#Chapter 4: The Good Deed

“Your villa?” Nathan’s voice sounded disbelieving. “This isn’t your villa. This is my wedding house.”

 

“What?” I scoffed. “You have to be joking.” Surely Nathan was just playing a joke on me. My aunt left me the deed to the house with my name on it, and her gardener, Clint, never mentioned any of this. Maybe Nathan was in charge of the renovations, and it was supposed to be a surprise.

 

But the more that I thought about it, I was only reminded of how he had mentioned his fiancee’s needs when he was talking to the builders.

 

“Isn’t it obvious?” Nathan asked. “This is my wedding house. I paid a high price for the most beautiful villa in town.”

 

This all felt unreal. My aunt’s villa was my childhood playground. My aunt and I didn’t have the closest relationship, but I spent a lot of my time here growing up. I knew this house and its surrounding property like the back of my hand. In fact, I had spent a lot of time as a kid talking to Nathan about how I would change this place if I owned it myself.

 

In fact, as I looked around me now, I suddenly realized that all of the renovations Nathan had made so far were exactly how I imagined it. He stole my vision, only for this to become his home with another woman!

 

I felt heartbroken. There was so much I wanted to say, but all I could do was grit my teeth. Without a word, I stormed over to the kitchen area where I left the envelope that Clint gave me and shoved it in Nathan’s face.

 

“My aunt left me the deed,” I said, watching with satisfaction as Nathan’s eyes slowly widened in surprise while he read it. “I’m her only living relative. Why would she leave the villa to you?”

 

…

 

A little over an hour later, Nathan and I were standing in the County Recorder’s office. Both of us had deeds in our hands; as it turned out, the pack’s treasurer sold the villa privately… and then immediately fled town, leaving us with two deeds, each with our respective names on them, and both of them were perfectly legal.

 

“This is an uncommon occurrence, but it’s not entirely unheard of,” the clerk said, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “You’ll have to go to court if you want to settle it.”

 

Before I could stop it, an audible groan came out of my mouth. I didn’t want to go to court; I just wanted to finally settle down after a decade of instability, and I wanted the comfort of a home that I knew well. Was that too much to ask?

 

Nathan and I walked out of the office then and stopped in the street. The longer I looked at him, the more I seethed.

 

“Listen,” he said, frowning. “We can either do this the easy way, and you can give up the house. Or we can go to court and it’ll be a pain in the ass. I don’t think either of us wants to do that.”

 

“Why should I be the one to give up the house?” I growled. “It’s my aunt’s home. She left me the deed on her deathbed. If anything, I think that you should be the one to give it up. Not me.”

 

Nathan frowned deeply, causing a shadow to cast over his handsome face.

 

“I’m getting married, and I paid a lot of money not only to buy the house, but also to renovate it,” he said. “I’ve spent the past six months personally designing all of the renovations. The wedding is just a few days away, and I can’t possibly prepare another house in that amount of time.”

 

I scoffed and folded my arms across my chest. “It was your father who saw to it that my dad and I were thrown out on the street,” I declared loudly, not caring if anyone else on the street overheard us arguing. “This is the only place that I have to live. I won’t just lie down and let you take it from me.”

 

“I’m sorry you had to leave,” Nathan said quietly, sounding sincere. “But getting you back was the best that I could do. And now, I need this house to make sure that my wedding goes smoothly.”

 

For a few moments, Nathan just stared at me with wide eyes. The blue-green hue of his irises glinted in the morning sunlight, and for a moment, he really did look like the kid that I once knew. Seeing him like this made me soften, and I sighed.

 

“I won’t fight you for ownership of the house. At least, not before the wedding. I do want your wedding to go well, Nathan,” I said, internally noting the hopeful look in my childhood friend’s eyes. “So if you want to use the house for your wedding so you can host all of your friends and family there, it’s fine. But after that, we’ll have to sort all of this out.”

 

Nathan nodded slowly. His blue-green eyes averted away from mine and stared unblinkingly down at the ground, and he chewed his lower lip just like I always remembered him doing when we were kids. Even though so much was different now, it seemed as though some things really did never change.

 

Finally, he looked back up at me. His face seemed apologetic, and I felt myself soften a little bit more.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been such a jerk earlier… Even though it was all just a mix-up over the wedding invitation, I do think my wedding would be more complete with you there. You were my best friend, after all, and I’d like you to be there.”

 

I was a bit taken aback by this sudden change. It made me wonder if the Nathan who I saw earlier that morning in my aunt’s villa was his true self, or if it was all some sort of act. I thought that he changed so drastically, but now as I looked at him and saw the way that his blonde hair bristled in the salty morning breeze coming in from the ocean, all I could see was the kid who I had left behind ten years ago.

 

“Well?” he asked with a sweet smile. “Will you come to my wedding, Olivia?”

 

I chewed my lip for a moment, thinking, before I finally nodded. “Alright,” I said. “But afterwards… I want to work this villa situation out.”

 

…

 

Nathan let me stay in the villa for the next couple of days leading up to the wedding, which felt ironic considering the fact that this was still supposed to be my house and I shouldn’t have had to get permission to stay there. But I obliged, because I really did want my friend’s wedding to go well.

 

It felt disorienting, though, being back in this place that was so different now. The house felt entirely changed, and although it was beautiful, it still felt odd to walk around in a place that I once knew so well.

 

One thing didn’t change, however: my aunt’s bedroom. Nathan had seemingly kept her room mostly the same. I tried avoiding her room at first, but on my second night in the villa, I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer. I held my breath as I pushed the door open, as though she would be sleeping in there right now.

 

But her bed was empty, and the handmade quilt that I remembered watching her make when I was little was perfectly folded. I sighed as I walked over to the bed and ran my hand along the quilt’s smooth fabric, taking note of the way that her reading glasses, which were now covered in a fine layer of dust, were still sitting on the bedside table along with an equally dusty book that was dog-eared in the middle.

 

I sniffled as I picked up the book that she didn’t even get to finish and thumbed through it. When I looked down, I noticed that the drawer to her side table was cracked open a bit. Once again, I glanced over my shoulder as though she would be standing behind me, before I pulled the drawer open. The photo album that she kept there was still in its place. Unlike the book and the glasses, the photo album was clean and not dusty at all, which made me wonder if anyone had been looking at it recently.

 

Smiling, I pulled the old photo album out and sat down cross-legged on my aunt’s creaky bed. For over an hour, I couldn’t help but look through it again and again, smiling at old Polaroid pictures of me and my friends when we were just kids.

 

We felt so grown-up at that time, but now looking back at our missing teeth and ripped overalls, I realized just how little and innocent the three of us were.

 

But at the same time, seeing those old photographs of Nathan and me as kids, before his wife-to-be ever came into the picture, filled me with an unexpected sense of bitterness.

 

I quickly snapped the photo album shut and shoved it back into the drawer.

 

“It’s just nostalgia,” I whispered to myself as I shut off the light and returned to my own bedroom. “Nothing more.”