Somewhere Only We Know

Olivia woke up the next morning the way she had several times throughout the night - to Jeremy's snoring. It was almost six in the morning, and Olivia had decided to give up trying to sleep. She threw a pillow at his head with no results, then again, trying to revive him. When this didn't work, she shouted.
"Hey! Wake up!"
Jeremy shook a bit as he looked groggily over to the figure of an obviously distraught woman with a face of fatigue about her. "What? What's wrong?" He slurred.
"Oh my gosh, you snore so loud!" she said, emphasizing the last two words. "What is your problem?"
He sat up on the couch for a second, just shaking himself awake and getting his bearings. "I'm sorry," he told her. "Man, you are grouchy in the morning, huh?"
"Well, I have reason to be," she snapped. "First I meet the guy of my dreams and have to spend yesterday being ashamed of you for treating him so badly, then you guilt him into making me stay here with you, then you snore all night so I can't even get a decent night's sleep! So yeah, I'm grouchy in the morning!"
Jeremy was no happy camper in the mornings either, but he tried to be this morning. He was excited about the plans he had, and he was actually glad she'd woken him up early enough to get a decent start to the day.
"Wanna go fishing?" he asked Olivia as she headed towards the shower.
She looked at the outfit she held and then looked at him. "I didn't pack fishing clothes," she told him. "Only nice stuff."
"You can wear nice stuff for fishing," he told her. "It's not like we're gonna go frolicking through the mud."
She thought for a moment. "Ok, I guess. I'll call Riley and have him meet us here."
"Oh, um," he hesitated to tell her had planned this fishing trip just for the two of them, but he told her anyway.
"Why? Why don't you like him?"
"It's not that I don't like him, Olivia, it's just that I think this should be more of a father-daughter thing. We can see Riley when we get back tonight."
She let out an indistinct groan as she headed to the shower to get ready. In the meantime, Jeremy called and made the last minute plans.

They picked a lake in Valparaiso, Indiana. It was a little bit longer of a drive, but the lake was smaller, much more private, and had plenty of bass for the picking. In fact, the town encouraged fishing to help decrease the overabundance in the lake. Figuring they would bond better over a successful fishing trip than an unsuccessful one, he chose to make the longer drive.
She was very quiet the whole way there, simply texting and laughing at jokes or quips that Riley apparently made. Maybe they were making fun of him, but Jeremy didn't even care. There would be no reception on the lake.
They rented a roomy fishing boat, complete with cabin and captain's chairs, built-in coolers, live bait on board, and all the trimmings. When Olivia stepped on board, she gave the "oo" and "ah" sounds Jeremy hoped for, indicating she actually intended to have fun. Once they set off into the heart of the lake, Olivia had relaxed, behaving much more calmly than Jeremy had anticipated.
She took a hold of the rod and tossed it over expertly. "Where did you learn how to fish?" Jeremy asked.
"Um, this time my mom and I went to San Francisco, we took a fishing trip. She hated it, but it was actually kind of fun."
He smiled at the thought of Alexa, so proper and so refined as she could be, slinging worms and hauling in dead fish. She didn't even eat fish, Jeremy remembered. Not since the bad experience with it in England. He knew Alexa must have gone fishing purely for Olivia's benefit. What a selfless mother she was.
"I caught a kingfish," she smiled. "Not that day, but another time when my friends and I went out. At least, they said it was a kingfish. Anyway, I had to let it go because it was too heavy for me to reel in."
"That's pretty impressive," he smiled. "So did you do a lot of fishing?"
"Not a lot. Not as much as I wanted to. My one friend that I used to go fishing with pretty often turned all vegan in high school, so she stopped fishing, and she was the only person I knew who liked it as much as me."
"Well, anytime you want to go with me, just ask," he told her. "I go out as often as I can."
"What is it about fishing that's so relaxing? I mean, if you really think about it, we are killing living animals, and that doesn't seem very nice. But there's such an atmosphere out here, and it's so calm. What is that?"
"Maybe just the satisfaction of making a big catch," he guessed. "Or maybe the way it feels to have control over something when it feels like there's no control left in your world."
She looked over at him and chuckled. "That's a little deeper than I wanted to go with this conversation," she smiled. "Don't need to know the meaning of life."
He smiled. "Yeah, but it's true, I think. It's nice to hold up something tangable, like a fish, and say, 'I did this.'"
She didn't answer. She was watching her line as she thought it tugged a bit, but she was mistaken.
"So," he searched for a way to make conversation without seeming too eager. "Anything you want to ask me about, you know, your childhood or anything? Anything you ever wanted to ask your father when you finally met him?"
"I don't know," she muttered as she tossed the line in a different direction. "I guess if you wanted to tell me something you can."
He considered telling her several things. He wanted to tell her about all the fantastic vacations they'd enjoyed while she was very young. He wanted to let her know she'd been to Paris and London and Rome. He wanted to tell her about how her first word was daddy, and how he watched her take her first steps. He wanted to tell her everything, but he didn't. He felt awkward just bringing it all up out of the blue. And besides, why hadn't her mother told her all of this? Would she hate her mother if he told her all these details after Alexa didn't? Would Olivia hate him for holding out on her? He was worried. He didn't know what to say.
"Just ask me anything," he said. "If you want to."
"Well, I guess if you wanted to tell me how you met mom, I guess that might be cool to hear."
