Chapter 1: Chapter 1
Standing in front of her mirror, which she had barely hung securely, Olivia Acker thought about how her perspective on life had changed. Five years before, when she had graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Landscape Architecture, she knew that some people want true love, while others want luxury and wealth, but she just wanted true happiness. Not just the happiness that every now and again gives you a temporary boost of self-confidence to make you believe that you can conquer the world. No. The happiness that makes you feel loved and accepted no matter what. She considered how she still had no experience in any type of romantic relationship, just a degree that meant nothing in the central part of a city like San Francisco.
She pulled on her dark brown curls, looking deep into her own blue green eyes in the reflection in the mirror.
“Caring, trying to be confident, too hardworking…,” she tried complimenting herself. “Too hardworking: that’s the problem.”
The mistake had never been the men she dated, according to her younger sister, Lilly. The problem was that she never loved herself enough. That emptiness and void had always been filled by her trying to love others. So, Olivia sometimes convinced herself that falling in love was just one of her crazy unachievable dreams, considering she was just a normal, unrecognisable assistant in the city. Then, other times, she felt even more pressure to fall in love before her twenty-sixth birthday, else her party would have to be a “single’s only party”.
A loud thump on her apartment door, almost a “bang”, shook Olivia back to earth. She quickly grabbed her dirty clothes that were strewn all over the apartment and threw the bundle behind the door. When she opened the door, it came as no surprise that it was Kate in the doorway, carrying loads of groceries. This was Kate’s usual way of making sure Olivia was still alive.
Kate, with her blond hair and dark brown eyes, was one of the accountants working at Golden Holdings. Kate and Olivia met when they regularly bumped into each other at Rose’s Coffee Shop on the corner, and later decided that they might as well go together. Since then, every day at one o’clock, they went out to get coffee. Or sometimes they sneaked out a few minutes earlier. Olivia always believed that their differences were precisely what held together their friendship.
That day, like most other days, Kate was in a hurry. Olivia sometimes felt that Kate buying her groceries was just one of Kate’s monthly chores.
“Gosh, Kate, tell me you still have money in your credit card,” Olivia said, standing shocked in the doorway that was blocked with too many bags of groceries.
“Well, if I have to be honest, my parents may not get a gift on their anniversary,” Kate replied sarcastically.
“Stop! I don’t want to know. Thank you for your effort,” said Olivia, helping Kate unpack the groceries onto the kitchen table.
Olivia didn’t know why it still surprised her when Kate acted like she was her mother. To be honest, if it had not been for Kate, Olivia probably would’ve still worn her thrift store clothes from the yearly Christmas market in Livingston. Before Olivia could think of another excuse for not doing grocery shopping herself, Kate interrupted.
“Don’t use any of your old excuses again; I know them all. And I know that your billionaire boss gives you a hefty pay check every week,” Kate said, stopping to stare at a bottle of milk to consider her next words carefully. “By the way, I don’t know how you do it.” Kate put the dairy products in the fridge.
Unlike Olivia, Kate knew where everything belonged in Olivia’s kitchen; she probably knew better than in her own kitchen. Olivia sometimes wondered what would happen to her without a best friend like Kate. Truly she didn’t want to know.
“How do I do what, exactly?”
“Oh, you know, not get distracted,” Kate said. She smiled and then bit her bottom lip.
“By whom?” Olivia asked, already knowing the answer.
“Don’t play stupid! Tyler Brown, of course.”
“Well, I’m glad you see something in him, because all I see is a selfish and ungrateful man. I don’t know what people find attractive about him.”
She tried as hard as she could to not give any of her feelings away, otherwise she would never hear the end of it. It would also completely destroy her so-called career.
“I know,” Kate replied, with disappointment in her voice. She soon started smiling, “Let’s be real. Tyler is the CEO of Golden Holdings. He can make any girl’s dreams come true. And those green eyes! Ah, those green eyes.” She swooned, looking at Golden Holdings Head Quarters through the kitchen window as it was just across the street.
Tyler Brown was the most attractive man Olivia had come across, even though there admittedly had not been many. With deep green eyes, brown hair, and a short beard, he was the perfect mixture. It was his tanned skin and perfect jawline that attracted Olivia the most. Every night before she went to bed, she looked out of her dusty apartment window into Brown’s office with binoculars, which she had bought in Kenya on a safari trip, not knowing they would come in this handy in the city. Every night was the same: Brown sat at his computer, typing or answering calls. Strangely it never got old.
“Kate, you know that as employees we are not even allowed to look in his direction. To quote Tyler himself, ‘To look away from your desktop is time and time is money’,” Olivia said, trying to put an end to the topic.
“See! That’s why you’re lucky. You get paid to listen and talk to him. I only see him once a month when he organises a meeting with the accountants,” Kate replied, looking somewhat jealous. “Well, I should probably get going. I hope I got everything you needed. And please take better care of yourself, won’t you?”
“I’ll try,” Olivia jokingly shouted as Kate closed the door.
She knew that Kate was trying hard not to laugh because Kate knew that she would have to return. Not because she needed to; just because she would feel bad not doing it for once in three years’ time.
That night, like every other night, Olivia laid on the couch and watched Tyler Brown pacing up and down from one room to the other and talking impatiently over the phone. They never got to see that side of him. He always seemed polished and organised, as if everything always went according to plan. Having watched him with curiosity over the years, she had come to the realisation that he, like many other people, had an emotional side. That would probably always stay unrevealed, she thought.
She gained a new appreciation for him. Maybe I should appreciate being around Tyler more. Maybe I should lower my guard. These were her final thoughts before she closed her eyes to shut out the world.