Always?

Chapter 19

For the first time in a month and a half, Oliver knew what true joy felt like. It was his first day off, and he had assigned Matt to babysit Atlas so he could stay at home, in the apartment he was renting, even though he barely spent any time here, and actually make his rent worth it. He would rot, get his fill on reading a fantasy book he had started so long ago, finish the newest season of a show, and recharge his social battery, which was essentially drained from how much time he had to spend around people, thanks to Atlas.

Of course, that delusion only lasted an hour after he woke up, while he was sitting at his small dining table, in his pyjamas, sipping his coffee, working away in his notebook, jotting some ideas down with the television on in the background for some ambience, when his phone rang. He stared at it as it sat beside the notebook on his table. He saw Ani, a picture of her. It was from when they had all first dyed their hair, a mirror selfie as they looked like aliens with tinfoil in their hair. He watched it ring, and eventually she gave up, hanging up. He picked his phone up and threw it onto the couch. There is no way they would be ruining his one-day off.

Oliver continued writing in his notebook, working on one of the main antagonists. This young man was both a victim of the system that society had created and also a perpetrator who had committed heinous acts against others. Now, he had to make it so that, although he was a bad character, he could explain his reasoning and thinking without it seeming like he was justifying the character's actions, but instead giving people another perspective on why he did what he did, which seemed to be a lot harder than he had initially thought.

He heard his phone ring again, but he ignored it. If it were essential, they would ring him. Oliver ignored nine missed calls, and on the tenth call, from Ani, he picked up. “Do you not know how to answer your f*****g phone?” she snapped, instead of hello.

“What do you want?” he asked. “I told you, it’s my day off. Leave me be.”

“No can do, Matt brought Atlas over here, he’s with me, and I need to go out, and I can’t leave him here alone with Cai. So, come sit with him.”

“No.”

“I will leave him with Cai,” she threatened.

Oliver let out a noise of frustration. “Fine! Give me twenty minutes, I need to shower and get dressed. I’ll be over soon.”

He took an hour out of pure spite. When he finally arrived at the girls' apartment, he let himself in and was annoyed to find Ani and Atlas chatting away on the couch, the coffee table in front of them littered with what appeared to be introductory scripts for shows and movies.

“I think I really like the storytelling aspect of ‘In which direction does the wind blow’, but I like the more mystical element in ‘Mercury in the Sky’,” Atlas was saying, as he pointed at two scripts in the big pile. Oliver let his presence be known as he walked into their eyesight.

“You took your time,” Ani deadpanned, as she shot up, grabbing her coat, which had been placed on the side of the couch. “Watch them all, Amber’s in her room. She hasn’t been out in a few days. Check on her, will you? She’s told everyone else to leave her alone. Maybe you can get something out of her. I’ll be back in a bit.”

Before Oliver could comment on anything, she was already out the door. Cai was sitting on the ground, near the TV, flipping through a crystal book. He looked up at Oliver, said nothing before going back to his book. Oliver noted the notebook beside him, and it looked like he was taking notes on whatever he was looking at.

He plopped onto the couch, taking a seat where Ani had been as he flipped through the ones on the table, and the one thing he noted about all of them was that they were all fantastical in nature. “I thought you didn’t do fantasy,” Oliver said, flipping through the script of ‘Mercury in the Sky’.

Atlas awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck, dropping a different script back onto the coffee table. “I love fantasy, though my mother did not want me to align myself with it, because it was seen as immature and naive. Without her in the picture, if I want to do acting, I definitely want to do it in that genre.”

Great. Now, not only was Atlas ruining his day off, he was about to destroy his favourite genre too. Atlas turned to look at Oliver. “I know you said you like fantasy, can you help me pick one of them? Please, I’m torn between ‘Mercury in the Sky’ and ‘In which direction the wind blows’.”

Oliver side-eyed him. “Why pick one? Do both.”

“I can’t. They’re all shooting at similar times, so I need to pick one.”

“Fine. Tell me what you like about each.”

“I like the fantastical element in ‘Mercury is in the Sky’, how, despite it being a fantasy setting, it still tackles a lot of political issues in the real world.”

“Are you vocal about your political stances? People will want to know where you stand.”

“I’m with humanity,” Atlas deadpanned. “Ever since I announced I’ll be back, I’ve been very vocal on where I stand with everything. Considering you're my manager, you should check my i********: more.”

“I blocked you. Okay. So you like the political side of that one, what about the other one?”

Atlas stared at him, a little shocked, but he sighed, continuing. “The storytelling. Even though it’s more toned down, there are still elements, you don’t know if it’s truly fantastic or an element of the unreliable narrator. And, I think that would be an interesting side to explore.”

He continued to talk, and Oliver stared at him, as Atlas spoke about all of the scrips, what he liked, what he didn’t like, why he was leaning towards certain ones, which ones he had already decided that while they were interesting, he wouldn’t be accepritng, and all Oliver could think about was that maybe he wasn’t that bad. But that thought snapped him out of the weird trance he had found himself in.

“I like ‘In which direction the wind blows’. I like unreliable narrators.”

Oliver stood up, walking over to the fire escape and climbing out, taking a seat as he grabbed a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, staring at the sky. Whatever the hell had happened in there, he would be shutting down. No way in hell was he doing any of this s**t again. He had been hurt one too many times to be stupid enough to fall for it again.

“I thought you stopped smoking.” His head snapped over to see Amber standing there. She was in a baggy hoodie, and she looked like she had seen better days. He thought back to what Ani had asked him to do, and so he moved over a little, letting her take a seat beside him. He offered her a cigarette; he saw her mental gears ticking before she nodded.

He watched her as she sanitised her hands, then took the cigarette and lighter and sparked it up. “Working with Atlas brought the habit back,” Oliver said.

The two were quiet until they had finished it, and just before she could go back inside, Oliver grabbed her arm, nodding with his head for her to sit back down. She eyed him but did so, watching him with a frown “What?”

“What’s going on with you and Ani?” he asked, getting straight to the point. He was sick of whatever game the two were playing, and it was really ruining his vibe, if he was being honest.

“Are we that obvious?”

“Is the sky blue?” he deadpanned.

“The party we all went to a couple of months back, do you remember?”

“What about it?”

“I kissed Ani.”

Oliver faked a gasp, going as far as to cover his mouth with his hands. “No!”

“Cut it out.”

“Did she kiss you back?”

“We were drunk,” Amber muttered, slumping down, resting her head on his shoulder.

“Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“There’s your answer. Some things do not need to be complicated. Don’t make life harder than it already is.”

~*~