Song: Bitch by Ruby Amanfu.
Chapter 5- Olivia
8:00 p.m.
The door closed. We'll get there, ringing in her ears. Her body fell against her coat rack as she let the tears come. Her fingers searched for something to grasp onto. The fabrics of the coats she wore to work had never made her feel so cold before.
The sob wracked her ribcage, and she allowed it for just a moment before she stifled it down deep into the parts of her that she would never let anyone unlock.
Her mother would be buzzing her building any minute. She needed to compose herself. She made a beeline for her kitchen. She poured water into a glass from the tap and drank it down as fast as she could. Then she turned the water to a scalding temperature, and she held her hands under the waterfall. She needed to feel the burn.
He'd burned her in a way that she wasn't certain she would ever heal from. It would have hurt less if he'd captured her mouth and fucked her into that wall.
She could have hated him for that. Instead, she was left with the horrible realization that he was everything she'd always wanted, and she couldn't have him. He'd let her go, and she couldn't be anymore attached.
Let it go, let him go, he wasn't yours to keep Olivia, he never was.
Let him go.
Let him go.
She'd see him at work on Monday, but she knew she'd never have him again like she had him for that split moment in the hallway.
It was all right before her, and she let it go.
"Fuck!" she cried into the silence of her apartment as she pulled back her hands from the water before she caused permanent skin damage.
Thank god Serena Benson was always late. Maybe with any luck her mother would stand her up.
She hurried to her bathroom and wiped away her running mascara. She caught a glimpse of her reflection, and it felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to the backs of her knees. Her hair was still tousled from where his fingers hand clung to the strands like she was his lifeline.
She tore her eyes from her reflection and quickly brushed her hair out.
She heard the buzzer.
Her mother.
She wasn't sure how much more she could take in one day.
"Coming!" she called as she shut off the light and grabbed her wallet and coat.
She'd be fine. She'd take her mother up on the third drink and the fourth drink and the fifth drink, and maybe she'd reach some oblivion.
Mother like daughter.
The first time she'd gotten wasted with her mother she was thirteen. Sean Anderson told her she wasn't pretty, and Serena Benson handed her a gin and tonic. Maybe her mother really had been trying to kill her.
She didn't even start out on wine coolers. Olivia skipped the baby steps with everything. It was always 0 to 100.
We don't really talk about our personal lives to he is my personal life.
She pushed the thought away as she opened the door to her mother.
8:30 p.m.
"What's eating at you?" her mother asked as she leaned towards her from across the circle bar table.
"Nothing," Olivia said as she sipped her third drink. She hated the taste of alcohol.
"Work?"
"Let's not talk about that tonight."
"You're almost coming up on two years there; maybe it's time you transfer out."
"I have no desire to do that," Olivia said as she crossed one leg over the other. She wondered if Elliot was in bed yet. She wondered if he'd touch his wife tonight. If Kathy touched him first would he refuse her? Maybe she should switch to shots.
"How is it going with…" Her mother gestured to the ceiling as she tried to come up with Elliot's name. She came up empty.
"He's fine," Olivia swallowed.
"Are you fucking him yet?" her mother said in a calloused tone.
"Is that what you think of me?" Olivia bit off because she was all out of resolve for the night.
"Oh honey," her mother laughed like she'd just said the funniest thing she'd ever heard.
"You've always had a habit of fucking everyone you're not supposed to."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Come on Olivia, every man that would look at you sideways would end up leaving out of your bedroom window, and that was back before you started sneaking out. I should have shackled you in."
"You should have," Olivia growled as she sipped the drink, her eyes connecting with her mother's.
"You were uncontrollable."
"I was sixteen."
"I tried to tell you they were all using you," Serena said with the hint of an eyeroll.
"I thought they loved me," Olivia said into her martini glass.
"No one loves women like us, sweetheart."
"I was sixteen," she repeated. "Hardly a woman," she added under her breath as if it was a moot point. Her mother didn't say anything. She didn't even pretend to care.
"I've had enough," Olivia said as she slid her half empty glass towards her mother.
