When I hear Oliver pull up, I head straight outside to meet him not wanting to deal with some awkward door moment. He still parks in the driveway and gets out, walking over to open the car door for me as I get closer.

He's not decked out in a suit, thankfully, but he looks good in a pair of well-fitted jeans and a crisp navy button-down.

"Hey," he smiles.

"You didn't have to be formal," I say teasingly. "You could've just honked."

"Can't take the south fully out of a guy," Oliver says.

We each let out a small laugh, easing the tension just a little.

"So where we going?" Oliver asks once we're both seated in the car, and he's pulling out of my folk's driveway.

Talk about going back in time...

"We have a lot to talk about," I murmur. "Let's pick something up and go somewhere private, like the park or something."

"Not the park," Oliver says quickly.

"Oh, right," I agree. What was I thinking? "Should we come back here and talk in the barn?

"No," he says. "That brings back all the other memories and makes this even harder."

"The beach?"

"The beach works," he agrees.

*** 

We picked up a bunch of takeout from Carl's, some appetizers mostly, and a bottle of wine, which we picked up after, Rose of course. A spendy one, from the looks of the bottle, Oliver went in and bought it.

We head to the beach and find a sandy spot near the water. Oliver had some blankets in his trunk so we spread those out to sit on. It's like an old-fashioned picnic but with sliders and onion rings instead of bologna sandwiches and chips.

We eat silently for a while, and then he clears his throat.

"I want to offer you the job first no matter what. This bookstore, the whole point of it, was to get back some of that friendship we lost and I feel like that is possible, even now."

"I know it's possible," I agree as I gulp back a world of emotions. I want that too, as hard as it may be. I wanted it then... but he pushed me away. My eyes burn into his and he looks away... but I can sense he knows what I was thinking, and I suppose we'll get to that tonight too.

"I still have to chat with the manager about what hours they want you to work. Things like that, the pay like I said won't be very much, I can get you started around eighteen an hour, but I think we can get you a good forty hours every week. I know you won't stay forever. It's something for you to do until you find whatever permanent."

"Eighteen an hour isn't bad and without having rent right now I can save a lot of it. You said you already hired a store manager?"

"The same person who was managing it before I bought it," he explains and then pops an onion ring in his mouth. "I gave them the option to come back when it's done."

"Wow, Oliver that's so great of you." I really misjudged what they were doing here, didn't I?

He simply shrugs.

"Thank you for this. This job and the debts and Julian, you have no idea how much this helps," I get a little choked up and take a moment before continuing. "When you build a life and home with someone, and then it's over, and you have to start your whole life over again and, it's so hard. Being in a literal hole made it so much worse."

"I know how hard it is, I've been there," Oliver says. "Luckily I wasn't in a hole like you, but we were tied up in a company together, and that complicated things."

I recall his brief mention of relationships we've had since each other, I still for whatever reason am having a hard time wrapping my mind around him with someone else in such a serious way, and I find myself very curious about it.

"So you were living with someone, and y'all worked together too? Is that how you met?"

"Yeah," he says. "This was the first company I purchased actually, a collection agency, a small one, that wasn't doing well. She was one of their top collectors, a hard worker who never got recognition for it. I saw it, promoted her, and we started working together. She came up with the amazing idea of working with a debt management company, and we turned it all around."

There's a small smile on the corner of his lips and a slightly faraway look in his eyes. She meant a lot to him, as did his first company, and her being part of it was probably a big deal for them as a couple.

"How long were you together?"

"Almost four years," Oliver confirms.

"What happened?"

"Everything started to take off after the collection agency did so well. I bought the debt management company, and then James came to me about partnering up, and when the iron is hot you have to run with it. Cassie was at that point the VP of the collection agency and debt management company and was as busy as I was."

"I get that," I say slowly. "Julian was gone so much, at least you two saw each other at work though. Did that help at all?"

"No, it actually made us think we were okay when weren't."

"What do you mean by that?"

"We were so wrapped up in the company that started to become what our relationship was about instead of it being about us. Every night that's what we talked about, work. Even when we tried to do something else, we'd talk shop. I recall a camping trip when we were playing cards and talking ideas of clients to approach."

"Yikes," I say.

"We were both such workaholics that we didn't see that this was bad, right away" he lets out a breath. "Then one night we're celebrating her thirtieth birthday, and she starts crying, just breaks down. She said, she suddenly remembered that she always thought she'd be married by thirty, and we were nowhere near that."

He pauses for a moment as a sad look crosses his eyes. "We stopped looking at our future as a couple and, we both married our work. It was a painful but mutual decision to end things."

