How to Say I Love You: Olive Street Series, #1

DEDICATION

This book  is dedicated to women around the world and especially to the wonderful women who have inspired me throughout my life. May we always be brave enough to follow our dreams no matter where they could lead, strong enough to trust our instincts, and free enough to allow our hearts connect to one another.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is ten years in the making. It began as a play I starting writing while in undergrad. Three years ago that play saw its first production, but I always knew there was more to the story than I could put on the stage. That is when I set out to create, How to Say I Love You the novel. Now I’ve seen this story grow and flourish into the upcoming Olive Street Series.

I am so thankful for the love and support I’ve received along this journey. I especially have to thank my parents for their unwavering support. They’ve always been there to nudge me forward and remind me I can accomplish anything. My inner circle, my friends, who’ve been an incredibly gracious focus group and my most spirited cheerleaders. And to the man I swear I wrote into existence, for holding my hand along the way.

Finally, thank you for reading.

red string of fate

THE FIRST TIME I SAW him, I was six years old.  His name was George Anthony.  I’m sure I must have seen him before that, but that is the first time I can remember.  It was the first time he registered.  My heart was much more advanced than my brain could possibly have been.  I saw him.  The man I love.  The one I would love for the rest of my life.  But, not just be in love with him.  No, cursed to love him forever without him ever knowing. 

George Anthony was my neighbor’s youngest son.  Well, he is their youngest son.  He is still their son, but neither of us still live in our childhood homes next to each other.  Two steps out my back door; three garden stones, a step down into the alley, metal gate, a step up out of the alley and two more steps to his back door.  Growing up in the inner city, that was all that separated us.  Our whole city block was basically one large, slightly dysfunctional extended family.  It seemed as if the dangerous reality of our city didn’t exist for our row of homes.  On Olive Street everyone knew each other and took care of each other.  I was raised spending as much time in George’s mother’s kitchen as I did my own.  It is that comfort of having family all around and running barefoot from house to house, that is the thing I think I miss the most about my childhood. 

It was cold out that night when I first saw him.  It was mid-December in eastern Pennsylvania so it was more than cold, it was absolutely frigid out.  I know because my mom was smoking out the window of our second-floor sun porch.  The sun porch was a narrow room just wider than a hallway that ran the length of the second floor.  It connected the three modest bedrooms and bathroom up there.  She only did this when it was too cold to smoke outside because there was a strict no smoking in the house policy for the Reilly’s due to my asthma.  She would sit in the dark, her legs crossed on top of our homemade toy box.  She looked like a fairy sitting atop a mushroom in a dark forest.  I can probably count the number of times I saw her there on my two hands, but that image of her is forever engrained in my brain.  There was something otherworldly about her, something mystical.  She always told me we came from the gypsies, that my great grandmother could place a hex on you with just one look.  Her powers were supposedly passed down to my grandmother, my mother and finally me.  Although, I still haven’t seen any recognizable or worthwhile abilities manifest themselves.  Silently sitting, watching the Christmas lights sparkle that night, I snuck up on my mom.  I always wanted to be near her.  Fear of missing out was far from being a catchphrase in the early nineties, but I very much suffered from it.  Wherever she was, I wanted to be.  I silently crawled up on the toy box facing her and pressed my forehead against the cool window to watch the lights with her.  I stared out, smiling at the lights against the dark blue, nearly black sky.  But then I looked down to the ground below and there he stood.  Just outside his kitchen door, he was standing there silently smoking a cigarette and staring off into the alley behind our houses.  He had no idea that we could see him from the second-floor window.  We sat completely in the dark, but he was illuminated by the motion security light his father installed just that week.  The harsh white light cast a surprisingly warm glow on him.  I examined him, unabashedly staring in a way that you can only get away with when you are young.  My mother must have noticed me observing him, but there is no way she could have known what I was thinking, feeling or where it would lead.  The first thing I noticed was his skin.  His permanently tan skin was so different from my pale, pasty skin.  His face was shaven smooth except for where it gave way to the short coffee-colored hair of his sideburns.  It was combed forward in a George Clooney-esque Caesar cut.  He was tall, but not intimidatingly so.  His striking presence came from his broad shoulders.  I got the feeling that I wanted to know what it would be like to have his arms wrapped around me.  He was older by quite a few years, twelve to be exact.  A fact that wouldn’t even come into my consciousness for several years.  Even still, somehow standing with one hand inside of his Temple University hoodie he made my heart swell.  He was mysterious to me, he was intriguing.  There was a twinkle in his eye as he stared out at the thin layer of snow on the ground.  I was stuck still at that moment and I thought in my teeny tiny mind I love him.

