Page 1 of Baby, It’s You (Clairesville #1)

Olive

I startle awake to the sound of tires screeching, and then a large crash, followed by someone shouting, “ You cheater! Ass. ”

I rub my eyes with my hands, then swing my feet over the side of my bed and head to my apartment window to see the commotion that woke me from my hour of blissful slumber.

What I see is no surprise: my downstairs neighbor and best friend, Ivy, is standing in front of her boyfriend's car with a bat, swinging it around like she is Tiger Woods’s ex-wife.

His black Camry’s front windshield has a huge shatter mark across it from her first blow, aka the culprit that woke me.

“I should have known. When that cocktail girl at Slots R Us introduced herself to me as Tiffani with an I … Who cares how it’s spelled!” she continues to scream.

Her boyfriend, Dennis, who is a six-foot-two “professional” poker player who looks like a young Mark Ruffalo—if he stuck his finger in an electrical socket and became the slimiest person on the planet—leans out the driver’s side window.

“Baby! Tiffani with an I is just a friend! Her texting me that she wants to suck my chips again was just a joke! You know you’re the only girl for me.” He throws his hands up in protest.

Groaning, I step away from my window. I wish I could say this is something I’ve never seen from them, but that would be a lie. Ivy and Dennis have been together for four years, and in that time, he’s cheated six times, and she’s taken him back six times.

Knowing the cycle is about to start again, I rub my eyes and walk to my fridge to uncork a bottle of chardonnay, knowing that soon I will hear her run up the steps to my place.

Sighing, I look around my apartment and begin to pick up pieces of my work uniform that are strewn across the floor from me yanking them off over my head, tossing the outfit and my shoes without care, and collapsing into my bed the second I walked in the door after my shift ended.

Loud, muffled back and forth continues outside and at this rate the whole complex will be awake soon.

This is why I don’t date—I don’t trust men and I never will.

Between my parents’ constant arguing and my father’s short fuse growing up—that led to a divorce when I was young—and now watching Ivy’s toxic relationship, I will never allow myself to get in a position where a partner makes me feel less than or causes me to lose myself.

The stress I have watched the women in my life go through because of a man's bad decisions and emotional intelligence is something I don’t want for myself.

I have watched my spunky strawberry blonde best friend go from someone who lit up a room when she walked in, to someone who can’t even hold a conversation without checking her phone anxiously to see what Dennis is doing.

I saw my mother cry time and time again because my dad called her another horrible name and stormed out of the house, going god knows where.

Eventually when I was twelve, he left and never came back.

His leaving caused something inside my mother to snap, and she was never mentally right again.

After he was gone, my mom dated one horrible guy after another, constantly causing chaos in not only her life, but mine.

The nausea I feel in my stomach every time I think about the slamming of doors and the voices raising, followed by abandonment…

I would choose to be alone over a “love” like that, always.

Ivy and I have been best friends since we were sophomores in high school, when her nomad parents decided to move here, to Clairesville, a town on the outskirts of Tennessee, after throwing a dart at a map.

Literally, they packed up everything they had and moved here on a whim, decided by one single dart.

Freshman year I was kind of a loner; I had a few friends that I would eat lunch with, but no one I would spend time with outside of school.

Sophomore year that all changed. This wild-eyed girl barged into my first period class with pigtails, a tie-dye shirt, and bell bottoms. She loudly introduced herself to everyone as Ivy Penny and tossed her bag down next to me in the front row.

Once the teacher started talking about the syllabus, she turned to me with a big smile and immediately started talking to me like we had known each other for years.

She told me about how her dad burnt breakfast and it started a fire and the fire department came to their house and the firefighters were so hot.

She enthusiastically told me this all happened that morning before her first day of school.

I sat there absorbing her story and laughed along with her.

I had never felt that kind of natural connection to anyone before, and we became inseparable after finding out how many things we had in common.

We both hated mustard, appreciated all boy bands, had an aversion to jean skirts, and most importantly, cried every time we saw an old person eating alone at a restaurant.

We also cried every time we thought of an old person eating alone at a restaurant.

I’m tearing up right now.

Glancing at the clock, I see it's now past 4 A.M. and she still isn’t up here yet.

I smell my armpit and cringe. I was too tired to shower when I walked in the door but now that I’m up, I must handle my stench.

I head to the bathroom without unlocking my front door—Ivy already has a key, and I watch way too much True Crime to leave my front door unlocked, even for a minute.

I flick on my bathroom light and look around my dull bathroom.

