Spa Days and Revelations Who:Olivia and Thea Where:Thea's Pod
Knocking of Thea’s door, Olivia hoped that the surprise drop-in on her friend would be welcome. She had her arms filled with a big bag of treats, including two fluffy bathrobes sticking out the top of the bag. She was still in her gym clothes from her self defense class with Haru and she hadn’t realized that she’d not showered or changed until she got to Thea’s pod. She’d just dropped off back at her own, grabbed her things, and rushed over to see Thea.
It was a freeing feeling, not being worried about how she looked in that moment. She wasn’t sweaty anymore, but she definitely looked like she’d gone through a workout and she normally would have spent at least an hour getting ready to go see her friend. But now, especially after the recent developments with Jacob, she’d felt like dressing up was less of a requirement. It was nice.
Thea went to answer the door, and she blinked and then beamed brightly at Olivia. “Hi!” she said, leaning out to give the blonde a hug. She hadn't seen her in a while and she just realized how bad a friend she'd been. “How are you? What's this? Come inside!!” she gushed, stepping back so Olivia could enter. “You taking the self defense courses? That's awesome!” she said, guessing that was what Olivia had been up to.
She started to lead her in, shutting the door behind her when she entered. “I'm so glad you're here. I was thinking I might just go a little nutty if I had to stay home and do nothing.”
Beaming, Olivia stepped inside and slipped out of her sneakers. She hoisted the bag up a little then tipped it toward Thea. “I thought we could have a spa day, if you’re interested? I have a cute robe in here for you and lots of stuff like face masks and manicure and pedicure stuff. I thought it might be nice to just sit and watch movies and pamper ourselves.” Putting the bag down, she pulled out the white and black fluffy black robe with the panda ears and extended it to her. “See? It’s a panda! It’s cute, like you!”
“I am amazingly interested!” Thea said brightly. “And aww! You brought me a robe? That's so sweet!!” she said, shutting the door behind her friend. Then she saw the panda robe, and she actually made a happy squeaky sound, and bounced on the balls of her feet. “oh my god!! It's so cute!!” she said, reaching out to take it and she hugged the seemingly impossibly snuggly material close, rubbing her cheek against it a little bit to soak up the softness.
Then she looked at Olivia again, and she was hugging her. Man, she kind of needed this. “Your timing is perfect,” she admitted to the blonde. “I so need a girly friend day. You're a life saver,” she assured her. To her, that was definitely what it felt like. She needed to step outside her own dumb brain, and focus on Olivia, and just relax for a little while.
Olivia beamed. It made her so happy to see Thea like this, bright and smiling. Putting the bag down, she reached for Thea during the hug and laughed, squeezing her friend back. “I’m so glad you like it! I have one too! It’s not a panda one, but I like it. Pink and white polka dots.” Pulling back, she grinned again. “Then let’s get this party started.”
Taking Thea’s hand in one of her own and the bag in her other, Olivia headed into the kitchen and plopped the bag on the counter. “Ok, so we have...lavender sugar scrub, for hands and feet. We have a couple different face masks, like green tea ones and black charcoal ones, those are great for blackheads. I have a whole set of nail polishes in here. And headbands to keep our hair back…” As she spoke, she brought out each item and placed it on the counter. “Where should we start? Maybe with something that you can talk to me through? Because I wanna know what’s going on in Thea-world!”
“It'll go perfect with your hair!” Thea said, laughing happily. “Which is adorable, by the way,” she added. The little pink streaks were awesome. She thought about something like streaks now and then, but never went through with it, preferring to stick with her natural color. But she always thought it looked nice on other people. Ah natural blondes – they could stick anything in their hair and it looked good.
Thea blinked at all the stuff Olivia had brought over, and she felt so touched that she had thought to do this, which wound up with her giving Olivia an abrupt hug. “You're amazing,” she told her, giving her a squeeze, then she let go. “Yes, let's definitely do something that we can talk through first, because we both have to catch up. In Thea Land, things have been okay,” she said, though she made a face. “But I do have something going on a little. Something stupid! But it's there. What about you?”
Laughing, Olivia hugged Thea back tightly, happy to see her friend so happy. Nothing that's going and bugging you could be stupid,“ she assured, trying to make sure her friend knew that she was justified in having troubles. “There's so much going on with me but I think we should start with you first. After we get changed?”
