Waking Olivia (18 page)

I
’m driving away
from the farm as fast as I can go, as if I can somehow separate myself from what she just said. I can’t, because she was right. Every damn word out of her mouth was right.

It’s not simply that I don’t like Jessica. The truth is that I
dread
Jessica. I dread seeing her in my office, in my apartment or hers, or at the farm. There’s nothing wrong with her. There’s also nothing that makes me crave her, miss her, think about her when she’s not with me. All these nights I’ve spent sleeping on my mother’s couch were spent thinking about a girl, but that girl wasn’t Jessica.

I’m mad at Olivia for pointing it out, and I’m mad at myself for not seeing it sooner. I turn the car around and go home, to sit on my mother’s front porch with my head in my hands, realizing exactly how pathetic the truth is. I was never interested in Jessica. She was just another futile effort to please my father, an effort I made far too late.

I took over the farm like he wanted. I dated the girl he chose for me. I’ve spent two years paying penance as if these actions will let him know that I’m so fucking sorry for the way I acted and the shit I said to him, and for the fact that I let him carry so much on his shoulders without ever once offering to help. But paying penance feels like it’s sucking the life out of me, and it’s never going to bring him back.

I’ve only just stood up when the door flies open. I leap forward, cursing myself for not going inside sooner, and barely grab Olivia before she gets down the steps. She screams and flails and finally gives in to me, collapsing against my chest with a weak, final cry.

I carry her to her room. It’s funny that I grew up here, but in a short period of time it has become Olivia’s room. It will always be her room, even when she’s no longer here.

I lay her down on the bed, but she’s still restless.
Fuck it.
The truth is I want to stay. I like falling asleep with her. I think about that almost as often as I think about seeing her naked, which seems to take up most of my day despite my best efforts to avoid it.

I get her into bed and wait to make sure she’s okay. I start to slide my arm out from under her, to pull away, except she rolls toward me instead. And then, with her eyes still closed and fast asleep, she raises her head and kisses me.

I’ve imagined how it would feel to kiss her a thousand times, I can’t look at her mouth once without thinking about it. But this is better. Her soft lips, her body arching toward mine. For a moment, I’m drowning in sensation without thought. Nothing exists but her tongue and her exhale, her perfect skin and the way she
yields
as if her body was made for my hands.

My groan breaks the silence and the spell, forces my brain to begin working again, and I open my eyes to see just how far I’ve taken things: she’s on her back and I’m nearly on top of her, my hands at her waist, fingers beginning to slide beneath her tank.
Fuck
. She’s still sound asleep and I’m on the verge of … I don’t know what. I don’t
want
to know.

I scramble away and go sit on the couch, feeling sick with guilt, but not so guilty that I don’t want to go right back in there and do it all again.

I’ve dreamed about what just happened. You’re supposed to be grateful when you get the things you dream about, but I’m not. Because now that I’ve had a small taste of how it would be with her, I’m going to go through my entire life also knowing what I gave up.

“
Y
ou’re
a total space cadet today,” Erin laughs over breakfast.

“She’s excited for her date with
Evan
,” teases Hannah, and they all laugh. “Even the unfazeable Finn is getting swoony over a guy.” I roll my eyes and let them believe they’re right. And I guess they are, in part.

It’s just the wrong guy.

I kissed Will last night, and it was the kind of kiss that has had me running a finger over my lips all morning, trying to recapture it, relive it, ever since.

I woke up last night. His arms were wrapped around me, shielding me from the outside, and I knew we’d been like this before. It felt familiar. And it wasn’t enough. I wanted more from him, and so, still half asleep, I took it.

His mouth was as soft and pliant as I’d imagined and, to my surprise, he gave into it. A tiny, low moan from his throat, his arms tightening, pulling me closer, kissing me like it was something he’d wanted for a long, long time. Rolling me to my back, moving over me … and then freezing up and pulling away as if I were on fire.

It wasn’t a good kiss.

It was an amazing, life-altering kiss. The kind I will remember every time I’m with someone else. The kind I’ll still be thinking about when I’m 80 and this is so far behind me I shouldn’t recall any of it. I’m pretty sure I’d take a lifetime of that kiss over almost anything else.

Will barely spoke to me this morning. Wouldn’t even look at me. And it doesn’t matter because now I know, whether or not he’ll admit it, that some part of him wants this too.