Chipped tan tile floors and a flickering florescent light stare back at me.

My apartment is old, and the complex needs a serious update, but I stay because it's close to work and let’s get real: I'm not raking in the cash.

I basically live at the bar, but that's how I like it.

Cranking the shower handle to the hottest setting it can produce, I decide this will be an “everything” shower, because my legs are hairy enough to knit into a scarf.

Mentally preparing myself for the next twenty-five minutes of washing, exfoliating, and shaving, I connect to my wireless speaker, turning on my “All my Vibes” playlist at a low volume.

I make sure to respect my sleeping neighbors, of course, and step into my standing tub.

“Zero” by The Smashing Pumpkins starts to play in the background as the steam from my scalding hot shower clouds my vision and relaxes my aching muscles.

Every bar shift leaves me drained but happy.

I enjoy my job at Whiskey Jane’s. I love the regulars, and my tips are usually fairly good.

Even though I’m the manager, I’m also the bartender most days since our staff is extremely limited.

It doesn’t bother me, though, and every day I leave happy, even when I don’t make much money.

That is until recently. I can’t stand the guy currently in charge of the bar. He blows.

“OLIVE!” I hear Ivy whine from somewhere in my apartment.

“In here,” I call.

Ivy opens the bathroom door with a whimper, and I peek my head outside the shower as she plops onto the shag rug by the sink and buries her mascara- and tear-smeared face in her hands.

“So, what happened this time?” I ask, returning to my left leg shave.

“He cheated on me again! After all this time and all of the promises he’s made me, the ass turns around and does it again,” Ivy groans.

I roll my eyes as I go back behind the curtain. “Where did you get the bat from?”

“I think it was little Steve’s from Apartment 12A. I passed him playing baseball with some friends yesterday by the pond. I saw it on the grass right by the sidewalk as Dennis pulled up in his car. It was really meant to be.”

“How convenient,” I say. “Don’t do that again, though. He might get petty and call the police on you. How did you bust him this time?”

“His iMessage was logged into my iPad and all these texts from Tiffani came through.”

“What an imbecile,” I say over my music, and shake my head in disgust from behind the curtain. I open my cherry blossom scented shampoo and start to lather my hair up in suds.

I have been down this road with her so many times. I peek my head out once more and say, “Kitchen, chardonnay, Damon Salvatore. I’ll be out in five.”

She nods from her puddle of sadness on the floor and gets up to begin the routine we have done time and again since high school. Let's pretend the chardonnay was apple juice when we were sixteen; we were good girls.

Our tradition started after Ivy’s first heartbreak with Chad Miller junior year.

She found him making out with Mackenzie McCray after his track meet by the bleachers.

He smelled like a walking Axe body spray ad and had acne everywhere, but that didn’t matter to Ivy.

All she saw was the “love of her life” sucking lips with another girl and it was over.

She wailed next to me the whole ride home and I promised her I would sleep over at her house.

That night we raided her mother’s wine cellar.

Yes, her nomad parents were wealthy enough to have a wine cellar.

Thanks to Ivy’s mom having an inheritance, we were introduced to our friend chardonnay.

Half a bottle of wine deep, we decided to watch a show with our favorite hypothetical boyfriends, Damon and Stefan Salvatore, because everything was easier in fiction.

This was where our heartbreak routine began.

When a boy let Ivy down, we just watched hot men on TV and our troubles floated away, momentarily.

I towel off my hair when I’m done and throw on a green oversized T-shirt.

Then I walk out to my grandma-style worn paisley couch from Goodwill and plop down next to Ivy.

She tosses me a blanket and hands me the open bottle of wine.

Then she clicks play on a rerun that we have watched a million times over the years.

There’s no reason to try and convince her to block him or leave him.

She knows what I think of Dennis, and I know she won’t walk away from the relationship.

We have learned this balance from years of friendship: take each other as we are.

I want more for her, but she has to want more for herself to make a change.

After the episode finishes, I hear her start to sniffle next to me and know the tears are coming.

I pause the intro to the next episode and open my arms to her.

She lays with me on the couch, and I let her sob, knowing she just needs to let it out.

After fifteen minutes, she finally stops, and only hiccups from crying so hard are left.

Ivy sits up and gives me a small smile so I take that as my opening to call him every name in the book I can think of.

She laughs, forming a giant snot bubble by accident, which makes us both crack up hysterically.

Ivy then reaches over and clicks the play button on the remote and we resume watching like nothing ever happened.

Eventually, we drift off to sleep, intertwined and dreaming of fictional men.