, too. We should have a girls’ night!”

“Oh, thanks, Angela. But I’m pretty sure it’s going to take a while for things to start calming down. We can figure it all out then.”

“We never hang out anymore, Livvy. You’re never there. It’s not the same when you’re not there. Ellie is obsessed with her stuff, and Paul always wants to cook. Nobody wants to go out and have fun anymore.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. I… Look, I’m being paged.”

It was with relief that Olivia got out of there and rushed to where she was necessary. Thankfully, there were no more life or death emergencies, the winds died down slowly, and the flooding was minimal.

The beaches would need massive cleaning up. She was sure the entire community would turn out for it. And, well, so would she, because she was now a part of the community, too.

“Things look better now,” said a voice, and Olivia smiled.

“Sure do, Ellie. You did an amazing job with Dr. Heart, with Liza and Rose. Mother and baby are both doing great. Dad might need more sedatives.”

Ellie chuckled.

“He might. He’ll need all the sleep he can get while he can get it, anyway. You know, it was touch and go in there for a moment. We thought we might lose her. Dr. Heart is extremely skilled; without her, Liza would have died on that table. You’re lucky she has decided to mentor you, Olivia. It’s going to go well for you.”

“I guess I am lucky.”

“Your Nikki is doing well, too. Does she need help? Shelter, supplies, anything of the sort?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t asked. She has to stay here for a couple of days before we let her go with antibiotics, but I think she does need help. She begged me not to tell her family. Why do so many people have such terrible families? I feel like I won the lottery with mine. They’re so great compared to yours, or hers.”

“I think most families fall somewhere along the middle. They get some right, they get some wrong, but at a pinch they’ll probably be there for each other. Like friends.”

Olivia poked Ellie in the ribcage, making her laugh.

“So serious, Ellie! Very unlike you!”

“Hey, I can be serious when I want! I sure hope Harley is fine.”

“You wrapped her up in tarp and put her in the living room, Ellie. I think Harley will be just fine.”

“I hope so. She is my one true love. I do worry. Too bad I can’t go home and check.”

“Please, don’t! I… Oh, look, there’s Jason. Do you think there’s bad news?”

“He doesn’t look like there’s bad news. And neither do you. I… Olivia, are you and he having a thing?”

“What?”

“I’ve been meaning to ask for a while. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it because you obviously don’t want that, but you’ve been making a lot of excuses to avoid hanging out, and whenever you disappear, so does Jason. It’s very odd, and it makes sense if you put the two of you together.”

“I… It’s not…”

“Don’t lie to me!”

Olivia was startled. That hadn’t sounded like Ellie at all. There had been anger in that – real anger. No, she was not going to suspect Ellie! It was probably none of them. It was probably somebody else entirely, somebody else who worked at the hospital. There were so many people who worked there. It would take forever to narrow them all down.

“I wasn’t lying! I just didn’t want to mess up the group unless we decided to get serious and make it official. If we just had a fling and it ruined everything, what’s the point? I just needed us to figure out what it was between us before we told anybody else.”

“And have you?”

“Not yet, so don’t tell anybody, Ellie.”

But that was a lie. She recognized that as a lie, even if she had just told Ellie that she wouldn’t lie.

She might have claimed, even to herself, that they hadn’t figured out what they were, and whether they mattered to each other. She might have told herself that it was her decision not to let everybody know about them. It was her decision to keep things on the down low.

But as her heart raced, watching Jason, seeing the moment he spotted her and grinned, how he immediately started walking towards her, she knew that that wasn’t entirely true.

She might not know how he felt, and she might not be ready to know it yet, either, but she did know how she felt about him. She might not know what she wanted to do about it, but she knew it.

She loved him.

This time, her heart didn’t just tremble. It quaked.