"I'm sorry," I say leaning over and squeezing his hand. "That must have been so hard with working together after that?"

It's a strange feeling knowing he moved on with life and had a serious live-in relationship, it's not jealousy so much, but curiosity, this side of Oliver I don't know, never knew. Who he was as a man and as a boyfriend to someone other than me? 

"That was where things started to grow complicated. The breakup may have been mutual, but we were both left with hurt feelings, and then... Well, the fallout wasn't very pretty, I'll just say that much."

I tilt my head, giving him a curious look.

"Not a story for tonight," he says, shifting uncomfortably.

I can't help it though, I want the rest of the story. I have to shake my focus back to why we're here, and I sit up a bit.

"You're right, so let's get to the story of the other time you decided to start over again," I say.

A nervous look flashes through his eyes, and he sits up straighter and nods.

" I know you feel I owe you an apology for leaving."

"I do. Of course, I do!"

"I don't," Oliver argues. "Not everyone is 'owed' what they think they're owed. Is it fair? No. It's super unfair to you actually, and I am sorry about that part of it, but I won't apologize for leaving."

"Then this is getting off to a bad start," I say feeling my cheeks starting to warm up already.

"I think you need to hear my side of things to get what I mean by that," Oliver says slowly. "Kinsey we didn't break up that night. That night was the break, but we'd been breaking up for months, we were having the same fights over and over."

"I know," I say with a long sigh. "But you-"

"Hold on," he stops me. "I did some questionable things in our past, and I knew that the pact with Hunter and the summer Hunter rejected you for me... I did those things to fight for us, to give us a chance, but I was always left to wonder what would happen if Hunter ever told you the truth. I was always insecure about our relationship, because of how it came to be."

"But.."

"I know," he cuts me off. "It was my own fault, that I had that insecurity, but, it wasn't always like that. We had this great beginning, we fell madly in love, we lost our virginities to each other, couldn't take our hands off each other, and had all these amazing times, until..."

"Senior year," I offer.

"Before senior year," he corrects me. 'Your jealousy of Erin... that's what really started to change my feelings on things. I was a little worried before, but I felt secure with us, especially after the summer of 2001. Then we started back up at school, and Hunter had a serious girlfriend, I thought this was going to be great, we could all double date and all four be friends, and any remaining worries I had would be long gone."

He lets out a humorless laugh. "The total opposite happened. You were so jealous of her that it hit me like a ton of bricks."

"I won't insult you by denying now that I was jealous of Erin, but at that time, that's not what I thought it was. I thought she wasn't right for him. But I did try and accept her and I was nice to her."

"Kinsey, come on, Erin knew you hated her. She always knew, how jealous you were," Oliver says. " and I was pissed about it."

I blanch at the biting tone towards the end.

"I'm sorry, but I'm just being honest," Oliver says. "Did I do the wrong things in the past? Yes. But we had been a serious couple for over a year, and you being jealous of a girl our best friend was dating was bullshit."

"Yore right," I admit. "I was jealous of her, but in my defense, I honestly didn't see it like that. She was so bitchy and –"

"Stop," he cuts me off. "Was she a little assertive and blunt, yeah, but any bitchiness you perceived was her feeling defensive about you, and what could she do? Hunter would always defend you."

"You're defending Erin?" I raise an eyebrow. What gives him such insight into her stuck-up little head anyway?

A strange look crosses his face that I can quite read, and I furrow my eyebrows in confusion as I lean closer, tilting my head.

"This isn't about Erin. This is about you giving me a reason to feel so insecure. That's what started our downfall."

"But you said nothing about it; you let that all fester and build up, and then after Erin left town, you got so jealous seemingly out of nowhere."

"It was not out of nowhere. Hunter was single. I was gone for nearly a month and come back to find you two are spending every second together?"

"He was my best friend!"

"He was a lot more than that," Oliver corrects me. "It compounded my fears, these intense fears that you two would have that talk, and then what? Would you leave me for him, even after all that time?"

"I wouldn't have!"

"You can't say that now. You don't know what you would have done if you knew."

"I was loyal to you, and I loved you. I would have stayed true to you, even if Hunter told me the truth."

"I think maybe you would have done that looking back now," he agrees in a softer voice. "But back then, I felt like I was constantly only one conversation away from losing you. I was on edge every fucking day. I kept hearing second best in my head every time I saw you with him."

"You were never second best," I cry out.

"But I felt like I was, and every fight ... I was begging you to tell me differently, I was begging you to choose me, but you always fought for him."

