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It starts, like any day starts, with morning sunlight streaming through the front windows and dozens of orders of coffee and resident sweet tooth’s popping in for an unhealthy breakfast. Emerson pops in early enough that everyone knows it’s a case and Ned slides from the kitchen into the booth. Chuck appears as if summoned, sitting opposite of Ned and smiling.
And like any day, it stabs at her heart, just a little.
Because she wishes, sometimes, she could just slide in next to Ned when they all sat like that. Slide in far enough that their thighs touch and elbows knock. She just wants to touch him, she thinks, touch him right there in front of Chuck and Emerson and the world.
The empty space, at least, is satisfying. Like the cuts missing from the pie on the top stand.
-
“He was mauled by a bear.” Emerson finishes, jamming his fork into the slice of apple-rhubarb half finished on his plate.
“Why are you investigating if you know who the murder is? Is it even up for investigation if it’s a wild animal attack?” Ned frowns, hands clasped tight on the table top.
“We’re not going to attack the bear are we?” And there’s Chuck, voice all light. “I don’t think you could take down a bear.”
“I don’t want to take down a bear. I had a very traumatizing experience with a bear skin rug once and I’d rather not repeat it.” Ned again, still frowning.
“We’re not taking on a bear,” Emerson says snidely. “Mitchell Michaels wasn’t the only one up in those woods. There’s a reward out for finding his hiking companion. A very nice reward, if you get the drift.”
“So you want us to…”
“Michaels was the last one to see Pietro Peterson alive.” Emerson sips his coffee and levels Ned with a heavy look that seems to be cause for a silent conversation.
Or maybe there’s a real conversation taking place. It’s hard for Olive to tell when Ned’s eyebrows are moving like that.
“And then we tell the police where to find him?” Chuck cuts in, bringing all eyes back to her.
“Then we go get him for the thirty grand of jewelry they stole before running off into a bear populated forest.”
“Jewlery?” Chuck asks, sounding surprised.
“Did I forget to mention?” Emerson smiles now.
“Did someone mention hiking?” Olive cuts in before Chuck can shove at him and Ned can finish twisting up his facial expression.
-
The hike into the woods isn’t that bad, not really. The trail’s clear, more so than she’d expect criminals to take. She’s not sure how Emerson knows the way to go, she’s never sure how Emerson knows half as much as he does. But she’s glad it’s an easy path and that she dug out some old riding boots for the walk. And that it’s not muddy out. Emerson’s driving them on so fast that muddy would have meant infinitely more slipping and sliding.
Emerson’s pretending to be annoyed with her and Chuck tagging along, shooting them snarled glances whenever they have to stop for a breather. It doesn’t seem to matter that it’s Ned making them stop, leaning on trees and stooping over rocks until he can wipe his forehead and even out the rise and fall of his chest.
He seems to find the trail more than a little bad, and it’s the only reason Olive isn’t saying anything about the light exercise. She’d had it worse training for the races. The races themselves had been worse. But she finds it cute when he pants and groans and doesn’t bother trying to hide it even when Chuck teases him.
It’s not so cute how her stomach rolls at the smile he shoots Chuck after.
-
They find the body at the bottom of a ravine, just off the side of the path. There’s claw marks on the ground and fur caught along the tree line. There’s no trail of blood where the other man had crawled away after the attack, only to be found later half down the trail, but there’s a finger lying in the leaves and Ned nearly pukes when Chuck finds it. From up here they can’t see any cuts on the body. At least there aren’t any cuts that look like it comes from any angry forest creature. It looks like he fell trying to get away from the beast and Olive says as much.
Emerson gives her a glare for it, but Chuck backs her up in that chirping little voice and that makes Ned chime in too. Emerson’s not very good at standing against all three of them, or at least he’s not up to trying when they can see a bag lying next to the body and there are shiny things spilled out all over the rocky soil.
He walks off around the trail to find a way down and the rest stay there, trying not to look at the mangled flesh but finding it a bit like a train wreck. Chuck says as much and when Ned frowns, this time Olive backs her up. Tit for tat, she says in her mind, feeling evened up.
They try to keep an eye on Emerson too, as he finds a place to climb down. He slips, just a little, halfway down and Ned leans forward to call out to him at the same time Chuck does. He jerks away from her, eyes wide and startled and he loses his footing and starts slipping from the edge. Olive watches it and lets out a shriek far higher pitched than she thought she had in her. She reaches for him just a second too late. She brushes against his sleeve and then he’s gone.
