“Away from you, once and for all!” she said, and wrenched open the door.
He followed her and took their argument into the hallway. “Liv, I saidI’m sorryfor missing the party. I’ll write Grandma Ruby an apology letter. I’ll send her flowers. I’ll—”
She whirled on him and shouted, “You can’t fix this, Chuck!” She turned and jammed her finger into the elevator button. Thoughts of taking the stairs to get away from him faster tempted her, but ten stories seemed like nine too many in that moment. “You always do this! You’re so obsessed with your career that you can’t see beyond your own nose. You forget there areother peoplein the world—namely,me!” She reached out and pressed her palm to his bare chest to prevent him from following her as he was wont to do. The brief contact was regrettably pleasant, and she told herself it would be the last time she ever touched Chuck Walsh.
Chuck had different ideas because he followed her into theelevator when it arrived anyway. “That’s not fair, Olivia. You know I’m killing myself to make it in this industry, and I have to take opportunities when they come up.”
“Well, they always seem tocome upat the worst times, Chuck.”
“You know I can’t control that. Not all of us have the industry dangling at our fingertips like you do.”
She turned to him with a sharp glare. “Donotgo there.”
He flinched for the slightest second, knowing he’d toed a line that was off-limits. Then his eyes narrowed into a cool glare. “Why am I always the bad guy? You think you’ve done everything right in this relationship?”
She folded her arms and stared up at the ceiling, not wanting to hear it. She watched the floors light up as they sank lower to the ground.
Chuck faced her with his hands on his hips, seemingly unperturbed that he was about to arrive half naked in the building lobby. “What about how you never let anyone help you with anything? Or how you turn everything into a competition that you have towinall the time? Or the way you leave toothpaste in the sink and use the last of the coffee and have horrible taste in music?”
She gasped, most offended by the final remark. The other things were half true, but her taste in music? Line. Crossed.
“Now you’re just being mean,” she said as they arrived in the lobby with ading.
Chuck spilled out into the room behind her, a modern tile and stone space, with his arms out and still arguing. Her flip-flops smacked against the shiny floor. Heads turned from the few other building occupants who happened to be coming andgoing. They were so wrapped up in arguing with each other, the staring hardly registered. “I’m not being mean, I’m being honest!” Chuck said.
Olivia stopped near the round table in the lobby’s center and caught a whiff of the freesias billowing from a vase there. She turned and Chuck almost ran into her from following so closely. Already breaking her no-more-touching promise, she jabbed her finger at his chest. “You wanthonest, Chuck? Okay, let’s play this game. How about how you leave the toilet seat up and I fall in, in the middle of the night. Or how you never do the dishes. Or how you bend over backward trying to keep everyone happy all the time—”
“Yet it somehow never seems to work with you.”
“—or the way you sleep through every movie I want to watch—”
“Stop picking boring movies, and I won’t fall asleep.”
“—or how when you chew, it sounds like rocks in a dryer—”
“You know I have a mandibular disorder.”
“—or how you take up the whole bed lying diagonally—”
“Sorry I’m six foot three.”
“—or how you leave onevery light in the house. My electricity bill is higher on the nights you stay over.”
“Well, that won’t be a problem anymore either because—”
“WE’RE DONE!” they said at the same time.
They’d reached the lobby doors. Olivia pushed through them onto the sidewalk bathed in morning L.A. sun, the gauzy bluish kind that made one acutely aware of the city’s air quality.
“You know what your real problem is, Olivia?” Chuck said, having followed her yet again.
This man.She swore.
“You never finish a fight. Look, you’re even running away from this one right now. How is anything ever supposed to get better if you don’t stick around to see it through?”
His honesty was too bright in the morning light. Taking a microscope to herself was not on the day’s agenda, which had already fallen so far off course she’d need a crane to get it back on track. She was supposed to be broken up with him, a clean cut. Goodbye. Not whatever this dramatic drag out into the street was. Though she should have known that what had started with a spark would end with a blast.
Had she not been so caught up in arguing with him, she might have noticed the young man across the street filming them with his phone.