Preposterous! I know it is.  Thinking back on it now, it seems insane.  How could I possibly fall in love at six years old? I didn’t.  I couldn’t possibly have even known what love meant.  Honestly though, all these years later I don’t think I am any more enlightened on the subject.  But nevertheless, that singular night is how this whole story started.  It began twenty some years ago between row homes; apartment buildings, tiny yards, back alleys and the Greek Orthodox church down the street.  In the middle of the biggest city in Pennsylvania and among families who’d been in their houses for generations.  We grew up in a place where the bond between neighbors could take on any sort of familial relationship.

Our lives seemed magnetized to each other, naturally intertwined as though we were connected by some mystic power.  There were times when I was younger I could never have imagined my life without him in it.  Even as we both grew up and away, he always seemed to know when to float back into town, setting my head and heart to spinning.  Fated, I thought.  Destined, I said.  Tied together by the red string of fate, I read. 

During my freshman year of college, I took an Asian Cultures class as a part of my general education courses.  One night I was up well past one in the morning working on assignments for a few different classes.  I was sitting against the wall of windows that looked out over the quad so that I could watch the wind blow through the trees when I needed a break.  After finishing forty pages on Carl Jung and his archetypes I moved onto my last reading for the night.  It was so innocuous.  Read pages fifty-two through seventy-five of a book on Chinese mythology.  As the clock drew closer to two in the morning and the wind howled through the trees, I read a passage in that book that would shake me to my core.  I re-read it three times that night and twice the next day just to make sure I understood what it was telling me.  The red string of fate is a myth that occurs in many Asian cultures, but it originated in Chinese culture.  It is believed that everyone on earth is connected to another person.  They are fated to be in their lives in spite of everything that might keep them apart.  This is because the love deity, the matchmaker god has tied these two people together with the red string of fate.  It is tied to each of their ankles and it lasts through time and space to bring these two people together when the time is right for them to find each other.  Some stories include the lovers meeting as children and then again as adults, other stories had them never meeting, but perhaps passing each other on the street every day for years without noticing one another until one day...bang! They meet and it is all over from there.  My stomach flipped with each sentence I read because it spoke so deeply to me.  George and I are connected by the red string of fate.  We are supposed to be in each other’s lives and we will be together eventually because the string tied around my ankle leads directly to his.

Nevertheless, it has been seven years since that late and windy night in the library.  It has also been seven years since the last time I have seen George’s face or heard his unmistakable laugh.  I have never given up on the belief that the red string of fate would ultimately bring us together.  But every year grows even harder than the last, as I feel a piece of myself is missing.  It is like an aching phantom limb.

Seven years I thought about him and dreamed about him, but life kept us apart.  Seven years... that is, until last week.

1

choose life

OH MY GOD, WHAT IS he doing home? What is he doing home midday on a Tuesday? The crack of the metal door startled me.  My heart is pounding in my chest.  Shouldn’t he be at work doing something very important that no one could possibly know about? Maybe he won’t see me.  I slowly, stealthily pull the book I’m reading up so close to my face that I can feel my breath bouncing back at me.  Gross.  Well, I guess I would rather have him think I’m extraordinarily short-sighted than have him find me with no make-up, a huge zit that came to visit my face this morning and my hair greasy from the conditioning mask I’ve left on for far too long.  At least the need for glasses is cute and can easily transition into a sexy librarian type of fantasy.  There are no redeeming qualities to sweatpants and poor hygiene.  I try to quiet my breathing.  I don’t want anything to draw his attention.  Silence.  Good.  I think it just may be working.  Now, all I have to do is just wait it out until he goes back inside his house.  Then I can scurry into mine, take a shower, put on a full face of make-up and my most alluring, but casual outfit.  It should take me roughly all day.