"You always do this," Serena Benson said as her slur started to kick in.
"Do what?"
"Walk away when it starts to get good." Her mother's words nipped at her heart. She'd dedicated her life to not walking away. She stood beside every victim and saw their pain through the end. She was sick of people telling her she walks away.
"Do yourself a favor and call a cab," Olivia said as she dropped cash onto the table and walked into the night that had broken her heart one too many times.
She walked the whole way home, and once she made it back to her apartment, she found herself in front of her bathroom mirror again. This time she held a pair of kitchen scissors in her hand as she twirled a lock of her hair around her finger.
She smiled through cries as she let the scissors work their havoc on her locks. This had become a sick practice of her's. Whenever she lost too much control in her life, she asserted it again over her hair. What a childish thing to do.
"You think you're a big girl, Olivia," her mother said as she looked at Olivia's freshly cropped hair, low rise jeans, and pierced navel. Her mother had always loved her long locks. It was the one thing about her that her mother didn't grimace at. When she was really young, her mother used to brush through her hair after her baths and tell her stories about all the things she could grow up to be someday.
"I think that I don't care what you think anymore," Olivia said as she tried to walk past her mother and into her bedroom.
"You have no appreciation!" her mother yelled out as she gripped her wine glass.
"Why should I appreciate you?!" Olivia screamed back as she slammed her bedroom door.
Her mother came to her door and swung it open.
"Get out then," Serena said as her glassy eyes looked at Olivia with hatred.
"Fine," Olivia replied as she began to shove things into a bag that she always kept at the ready for when Serena went into a particularly bad binge.
"You know, before you, I used to be fun. I used to wear jeans like that, and I had long gorgeous hair, and all the men wanted me too! I walked around like I was untouchable, and all the doors were open to me. I was smart, Olivia; I was beautiful too," Serena said as a sob started to make its way up her throat.
"Why are you telling me this," Olivia said as she shoved past her mother with her overnight bag in tow. She'd go to one of her lover's and find comfort for the night.
"Because you ruined all of that for me! I kept you, and I lost myself," Serena said as she followed her to the door.
"Then you shouldn't have kept me," Olivia said with her hand on the door handle.
"I love you, honey," her mother said as if she was having a moment of clarity through her drunken haze.
"No you don't."
"I hate him, but I love you," Serena said as she grabbed Olivia's forearm. Him, meaning her father. The father that Serena would never talk about. Olivia had long ago accepted that she would never know anything about the man, and she knew not to ask anymore because it would send Serena further into the bottle.
"Why do you hate him?" Olivia asked even though she'd guessed the answer around thirteen. She'd never heard her mother confirm it, but in her heart she already knew.
"He held me down, and he gave me you. It wasn't my choice, Olivia," Serena said as a sob escaped her mouth.
"Why are you telling me this," Olivia repeated as a sob escaped her mouth as well.
"Because you don't understand what I go through, and you will never understand until it happens to you," her mother spat.
"I'm sorry, mom," Olivia said as she tried to bring herself to look at her mother's aging face. Serena reached up and touched Olivia's short hair.
"You were such a pretty child," her mother commented from some faraway place in her own inescapable hell. Olivia wished she could drag her mother from that place.
"What can I do to help," Olivia asked because it wasn't in her nature to abandon someone who needed her.
"Just go, go to one of those men who could be your father," Serena said as she turned her back on her sixteen-year-old daughter.
That was the moment that Olivia realized her mother didn't need her; her mother regretted her. She never wanted another person to regret her the way Serena did. She never wanted Elliot to regret her, so she chopped, and she chopped, hoping that her short hair would make her more repelling to him; it had worked with her mother.
All the spindles that Elliot had touched dropped into the sink, and she hoped that letting go of that moment would make facing him on Monday easier.
She'd walk into that squad-room a new woman, and any memory of what transpired in the hallway would be just that, a memory, a moment cut short before either of them could regret the fallout that it would have caused.
A/N: The next chapter will skip ahead to the season six timeline!