Pushing gently at Thea, Olivia tried to coax her and her tone off to her bedroom. “Robes first?”
“Oh, it can be,” Thea assured her. “Trust me!” Then she smiled, trotting off to the bedroom with a smile. Jammies and a robe and this was going to be perfect. “I hope good things are going on with you?” she asked, wanting that reassurance first. When they got to her bedroom, Thea went behind an old fashioned screen to change super quickly, something she’d invested in both because it was neat, and because of the open windows policy of the pod.
She wound up in a cute soft little pj set that was shorts and a tank top that was baby blue with puffy adorable fat baby penguins on it. Then she slipped on the robe, and she sighed falling backwards onto her bed. “It’s so fluffy!!”
Olivia hadn’t brought over pajamas, but she did have her robe and that would be fine. Taking the bathroom to change in, she came back out in just her robe with her hair down and airing out from its time in the bun. Finding Thea on her bed, she giggled and plopped down beside her. “So fluffy! I love it. You look so cute!” Shifting, she leaned on her elbow so she could look at Thea. “Ok, lady. Spill. We can talk about my stuff lady, but we’re starting with yours.”
“Feel free to raid my drawers to find pjs for you too!” Thea offered. Then she smiled brightly. “Aww, thanks! That's kind of my lot in life. I'm one of the universe's 'cute' girls,” she said, laughing at herself. “Not pretty, not beautiful, but I have cute going on in spades.” She wasn't bitter about it.
When Olivia pressed the issue, she made a face then reached up to slap her hands over her features. “I'm just stupid, that's all!” she moaned. Then she peeked out at Olivia through her fingers. “Ever feel a certain way and you know you aren't allowed to, like, it's just wrong? And you really hate that you feel that way but it seems to take a lot more convincing on your part to let it go than you think it should?” she posed. “Also that was probably gibberish, and I apologize for that.”
“See, I think you're wrong,” Olivia said. “I think you could knock someone dead with those looks you've got going on. I mean, those eyes? Whoever you turn those on is basically powerless in comparison.”
She listened though and shook her head. “Nothing that is bothering you is silly. But yeah I feel that way all the time, actually. But what's got you feeling like that? Wanna share some details?” Maybe she could help, or maybe she could just listen. Either way Thea was important to her and she wanted her friend to know that.
“Only if you count using them as puppy eyes,” Thea said, laughing a little as she sighed. “I’m not down on my looks, just aware.” Then she pulled the hood of the panda robe up and gave Olivia the most adorable look she could muster. “Seeeee?”
Then she laughed, and went on. “I have a friend. And I’ve known this friend for a long time, and I feel very very strongly about them. But we aren’t together, never have been, and never will be. By now it would have happened, y’know? I think. I don’t know. Anyway, he got a girlfriend. Or date, I guess. Second date. And I just feel… weird about it. Sad. I know it’s ridiculous. I know it isn’t fair of me, and I need to just be happy for the guy, he deserves to be happy more than pretty much anyone I’ve ever met, and I kind of hate myself for not being as overjoyed as I feel like I should be.”
Olivia laughed again and shook her head. “Ok, when you put on a panda hat, you’re obviously adorable! But don’t sell yourself short. You can also be sexy and gorgeous and beautiful and alluring. And if you need reinforcements on that, you come find me. I’ve actually got some clothes that I think you might like that would definitely not be described as cute.”
Sitting up, Olivia crossed her legs and repositioned her robe as she listened. “Ok, so...it sounds like he got a second date, maybe not a full on girlfriend. But if you like him, are you sure he doesn’t like you? Maybe he’s scared that he’ll ruin the friendship and that’s why he hasn’t taken a step toward more? I mean sure, you can be happy for him, but...we also need to make sure you’re happy because you deserve to be happy too. Don’t think you don’t.”
