Ollie Always
Table of Contents
OLLIE ALWAYS
JOHN WILTSHIRE
mlrpress
www.mlrpress.com
Named after the main character in his mother’s infamous Oliver novels, Ollie’s been fighting his fictional namesake his whole life. It’s a battle for identity he is slowly and inevitably losing. Ex-army PTI, Tom knows all about battles—the real ones that break soldiers. When he volunteers to help with the Oliver situation, Ollie hears more in the offer than Tom apparently intends, for Tom quickly informs Ollie that he’s married. Which is absolutely fine, because Ollie isn’t gay—that’s Oliver. Tom and Ollie discover fairly swiftly that there is often a very fine dividing line between fact and fiction.
Copyright Acknowledgement
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2016 by John Wiltshire
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Published by
MLR Press, LLC
3052 Gaines Waterport Rd.
Albion, NY 14411
Visit ManLoveRomance Press, LLC on the Internet:
www.mlrpress.com
Cover Art by Molly Wright
Editing by Christie Nelson
Print ISBN #978-1-60820-999-6
ebook format
Issued 2016
This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the publisher.
CHAPTER ONE
Having watched all the new funny cat videos he could find, Ollie flicked back to his open document—
ideas_for_the_book.doc
. It was still depressingly blank. Had he honestly hoped some inspiration would hit him whilst perusing cats sitting in circles or standing on their hind legs? No, he’d prayed the page might magically fill itself rather than nagging him, a tiny blue and white source of pain at the bottom of his screen.
But it was almost eleven…Ollie checked his watch again. Almost time to stop procrastinating with cats to a much more profitable and absorbing diversion—watching the runner.
He had first noticed this man a week ago. Ollie’s traditional Kiwi villa sat on a slight curve of the road—a single-lane, rarely used highway, which ran for over twenty miles along a stretch of New Zealand coastline from the city to a remote, almost uninhabited fishing village that was his nearest neighbour. From his back bedroom window—or, more specifically, from his writing desk—he could see for miles in both directions, and thus he had spotted the runner.
He’d materialised one morning out of a sea fog, so his first appearance had created an air of mystery around something, which, in itself—legs moving fast in a forward motion—was rather mundane. Ollie had glanced up from a cat seeing off a bear, which was hilarious, to observe a florescent yellow jacket emerge from nowhere, run past, and then disappear again. Tall, male, and running. Intriguing. In Ollie’s experience, despite New Zealand being promoted as the lifestyle capital of the world, Kiwis, by and large, didn’t run. They occasionally walked with intent. But here was one—tall, running, and…male. That seemed a much more interesting order to catalogue this apparition’s attributes.
Ollie hadn’t given the runner much thought for the rest of that day, because he was already busy procrastinating, and that took up a lot of mental energy. The bathroom was beginning to show signs of mould, so that had to be tackled. Wood needed to be chopped and stacked. Then he’d felt obliged to update his website, check his Twitter feed and compose some lies for his blog. All this took time and a great deal of concentration, so he didn’t think again about the yellow jacket and what it contained until that night, lying alone in bed.
Where had the man come from? The obvious explanation that he’d parked somewhere further up the highway was too dull to contemplate, so Ollie initially had him run all the way from the city, but this didn’t seem all that likely—or fascinating. No, much more alluring was the thought that the apparition in the fog had come from the old farmhouse on the other side of the hill. It had been on the market for about a hundred years—a short time in New Zealand house sale terms—and Ollie had been pondering who’d bought it since he’d seen the sold sticker across the agent’s board the previous week. Within a very short space of time after climbing into bed, therefore, Ollie had decided he had a new neighbour. A tall neighbour who liked running. And who was male.
The next morning, Ollie had stationed himself at his desk with a mug of tea and a piece of shortbread half an hour before the runner had appeared the day before. In the morning light, it hadn’t seemed all that credible that one lone figure in a bright jacket could, by such unlikely coincidence, be the buyer of his neighbour’s house. Ollie had convinced himself that the man had parked his car by the ocean, despite the lack of visibility, and decided to get some exercise. In which case, it was highly unlikely he’d see him again.
He’d not spotted him before, and he’d been sitting by the window for weeks now not writing his novel.
It hadn’t been foggy that second day—quite the opposite. It was one of those ozone-depleted, blue-sky days that looked so good on New Zealand postcards. A deceptive blue that drew you out of your comfortable house to sample the sun and the warmth—until you scurried back inside, muttering about the equivalent temperatures in space. So, Ollie had seen the runner from a very long way away. As far as his eyes could see down the road, in fact. Initially a tiny yellow speck like a minute rapeseed flower, it had grown to be the discernable figure of a tall man in running shorts. Ollie had shot to his feet, wishing he had a second floor he could nip up to and examine the figure better. He would have about five minutes to watch as the man thumped closer, and then he’d have a brief flick of time when he went past the hedge, and then he’d be able to study the retreating…form…for another five minutes.
Perverted possibly, but perfect procrastination.