Nessa! His voice forces me to inhale violently.

Shit, shit, shit.  He saw me.  There is no hiding now, I’ve been spotted.  I want to look up and see him.  Jesus, I’d stare at him until my eyes dried up and fell out of my skull if given half the chance.  Just not right now, not in this moment.  I don’t want this to be the image of me that he has in his head.  This was supposed to be my safe space, my own little corner.  No one should be able to see me on this little chair in the back corner of the yard.  No one except my next-door neighbors.  He is supposed to be working.  He is not supposed to be standing five feet from me on the day I decide to fully transition into a slug.

Nessa! Hey!

I can’t ignore him and honestly, I don’t want to.  I look up and my heart sinks all the way down my body and into my butt.  He looks gorgeous leaning against the chain link fence ever so nonchalantly.  His hazel eyes shining in the sun call me to him.  I am no longer in control.  I can’t feel my body.  It is like I’m floating across my tiny yard right over to him.  I feel awkward and self-conscious by my appearance, but his smile is so welcoming that I begin to buzz with adrenaline.  Now, I’m standing only inches from him and his hands reach out to my face.  He isn’t afraid of my zit or repulsed by my pudge or blotchy, pale skin.  He doesn’t gawk at my sweatpants or recoil from my greasy hair.  He is not sickened by me at all.  No, in fact, he is looking at me quite dreamily.  Holding my face in his firm hands, he whispers in my ear, Welcome to London. London? What does he mean, London? I try to look around, but my head is still in his hands and I can tell he has no plans of releasing me.  He leans into me and ever so gently touches his lips to mine.  I have been waiting for this moment for as long as I can remember.  It is so tender I could cry, but then it doesn’t stop and I can’t breathe.  I panic and try to pull away.  I try to breathe.  I gasp for air and...

I’m awake...and breathing thankfully.  Eyes bulging open in fear, it takes me a moment to recognize where I am.  All of the adrenaline that had been coursing through my body is now all collected into a softball sized pit inside my stomach.  I am staring up at a beige ceiling inside of a beige room with the bright orange of a Trainspotting poster assaulting the periphery vision of my right eye.  I can recite the movie mantra by heart.  "Choose your future.  Choose life." Choose, eh? Lately, every time I see that damn poster I feel like it is mocking me.  I want to close my eyes and go back to the dream, but I am afraid.  So, I lay still peering out through barely opened eyes.  I can’t shake the feeling of the dream even as I come face to face with the harsh light of reality.  I tilt my head slightly to the right, to the poster so rudely intruding on my sight.  Choose your future... Choose your future.  I turn back to the ceiling, but my eyes are going cross-eyed just laying here looking at nothing. So, I turn them ever so slightly to the left and this pit in my stomach grows exponentially.  Danny is sleeping so soundly, so still.  He sleeps in a way that I never could, as if he had no thoughts in his head to keep him up at night.  He is peaceful and handsome and sleeping next to me.  It is infuriating.  I, on the other hand, sleep like a meerkat or at least what I imagine a meerkat, sleeps like.  It takes me forever to settle down.  I am constantly popping up in the middle of the night.  I toss and turn and then when I wake up mid-morning, I have permanent dark circles around my eyes.  My fury subsides as I examine him, taking in every inch of his face.  It was his soft features that drew me to him when we first met.  He looked like he jumped off of a Disney animator’s drawing table.  Round, gray, puppy dog eyes with soft, full lips and a gently curved nose.  He has the most welcoming face of anyone I know.  I could make a home in his cheeks.  The night I met him I immediately wanted to tell him all my secrets.  Spill my soul to the kind stranger at the bar.  I could have too and he would’ve taken them to his grave.

It was an unusually quiet Thursday night at The Temple Bar and I was working my usual closing shift.  I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the turnout.  There was a table of girls in the back corner, two regulars at the bar and a group of college kids playing darts in the back.  It always quieted down the week after graduation around here, but this was dead.  Knowing I wouldn’t be walking away with fists