E
van picks me up and
, being a gentleman, he only makes a few references to how unbelievably shitty my neighborhood is. “It’s not all bad,” he says. “I bet you don’t have to walk far to find meth.”

He drives us out of the city and toward the mountains, and we wind up at a tiny shack that serves the best barbeque I’ve ever eaten in my life. There’s a porch in back and a small stream weaves its way right through the center. I didn’t want to come tonight, and I’m still not sure I want to date him, but it’s okay.

“So is this better than eating ramen noodles alone?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I reply. “Are we talking shrimp flavor or the spicy chicken?”

“Admit it, you’re having fun.”

“Fine. I’m having fun.”

“And you’ll go out with me again.”

“We’ll see.”

“Awesome,” he says, leaning toward me. “Then I lied before, when I first asked you out. I am gonna try to kiss you.“

It’s a good kiss, just like it’s been a good date. And it still can’t hold a candle to last night’s kiss with Will.

“
I
t feels
like something is missing without her here,” my mother says that afternoon. “The house feels empty.”

I don’t need to ask who she means. This house was my refuge and now it lacks something. “I’d never have imagined
her
making anything better,” I reply.

“Will,” my mother says gently, “sometimes it’s best to admit things to yourself, instead of pretending they aren’t there.”

“You want me to admit I like her? Fine, I admit it. Do I like her in a way I shouldn’t? Yes, I think I have since the day I met her. There. It’s all out in the open and it doesn’t feel better in any way.”

“If you like her so much, then why are you still with Jessica?”

“I don’t know. I figured I should wait until after Thanksgiving since she told her family she wasn’t coming home. But it’s going to make things a lot harder.”

“Harder how?”

I exhale. Sometimes I think the only thing that’s kept me from messing up more than I already have is the fact that I have a girlfriend. I’m with Olivia way too much and keep finding myself in situations where it would be so easy to make a mistake, like I did last night. But these are things I can’t tell my mother. “I’m around Olivia a lot,” I tell her, hoping she’ll understand.

“Then maybe you need to come up with a better solution, honey. Maybe you need to not be sleeping here before meets.”

“Are
you
going to tackle her when she runs off, Mom?”

“Obviously I’m not going to be able to stop her, but Brendan could.”

“No.” My voice is cold and certain, my fist clenching reflexively.

“Why not?” Dorothy asks. “He’s as big as you, and nearly as fast. I’m sure he’d be willing.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’d be all too willing,” I sneer. “I’m sure he’d
jump
at the chance. That’s why he’s not doing it.”

“If you can’t be with her, maybe you should move aside for someone who can.”

“I’m not stopping her from being with someone else. But I’m sure as shit not going to encourage her to be with someone when I’d be forced to look on. And it sounds like you are.”

“I want to see her happy and in love, and if it were one of my boys, it would be the best of all possible worlds.”

“Do you think …” I exhale, steadying my voice. “Do you think she likes Brendan?”

My mother sighs. “I think we’ll never know until you get out of his way.”

I’m not getting out of the way, that’s for damn sure.

Brendan. Evan. The entire fucking world is full of guys who can take her away from me, and one day one of them will.

E
veryone wants
to know how the date went. It’s the first thing they ask from the moment I walk on the track.

“You’re such girls,” I groan. The date was fine but the truth is that I’ve already sort of forgotten it, and I don’t feel like wasting time discussing it now.

“Ha! She’s holding out on us!” screeches Nicole. “That means they got busy.”

“Do you think you ladies could do a little less jabbering and a lot more stretching?” Will snaps, but it’s as if he hasn’t spoken.

“What’s he look like with his shirt off?”

“He’s a swimmer, Nic.” I laugh, trying to mask my irritation. I already feel like I’m on edge and my teammates’ girlish bullshit isn’t helping. “You can just Google him if you want to know what he looks like with his shirt off.”

“Yeah, I know. But I wanted you to admit you’d seen it firsthand.”

“A lady never kisses and tells,” says Erin.

“No,
gentlemen
never kiss and tell. Ladies can kiss and tell all they want,” Nicole responds.

T
hat afternoon Evan
comes to the track to watch us practice. It’s Erin who sees him first, but Will’s eyes follow hers and turn cold immediately.

“Olivia,” he says, “please inform your boyfriend that he is not welcome at our practices.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I huff, “and why does it matter anyway?”

