Enjoy the first of three already completed and waiting on my desktop to be released once a day chapters. ;-p
This one is for Diane, who has been waiting for this one for a minute. And to all of you anxiously awaiting From Paris With Love!
She always knew where to find him.
Letter in hand, Holly navigated her way through the halls of the Denver Main Branch of the United States Postal Service to the little corner nook that was the Dead Letter Office.
Not much had changed in the few years since she last walked its busy corridors, which became less so the closer one got to the Dead Letter Office. To her, it always seemed a world away from the rest of the Branch, a place of refuge in the midst of a storm, where time stood still and the past was still very much the present. The thought brought her comfort.
She took a left and pushed her way through the first set of doors, then the second, into the Dead Letter Office.
Although prepared to see Oliver, and likely Rita and Norman as well, going about their daily tasks as she had been accustomed to walking in on years before, she instead found the Dead Letter Office completely empty.
Holly looked at her watch.
Lunch.
It was no matter-she had the place to herself and the freedom to explore.
As Holly surveyed the space for the first time in years, she began to pick up on a few changes. The most notable was the computer only steps inside the room, living on what could only be described as some sort of makeshift workspace that someone clearly occupied. It perplexed her. She couldn't imagine Oliver letting something like that through the front door, let alone giving it décor-appropriate modification. She had seen neither Rita nor Norman with so much as a cell phone. This was definitely new.
She cast the thought aside and made her way to Oliver's desk. She loved seeing him there. In fact, it seemed to be the one place where his happiness was guaranteed.
Holly hung her handbag on the coat rack and sat down in his chair, surveying his desk for things she remembered, only to find it littered with a few boxes he must have been in the process of working with and the various tools of his trade, including his prized letter openers.
Comforted by his predictability, she swiveled his chair around to inspect the trophy display she spied out of the corner of her eye just moments before.
Her eyes were immediately drawn to Stanley O'Toole's Dark of Night award. She pulled it down and cradled it in her hands, remembering Oliver using it at home in the mornings. One day he brought it to work, and Holly never saw it again after that. In fact, she had almost forgotten about it.
To her surprise, the cherished cup wasn't alone. It had neighbors-four of them-on a beautiful graduated mahogany display, which prominently featured a picture of the four smiling recipients of the awards.
The smile on Oliver's face was one of genuine pride. It was strange to think that somehow, over the course of two years, she had almost forgotten what he looked like, or how handsome he was. For the first time in a long time she felt butterflies in her stomach.
The butterflies were squashed, however, as her attention shifted to the individual standing next to Oliver. Holly had never seen her before.
Well dressed. Modern. Pretty.
Holly's initial assessment was superficial and without prejudice. If anything, it occurred to Holly that if she dyed her hair blonde, they very well could have been mistaken for twins. This assessment, however, troubled her, and it became pertinent she determine the doppelganger's name, a feat achieved by carefully turning each Dark of Night Award until she found the name she didn't know.
Rita…
Norman….
Shane….
"Shane McInerney," she read aloud.
She looked back towards the computer she passed on the way in. Putting the pieces together, she concluded that Shane McInerney must be their fourth musketeer now. The thought was unsettling for reasons she failed to fully grasp.
She looked down at Oliver's letter, which she had been carrying in her pocket virtually since it arrived. Oliver missed her. It was her Oliver begged to come back to him. Whatever this Shane was doing there, it was strictly functional.
Click, Click
Holly had a guest. This wasn't Rita, because Rita was too uncoordinated to walk in anything but flats, and the sound rung decidedly as heels.
Shane.
Holly swiveled the chair around. Time to play.
She took a minute to look the speechless Shane over, who looked as though she had seen a ghost.
Pencil skirt, nice blouse, ankle boots a nice touch.
Holly experienced all kinds of unprocessed feelings, which unintentionally spewed out in a monologue that her apparent replacement was too stunned to interrupt.
"Hi, I'm Holly O'Toole," she greeted, "Would you like a Yoohoo?"
It was suddenly important for Holly to demonstrate her mastery of the space, and everything in it, even if her absence should have rendered her a guest there. Instead, she acted as if she owned it, or at the very least could lay claim to some remote piece of it, even if that remote piece was Oliver's fridge, and more specifically, his Yoohoo.
Shane remained silent; the stunned look her constant companion. Under normal circumstances, Holly might have been ashamed of her lack of tact in relating to this woman, but she was admittedly threatened.
And then it occurred to Holly that though she had introduced herself, she hadn't quite identified her relationship to Oliver.
She reached into the fridge to pull out a Yoohoo and closed it gingerly, still having Shane's full attention, "I'm his wife, you know."
"Uh, huh," Shane squeaked out.
"Isn't he such a gentleman? He's just the best. And he always does the right thing," Holly continued, walking towards Shane, who seemed to cower at Holly's approach.
That was Shane's fatal mistake. It gave away every card she might have been trying to hold from the minute she walked into the DLO. Holly knew immediately that it wasn't Oliver who had feelings for Shane-it was Shane who had feelings for Oliver.