For a moment, she just stares at where he was in horror, frozen in that outstretched position that starts to make her back ache. Then Chuck makes a sobbing noise that sounds odd and distorted, like a cry in a tunnel, and Olive lurches forward to peer over the edge.
She expects to see a Ned shaped body lying at the bottom. She expects to see the shattering of her world all splattered out like jam dropped off the counter top, shards and sticky bits making patterns on the floor. She expects to hate herself for thinking of food at a time like this, expects to spend the next few years unable to have toast without crying.
Instead she finds Ned clutching at a tree growing out of the side of the ravine, at a point near the bottom, looking winded and terrified. She’s reminded of the time it was both of them hanging from a branch and she could smile if it weren’t for the way Chuck grips her arm, tight with relief.
They call to Emerson, making wild hand gestures at Ned but Emerson’s already seen him. And he’s moving faster than Olive’s seen him in years. She knows he’ll pretend later he’s not that worried but she sees he is now and it makes her smile break out over the thread of pain shooting up from Chuck’s death grip on her bicep. She tries to ease Chuck away, half tugging the other woman toward the path Emerson was taking and half trying to get ahead of her. They both stumble around the edge, trying to both avoid the fall and keep their eyes on Ned and-
And the tree splinters. He falls.
It’s not such a harsh one this time. He was already close to the bottom and the fall’s broken by the body already decomposing there. It’s still enough to shock a gasp out of both women, the sound sharp and ringing until he lets out a groan and starts to move.
Then the body starts to move too.
Olive shriek is higher now than the last.
-
They don’t explain much as they file out of the woods, Emerson was too focused on getting the goods and Ned was too covered in bruises and someone else’s blood to do much more than jumble his words. It wouldn’t matter, Olive feels shell shocked, like she’s moving through a dream. She can barely focus on anything other than the lift of her feet and the tight feeling of trying not to faint. Every time she thinks she’s gotten it under control, she looks to Ned and sees that body move again- twitchy and broken and speaking- and sees it drop back again with a jab of his finger and a horrified shout, and she feels sick.
As they sit in the car, Ned’s over shirt stripped to keep blood off the seat cushions, Emerson and Ned try to tell her it was a fluke. She didn’t see anything. It was a trick of the light. She’s hallucinating. The man simply wasn’t dead yet. Every excuse seems more ludicrous than the last and she can tell that they can tell she’s not buying it. She stares until Ned’s voice falters and Emerson starts yelling at him about the whole ordeal.
Chuck turns to her, face open and honest as she touches Olive’s arm. “I told you.”
And Olive has never been more grateful for the hand held out to her.
-
“We’re selling rotten fruit in our pies?”
“They aren’t rotten anymore. Not after I touch them and make them…”
“Undead?”
“I don’t like-“
“He doesn’t like that word, Olive.”
“But they’re still dead, Mrs. Undead Lonely Tourist. And rotten. And in our pies.”
“You’ve always said they were good pies!”
“They are! I recommend them to everyone. I talk about this place all the time. But, Ned. Rotten fruit.”
“I know this looks bad between you two, but this is going much better than I thought it would.”
“Can I just bud in here and say none of this would have ever happened if we just left these two at home? Like I suggested. Or maybe not brought back Dead Girl in the first place? No? Fine. You, stop gawking and help me with these rings.”
-
It all makes sense now, seeing everything now for what it really was. Why he never touched Digby. Why he never touched anyone. How withdrawn he was. How nervous he was. Why he would even work with Emerson in the first place.
Beyond the initial panic and her completely appropriate questions about their food service, that’s what bothers Olive the most. It’s Chuck and Ned and all he’s done to bring her back. It seems so terribly romantic and she can’t decide if she wants to smile or cry about it.
-
It is strange, walking into the Pie Hole with the world still the same and her mind all changed around. Enough that for a second, just a second, she thinks about staying home. About quitting and finding a different job and moving far, far away from Ned and Chuck and NedandChuck and this great secret she now shared with them. But it only lasts a second, between waking and her first cup of coffee. And then she is dressing for work and flipping the sign to OPEN and turning on the espresso machine. She smiles at Ned when she ducks into the back to bring out the pies he’s come in early to bake. He smiles back.
He looks so relieved that she feels guilty for that second of doubt. He looks so relieved that she feels just a little happy that he’s so happy to see her still here.
-
“You’re still here,” Chuck says as she slips onto a stool at the bar and waves to catch Olive’s eye. Like Olive wasn’t already paying attention from the moment the woman had walked into the dinner looking too much like the story on the six o’clock news.