"No for me! I was fighting for me. Dictating how my friendship with Hunter had to be was possessive, Oliver! I was standing up for myself. I had every right to have the same best friend I'd had before you and–"

"I get all that now, looking back I don't think it was wrong to ask some of what I asked you two, but telling you not to hang out alone with him, or talk to him about us, wasn't right, it was my paranoia turning me into someone I wasn't."  

He pauses, picking up the wine bottle for a short sip as he looks off into the distance, setting it down as he continues. 

"When we got the college letters, I saw this opportunity where you could prove I was your first choice, where you could prove you loved me enough to follow me. I realize now how crazy that was but back then it made so much sense. I got the idea so stuck in my head that it legit crushed me when you wouldn't even consider it."

"I would have considered it, but I needed time to come to terms and think about it, and you wouldn't give me that," I protest. 

"Because I knew, I knew you wouldn't go. I saw it– the end. We'd break it off at the end of summer, I'd leave, and you'd be with Hunter within the year. Every time I came home, I'd have to see you two. I broke before we even broke up, and I was grasping at straws in that fight, desperate to find a way to save what was already gone."

"You just went ahead and decided we were over?"

"Sort of, yeah," he confesses. "I knew you'd go to his party. You hated me telling you, you couldn't, so you'd go just to piss me off. I sat at home thinking about what I would do because I didn't want it to be over, but you showed me no sign of wanting to fight. Then Brandi called and said someone called her about how drunk you were...but she was too drunk to go get you herself, so..."

"So you went to Hunter's," I finish.

"He was sitting on the bed and leaning down, and from the angle, it looked like he was about to kiss you, and I just flipped out."

"I can see how it looked but... nothing happened and you know that and you still left!"

"That's not why I left, Kinsey." His eyes fill with sadness, and he leans forward slightly. "I took you home that night. I wasn't leaving you there in that state.

"What... you?" I am so confused. I always thought Hunter brought me home...

"Hunter was drinking, he couldn't drive you, so I did," Oliver says. "You kept mumbling his name every time you woke up, so he told you I was going to take him home, and he'd call you in the morning."

"Oh..." I shake the cobwebs from my head, searching for those memories, but they are so lost to time and alcohol.

"The whole way home, you mumbled his name. I set you on the couch, and then you thinking I was him, said, 'I love you, Hunter, even if we never get to be together."

"What... I no. I never said that." The confusion makes my head spin. "I hardly remember getting home... I-"

"I won't forget that moment, Kinsey. You said it, and you broke my heart."

"Oh my god," I whimper, my eyes well with tears. "But I was blacked out drunk and had no idea what I was saying."

"You were saying the truth you never let yourself say," Oliver counters. "I was wrecked it was like a shot to the heart, I knew, but it was proof. I was so angry at you, both of you and myself. I wanted to hurt you like you hurt me, but she slapped the hell out of me and then–"

"Wait, what!? Go back. Who slapped you?"

"Brandi," he says slowly and pensively. "I went to her house after I left yours. I tried to kiss her, and she smacked me, looked at me and said 'who the hell are you right now, Olly?'"

"You tried to kiss Brandi?" The words don't make sense, and that betrayal feels so heavy in light of him leaving the very next day.

"Not my finest moment, but the point of me telling you this was her question. When she asked me who I am, you know what I said?"

"What?"

"I don't know. I had no idea who I was anymore. I'd turned into this desperate, jealous, insecure, and angry guy. I was so far from who I was. It was toxic, you and me, and I couldn't go on hurting like that anymore. I couldn't. I had to leave. I had to get away from it."

That hurts, it hurts but I can't deny anything he is saying, this is his truth, and it's got me feeling absolutely awful.

"I had to do it, get totally away from you and him, and start all over, find myself again, because I could not keep being that guy I'd become. I was starting to hate myself."

Tears are streaming down his face as he finishes and the lump in my throat is bigger than ever.

I should be angry. He has given me plenty of reasons to be, but the time for anger. It's gone. I'm sad instead, sad that we were so sick, that he became someone he didn't want to be anymore, and I was just blind to it all till the very end.

"I'm sorry you heard me say that. I'm so sorry," my eyes fill with tears as the apology spills from my lips.

"I'm not because I needed to hear it. I needed to leave for my own sanity, and I know it sucked for you that I left that way. But, Love it if I had tried to do it in person... I wouldn't have been able too. I wouldn't have left, and I probably would have kept what I heard to myself, and it would have been even worse."

My lip quivers as the tears start to spill down my cheeks.

"It's okay,' he scoots closer, and I fall into his arms.

"No, it's not okay," I cry as he holds me, and soon he starts up as well. We sit there in the sand clinging to each other as we let all the tears out. Finally, we break apart, both sniffling and wiping at our faces.

