Olive You

By Imogen Markwell-Tweed

Mamma Mia gave Olive a false sense of romance, beach waves, and paternity. When her best friend, Thomas, offers to marry her for insurance as long as they have a "real" wedding to get his family off his back, Olive doesn’t think twice — a free trip to Greece where she gets to hang out with her best friend, have a huge party, free health insurance, and then a dramatic divorce in a month? Perfect.

But once on the island, Olive realizes that the fantasy she’s built in her head is just that — a fantasy. The family is rude, the weather is hot, and Olive has to pretend to be straight for two whole weeks, which is something she hasn’t done since middle school.

And to top it all off, the wedding planner might just be the woman of Olive’s dream.

Lorelai is smart, funny, and so pretty that it makes Olive want to scream. But she also thinks that Olive is straight and, because of the wedding, completely off limits.

Olive never meant to fall in love. She only wanted to get her appendix taken out. But love, unlike the wedding, can't be planned.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Shorts
• Release date: Jan 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781094435268

Imogen Markwell-Tweed

Imogen Markwell-Tweed is a queer romance writer and editor based in St. Louis. When she's not writing or hanging out with her dog, IMT can be found putting her media degrees to use by binge-watching trashy television. All of her stories promise queer protagonists, healthy relationships, and happily ever afters. @unrealimogen on Twitter and Instagram.

Book preview

1

Olive Punch is, first and foremost, a girl in love.

That is what her mother says to her, at least. She says it when she’s in the second grade and weeping over another little girl who doesn’t want to come to her birthday party. Her mother says it when she’s twelve and the boy across the street moves away and Olive can’t get out of bed for a week. She says it throughout Olive’s life so often and so earnestly that eventually, Olive thinks it of herself, too. It’s insidious, really, becoming a part of herself just because someone says it with enough frequency. It is a mother’s words that can do this the most sinisterly, Olive thinks, with a sense of forlorn doom as she holds the ice pack to her swollen lip.

You’re a girl in love, her mother admonishes. You need to get yourself together.

Olive rolls her eyes. The throbbing of her head is only partly from her mother’s words; the rest comes from the headache forming because the potential love of her life just fucking decked her.

I’m not in love, Olive adds as an afterthought. Really, she should have said that first.

It’s your wedding, her mother says, throwing her hands up. Of course you’re in love.

Oh, right.

Olive forgot about that for a second.

It was just a misunderstanding.

A misunderstanding, her mother repeats. She shakes her head, her hair moving from the effort of it. She clicks her tongue just like she does when the dog drags in dirt. You need to fix this, Olivia. I will not have your wedding ruined.

Olive nods, ducking her head. She turns to look at herself in the mirror as her mom leaves, presumably to find her sister, Sophia, before she turns all the caterers into frogs or something in her panic over stuff that is not any of her business.

Get yourself together, Olive Punch, she demands of herself.

Her reflection stares back in a pitiful sort of way. She has bloodshot eyes with huge under-eye bags, caked with concealer that is cracking. Her hair is a mess, out of the careful coif she’d put it in this morning for the wedding photos. Not to mention, of course, the big, blossoming bruise spilling out red and blue on her cheek and the fat lip she’s got.

She’s been in Greece for three days now and her life is essentially ruined. How the hell is she meant to go back to St. Louis now?

She never should have done any of this. She should have just paid for the marketplace insurance like all the other poor people in Missouri do. She shouldn’t have convinced her best friend and roommate, Thomas, to marry her for insurance, and she shouldn’t have gone along with keeping the lie bit of it a secret so that Thomas’s family would get off his back about finding a wife. And she really, really shouldn’t have agreed to an elaborate wedding in Greece just because Thomas’s family was willing to pay for it.

Mostly, though, she really shouldn’t have tried to hook up with the wedding planner.

All in all, Olive should have made about a hundred different decisions.

But she couldn’t. No, not Olive Punch, family screwup and certified loner. She just had to risk her whole family, all of her friends, and an island full of strangers thinking that she’s a cheater all because she is absolutely incapable of turning down a glass of local wine.

A knock on the door drags her attention back to the present. She sighs and hefts herself out of her depressing spiral. She gives her face one last wincing glance and then heaves herself up and opens the bathroom door.

Olive, Thomas says, and then he’s folding her into a hug.

She feels tears building immediately. Dude, I fucked up.

You got punched, he coos.

She nods. I know, she whines into his shoulder. He holds himself extremely still — trying not to laugh.

Ugh. Fine. She sniffles and takes his body language for the cue that it is: she’s being dramatic.

Is this because I said no to New Politics as our first dance?

Olive laughs wetly. ‘Tonight You’re Perfect’ is very romantic, asshole.

He squeezes her once more before letting her go.

You have to understand, Thomas says as he pulls back, that there is very, very little damage control I can offer this situation.

Olive scowls. Temporary insanity?

He shakes his head. Gets you maybe out of this, but into a whole new bucket of hot water.

I think it’s meant to be a pot of hot water, she corrects.

Thomas blinks at her, unimpressed. You’re really going to pick semantics with me? On our wedding day?

Olive snorts. Technically, that’s next week.

He tweaks her nose gently before moving over to hoist himself onto the bathroom counter. Tomato, tomahto, he says.

Olive closes the bathroom door again and then leans against it. She knows that she’s really holding the place up and technically this is a public restroom. However, she’s sure there’s another bathroom somewhere around here; she’s less sure that there’s another private place for her to have a full-on panic attack.

So, what are you going to do? he asks.

She gives him a once-over. "What are you going to do?" she asks.

He furrows his brow. What do you mean?

"I mean, technically, this is because your fiancée is a two-timer. Olive shivers at the very idea of it. Are we breaking up?"

Thomas pales. He shifts from foot to foot and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. I… how many people know what actually happened?

Just… myself and Lorelai, I think? Mom didn’t know. Olive isn’t sure how many people heard her drunkenly proposition the wedding planner, but she is sure that everyone saw her get decked for it. But she could be telling anyone.

Oh, god.

Should I… tell her the truth? About us?

Thomas shakes his head. No, no. Bad idea — she’s my parents’ wedding planner, who knows what will get back to them, on purpose or on accident. We have to come clean either to everyone or to no one.

The drama is a bit high, but Olive is nursing a potential black eye in Greece at her wedding resort, so, whatever. Drama it is.

Got it. No truth.

Thomas pinches the bridge of his