"And just between us girls," Holly lowered her voice to a whisper as she got within an arms reach of Shane, "he's also a really good kisser…"
Holly walked back to his desk, suddenly remembering the drawer she used to stock with spare ties for him to change when they went out to dinner. She opened the third drawer down on the right side to find three ties still there. She pulled one out.
"See this tie," she said, holding it up for Shane to see, "I got it for him for his birthday right after we go married. Keeping ties in this drawer used to be the only way I could get him to change for dinner in the city. I guess he still keeps the drawer stocked," she chuckled.
Suddenly the door swung open.
Holly's heart stopped.
She may not have seen him for a few years, but he truly had not changed one bit since she saw him last. He was handsome in his well-fitting pea coat, and she could tell Oliver was still partial to his suits and ties.
The look on his face was no doubt one of surprise, but she couldn't help but pick up a certain level of distress as well, as he couldn't seem to decide which of the women before him to focus on.
Not once during the entire twelve-hour flight from Paris to Denver had she even once questioned her decision to return. That hadn't changed. But Holly instinctively began to question her brazen assumption that Oliver had no feelings for this other woman.
She walked around to the other side of the desk and took her place next to Shane, still struggling to get Oliver's full attention.
"Hi, Oliver," Holly said quietly, walking in front of Shane and disrupting the silence that had fallen on the room, forcing him to focus on her, which he seemed reluctant to do.
He remained silent, but composed himself enough to walk towards her and determine whether or not she was a mirage that might disappear if he came too close.
The butterflies in her stomach multiplied with every step he took. She wasn't quite sure what he was thinking, and that scared her a bit, but not enough to weaken her resolve.
When he was close enough to determine that she was, in fact, really standing there in front of him, his face softened and he smiled. His blue eyes cut through her like a heavenly knife. If they hadn't been estranged, she might have pulled him in for a kiss. Seeing that smile made her feel like a teenager in love for the first time all over again. Oliver used to look at her like that when they first started dating, the memory, however, was a distant one.
She remembered the letter clutched in her hand and tried to form a sentence.
"I, uh, got your letter," she said nervously.
He looked down at the letter she carried in her hands, and, for the second time, Holly picked up on something in Oliver she couldn't quite place. It frustrated her, because there was a time that every wrinkle in his brow and dart of his eyes had a description in her vocabulary. All of that knowledge was rewritten and now a mystery to her.
"I see…that," he said, still in disbelief at her presence before him.
A pregnant silence filled the room. There was so much to say, and no knowledge on either of their parts as to where to begin.
Uncomfortable with the silence, Holly pressed on, "I always thought I knew what I was going to say," she admitted weakly.
He seemed relieved that she was similarly uncomfortable. She knew it had to be a shock that him finally writing her a letter would be what brought her back. He probably expected she would just write him back, or at the very least call. But here she was in the DLO, fumbling for words with the one person with whom conversation was once the easiest thing in the world.
"I know you're surprised to see me here, all the way from Paris," she began, not even sure where she planned to take their conversation.
"Are you happy...in Paris?" Oliver asked, his eyes penetrating her soul, as if her answer wouldn't matter if he discovered her true intentions first.
He was a master at getting to the heart of the matter. And his was the question Holly struggled with the most. She loved Paris, but part of her had always wanted Oliver to come after her. If anything, his failure to do so made it easier to stay on the other side of the world, learning a new language and forging her own path. But finding Oliver's letter in her mailbox reminded Holly of the man she left behind, and the question of her happiness, once easy to answer, came into question once more.
"I am. I'm doing well there," she responded carefully, "You remember how I used to sit with you on the patio, going through the paper editing articles on Sunday? It came in handy, because I became an editor of the English-language version of one of the major regional publications in Paris."
"Congratulations."
Holly could tell he was conflicted, as if her good fortune meant she had no intention of staying. She wanted to discuss things with him more, but she couldn't bring herself to do it in the DLO.
"Speaking of which," she began again, looking at her watch and trying to calculate the time difference between Denver and Paris, "I have a deadline fast approaching for the next edition of the publication that I have to be ready for. You know me, I always wait till the last minute…"
"Oh," Oliver said, still trying to take everything in, but also disappointed at the prospect of her leaving.
"I'm staying at the Brown Palace Hotel. You should come meet me for drinks," Holly proposed, grabbing her handbag from the coat rack. "How does eight sound?"
"I will see you then," he said with a half-smile.
"You look well, Oliver," she said sweetly, squeezing his arm as she walked by, "I will see you tonight."
Before she opened the door to leave, she couldn't help to turn back and look at him. He hadn't moved a muscle, and she could tell by his slumped shoulders that it had taken everything he had just to keep upright.
Oliver was fighting with something inside himself that Holly couldn't place, and she began to wonder just how long it took his lost letter to find her.
Pretty heavy stuff, right?
Thinking about Holly a little differently now? Don't forget to review!