~Olivia
*
In a way, he is quite beautiful, she thought as she watched a boy crossing the street. His blonde curls seemed golden in the setting sun, his blue eyes focused on the book in his hand as he walked on without paying attention to anyone around him, but there was something in the way he walked, that Olivia disliked - something that screamed of the wealth he lived in, and something which made him so attractive to the other girls in the first place. Something she never really understood.
She sighed as he entered an old building and disappeared. I wonder if I'd ever know what living in a place like that feels like.
"Dreaming of another life, again?"
She turned at the voice, facing an older man in dark green suit. He was no stranger to her, in as many ways as one could imagine, and she smiled back to him as he flashed a grin at her.
"Always," she said then. "There must be more than this. Has to."
"Then leave," he replied. As if it's the easiest thing to do.
She frowned. "I do wish I could," she confessed, carefully, so quietly no one around could hear. "I have a life here." If one can call it so. "I have a job."
"Nice job it is," he muttered, turning to a group of girls about Olivia's age, all in those same skirts and heels. Olivia couldn't help but feel guilty, every time they would get to the subject. Why do clients enjoy questioning our lives and choices so much? "You sell what should be the most important to you."
And you're whom I sell it to.
"No," she said instead, looking up to the sky, and stars already appearing though the west was still in shades of dark orange. She felt tears pricking in her eyes, and not for the first time in her life, wished she could just make them dry out. She'd cried her share of tears in past few years - she hated how easy it still was to make her cry. "I don't sell my little sister, nor would I ever let her come in my place. I do what I have to - and the only thing I really can."
The man in green shrugged, and Olivia almost laughed. She didn't even know his name - nor did she care, but she knew he didn't truly care for her personal problems either.
"You're wasting your youth, if you ask me." I didn't ask you. "And beauty, not to mention." There we are. His eyes traveled from her hair, over the freckles on her face, down to arms crossed on her chest. "Come out with me."
"We are out," she replied dryly, "can't you see the starry sky?"
"That's not what I meant." He hesitated. "You know."
"I do," she admitted. "And I already said no tens of times before, haven't I?" She sighed, and inhaled warm, heavy scent of summer night, closing her eyes for a moment. "I don't care to like the people I sleep with, and I don't sleep with people I like. They sooner or later leave anyway."
"That's unfair," he countered, ignoring her as she shook her head. "You're judging it based on your mother's life, not your own."
Olivia couldn't help but frown again, turning back to the motel they stood in front of and inviting him to follow with a move of her head.
"Learning from other people's mistakes is better than making your owns," she said, nodding to the manager and opening the door to her usual room. "And it's easier to live lonely than have a broken heart."
*
She first saw the young stranger as she walked home, late that night, as the sky turned to a shroud of black velvet and dappled with silvery dots, perfectly clear as if the rain hadn't just soaked the whole world around her.
He was standing in her doorway, hidden from the rain and sights, his hair under a hood and his eyes looking at her.
"Excuse me," he said as she approached, in an unusually polite way for Olivia to hear. She stopped, eyeing him suspiciously, interested despite of the potential danger. He gave her a little smile. "Can you tell me the date please?"
"Um. It's eleventh of August," she replied, somewhat disappointed it was all he wanted to know. You must stop imaging the world will ever get more interesting than it is, Liv. "The year is..oh. Are you alright?"
He glanced at his arm, following her glare, as if he sees it for the first time; a blood stain was spreading over his sleeve, as if he's just been shot. Yet he shows no pain..he looks more surprised than hurt.
"I'm alright," he muttered, running the fingers of his other hand through his hair, taking the hood down along. She bit her lip. Empathy will get you in trouble once.
"It's quite a dangerous neighbourhood to stay in, especially when you're hurt," she admitted, hesitating. Elie is sleeping.. "Look, I live here, just upstairs.. would you like to come up?"
He lifted an eyebrow. "I'm engaged," he said, and she made an effort to keep her face impassive, wrapping her jacket tighter to hide her clothes.
"I didn't ask you to marry me." Nor to sleep with me, she stopped herself from adding, though she was fairly sure he managed to follow her train of thoughts. She awaited, and he finally smiled.
"I would appreciate it," he said. "I assure you, you have nothing to be worried about, miss.."
"Revel," she finished his sentence as they climbed upstairs together. "You can call me Olivia, I suppose."
*
Putting down the small bottle of alcohol, she sighed, somewhat relieved and slowly starting to breathe normally again. What had seemed to be a light injury, proved itself to be a potentially lethal one, as she took off her guest's shirt and examined it. It wasn't a gunshot wound - rather a deep, sharp cut, and Olivia didn't manage to get him to tell her what had inflicted it.
She cleaned it up the best she could, and wrapped it with a cloth, careful not to hurt him though the strange man didn't even make a sound.
"My father was a doctor," she said, as he'd asked her where she'd learned to do it. "He left when I was sixteen, but still he managed to teach me a lot before that..can you move?"
He nodded, lifting slowly his arm and then putting it back down again.
"Thank you," he said, and there was something in his voice, at the same time exotic and strangely familiar, that Olivia found both comforting and alarming. Her eyes caught his; deep green with just a touch of brown around his pupils, that making them appear to be even bigger than they were.
"I didn't catch your name," she said silently, not quite sure why she kept her voice barely louder than a whisper. My sister is asleep in the other room, she told herself, feeling the heat in her cheeks and looking away. It was stupid - more than stupid, it was pathetic and ridiculous. You like a man you haven't even properly met yet, who appeared on your doorstep asking you what date it was. So clever, Liv. Send him out.
"Dante," he replied, not offering a last name.
It wasn't his real name - Olivia could tell, from the way he pronounced it; as if he'd never said it out loud before. Not the one that was given to him as a newborn, anyway.
She'd heard more than enough lies in her life, to know what the truth was and what wasn't - yet despite of not telling the truth, this man didn't really seem like a liar either. More as if he's imagined a name for himself, one he'd use if he ever happens to be in need of one.
"As you wish," she said therefore. Dante nodded.
"You seemed to have saved my life," he said softly, taking his shirt back from the chair she left it on. "A favour for a favour, I owe you the same."
"You owe me nothing," she replied automatically. Why not? You don't even know who he really is, perhaps this is your chance to get a different life you dream about so much.. She shoved the thought away. "It wasn't a favour, it was what needed to be done. Otherwise I'd have your death at my conscious and I'd hardly stand it."
She watched as he put on his shirt again, well aware of herself staring at him, but she couldn't really help it. Over his ribs on the left side, moving upwards over his back and finishing at the bottom of his neck, there was the most complicated tattoo Olivia's ever seen, composed of hundreds of small letters and drawings, so enchanting that, for a moment, she wished she could just reach and draw her fingers over his skin. And then the moment passed, he buttoned his shirt up, and she bit her lip to focus once more.
"I like the tattoo," she admitted. "Does it have a meaning?"
"Everything has a meaning, does it not?" He replied with a question, grinning at her.
"Will you tell me?"
He looked at her, turning serious again, as if he wasn't sure what to say - or how to say it. "Perhaps once. It's a rather long story, I'm afraid, and it is getting very late."
She left him to sleep on the couch, hoping that way he'd be there in the morning and she'd be able to think of a way to get him to tell her proper answers to her questions, and turned back to him once more before closing the bedroom door behind her. Not for the first time, she asked herself if she trusted him. You do, a voice in her head replied. She agreed - but she didn't quite understand why was it so.
"Maybe you could tell me in the morning," she said, in an almost challenging voice. "I love long stories."
As she wished him goodnight and locked her door behind her, standing by the couch Dante only smiled.
***
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