Chapter Two: Ocean Avenue
"There's a piece of you
that's here with me
It's everything I go,
it's everything I see"
~ Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard
Summer, 1981
They were just kids the first time they met. Olivia had been nine, way too young by modern standards to be running around an island all by herself. Yet, that was what she often found herself doing when Harper was too busy to remember she had a younger sister. Of course there was Todd, her age and always willing to follow her around like a bad shadow, but Olivia definitely did not want to spend any extra time with her new stepbrother.
She had gone too far into the forest - farther than her mother had told her was appropriate. It wasn't until the sun had started to sink, hanging precariously close to the treeline, that panic had begun to sink in. And so, though Olivia was far from a cryer, hot tears had begun to trickle down her cheeks. Still, she aimlessly wandered through the dark thickets with only the chirping of the crickets and the singing frogs to keep her company. Or so she thought.
"What are you doing out here?"
Olivia jumped at the unexpected sound of another human. Sniffling, she found herself looking at a pair of blue overalls, the dull clasps at eye level. Tilting her head backward, she was looking into bright, blue eyes and a frowning face.
"I can be here if I want." The stomped foot and set jawline may have been more intimidating if she weren't currently sniffling, tears rolling down her cheeks and making clear pathways through the dirt.
"You're lost." The boy wasted no time in making the accusation, his hands holding onto the straps of his overalls as he rocked backward on his heels.
"Am not!" Her frown deepened, heart racing as she resolved, resolutely, to not be lost in front of this boy.
"Fine, not lost girl –" the boy rolled his eyes, "Do you want to come look at the frogs with me?"
"Frogs?" Olivia questioned, sniffing and using the back of her hand to swipe at her tears. "I like frogs."
"Come on then." He led her further into the thicket, splashing through mud puddles and snapping twigs under their feet. Along the way, he introduced himself: "I'm Fitz, by the way."
"O…Olivia."
He led her to a small pond, barely larger than a mudhole, and urged her to kneel at its edge alongside him. The ground was wet, squishy beneath her knees, and cold seeped through the thin fabric of her shorts.
"So, not lost Olivia, where do you live?" Fitz questioned just as she dove forward, nearly dunking her head underwater to reach for a frog.
"It got away." Olivia frowned, scrambling to lift her face from the water and eyes darting about the grime to locate another amphibious friend. "Sharkfin Reef."
"Which house?" He suddenly lurched forward, his hand disappearing beneath the murky water for a couple seconds before reemerging with a small frog in his hands.
"We have a pond. It's bigger than this," Olivia announced, proudly, as she shuffled closer to him.
"Mrs. Barlowe's place?" He carefully shuffled the creature into Olivia's cupped hands.
"Nana?" Olivia grinned at the slimy animal she held, keeping her hands nearly closed so there would be no escapes. "Nana doesn't like our house. She says it 'minds her of my grampa. One of my grampas. Not my momma's daddy."
"That why she never stays there anymore? My mom thought it was abandoned."
"What's 'bandoned?" Olivia asked, lowering her hands toward the water and releasing her prize.
"That no one lives there."
"We live here every summer!" Olivia shook her head, sitting back on her heels and scrunching her face.
"Obviously," Fitz scoffed. "Why don't you ever do anything?"
"I'm doing someting now," Olivia argued. "I swim in our pond and I like the woods."
"You never come to the beach. Or the parties. There's parties like every weekend."
"I dunno," Olivia admitted, jumping at the first sound of an owl's hoot and widening her eyes. "Can you walk me home?"
"I thought you weren't lost?" Fitz smirked, standing and offering a hand to pull her to her feet.
"I lied."
"Did your house burn?"
Olivia turned sharply at the question, eyes narrowing as she took in the tall boy standing behind her. He had changed from the overall of the previous day and replaced them with light-blue swimming trunks. A small group of boys stood behind him, pushing each other and talking too loud.
"Is my house gone?" Olivia bit her bottom lip, brows creasing with worry.
"What? No. It's a –" Fitz sighed, waving a hand at his friends before plopping down in the sand beside her. "It's a joke. Because you never come to the beach?"
"Oh. It's a bad joke." Olivia laid back on her beach towel, closing her eyes.