“This is my job,” Olive replies, the laugh in her voice just a little nervous. She thinks she’s doing a very good job of being normal. Or at least she’s doing well at being as normal as she ever was.
Chuck smiles, wide and sparkling. “You stayed,” she says, “He was afraid you wouldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t run off and talk about,” Olive drops her voice into a whisper, mindful of the customer’s all around. “The thing.”
“That’s not what he was worried about.” Chuck’s smile turns feather soft. “At least that wasn’t all of it.”
That makes her heart start to pound, her chest clench up in a way that used to fill her hope but in light of what she really knows about the woman in front of her it just makes her hurt. “Do you want me to get Ned?” Olive asks instead on lingering on the emotion rolling in her stomach.
-
She thinks Ned’s watching her now, more than he ever was before. She can feel his gaze on her, making her hot and cold by turns, both as she works and as he stops by the apartment for Digby. It’s not the heated gaze she’s always wanted or dreamed of, instead it’s nervous and careful. He’s scared, she realizes, after the third day of his uneasy stares and more false cheer in his voice than she’d heard in a long while. She realizes after Chuck had points it out as she barges into Olive’s apartment that third night for tea that turns to wine and old romcoms.
Olive hasn’t said anything since that first day, not said a word about the big secret and all the things it makes her feel. And she considers, in the moments between Carry Grant loosing the girl and winning her back again, that maybe Ned’s feeling a lot of things too.
-
“It doesn’t bother me.”
“The added honeydew? You said yesterday you didn’t like it.”
“Not the pie, Ned, though I stand by what I said. I meant the other thing. The big thing.”
“Olive, I…”
“Well, it does bother me. That I didn’t know. And you didn’t tell me. But she knew and Emerson knew and I didn’t and that bothers me. And the dead thing. That bothers me too. That’s normal, isn’t it?”
“Olive,-”
“But you don’t bother me. You’re still Ned. And Ned never bothered me. Well, not like that.”
“I-“
“You don’t bother me. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Olive?”
“Yeah, Ned?”
“Thank you.”
-
The next time Chuck comes over, it’s with popcorn and a musical tucked under her arm.
“You’re here!” Olive’s half surprised, half exhausted, but she let’s Chuck slip by her anyway.
“I’m here!” Chuck says with a laugh and sits herself on Olive’s couch like she belongs there.
Halfway through the movie, after the saucy duet and before the jazz inspired number, Olive knocks her ankle against Chuck’s. “You talked to him.”
“Ned? Well, yes,” says Chuck.
“About me.” Olive presses on, feeling oddly shy as she stares at where their heels are pressed together.
“Oh.” And Chuck looks all soft and sweet. “Yes. I did. I think you both needed that.”
“Thank you,” Olive says quietly and a little more gruffly than gratitude demands but Chuck still smiles like it was as long winded and heartfelt as the confession song on screen.
-
Chuck comes over more and more, until it’s nearly a nightly thing and Olive’s stopping by the library to find new old movies to borrow. She learns exactly which ones Chuck will like the best, which actors she gets excited over. She keeps a lot of wine on hand and starts keeping a lot of cheese in the ice box too.
She pretends not to be so pleased when she surprises Chuck with a cut of Stilton and the woman lights up like a Christmas tree. She also pretends not to hear when Chuck talks about how pretty the actresses are and when says she says Olive looks a lot like one of them.
It’s the wine, she thinks.
-
Ned stops looking at her like he’s scared and starts looking at her like he’s happy. He smiles at her every morning in a way that’s decidedly different than the way he used to and for once, he talks to her. Really talks to her.
He talks about Chuck, a lot, and about baking, and neither of those comes at any surprise. But he talks about cases too, about waking people up and putting them back down. He tells her the truth about Digby and laughs when she gives the dog an extra hard hug just after. He tells her sometimes about what’s going through his head, and sometimes he even tells her without having to be prompted.
It’s almost perfect, she thinks.
-
“And so her dad?”
“Yeah.”
“And she knows?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, Ned.”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
-
“He told you?”
“He did.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What about another glass, Olive?”
“I’ll just get another bottle.”
-
He touches her a little more now, surprisingly. It’s not much, but there are little brushes of his fingertips to her own when he hands her things and little brushes of his side against her shoulder when they move around the kitchen and little brushes of the back of his hand to her forearm when he comes to pick up Digby and she’s fallen asleep on the couch. It’s all little brushes, tiny and hesitant, but it’s touching and that makes her want to explode.
