Good Girl, Olive
1390 Words
~Olive~
Okay so the whole table goes completely dead silent in that very specific way where you suddenly notice the sound of your own breathing, and my mother’s spoon stops halfway to her mouth like somebody hit pause on her entire body, and her eyes get so wide I can see the whites all the way around them, and the worst part is that I am not even a little bit sorry.
“Olive.” My mom’s voice has gone tiny and I cannot — I literally cannot — look at her right now, because if I look at her I am going to crumble, and I do not crumble, and I especially do not crumble in dining rooms full of men who are watching me decide whether to crumble. “Baby, please.”
“It’s fine, Mom, it’s totally fine, I promise, it’s fine.”
“Olive, sweetheart”
“Mom, I said it’s fine.”
I keep my eyes on Richard. I keep them locked on his stupid handsome silver-fox face and I do not blink and I do not look away first.
And here is the part where Richard Hayes ruins my entire night, reader, because I came into this dinner braced for a yell. I came in braced for the speech every rich dad in every show I have ever watched gives the bratty stepdaughter on the first night, the while you’re under my roof speech or the I will not be spoken to like that speech or, like, the I think we got off on the wrong foot speech that Mr. Bridgerton would give. I had a comeback ready for every single one of those. I had a flowchart.
He doesn’t do any of them.
“Olive.” His voice is so gentle, it is genuinely upsetting. “I’d like you to do something for me, sweetheart. I’d like you to take a breath again”
I do not take a breath. I am, in fact, holding mine on principle.
“Take a breath, Olive.”
I take a breath. Why am I taking a breath. I did not authorize this breath. My lungs are traitors.
“Good.” He nods, like a guy giving a dog a treat. “Now I’d like you to listen to me very carefully, because what I am about to say is going to be the only time I say it, and I’d like you to understand it the first time so we don’t have to have this conversation again. Can you do that for me?”
I open my mouth to tell him exactly what he can do with his conversation.
“Can you do that for me, Olive?”
I close my mouth.
I do not know why I close my mouth.
I nod. At Richard Hayes.
Olive. Olive what is wrong with you. You’re nodding. We don’t nod.
“Good girl.”
Excuse me.
I’m sorry, excuse me. What did this man just call me. I am about to combust — I am about to genuinely combust at this table in this Tom-Ford-wearing-silver-fox’s dining room — and Crew, beside me, who is still pretending to be invisible, makes the smallest possible sound in the back of his throat at the words good girl, and I am going to kill him, I am going to murder him, I am going to put him in the ground before dessert, I am..
“Olive.” Richard again.
“Let’s go through this together. You are my stepdaughter. Or rather, you will be my stepdaughter as of Saturday morning at eleven a.m., when I marry your mother in the garden of this house in front of two hundred and forty guests. You are currently sitting at my dinner table.
“You are eating food that my staff prepared in my kitchen with ingredients I paid for. You will sleep tonight in a bed in a room in a house that belongs to me. You will, starting Saturday, be living in this house for the foreseeable future, because your mother who, I will remind you, is sitting four feet to your left has agreed to move in with me, and you are her daughter, and her happiness is, I’m sure, important to you. Are you with me so far, Olive?”
I cannot speak. I have never not been able to speak. This is a new experience for me and I do not care for it.
I nod. Again.
(Why are we nodding. Olive. We have GOT to stop nodding.)
“Wonderful.” He takes a small sip of his wine and sets the glass down. “Then I’d like you to understand the following, sweetheart, and I’d like you to understand it now so that we can spend the rest of our acquaintance without having to revisit it. In this house, you may call me Richard.
“You may call me Mr. Hayes if it makes you feel better. You may, when the mood strikes, call me old man — I’ll be honest, I found it charming. What you may not do, Olive what you will not do, going forward, in any room in this house, in front of any member of this family is raise your voice at me. You may disagree with me. You may dislike me. You may, if you wish, hate me. I will not require your affection, your respect, or your gratitude. But you will not, sweetheart, raise your voice at me in this house. Are we clear?”
The room is so quiet.
My mother has gone past crying. She is now in that worse place where the tears are running silently down her face and she is not making any sound at all, and she is gripping her water glass so hard I can see the white of her knuckles.
“Crystal.”
Reader, I said crystal. Like a girl in a movie. Like Aubrey Plaza in Parks and Rec doing a deadpan. I said crystal in a flat little voice that sounded nothing like me, and I am going to be hearing that crystal echo in my head every time I try to fall asleep for the next three months, thank you so much.
“Crystal.” Richard nods, as if I have given him a piece of paperwork he was waiting on. “Thank you, Olive. Now. You said earlier you were tired.
“Why don’t you let one of the boys walk you upstairs to your room. I think we’ve had enough excitement for one evening, and your mother and I have a few things to discuss in private before bed.”
He looks at Cas.
Cas does not move.
Richard’s eyebrow lifts. Just a millimeter. Just a fraction.
“Cassius.”
Cas stands up.
I stand up. My knees are doing something I do not have permission for, but I lock them, and I push my chair back, and I lean across the table one more time and I kiss the top of my mother’s head and I do not look at Richard, and I do not look at Crew, and I walk out of the dining room with Cassius Hayes one step behind me.
Crew, behind us, lifts his wineglass to his father in a small, ironic little toast and downs the rest of it in one swallow.
I do not look back to see Richard’s response.
I am suddenly, very seriously, afraid.
We get to the top of the staircase. I turn left toward my room. He turns left with me.
I stop outside my door. I put my hand on the knob. I do not turn around.
For a long, long moment, neither of us says anything.
“You will not do that again, Olive.”
I do not turn around.
I cannot.
“What.”
“You will not raise your voice at my father in his house. You will not call him old man at his table. You will not embarrass your mother on the night before her wedding. You will not and I cannot stress this enough..make me look at you the way I had to look at you tonight ever again. Are we clear.”
I keep my voice flat.
“And what if I do, Cassius.”
“Try me”
- Writer
