27. Quinn
CHAPTER 27
QUINN
There's nothing like being woken up to someone pounding on your door at six a.m. to start your day with a big ol’ kick in the ass. It takes effort, but somehow I force myself out of the surprisingly comfortable hotel bed and throw on a robe to get decent.
After a nice long shower last night, I crawled in bed naked and passed out. Sue me. It was comfortable.
Opening the door, I'm shocked to see Ally standing on the other side, her phone in one hand, the other balled into a fist and ready to knock again. She’s never been very patient, but I figured at this time of day she’d be a little less annoying.
“What the hell are you doing here at the crack of dawn?” I snap, instantly irritated that she's here. Everyone knows I have a thirty-minute rule in the morning. If you wake me up, I need coffee and thirty minutes, and then we can talk.
Besides, why is she even here? Is she just coming to gloat? Does she want to tell me what happened between her and Levi and rub it in my face? Yeah, I could live without all that.
“The crack of dawn?” Ally says slowly as she holds up her phone that says 9:10. “Not sure when nine became the crack of dawn but my bad, I guess? Besides, I'm not even here for me…well, I mean... I am. But that’s not why I’m here…at least not today,” she rambles, her voice getting quicker and higher as she talks, her nervous chatter always having made me giggle before, but now it's just annoying me.
What the fuck does she want? Also, how is it already nine in the morning when I feel like it should still be the middle of the night.
None of this is making sense.
“What do you want Ally?”
“Can we talk?”
“You want to talk? To me? What are we supposed to be talking about Ally?” I snap, still standing in the doorway, feeling like I'm having a conversation with a stranger.
Sometimes it feels like she is a stranger, like my own big sister knows me as well as a random person off the street.
“Did you come here to gloat that you won, again? Or did you just want to see the look on my face when you told me?” I spit out, cutting her off before she can talk as the memories of seeing her at Levi’s last night hit me like a punch to the gut, a wave of nausea following as I think about what I might have seen had I not made the driver turn around.
This explains my headache and the empty wine bottle I noticed on the dresser. I guess I decided to numb my pain with wine, even know that, unfortunately, that’s a temporary fix. Now I’m sad and have a headache, and honestly that’s fucking worse.
Looking up, my eyes well with tears, the realization hitting that I will never be enough for him. I'll never be who he wants. The only girl he's ever truly dated. I’ll never be Ally…it doesn’t matter what I do, or how much I try to show Levi that we could be it. I try to show how I really feel about him, but it'll never get me what I’ve wanted for so many years now. It hurts, but it has to be okay.
I have to be okay.
I have not gotten this far in life to be brought down by a man.
But it doesn’t feel like I will be okay right now. It feels like I’m suffocating. My heart breaking as the realization of just how deeply I love him flows through my veins, filling every part of my body.
“What did I win? And what do I need to tell you?” Ally says, and when I look back at her, she looks confused, no longer the angry, grumpy sister I’m used to seeing.
She almost looks sad.
“I saw you two last night,” I explain, trying to put a little oomph in my words, made it seem like I'm less broken than I actually am.
Ally just stares at me for a moment, confused at first, until her eyes widen and she takes a step back.
“Oh shit, Quinn. You’re not talking about me and Levi, are you?” she says, and it feels like she's confirming it, like the nervousness in her voice is giving away that she’s scared they’ve been caught. “You didn’t see anything bad. I wasn't there for him. I was actually there, I mean…I went over there to see if I could get you to talk to me.”
“What?” I ask stupidly.
Ally looks down the hall, and I'm halfway expecting to see someone walking towards us, but she looks back at me, almost pleading. “Can I come in for this?”
Stepping back, I open the door and let her in. We migrate to the chairs and both silently take a seat, and I'm giving her time to gather her thoughts.
“Uncle Ronnie came and found me last night after the game, and he was pretty pissed off. He sort of demanded I tell him the truth. About everything. About us. About me and Levi. And well, I guess I just got tired of being an asshole all the time. It's exhausting.
Okay, so maybe I have it all wrong.
“What are you saying?” I ask, my brain unable to compute.
“I'm trying to say that I'm sorry. I know I've been awful and such a bitch for so long…but I've just been angry.”
“Angry? At me? For what?” I snap back, interrupting her, because what the hell does she have to be angry about?
“It shouldn't have been at you. It was misdirected anger, and that's unfair. I guess I've just been jealous. I've made horrible choices and hurt so many people in the process,” Ally says quietly.
“Where is all of this coming from?” I ask, my brain still trying to catch up.
Ally fiddles with her sweatshirt, playing with the strings, focusing on them way too intensely, and I know this must be hard for her. She hates being wrong, so the fact that she's willingly admitting to this…it's a lot for her. She may piss me off, but I can still appreciate the growth.
Doesn’t make her less of a brat, though.