"Did you come here just to sleep?"
"It's 'laxing."
"But you could swim –"
"The water makes my hair nasty."
"Surf –"
"I dunno how to surf."
"You know how to do anything, Barlowe?"
"Pope."
"What?"
"My name." Olivia spoke slowly, popping an eye open and looking at the boy beside her. "It's Pope."
"Oh. I thought because your mom –"
"She doesn't use any of my gramma's names either. It's Lewis. She's married."
"How do you keep up with all of that?" Fitz crossed his legs, sitting up and beginning to dig in the sand with his hands.
"I don't," Olivia shrugged, worming her way into a sitting position as well and joining Fitz's efforts in the hot sand. "Just the ones who stay."
"That's kind of sad, Liv."
"I like that." She worked a pile of sand up in front of them, squinting as she surveyed what they had to work with and asking: "Sandcastle?"
"I was thinking turtle." Fitz reached over her, using a finger to draw a rough sketch of his vision beside her leg. "You like being sad?"
"We should do it. Everyone else has done castles today." Olivia grinned, showing off her missing front tooth - a recent occurrence. "No I don't like being sad, you idiot. I've never had a nickname 'fore."
"No one's ever given you a nickname?"
"My stepbrother calls me barf bag and airhead." Her voice didn't waiver and neither did her actions as she made that statement, so matter of fact that she may as well have been recalling the weather or what she had for breakfast that morning.
"He sounds like a douche," Fitz declared.
"I don't like him," Olivia confided, frowning for a moment before whispering: "He scares me."
Summer, Present
"Did your house burn?"
"One of these days I'm going to say yes and you're going to feel like an arse." Olivia's eye roll was hidden by the large, round sunglasses covering a significant portion of her face.
"I'd probably know before you if that did happen," Fitz scoffed, collapsing beside her, chuckling when she huffed at the flying sand particles.
"Does anyone even know why they always greet each other like that?" Nat wondered, huffing as she struggled with a rolling cooler
"Only at the beach though." Ezra winked, taking the handle from Nat and heaving the heavy cooler to a shady spot beneath their umbrella.
"It's just an island kids thing," Fitz answered, bumping shoulders with Olivia.
"Do you want a towel?" Nat asked, digging through the beach bag Fitz had dropped prior to staking claim on his seat.
"Nah. I'll just steal Liv's if the sand gets too hot."
"Yes. Yes he does." Olivia shot Fitz a warning look as he slid his pinkie beside hers, linking their fingers. An audible sigh escaped her lips when Nat tossed the towel over her shoulder, not a single glance to gauge the direction of her throw, only to have the towel land over their legs and interlocking fingers. Sometimes, Olivia was sure, the universe hated her.
"Mum! Can we swim?" Poppy, suddenly disinterested in her sandbucket, launched herself into Olivia's lap - forcing Fitz's hasty retreat with his hand.
"Darling, you know I don't like to swim here." Olivia raised a hand, brushing an errant curl from her daughter's eyes.
"Uncle Fitz?" Oval-shaped brown-eyes turned on the man sitting beside Olivia, causing her to nearly snort at the resemblance to her own 9-year-old self.
"Olivia, your clone is trying to convince me to swim," Fitz complained, shaking his head at the prominent pout now gracing Poppy's lips.
"Your uncle's so old, he probably doesn't remember how to swim," Nat joked, kicking her sandals off by Olivia's towel and bending to grasp Poppy's arms. Hauling the child up, she wrapped an arm around the girl's shoulders: "Go get your brother. I'll swim with you."
"You're the best, aunt Nat!"
"My life's achievement is complete. I'm better than Uncle Fitz." Nat stuck her tongue out at Fitz before quickly pinning her hair into a bun and jogging toward the water.
"I better help her. Those two are handfuls."
With that, Olivia found herself alone with Fitz. Again. Swallowing, she glanced at her friend out of the corner of her eye, keeping the other eye firmly on the ocean and the scene of her children with their father.
"Liv –"
"We fucked up last night." She kept her voice steady despite the pounding in her chest and the nagging in the back of her mind that last night was the culmination of a lifetime of want.