Oliver hands me the wine bottle, and I take it gratefully, taking a huge sip and then passing it back to him, and he does the same.

"It's not okay that you heard that or that you felt so bad during our relationship. I hate that I made you feel that way."

"It's not all your fault, it's mine too. I wouldn't have been so insecure if I hadn't done the things I did."

"I loved you," I tell him vehemently. "I was fully committed to you, and it sucks and was so unfair that I harbored those feelings for Hunter, but I'd have never acted on them. Hell, I was in total denial of them."

"I know, but that didn't make it any better. I wanted all your heart, not half of it."

"And you deserved that," I agree. "I...understand why you left...but that summer when I found you, the things you said..."

"I was still angry then. I was angry for a long time," Oliver says. "I'm sorry that that ruined our friendship, but I was harsh with you that day because I wasn't ready to be friends or anything with you then."

"You said never, never again," I whimper as that day rears its ugly head again. "You said I never should have kissed you that New Year's Eve, that all I did from that day on was hurt you. You even said look what happened to Brandi and for what? Like our relationship wasn't even worth it or you regretted it."

"I was in a bad frame of mind and very angry I didn't mean all of that. I just wanted you to leave. and so, I was cruel." 

I let out a sob as a fresh batch of tears go streaming down my face.

"I'm so sorry... I was so hurt then, Kinsey, because I loved you so much, and it just fucking hurt."

"I'm so sorry for that," I whisper.

"I know you are for the record. I don't regret us. I swear that to you.  As far as Hunter goes, I get now that your feelings were your feelings. You couldn't help them, and I think by denying them, that was your way of being loyal to me," Oliver says slowly; he wipes his eyes and sniffles a bit. "You didn't know the truth, and that's my fault. I could only blame myself for that."

"Hunter said we're in the position we're in now because you two didn't give me the choice back then."

"Touche," Oliver agrees with a sigh. "Kinz... the last thing I want to do is walk right back into the literal same situation that crushed me back then. I even told myself coming back here, I was not looking to reconcile anything but our friendship, and I wasn't, but–"

"But?" I question.

"But... there's these moments that I feel something between us, and I can't deny them. It's been fifteen years and you and Hunter haven't made it happen, so maybe I was wrong. Maybe... all my paranoia and assumptions destroyed what could have been, okay, eventually. Maybe you would have picked me if given the choice. Or maybe I'm foolish, but..." he trails off as he runs a hand through his sandy blonde hair. "I... need to know. Which of us is it, Kinsey? It's time you answer that question once and for all."

"I know," I whisper. "But I don't have that answer yet. I just healed from Julian, and now I am so confused, but clearing up the past is helping. I'm going to need time still, though, to sort all this out."

"Of course you are," he says quickly. "I'm not as angry as I was then, and I know it is not going to be easy, but ..."

"But it's worth seeing, right? What this is here?" I say softly, leaning in slightly, but he quickly backs up.

"I think, actually... uh, maybe we shouldn't kiss again, yet anyway..." Oliver says sheepishly.

"Oh uh... okay." I flush feeling embarrassed by misreading the signal. 

"It's not that I don't want to, but it's not right, yet. I didn't mean to kiss you the other night. It was this impulse thing, and then it felt wrong."

"I felt that too," I admit. "It thought maybe because we still had all this to talk about. it was like looming in the background." 

"It's that and our relationship was rooted in our friendship, and I think I think we need to get that back first if that makes sense?"

"Yeah," I agree as I grab the wine bottle for another nip. "It does, and I want that. I feel like we're getting there already."

"I do, too," he agrees.

"But it broke me, you leaving, and I don't forgive that yet. I understand it, but I'm not ready to forgive, and this new bomb about you trying to kiss Brandi that night is not helping."

He cringes. "I get it."

"Full disclosure?" I question.

"Please," he says albeit nervously.

"Hunter knows we kissed," I tell him. 

"I'm sure he was happy to hear that."

"Oh, so very," I joke. "He and I have kissed too, and I don't see that stopping." 

"This is going to be fun," Oliver says through gritted teeth.

"I will be as fair as I can to both of you with this. I won't cross any lines I shouldn't until I know where I stand, but Olly... "

I clear my throat as I correct myself, "Oliver, this is going to hurt you, and maybe you should walk away now and..."

"No," Oliver cuts me off. "I'm not walking away again, Kinsey, not this time." 

*Whew! So, there we have it. Oliver's side and his stake in this... will she answer that question once and for all?? 

I find your losing me sing fits the 'that night' backstory really well. So, I added that song again to this chapter too. 

https://youtu.be/pQq9eP5OFhw