-
The space on the couch between Chuck and Olive on movie nights starts to grow smaller and smaller until they sit shoulder to shoulder while Mae West’s personality fills the screen. Chuck might put her hand on Olive’s arm when something makes double over with laugher or she might kick her legs over Olive’s knees until they’re more a huddled mass in the cushions than two bodies. It’s all encompassing, every touch purposeful and confident and it makes her forget little by little why she disliked Chuck in the first place.
-
“You have a little something, uh, there.” Ned rubs his thumb across his left cheek, as he pulls back from the oven.
Olive reaches up to rub at her face obligingly, watching him smile and shake his head. She already feels a little giddy, that they are both back here baking together after the little flour fight they’d had while trying to decide if the recipe was better served with lavender or orange zest. The atmosphere between them is so happy, so easy that she’s walking on air and she can’t think of anything that could ruin the course her life has taken since she found out the truth.
He shakes his head slowly. “No, the other…” Ned trails off and reaches for her, swiping at her cheek with the dry dish towel he’d used in lieu of a pot holder. His smile grows as he looks down at her and even though he pulls back after a moment, crossing his hands behind his back in that habitual manner she’s used to, it makes her heart leap into her throat. She’s about to mark it down as something for her to squeal about later that night, after Chuck’s went home and she’s left with the last half inch in the wine bottle, before he moves again.
He kisses her.
He lays his lips against her own, as gentle and careful as she could ever imagine Ned being. It’s nervous, questioning, like he’s never known how she felt and he’s a schoolboy on his first date. It’s a little dry and there’s still so much space between them but it’s perfect. It’s almost perfect.
Because as much as she wants to melt into it, her brain just won’t turn off and let her just enjoy. She can’t stop seeing a wide, sparkling smile and hearing a cheery laugh and smelling honey. The kiss can’t be perfect because it suddenly doesn’t feel right. It’s lacking and sickening, and all she can think of is Chuck.
Olive pulls away, looking up into those nervous eyes with the thick eyebrows all pinched up and she wishes she wasn’t about to speak at all. But she does. “Are you kissing me because you can’t kiss her or because you want to kiss me or-” And she doesn’t know what else to say, how to say it, so she snaps her jaw shut and stares at him.
He stares back, open mouthed and wide eyed and she can’t take the space of moments it takes for him to answer. She turns and flees, scurrying as fast as her short legs will carry her, past Emerson as he comes through the door and yells at her for running into him. Truthfully, she doesn’t want to know the truth.
Truthfully, she does.
-
Chuck knocks on her door that night, but Olive won’t answer. She turns out all the lights and listens to the gentle pleas to come in, please, can’t we talk. She curls away from the door, willing every part of her body to stay stock still. She can’t open the door, not yet.
She waits until Chuck gives up before she lets herself start to cry.
-
She doesn’t go to work the next day.
-
Or the next.
-
Or the next.
-
On the third day she forces herself out and to the shop, because it’s a Saturday and the holidays are closing in and she knows they’ll be busy. She doesn’t say anything to Ned when she comes in and he doesn’t say anything back. She can still feel his presence, though, an aura of nerves and worry and guilt. It’s the guilt that keeps her from looking at him, keeps her from speaking. She thinks it’s keeping them both stuck, chugging through the motions on different tracks, unable to cross.
-
Chuck doesn’t speak to her either, when she comes in, trailing behind Emerson and going to the usual booth. Their talk this week is choppy and clipped, all Emerson speaking and all business. She’s thinks he ought to be pleased by that, but he’s frowning at Ned and Chuck the whole time. He even looks at her once, as she dollops cream on a customer’s order at the counter.
As far as she can tell, he’s not saying anything either.
-
She still wants to slide into that booth, to sit with them. She’s not sure how much of it is wanting Ned or missing movie nights or just wanting to be part of it, to fill up the empty place until it’s not so empty. Now it makes her feel sad instead of smug. Like a coffee mug with a missing handle. It still works, but it’s not quite right. It’s not what it could be.
-
Things go on like this a few days, of her coming to work and leaving without saying anything to anyone. A gap’s growing between them, her and Ned and Chuck, and it’s growing larger with every second they don’t speak. It’s strangely lonelier than before, when Chuck wasn’t around and she was nothing to Ned but an employee. It’s worse than before she knew anything, worse than the nunnery, worse than every time she’s cried about him before.
She’s had a taste of what things could be like, of how she could slot together with them and they could all exist on the same page. And she’s lost it. She’s lost both of them and it’s crushing her.
She doesn’t know how to fix it.