§§§
So the week had gone very quickly for Ollie, his long stretches of deliberate inactivity punctuated each morning by the vision in yellow and black. He’d added some very salient facts to his observations. The man had longish dark hair; he was tanned (although this could have been a flush from running), and he had immaculate timekeeping. Ollie could have set his watch by the regularity of the appearances. This boded well in Ollie’s opinion for his living-over-the-hill theory. It was much more likely that a man leaving from somewhere close could keep to an accurate schedule than someone who had to drive out of the city to park and run. Much more likely.
The frustrating thing was that Ollie couldn’t get a good look at the man’s face. His initial impression of a strong jaw, straight nose and shaggy hair was very likely to be his overactive imagination, as he only had about two seconds of surveillance along the hedge, and some of those precious moments were obscured by the spiky things growing up along the post and wire fence that served as the boundary of his section with the road. The triffids, as he called them, these favourite Kiwi monstrosities, which produced alien purple stalks with mouth-like protuberances. He’d always meant to uproot them and plant something civilized and English and wished now he’d gotten around to it.
Damn it.
The man had passed by and was gone for another day. It was
beyond
frustrating.
Ollie spent a pleasant hour with his feet up on the desk, a couple of bottles of wine, and lost in a world of imaginary interactions with the intriguing neighbour. They clearly had a lot in common. Well, they lived in the same country, which was always a start. They both had dark hair, which was not something that usually sparked a conversation between men, Ollie had to admit. “Hey, love your hair, dude. Is that…wow, exactly the same shade as mine?” Nope, not the hair then. But they did both live in New Zealand. That had to be a topic of shared interest. Except, of course, the man probably
was
a Kiwi, and therefore that conversation too was destined to be a little short. Ollie had already discovered, despite only living in the country full time for a year, that discussing anything to do with God’s Own Bit of Paradise with a Kiwi could be fraught with difficulties….
No
, Ollie applied his don’t-criticise-New-Zealand-even-in-my-head rules, and turned back instead to his heart-to-heart with the runner.
But how was this little chat going to be engineered? For a while, Ollie pondered the hope that the man might trip and stumble right by his fence and thereby require immediate medical assistance. Was there anything sticking out, maybe, which could be made to…? Perhaps if
he
were out in the garden the guy might stop to say hi. As a new neighbour. Maybe
he
could be lying in need of urgent medical assistance…Ollie flushed as he envisaged the scenario where the man saw him collapsed there and…ran on past.
Anyway, who would want to be seen on a first introduction as a…casualty? No, far better to initiate this chat over…well…running.
Now, there was a slightly worrying thought to provide perfect procrastination for yet another day.
Running
. Ollie had run once or twice. At school, he’d run a lot, usually away from the much older boys who’d been chasing him. He’d become quite fleet of foot, he remembered. Physical activity, done in the cold with pimpled, frozen legs poking out from shorts, had been a compulsory part of every day’s timetable. Then there had been the mandatory weekend activities—orienteering, climbing, sailing. He vividly recalled a long weekend in Wales at an army adventurous training camp where they’d been bounced awake at five every morning for a quick sprint up to the top of Pen y Fan and back before breakfast. The instructors, all army PTIs with shaven heads and starched white vests, even in the bitterest of winds, had been, surprisingly, some of the most professional and kindest men he’d ever encountered in his short life. But then, Ollie knew his experiences with men, even aged eighteen, were highly unusual.
But such memories, once he’d thankfully left the vicious institution that had grandly called itself a public school, had put him off even attempting sport as an adult. In fact, most physical activity, now that he came to think about it, evoked the smell of gymnasium floors and the shouts of insane PE masters, who’d made his life miserable since he was seven.
But in this instance, he didn’t actually need to run—he merely had to
look
as if he’d been running. Then the meeting and very interesting conversation would be entirely spontaneous.
The next day, Ollie observed the runner, planning his ambush. Meeting.
He needed to be coming back from his run, facing toward the man and thus no gauge could be made of his speed…the thought of the guy overtaking him and sprinting away was as embarrassing as his initial plan to be lying, groaning in the garden. No, he needed the advantage of approach to make it at least credible that he was actually running. But how to do this…He wasn’t fit enough to run toward the fishing community out of sight and then turn around and run back to engineer this meeting. Then Ollie had a brainwave. Just because this guy slogged along the road every day with no variation, didn’t mean
he
had to! Didn’t most runners like to run off road? Ollie certainly did. Or he did now that he’d realised he could use the beach to suddenly appear on the road right in front of the runner, giving the impression he was in fact a
very
keen off-roader. Trail runner? Something or other quite impressive anyway.
Ollie’s villa had steps from the living room down to the beach. He lived with the sound of the ocean rolling and uncurling in his dreams, its pristine turquoise and white perfection with him day and night. He sometimes blogged about living on the Pacific, knowing quite well the jealousy it would provoke for city dwellers in places far away. He never mentioned the resuscitation unit he’d need if he so much as put a foot in the water. Even in summer, there were icebergs floating past. And if there weren’t, and this was merely an exaggeration he amused himself with, there were penguins on the beach. Who the hell didn’t know what temperatures penguins preferred?