"You can't believe that."
"I didn't say that I didn't want it to happen, but…it's 20 years too late." She watched as a wave crashed into Ezra from behind, sending both him and Liam to their knees.
"Or it's the right time. We weren't ready when we were younger."
"But now we're both married. And I have kids." Olivia sighed, tearing her gaze from the ocean and turning toward her friend. Tilting her head, she watched as Fitz adjusted his towel - tossing it further over her lap.
"Fitz…" she warned as she felt his hand creeping toward her bottoms under the towel.
"Livvie," he breathed, pupils enlarged as he licked his lips, watching for her reaction.
"What are we doing?" she inhaled shakily as his fingertips brushed over the thin, yellow fabric covering her mound. Leaning back on her elbows, she lifted her foot to rest against the knee of her opposite leg, giving him plenty of room to work.
"What we should have been doing all along." He moved his fingers to the edge of her bottoms, pulling the fabric to the side. In a flash, her hands went to the edge of the towel, double-checking that the fabric was still laying flat on the ground and hiding their actions. Head cushioned against the sand, she bit her lip as he teasingly traced her lips.
"Admit it: I'm the only one that can get this reaction from you." He smirked, that self-assured, cockiness she had loved from their first meeting showing through. Her snort quickly turned into a gasp when his fingers slid past her lips, dabbling in the liquid that she had felt steadily pooling in her bottoms since his first teasing brush.
"Only if you actually manage to get me off." She bit her lip again, eyes dancing mischievously. That mischievous look didn't last long as Fitz suddenly sank two fingers into her pussy. The slight burn was enough for her hips to jerk, her body's involuntary attempt at escape.
"Are you okay?" Fitz whispered, waiting for her nod before turning his attention to the ocean - appearing to be distracted by the scene unfolding in the sea rather than the sinful things his fingers were doing to the woman at his side.
Olivia felt her cheeks burning, grateful there weren't many people on the beach and certainly none close enough to hear the squelching sound her pussy made around his fingers, gripping the long, thick digits as they moved at a brutal pace. Her legs were shaking, bottom lip beginning to bleed at how hard she was biting, by the time Fitz hooked his fingers, hitting that delightful, spongy spot at the front of her walls. When his thumb covered her clit, tapping an uneven pattern against the small bundle of nerves, she really did bite her lip.
"Fitz…" she breathed, mouth falling open as her walls suddenly began clamping around him, liquid seeping around his fingers and pooling in the sand beneath her. Breathing heavily, she nearly whined at the feel of his fingers pulling free from her still pulsating pussy. Heavy lidded, she sighed as she watched him pull his hand from under the towel, bringing his wet fingers to his mouth and sliding them between his lips.
"Fuck." Olivia watched as he sucked his fingers, licking them clean.
"You were saying?" he teased, leaning back on his elbows.
"We have to have an actual conversation. One without sex." She reached beneath the towel, adjusting her bottoms, before slinging the material off her and over Fitz.
"What is there to talk about, Livvie?" Fitz sighed, rolling the towel and placing it under his head as a makeshift pillow. As much as she tried not to, Olivia couldn't help her eyes being drawn to his swimming trunks and the taut way they fit around his crotch. At least he seemed to be just as affected as she was.
"Oh I don't know. We're married. I have kids. We've been best friends for ages. There's a whole lot that can go wrong."
"The things that can go wrong have already gone wrong," Fitz argued, pulling his sunglasses from the top of his head to cover his eyes. Olivia knew it was a defensive move - even she wasn't allowed to see too many of his emotions. "And the only regrets I have where you're concerned is that they aren't mine."
He nodded toward Liam and Poppy - the twins were busy splashing water at one another as Ezra and Nat stood to the side, both ready to dive into action should it be required.
"They should have been mine."
Hey Everyone,
This story will be completed - hopefully with less time between updates. It has a detailed outline - not quite fleshed out completely, but more detail than a normal outline and one-hundred percent something I intend to finish. I recently switched from working outpatient mental health to an inpatient rehab facility and was adjusting to my new schedule. Now that everything's more normal, I hope to get my posting schedule a bit more on track as well.
Until next time. xx