Thea smiled at the compliments, blushing a little bit. And she looked intrigued at the idea of some clothes that maybe weren’t her style so much. That might be fun to test out. See if it suited her or not. Step outside of her own comfort zone. When Olivia put things together out of her broken rambling, Thea was really grateful. “Yes on him getting a second date. And I don’t think that’s it. I don’t know. I feel like I don’t know anything and I’m making mountains out of molehills and just being ridiculous. And I know I deserve to be happy. But…” she bit her lower lip, and she absently ran her thumb over the bare inside of her left ring finger where her wedding ring used to be. “I did sort of already have my shot and it did not work out…”
Olivia watched, eyes narrowing a little in concentration. “Ok, I think I need more info…” She said, then added. “Only if you want to tell me, though. But I feel like I’m missing something big. Just because he went on a second date doesn’t mean you can’t tell him how you feel, or try to figure out how you feel.” Shifting a little closer to her friend, she reached out to place a hand on Thea’s. “Nothing you feel is making a mountain out of a molehill. It’s valid.”
“I wouldn’t even know what to tell him, and it would be pretty incredibly unfair of me to drop that on him when I’m not even sure what’s up with me,” Thea said. Then she nodded. “Okay, information. So, I was married before. Right out of highschool. I married Mike, my highschool sweetheart. I was going away to college, and he didn’t want us to break up or fall victim to a long distance disaster, y’know? So, we got married and moved in together when I went to school. He just got a job, and helped support us as I went. And things were great, before then. Ever look back and still not know how you didn’t see something?” she asked, still feeling like she should have been able to spot this coming, like she should have seen it well before she was even married.
Olivia was quiet, just listening and absorbing, and it surprised her at first to learn that Thea had been married. She’d been so young. But then again, it could have easily been Olivia in her place. She’d been on that track with Christian back in New York before they arrived in New Eden. And as much as she loved Christian, she was so glad she hadn’t married him. But there was more in Thea’s story that concerned her. “...Was he gay too?” She asked, thinking that the thing Thea had missed was something darker than that, but she couldn’t even visual something scary happening to Thea.
Thea shook her head. “No,” she said. “He was controlling. Looking back, I think even marrying me before we left town was a form of that. That he didn’t want me to go meet some other guy and find happiness with someone else. Before we moved, it was just a small town where I guess there weren’t any reasons to be jealous. Mostly things went sideways when I met Dean. And I know a lot of that is my fault. I talked about him a lot, I spent tons of time with him, he was my best friend. And Mike, he didn’t accept that so well.” She sighed, shaking her head as her mind echoed arguments at her.
She looked back at her friend after staring at a middle distance for a few moments. “Anyway, things got bad. At first it was just like, a curfew. He wanted me home at a certain time because he worked and it was our only time to see each other, so it wasn’t asking too much. Then he was texting or calling me far more often to see how I was doing but he always asked who I was with. Then he started judging what I wore out of the house, or how I did my hair or make up. So on, and so forth.”
Olivia felt sick. How? Just...how? How could someone do something like this to Thea? Awesome, sweet Thea. It didn’t make sense. She wanted to reach out and hold Thea’s hand or wrap her up in a hug, but she’d learned some things about being a good listener and one of them was that it wasn’t her place to maybe make her more uncomfortable by touching her if she didn’t want to be touched.
She did scoot a little closer though. “...None of that is ok. What he did.” She had a sinking feeling the story wasn’t over, that there was more to come. She didn’t want there to be, she wanted the story to end with ‘And then I left his ass for being a controlling dick’ but, not all stories had happy endings like that. She knew that now. “You know that, right?” She asked gently.
“Intellectually, I know that,” Thea said. “Like if you told me someone you were seeing was treating you like that, I’d be threatening to kick his butt from one end of New Eden to the other. But emotionally, I still feel like it was at least half my fault. Like if I could have given up Dean, then it wouldn’t have gone the way it did. But see that’s the thing. I didn’t give up Dean. He was too important to me to concede on that point. I did everything else. But I wouldn’t stop being friends with Dean. I mean - the guy beat the hell out of a mugger one night when we were crossing campus after dark. We just connected.”
“I ended up here because things sort of came to a head, y’know? I’d been out with Dean, and I just kept getting angrier and angrier texts, and finally, I just dumped my phone in a pond and decided I was done being caged up like that. I went home and we got into this huge fight, and I was a little afraid that he was going to hit me. I left. Annnnd I didn’t wake up til like a year later, because I was in a car accident and was in a coma.” She exhaled. “I don’t know. Like I said, sometimes I feel like I had my shot, and I really messed that right up.”
