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CHAPTER ONE
Olivia let out a tired groan when her alarm blared to life. She stirred to the side, reaching for her blanket. The cold night had turned into a cold morning; she shivered slightly. As the alarm beeped, forcing her back to reality, she wiggled her cold toes and sighed. She just wanted five more minutes.
One of her socks was gone, no doubt dragged away by Mr. Right, her cat. The fluffy kitty always had a way of getting her attention, especially when she was asleep—sitting on her chest and purring in her face, or like this morning, clawing away at her sock until it fell off.
The alarm beeped, its sounds cutting through the silence, seeming to pitch higher with each passing second.
“I’m up!” Olivia grunted and, as if it had listened to her, the alarm went silent. Almost immediately, Mr. Right pounced on the bed and let out a soft meow. Olivia smiled, blinking away the last trace of sleep in her eyes.
“Good morning, Mr. Right,” she cooed and reached out to stroke him, running her fingers through the dark stripes on his brown fur. The cat purred in appreciation, his tail twitching.
“Please tell me you had a better night than I did,” she said with a sigh and wiggled her toes again. “And where is my sock?”
Mr. Right meowed and pranced off her, his tiny feet tapping the floor as he ran off. Olivia got off the bed and sauntered into the bathroom. The silence ringing through the small apartment was one of the things she hated, and, ironically, it almost reflected the world she lived in: the quiet greyness and almost lack of interest.
Another day was starting, one where everything would go just as it had always gone on the rest. Olivia stared at her reflection and frowned.
“New day, same old story.” She exhaled deeply as she put her shoulder-length brown hair into a bun. Water dripped out of the faucet into the cracked porcelain sink while she brushed her teeth and once again stared at her reflection. She hated what she saw on some days, the woman in her mid-thirties, looking tired and sad. But there was that brightness in her face that came whenever she smiled. Her hazel-brown eyes would sparkle and her oval-shaped face with a small button nose would take on a charismatic cuteness. “You’ve got the most beautiful smile,” her ex had always told her. But finding things to smile about lately was just as hard as, well, sleeping through a beeping alarm clock. How do you keep smiling when the only person you have is the one you’re looking at in the mirror?
Olivia stepped into the shower. The few minutes she spent under the warm spray of water always calmed her and, at the same time, hit her with lingering thoughts she wished would stay hidden. She lathered up her body, letting the soft lavender fragrance fill the air. There was something almost romantic to the smell, she thought, but romance was far from her reality at the moment. There were days she’d stay under the shower, closing her eyes, picturing a man she loved tinkering in the kitchen, making breakfast, hollering to ask if she wanted toast with her eggs. But as soon as she opened her eyes, he’d be gone and she’d once again be alone.
She shook away the fantasy. It wasn’t real, not anymore.
The room felt cold as she stepped out of the bathroom and into her small living room. It was nothing fancy but had a nice rustic farmhouse look to it with white furniture on hardwood floors, plenty of plants, and a comfortable couch. Mr. Right stood by the doorframe linking the room to the short corridor, as if waiting for her.
“You’re a good kitty, Mr. Right.” She smiled and walked into the bedroom to start getting dressed for work. She ran her hands through her damp hair and let the brown strands drop over her shoulders. Olivia was slender with long legs. She wasn’t all that “endowed” in the chest region, and it’d been that way since she was a blooming teenager, but her hips curved out nicely and she recalled having been told by someone—maybe her useless ex—that she had a nice body.
She straightened out her work outfit—the black skirt suit she’d ironed earlier—and once again stood before the mirror, turning from side to side, looking for more age-related changes. None today—she sighed in relief. For a while, she’d tried wearing makeup every day to work like her immaculate-looking coworkers, but after a few weeks, she traded those forty minutes of extra mirror time into sleeping time.
Olivia straightened the collar of her shirt and patted down a crease on her skirt. She let her eyes wander to the locket on her drawer and stretched her hand out to let the silver necklace slide into her palm. The locket clicked as she pressed a thumb over it. Her gaze softened when the picture inside came into view. The picture was dull and brown, but clear enough to show the pretty couple staring into the camera with bright, happy smiles.
“I wish you guys were here.” Her shoulders sagged as she lowered her eyes, her voice somber. It felt like forever since the day of the car accident. She could still feel the shock, even as she stood there, staring at the locket. The pain was still fresh, numbing. It had been a few years—but not long enough for her to forget that shock.
Olivia pressed the locket to her chest, her eyes closed. It was hard to shake off that feeling of emptiness and fear each time she thought about her parents, and each time she held that locket. Since their death, there’d been no one to call or run to when she felt alone. They’d been hit by a drunk driver on their way back home from a date night. Olivia had just left for college when the police showed up at her door—it was the worst day of her life. She was literally left with no one else. No aunts, cousins, no grandparents. Her father had grown up as an only child, and her mother, a first-generation immigrant from Romania, always insisted that there was nothing and no one left for her in Romania, so that was that. Olivia was now one of those people with no family. Sometimes it made her shiver, the thought that if she died today, she’d leave nothing and no one behind.
Olivia slipped the necklace around her neck and spent the next few minutes making breakfast while Mr. Right moved around the small living room. He started scratching the couch, which she stopped with a scolding, “Ah-ah, no.”
A half hour later, she was out of the house, fiddling with her door lock, which had started to jam of late.
“I’ll have to get this fixed,” she told herself and walked out into the cold morning, her shoes clacking on the hard concrete floor as she walked over to her aged 1990 silver Honda SUV. It was scratched and still had that dent in the back from someone committing a hit-and-run on her in the grocery parking lot, but working as an accountant at the local hospital didn’t leave room in her finances for a new car right now.
“It’s a good job,” she’d always tell herself, though it certainly could be better, like those hot-shot doctors she saw in the hallways on their way to their clinics. But she couldn’t complain—it paid for her apartment, cat, food, and monthly student loan repayments. It also served as a good distraction and time-killer. Unlike most of her coworkers, Olivia never had anything going on over the weekends—no screaming kids or online dates—so those days were always long and torturous for her.
Olivia parked her car in the employee parking lot of Boston Medical Center and walked up to the main entrance’s big glass doors. Her office was located in a side wing of the hospital, so this was the quickest way.
The security man glanced up at her, tilted his black cap, and nodded with a mumble.
“Good morning,” she greeted him with a smile. He acknowledged it with another serious nod. Olivia kept the smile on her face as she walked up the steps to the hospital entrance. “A smile brightens up the dark like opening the curtains to let the sunshine in,” her mother always said.
She was reaching for the wooden door that led to the elevators when suddenly the door swung wide open. It clipped her fingers and she winced as she pulled her hand out of the way.
“Sorry about that,” the man rushing out quickly apologized when he saw her and went on his way without waiting for a response, ambling down the steps, his brown jacket flying. Her fingers felt numb for a few more seconds before the pain faded.
“No worries,” she mumbled and went inside to the elevators. Her destination: the accounting department on the third floor. She peeked over her shoulder and stared at the wooden door behind her, hoping someone else would show up for this elevator ride. Olivia had given up on the idea of a romantic encounter at the hospital—the competition was too fierce—but what about a friend? Some young woman, new in town, in need of a friend. They could engage in a conversation, start a lasting friendship. You know, like they do in the movies.
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. A nurse stepped out, her light blue scrubs complementing her smooth skin. Something about the nurse reminded Olivia of those models she’d seen on magazine covers—her eyes gleaming, her perfect crimson red lips. Behind her, still in the elevator was Austin, Olivia’s coworker.
“Hey Austin.” Olivia stepped into the elevator. Austin was ogling the nurse as she disappeared behind the wooden door.
