Green For Confidence
Olive wears green for confidence.
Amongst school yard ridicule and girls with names like Rose and Violet and Scarlett, Olive was as ordinary as her name. Her height was a blessing and a curse; an easy target for bullies, an easy way to disappear.
Confidence, Olive, you have to be confident. Her mother would instruct on a daily basis. Wear your name like a suit of armour, smile and have faith in yourself! Confidence! Have confidence and you can’t fail!
Her mother spurted words of wisdom like a fountain and she took them into consideration as much as her young self would allow her to understand their meaning.
But kids are cruel, no matter how old you get and for her twelfth birthday her dad bought her a horse. So friends weren’t important anyway.
Winning was.
So she replaced friends with trophies and the sound of laughter with a horses' whinny.
And she never looked back.
---
Olive wears green for confidence.
She walked into The Pie Hole for a slice of pie, and came out with a job.
She never plans these things. But the restaurant reminds her of her beloved racehorse and the Pie Maker had an endearing charm (and sadness) about him that she wanted to embrace.
So she walks into work the next Monday, where the pie maker Ned awaits, surprised, with his sad, lonely eyes and her wearing green. She cleans some tables, makes small talk with the customers, pets Digby and slowly, but surely learns his quirks and accepts them.
Just like he accepts hers.
At the end of her first day, he thanks her for her help and tells her that he looks forward to seeing her tomorrow.
She smiles.
Hey, Olive?
Yeah Ned?
Has anyone ever told you that you have a really beautiful name?
(No.)
Oh, thanks. (Giggle).
He smiles and her world starts to spin.
She thinks she’s falling in love.
---
Olive wears green for confidence.
She has been for a while lately. On mornings when not even coffee can perk her up or even Digby (who has abandoned her of late much like his master); she slips on her green dress and pretends the world is her oyster.
(When in actuality she’s trapped inside.)
Because it’s hard to forget that the love of her life has been a mere ten feet away for years and if she had been less Olive and more Chuck, then maybe he would be her Pie Maker to call her own.
Instead he belongs to a girl called Chuck.
And she has no one.
She leaves her apartment and nearly collides into her. She apologises, fixing her hat and straightening her sunglasses (which Olive can help but admire, because if she was that little bit taller she could wear big hats too…) and Olive smiles a confident smile.
It’s my fault. I should really walk a bit slower.
The other woman smiles at Olive; the smile of a woman who doesn’t know that she stole the man of her dreams away from her and that she’s breaking inside.
I love your dress.
I love your hat.
The two women, their rivalry blissfully hidden, smile at each other.
Olive wants to hate Chuck.
But for the life of her she can’t.
It’s nice to have a friend.
---
Olive wears green for confidence.
She walked into the Pie Hole much like she had the first time she did.
Confident and smiling.
As the Pie Maker and the girl called Chuck (who she know called friend) stood together, but not touching and Emerson Cod wore a permanent scowl on his face, she announced to the world she would be leaving the Pie Hole.
For greener pastures, she joked.
No one laughed.
But wasn’t that always the way? A secret Olive wasn’t privy to, a joke not shared.
So she parted ways with the trio. She gave Chuck a hug and told her she’d miss her (sincerely) and hugged Ned a little too long (unrequited love runs deep). She refrained from hugging Emerson, because he would’ve liked it that way. She pets Digby one last time and turns her back on the Pie Hole.
But she’s not alone. She has a piece of paper in her pocket with a name and a number and dreams of driving down long, endless highways selling herbal mood enhancers with a smile on her face and confidence in her heart.
(With a friend and a lover by her side.)
She smiles and adds a little skip to her step.
Olive wears green for confidence.