“Ok, no. No way did you mess your shot up on that!” Olivia said, feeling her voice increasing before she could stop it. This story, this revelation about her dear friend, had her shaking and she didn’t even know it. She said it was a car accident that had put her in a coma and Olivia should understand and accept that one hundred percent but there was a little, itching part of her that wondered if it wasn’t actually a car accident. If this Mike hadn’t actually hurt her.
But here she was, sitting in front of Olivia, not hurt and retelling her story. “That jackass doesn’t get to take away your happiness like that. He doesn’t. And he doesn’t get a lockdown on your future happiness either!” This time she locked eyes with Thea before speaking. “You deserve to be happy. You are not an object, you’re not a possession. You don’t need to fall in line and play nice, and you don’t get just one shot at being happy.”
Thea hugged Olivia. She felt lucky to have her there right then, that she'd made this new, precious friend, and she was a huggy affectionate person, so she definitely hugged her tight for a moment. When she sat back, she gave a little smile. There was a little bit of a haunted sadness in her eyes but she was still smiling. “Well, he didn't get away totally with being a jackass,” she said, thinking that the last bit that Dean had told her might make her at least a little happier.
“And I know everything you're saying is right. It's just something in the back of my head I'm trying to work on,” she explained. “I didn't even know until the dates thing happened whether or not I was still married. But I got paired off, so I'm forced to assume that it means I'm not married.”
Olivia held onto Thea and only let go when she did. She would have kept holding her if her friend had stayed there, but instead she settled down in front of her again and this time she did take her hand, her left one, and squeezed gently. “Thea...even if he didn’t actually touch you, what he did was abusive. He made you feel unsafe and that’s not ok.”
She took a breath and exhaled, practiced, but it didn’t do anything to calm her this time. “I don’t believe for a second you’re supposed to be giving up on your happiness because you had your one and only chance. And I’m gonna be annoying about that.”
“I know. And it's still hard for me to really latch onto that? Like my brain automatically puts out there that hey, he never laid a hand on me. Hey, he never forced himself on me. So many women out there have it a billion times worse than I ever did. I feel like I'm a...a liar or something if I use the 'a' word.” She didn't know if she'd ever put so fine a point on it than right then. “Dean says he beat the crap out of him. Mike apparently didn't even tell Dean what happened, he had to find out through gossip at school. And then Mike made sure Dean couldn't see me and I guess he didn't like that.” She smiled at that. “Mike deserved what he got on that.”
Thea gave Olivia's hand a squeeze. “Good. Be annoying about it. I probably need the reminders.” That was true.
She didn’t argue there; Mike absolutely got what he deserved. There was a part of Olivia that wanted to run up to Dean and hug him and thank him for the things he’d done for Thea, but she pushed it away. It wasn’t her place to say anything about this conversation outside of this room. This was a personal thing and she didn’t need to go blab about it even if Dean probably already knew everything. So she latched onto the thing she could latch onto and looked back at Thea’s eyes.
“Just because he didn’t physically hurt you doesn’t me he wasn’t an abusive dirtbag. Emotional abuse is a thing too. A super real thing that I hate happened to you, because you are so perfect and you don’t deserve that. No one deserves that, but you really don’t. Just...please don’t let him take your happiness here too.”
“Oh, I'm not perfect!” Thea insisted. “I swear, I'm not. I just seem that way because of the big eyes and the cute thing,” she said, laughing a little, wanting to lighten the mood. “I promise I'll try to keep it all in mind. Sometimes I can. And sometimes I tumble back into self doubt. It's kind of a toss up. But I know you're right.” Olivia was definitely right. It was just hard to reconcile it all in her head the way she wanted to.
She tilted her head a little, giving Thea a Look. “You are. You’re perfect and I’m going to tell you as many times as I have to.” She squeezed her hand again and smiled, trying to go with the lightened mood even if she was still reeling from the story. “But that’s what friends are for. Reminding you of how good you are when you can’t see it yourself.” Taking another breath, she exhaled heavily and actually did smile this time, even if it was just a small one. “...And for bringing over spa-day materials.”
“That is what friends are for!” Thea said, laughing gratefully. “And yes, spa day! Let's get to that!” she said, happy to get back to that. “Thank you,” she said. “You're awesome. I'm really glad you're my friend.”
“And I’m really glad you’re mine.” Smiling, she stood up off the bed and started toward the living room again. “To the spa day!”