“Because he’s a distraction. You’re here to improve, not to show off for a guy.”

“I wasn’t showing off. I didn’t even know he was here.”

“Whatever,” growls Will. “You can inform him, or I can inform his coach. Your call.”

Once Will’s done being a complete dick, I climb the steps toward Evan, who puts down his book and nods at Will, who’s out collecting cones from the track. “What was all that about? You guys looked like you were arguing.”

“He was informing me that you are not allowed to be here,” I sigh. “Sorry. He said either I tell you or he tells your coach.”

“What the hell? It’s none of his business. I’m allowed to sit here. It’s public property.”

Technically, it’s university property, but I see his point. “He thinks you’re a distraction.”

“Am I?”

“I’m not saying you couldn’t be, but I’m pretty focused during practice.”

Evan’s eyes narrow as he watches Will on the track. “That’s okay. I can still spend plenty of time with you when you’re not practicing. Let’s see him try to monitor that.”

I get the feeling that if Will could, he would.

S
unday’s meet
has weighed on me all week, and by Saturday, it’s ramped into stomach-churning self-doubt. Betsy’s the fastest girl on the team aside from me and I’ve never seen her come in better than sixth, which means I have to be first to get us a high enough weighted score. If I fuck this up in any way, we don’t go to regionals.

I’ve been pacing my living room all day long, and by the time Will picks me up I don’t even have the energy to give him shit about the way he acted the day before.

Dorothy makes dinner, but I can barely choke it down. I listen to them talk but don’t participate, because I’m too busy thinking about all the things that can go wrong tomorrow.

Will sighs, taking a look at my untouched plate. “Let’s go for a ride.”

We head to the lake his father built for him and Brendan. I look out over it while the horses graze, beginning to understand why Will is so conflicted about his dad. How can you love someone who treated you the way his father did? But how can you hate someone who also wanted to give you the world, who built you a lake just hoping to make you happy?

He sits beside me on the grass. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how nervous are you about tomorrow?” he asks with a wry smile.

“1000,” I reply.

“Olivia—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, just do my best and don’t worry about the nerves and what happens, happens.”

“Actually,” he smirks, “I was gonna say, ‘please don’t lose’.”

I choke on a surprised laugh. “Asshole.”

“And also, just do your best. What happens, happens.”

“The whole team will hate me if I don’t place tomorrow.”

He scowls. “You’ve said a lot of crazy shit, but that’s got to be the craziest. How could they possibly hate you if you fail to do something
they’ve
also failed to do?”

“Because I’m the only one on the team capable of winning it.” I know that sounds arrogant but it’s the truth. The girls on the team work their asses off, but there’s only so much hard work can do and the rest is genetics. “And if I hadn’t fainted during the first meet, we’d probably already have a spot at regionals, but now we don’t.”

“Or you could consider the fact that if you hadn’t come to ECU we wouldn’t have placed once all semester.
You
did that for us.”

He may be right. It doesn’t change the fact that we will all be disappointed if I mess up tomorrow. Anyway, there are other things I’d rather talk about. Like the way he kissed me the other night. I’d like to know if he enjoyed it. If he wishes he could do it again. There are a thousand bad things in my head, things I push away all day long. But that kiss is a good thing and it’s the only thing I’m not allowed to discuss with him.

“This conversation is making my stomach hurt. Can we talk about something else?”

“That detective left me a message,” he finally says. “Apparently, you aren’t returning his calls.”

“I don’t want to talk about that either.”

“Liv,” he says gently, “you’re going to have to talk about it eventually.”

“No, I won’t.”

“But why? You said yourself you’d never planned to try to find your brother as an adult. I know this whole thing has been a shock, but does it really change anything?”

He waits, and I know him well enough to know that he will ask, and ask, and ask until he’s finally gotten the truth.

“It’s not the possibility that he’s dead. An adult version of Matthew would be a stranger to me. It’s that if they are right …” My voice catches, and still he waits. “If they are right then he would have been so little, and so scared.” The sentence ends on a rasp, and I feel this odd grief come over me, pulsing against my eyelids, my jaw, trying to wrench itself free of my skin. My heart begins beating too hard, a race it can’t win.