He smiled. He would love to tell her that story, because he loved remembering it. "She was a makeup artist on a movie I was doing," he started.
"She did makeup?" Olivia exclaimed. "That's crazy! So you were both actors and you were both makeup artists, and I want to do makeup too. I mean, it's not stage makeup, but it's the same kinda thing, right?"
"Yeah," he smiled, loving her enthusiasm. "And, um, anyway we started talking and I realized I really liked her personality, so I asked her to be my assistant while I was shooting a film in London. And the rest is history."
"So she was your assistant?"
"Yeah," he smiled. "Not a very good one, either, but I didn't mind. I just liked having her around."
"And how long did you guys date before I came into the picture?"
This would be a little difficult to explain, but he would try. "We... we had known each other a couple months already before she got pregnant, and we stayed together for a while after."
"Was I... um, was I... conceived in London?"
"Yep," he smiled widely at her as she smiled a little, too. He could see that she was piecing together bits of the nature of the relationship between her parents.
"So what about the other guy my mom thought might be my father? Who was he?"
He didn't expect this question, but he should have. "Well, your mom and I weren't exclusive while we were together, so she was seeing someone else. But it's not like she was, you know..."
"A slut?"
"She definitely wasn't a slut," Jeremy said. "It's a difficult situation, and I could really make it detailed so that you would understand better, but I'm not sure you would want me to get into those kinds of details."
"I guess not," she answered. It was silent between them for a moment, as Olivia caught a Blue Gill, but threw it back in disappointment. "Did you love her?"
"Of course," he told her. "Your mom and I decided to be exclusive before we found out she was pregnant, and I told her I loved her before we had any idea you were in our future. I loved her so much, Liv. She was my world."
"Well why did you guys split up, then?"
"That's a fair question," he straightened himself up a bit before answering. "Your mom and I were headed in two different career paths. I told her I wanted to stay with her, but she didn't want me to stay out of guilt, so long story short, she broke it off. But I stayed anyway, Liv. I stayed because I wanted to be there for you and your mom. I don't want you to think I just walked out one day, because I didn't."
"What happened, then? Come on, we're not going anywhere for a while, and you told me to ask questions, so that's what I'm doing."
"Your mom took you and moved to a house close to where I was. She asked me not to bother helping with money, but I did because I wanted to make sure you guys were okay. When I was in town, I was at your house every day unless you were at mine, and I kept trying to keep a relationship going with your mom, but she kept turning me down. She just told me that she appreciated that I was being a dad to you, but that didn't mean we were supposed to be together." He re-baited and threw his line out. "I was there every day for you guys. And I kept trying with your mom. We took trips together, the three of us, you know? We went everywhere, and we took pictures and made videos and celebrated everything. I tried to make it work, but your mom was adamant about my not being with her. You know, I wanted to marry her. I proposed and everything. But she turned me down."
"She was in love with you," Olivia told him. "I mean, obviously she never said it, but I saw her cry when she talked about my father, and there's no way she was talking about the other guy. She always said she missed my father, she wished my father was there, she kept talking about my father, but when I would ask her who my father was, she wouldn't say. Then I turn sixteen and she tells me it's one of two guys, and she gives me a key to a box and tells me the answer's inside. So, you know, I waited a couple years, but I had to find out who this guy was that my mom was still in love with after all those years."
Jeremy didn't look at Olivia because there were tears in his eyes. He always believed Alexa loved him, but she always rejected him out of fear or insecurity.
"Why did you leave?" Olivia asked. "Why did you leave if you were so in love with mom?"
He didn't know how to answer. Sure, the truth was the obvious way, but the truth was hard. And how to explain to a girl that you left when she was five that you chose another woman over her?
"I was doing a photo shoot in New York," he explained, "And I met this model. She was beautiful and funny and incredibly intellectual and I don't know, I just fell for her. She seemed so perfect and so enchanting and so amazing, and I fell for her right away. She seemed perfect, you know. She seemed like the perfect creature, and I couldn't stay away. So when she asked me to move with her to New York, I did. I made a mistake."
"So you loved mom so much and wanted to marry her so much and loved me so much that you just left to the other side of the country just like that?"
"No, not just like that," he continued. "I told your mom I was seeing someone and she got all upset. She started yelling at me about how she didn't want me around anymore, and I was an idiot and listened to her. I should have stayed, Olivia. Believe me, I wish I had. Moving away with that woman was the worst mistake I ever made. And you know at the time I justified my actions by telling myself there was no way you were biologically my kid since you had the red hair that was in the other guy's family, and your mom had yelled and I was proud and by the time I realized what I'd done, it was too late to reconcile. So a couple years ago, I went to the lock box to see the results, but I couldn't open the envelope. Your mom and I had decided you would be the one to do that, so I just left the note for you, and I hoped you'd contact me. And you did. And you need to know that getting that call was among the happiest moments of my life."
'Where are the pictures?" She asked.
"What?"
"The pictures of all the trips we took. Where are they? And the videos?"
"Your mom kept them all," he said. "And I'm guessing she threw them all away."
Olivia moped a little. "I know you gave up and everything," she sighed, "But I believe you when you say you tried. And I believe you loved mom."
"I did," he said. "The two of you were my whole world, and I was an idiot for leaving. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about how big a mistake that was."
She scooted next to him and hugged him voluntarily for the first time. She buried her nose into his neck and just stayed like that a bit. "I forgive you, dad."