-
Chuck finally says something one night as she hustles to leave with Ned, the two of them wrapped up in wool coats and bright scarves and looking so much the perfect couple from a perfume commercial that Olive’s breath gets lost. Chuck let’s Ned pull ahead of her, lets him fly out the door first without so much as a glance back, and then she stops. Her hand is on the door and she turns just a little, looking over her shoulder until she’s holding Olive’s gaze from across the counter.
“I’m not angry that he kissed you,” she says.
“You should be,” Olive says back, feeling defeated and grateful for the barrier of wood and space between them. “I’m not you.”
Nothing has ever hurt so much to say out loud.
Chuck stares at her, eyes soft and filled with something Olive can’t name. “Open your door tonight.” And that’s all she says before she leaves, catching up to Ned as they jog to the car. There’s snow falling around them and in the light from the shop sign they look like magic, standing there together.
Olive thinks she can never open the door, not with that on the other side.
-
But Chuck comes knocking and she does.
-
“He didn’t do it to hurt you,” Chuck says, over the second glass of wine. “He never does things just to hurt people.”
They’re sitting on opposite ends of the couch, the space cold and harsh between them. Both are turned to the television, eyes locked on the screen. Olive may have let her in but she can’t bear to look at her.
“I know.” And Olive is a little surprised that it’s true. She didn’t think she knew that. “But,” she sighs, “He loves you.”
“I love him,” Chuck confirms, her tone just a little dreamy.
They sit in silence until the third glass.
“Do you think we only ever have to love one person?” Chuck asks, voice just a little small. “Don’t you think we can love more? There was a case like that once, where someone had a lot of loves. Even if things didn’t end well there, I think- Don’t you think it’s possible?”
Olive doesn’t look away from the screen, even if she’s not sure what the movie is even about anymore. Her chest feels funny, like she’s standing on a high wire and too afraid to look down. It’s a fear of falling, of crashing and burning.
“I think it is,” Chuck says after a moment. She clears her throat and says it again, voice stronger. “Olive, I think it is.”
At the sound of her name, Olive snaps her head to the side and finds that Chuck’s already staring at her. There’s something in her gaze that keeps her from looking away, making a lump form in her throat. It makes her want to cry and run and hug her all at the same time.
Instead, when Chuck put her hand on the couch between them, gazes still locked, Olive puts her hand there too.
“You don’t have to be me, Olive.” Chuck twists her wrist until they’re not quite holding hands but their fingers are slotted together like they could, if Olive wanted. “You just have to be Olive. That’s enough for us.”
“Okay,” she says, and feels like the net’s caught her before she could hit the bottom.
-
The next day she goes straight to the back of the shop, straight up to Ned and looks him in the eye like she hasn’t for days. “Was it all of us?” Olive asks, forcing herself to keep calm. “The kiss, was it meant for all of us?”
Chuck’s there, leaning against the sink and smiling. Her presence makes it easier not to run, not to let the doubt in her head affect her heart. She thinks it makes it easier for him too, because he looks to Chuck before breathing deeply.
“All.” Ned says, blushing but steadfast. “It’s all.”
“All of us?” Chuck asks, swinging away from the sink and standing with them. None of them are touching, but the energy in the room feels like they ought to be. It’s making Olive feel a little like singing.
“Yes,” he says and Olive takes both of their hands and feels their combine smiles light up the room.
-
Knowing doesn’t really solve everything. There’s still a lot to work out between them and a lot to work out to exist as they are in the world. Olive’s still not sure how they fit together, how they’re meant to last. Ned still has that nervous look to him, whenever she enters the room and sometimes Chuck still makes her feel inadequate with her Chuckness.
But Ned comes with Chuck for old movies and they all sit side by side on the couch, with Olive in the middle and both touching her sides. Chuck holds her hand when they go shopping. Ned kisses her cheek softly every morning before work. Olive learns to keep a steady supply of plastic wrap in her apartment just in case, so she can see their version of a kiss up close. Sometimes when she sees Chuck and Ned smile at each other it doesn’t hurt at all and sometimes it just makes her smile too.
And now she gets to slide into that booth, touching Ned and neither feeling guilty or vindictive but feeling more satisfied than she ever thought possible. Because when her knees knock against Ned’s, he smiles in a way he used to reserve for just Chuck and Chuck leaves her arms outstretched on the table so her fingers brush Olive’s. And Emerson only frowns about it when they stop paying attention to him and instead focus too much on each other.
It’s not perfect, she thinks, except for that it is.