He scoots so that his body is tight next to mine, a welcome line of warmth, and puts his arm around me. I bury my head into his chest, relishing the feel of his fleece beneath my skin, the firmness of him under it, his smell and the sound of his heart so close to my ear.

“I would do anything to fix this for you,” he says quietly, “and it kills me that I can’t. Tell me what to do.”

It takes me a minute to reply. “You already make everything better,” I tell him. “And you’re the only one who ever has.”

He stills at the words. His breath, his pulse seem to stop entirely. I look up at him and his eyes meet mine. I don’t know what this is to him, but to me, it’s something far beyond running or lust or even friendship. When did he become so important? I know all too well that it’s not safe to care about anything this much.

I see panic, quiet and fleeting, pass over his face before he looks away. “Good,” he says quietly, “I’m glad I’ve been able to help.”

We ride back to the stables in silence. I’m equal parts embarrassed and angry. I don’t know why I told him what I did. What did I think it would accomplish? I hang Trixie’s tack up and begin to brush her, hurrying through it in my eagerness to get away from him.

“So are you going out with Evan again?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, without interest, “maybe.”

“You didn’t have a good time?”

I could spend longer on Trixie, but I decide that tonight I’m cutting corners. I pass him on my way out of the stable. “It was fine.”

He follows me. “Then what’s the problem?”

“I don’t need to date anyone twice. I’m not into relationships.”

“I don’t believe that anymore,” he says. “You’re as much a relationship-type girl as anyone I’ve ever known.”

I glare at him. “No, I’m not.”

“So on a night like this one,” he says, “can you honestly tell me that you’d rather be alone than have one other person with you to experience it all with? Even the lamest possible future you can imagine — sitting in a living room like my mother’s and watching reality TV — don’t you want to be with someone for it?”

I’m angry, and sad, and it’s all welling up in my throat and my chest and my head, making me feel like it can’t be held in.

“Yes,” I hiss, coming to a halt. “Yes, and if I told you I want
exactly
that — the two of us together doing every single lame thing we do — what would you say?”

The breeze rustles between us, only emphasizing the vast silence on either side. I want to hate him for making me spell it out, but there’s something so wary and yet so vulnerable in his face that I can’t.

But if I could cry, I’d cry right now. I’d cry and I’d beg him to see me the way I want him to see me. To admit that all these things, every minute we spend together, are the highlight of his day, his month, his year, his everything, the way they are for me.
Please admit it, Will. Please
.

“I’m sorry,” he says hoarsely, beginning to walk away. He draws his fingers toward his palms in tight fists. “I shouldn’t even have brought this up.”

“Did you like sleeping with me?” I call after him. His body jerks to a halt. “I know you’ve stayed with me. Before the last meet. And the last time we were in the hotel. You stayed when you didn’t have to. Did you like it?”

He hangs his head. “Olivia, I’m not
allowed
to like it. I’m your coach. And that’s all I’m ever going to be.”

He wants away and I want to kick myself for my stupidity. Did I
really
think he was going to abandon his job and his hot girlfriend for me? I’ve got no family, no money, a criminal record, and there’s a strong possibility that I’ll lose my scholarship before I graduate. I start fights, can’t account for what happens when I’m asleep, and I’m incapable of any emotion but anger most of the time.

Why would anyone give up anything for
that
?

I
wake up miserable
. I know I didn’t run because I don’t think I ever quite fell asleep. I never realized how important Will’s answer would be until it came back last night as a gentle but thorough rejection. Dorothy tries to get me to eat and it comes back up almost immediately. I wouldn’t be surprised if I pass out again today. I don’t want that for the team but at the same time it feels as if nothing matters anymore.

I don’t say a word to him as we get ready to leave. Dorothy wishes me luck and hugs me goodbye. “We’ll see you Tuesday, right?” she asks.

I look at her blankly.

“Thanksgiving weekend?”

I can’t. I can’t spend another weekend around him after what happened last night, watching Jessica take all the things I want and can’t have. It’s time to finally cut the cord. Jessica was right. This family has done nothing but sacrifice for me and they’re in no position to be taking in orphans right now.

“Oh,” I say. “I totally forgot to tell you, but I’m going home with Erin. Sorry about that.”

Dorothy’s face falls, and guilt spins in my stomach alongside every other bad thing brewing in there right now. But in the long run, I’m not going to be a part of this family, so I may as well stop pretending I am right now.