“Like I said,” she finally starts, “last night Uncle Ronnie and I talked, and after he yelled at me for a good thirty minutes, I knew I had to make things right. I went over to Levi's house to find you. I wanted to talk, try to work things out—but you weren't home.”
“But I saw you two…the way you were smiling…when he hugged you—I saw it with my own eyes, Ally,” I tell her, and I feel the tears starting to well up.
“Quinn, what you saw was the two of us talking for the first time in a long time. But I was there for you. You were the one I wanted to talk to first, to apologize. It’s taken me this long to realize just how much of a bitch I’ve been. How selfish I’ve been over the years not only to you but to everyone around me. It’s like I had this idea of what life should be, and it didn’t matter who I hurt in order for it to look like I had it all. The perfect boyfriend, the perfect job, all because growing up I was told that I was never going to be perfect.”
The wheels in my mind start moving a million miles an hour, processing her apology, admitting she’s been selfish, but the part that hurts me the most is that someone told her she wasn’t perfect.
But no one is.
It’s fucking impossible to be perfect, and it’s stupid—why would we want to be perfect?
It’s not even her fault, she just never knew where to direct her attention, so she always felt like she was behind…like she was failing. She couldn’t get focused on what she wanted to do in her life, so I feel like, right now, she’s settled on working with our uncle.
But it’s not because she’s not incredible.
“Who said you weren’t perfect?” I finally ask, unable to care about anything else at that moment.
She looks shocked as she whispers, “Mom…and Dad.” The pain in her eyes…I can feel it deep in my bones. It’s not an act; that pain runs deep, and it kills me.
“I’m so sorry they said that to you, but it’s simply not true.”
“You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew the truth,” Ally says, her eyes welling up as she averts her gaze, quickly wiping away the tears.
I want to reach for her, embrace her, because even after everything I still hate to see her hurting, but I don’t move. I don’t think she’s ready, and truthfully, I’m not sure I am either. So instead, I just wait.
“I ruined everything,” Ally whispers.
“What did you ruin?”
“Our relationship. Your relationship with Levi. My relationship with Levi. Basically every relationship I’ve had lately all because I’m selfish and too stubborn to admit I fucked up and didn’t know how to fix it.”
“Please elaborate.”
“I knew how you felt about Levi,” she says and my heart hurts because even though I knew it, part of me didn’t want to believe my own sister was capable of that. “I still worked to keep you two apart, even though I regretted it the second I asked Levi out…it just felt so nice to have someone treat me nicely. He was nice because he was hurt after I told him you didn’t have feelings for him, so I gave him attention, but it was still enough to make me feel worth something after our parents made me feel like I was worth nothing.”
“You could have told me at any time…I would have forgiven you if I just knew the truth.”
“You say that now…but you have it all figured out, now. Your life is perfect. Who knows if you would’ve reacted the same back then. Now you have the perfect job, the perfect friends, a great boyfriend. Me? I have none of those.”
“Really? I have a good job, but Uncle Ronnie treats me like crap most of the time. And besides, I might’ve quit that job.”
“Yeah, he mentioned that, but I wouldn’t worry, he refused to accept it.”
“What do you mean?”
“That's why he talked to me, and that's why I'm here. He never yells, he just doesn’t. Part of me thinks it just goes back to when he overheard our parents telling me I’d never be perfect, comparing me to you—my younger sister who has it all. I think that’s why he babies me, treating me like I’m made of glass and it’s his job to keep me from falling apart.”
It's starting to make more sense now. The idea that Uncle Ronnie wasn't being mean, he just knew I could handle more because my spirit had never been crushed by the people who were supposed to protect me.
Does it still hurt?
Obviously. It's been years of pain.
But I'm starting to understand my uncle a little better…and Ally.
And suddenly, when I look at my sister, I don't see this big, mean monster that's been bullying me for years. I see the misguided nine-year-old I used to look up to, and I just want to hug her.
Standing up, I surprise both of us when I embrace her. Wrapping my arms around my sister, I give her a hug for the first time in years.
It's cathartic, and before long, we're both teary eyed.
“I love you, Quinn. I'm sorry I've been the worst sister ever.” Ally sobs into my shoulder.
“I love you too, Ally,”
Before long, she pulls back, wiping her tears and steeling her face. “Now, for the second reason I'm here. You have a lost puppy that's been looking for you,” she says with a smirk.
A puppy? What the fuck? I don't have a dog.
“I don't have a dog,” I say, and Ally laughs at the confusion in my tone.
“No, but you have a Levi, and that man is just as bad as a lost puppy when it comes to you. Apparently, he couldn’t get ahold of you and skipped practice to find you.”
She looks down at her phone ringing and picks it up with a smirk I don't miss. “Hello, Cooper,” she says, her ice queen tone on display. “He's on his way up? Okay, that's fine,” she says and then hangs up.
“In fact, your naughty puppy should be at that door in 3…2…1.”