Olivia
Chapter thirty-three
There’s no other word for it: I’m wallowing.
Thank goodness my parents are away in South Carolina visiting my sister and her husband or else I’d have to explain to them why I’ve been lying on the couch in the same T-shirt and sweatpants for the last three days.
And why I’m eating all the junk food in the house and having more delivered when I run out.
I go back and forth between blasting Taylor Swift while singing through my sobs and watching every Emma Stone movie on repeat while sobbing. I sob a lot.
I ignore my phone—the texts from Linda and my sisters, the calls from Annie. I’m sure Gage has told her everything by now, and I wonder if I have to add my best friend to the list of my losses this summer.
On the fourth day, the doorbell rings. When I ignore it—I’m certain the bright daylight of the outside world would permanently blind me at this point—my phone rings.
It’s Annie again. I ignore that, too. Then I hear another ping on my phone at the same time someone pounds on the door. I check the text.
Annie:
Let me in NOW
I sigh. I’m resigned to my fate. With some effort, I rise from the couch and stumble to the front door. I unlock it, then turn back toward the couch. Annie lets herself in.
My best friend is five feet, three inches of righteous indignation. She stands in front of me with her hands on her hips. Her fierce glare is a drop in the ocean of my misery at this point. But, I made my bed, so, you know.
“You destroyed my brother,” she thunders.
I shrug. “I destroyed myself, too, if that’s any consolation.”
Annie balks at my words, stepping back to survey the scene in front of her for the first time.
The couch is a mess of blankets and pillows.
Empty ice cream containers, cookie packages, and various open bags of chips litter the coffee table.
“Last Kiss” is still blaring through my Bluetooth speakers.
Who knows what’s happening with my hair.
She drops her hands, and her face softens. “I can see that.”
Annie moves to the couch and sits down next to me. She rubs my back. I collapse onto my side, burying my face in the blankets. I’m sobbing again. It’s amazing that I still have tears left, really. At some point, I’m supposed to feel numb, aren’t I? When does that kick in?
Annie continues rubbing my back in a comforting circle. “Gage said … he said you dumped him.” I can’t see her face, but I hear the confusion in her voice.
“I did!” I choke out.
“But you love him?” She asks so carefully that I lift my head to face her. I can’t say the words, but I nod once, forcing myself to keep eye contact.
I can see the questions in her eyes and between the furrows of her pinched brow. A beat passes as she puzzles out what to say next.
“Delaney, Gage has been half in love with you since high school. He was devastated when you rejected him back then. Why would you do this to him again?”
“He told you all that?” I ask.
“I’m Gage’s best friend. He tells me everything.” She pauses. “Apparently unlike my best friend, who tells me nothing.”
“I tell you mostly everything. Except this one minor piece of information …” I wince and sit up, my shoulders tensing. “That I’ve been in love with your twin brother since I was thirteen.”
She sucks in a breath, then shakes her head.
“To be fair, it wasn’t as much of a secret as you thought.
I knew you had a thing for him. But I didn’t think it was love, just that it could be.
After Gage told me what happened Friday, I figured I was wrong, but…
” She pauses. “But it sounds like I wasn’t. Honey, then why?”
“It was a summer fling,” I mutter, my chest heavy. Maybe if I keep saying it, it will become true.
“No. You’re in love with each other.”
“Gage isn’t in love with me,” I insist.
“Um, pretty sure he is.”
I shake my head. “He may think he is right now, but it was only proximity. We were all together at that camp for months, and it’s not like there were many other single women our age.
But he’ll meet so many new women at school, and they’ll be so much more amazing than me.
One day, he’ll meet the real love of his life and he’ll be like, ‘Oh I thought it was love with that other girl, but I’ve never felt true love until I met you. ’ She’ll be better for him.”
“Better for him?” Annie stills her hand on my back. “Honey, I’m trying to understand, but I feel like I’m missing something here.”
I guess she needs me to spell it out. “A better match for him. More his equal. Smarter than me.”
Annie’s face shifts as the pieces all click into place. “You broke up with Gage, broke both your hearts, because you think you’re not good enough for him?”
I take a deep breath, and then, for the first time, I tell Annie the full story of what happened at high school graduation and everything that went down this summer, including the phone call with Headmaster Snooty Pants.
While I’m talking, a pit opens up in my stomach as I relive the most traumatic moments of my life, moments I don’t want anyone else to see.
But when I finish unloading, I feel lighter, like sharing my memories of the negative moments gives them less power over me somehow.
“Olivia,” Annie says gently, and I’m so grateful to hear her use my real name at this moment. “You’re not that kid in middle school anymore.”
I blink at her, my eyelashes wet against my cheeks.
“The kid,” she clarifies, “that never knew why the books and worksheets didn’t make sense. You know why now. You know that one in five people have dyslexia. You know it has nothing to do with intelligence. Why are you still letting thirteen-year-old Olivia control your grown-up life?”
“I know,” I groan out. I do know, but when things like that overheard bathroom conversation or that phone call happen, my emotions take over, and my feelings of inadequacy are in charge.
Annie pulls me into a hug. “You are amazing. You’re beautiful and fun.
A great friend and sister. Loyal and protective.
You’re so patient when you’re coaching. Everything you do, you give one hundred percent.
And you’ll figure out what you want to do with your life.
Gage would be lucky—any man would be lucky—to have you. ”
I’m shaking my head. Annie’s cheeks redden; she’s getting frustrated. “You’re acting dumb,” she huffs.
I puff out a sardonic chuckle. “I am dumb.”
She grabs my shoulders and holds me at arm’s length in front of her. “Olivia Delaney, do not talk about my best friend like that. You’re smart, but you’re acting dumb right now. Every woman Gage has ever dated—he compares them to you. And they never measure up.”
A tiny pinprick of hope pokes through my battered heart.
What did the phone call from Headmaster Snooty Pants change, really?
Gage would still want to be with me even if he knew that I didn’t get the Virtus job, wouldn’t he?
All that really shifted was my self-esteem, which I projected to reflect what I thought Gage would think of me.
If he thought I was enough before that phone call—if I thought I was enough before that phone call—I can’t let one jerk with his unfair hiring practices ruin everything else for me, too.
“Really?” I sniff.
“Really and truly. He loves you, Olivia. So, if you love him, too, why are you making this so complicated?”
“I … I don’t know.”
I sit up resolutely, starting a mental to-do list. First, shower and change. Then, rush to Gage and beg him to forgive me.
“I’m going to fix this, Annie.”
She frowns and opens her mouth as if to say something. Then, she closes it again.
Her hesitation confuses me. “What? Isn’t that what you want me to do?”
“Well, it’s just … slow down. I don’t think this is going to be an easy fix.” I stare at her through my puffy red eyes. “You have to convince him to trust you again.”
“What do you mean?” I know I messed up by not telling him how I feel, but why would it be hard for him to trust me?
“It’s been twice now that you’ve led him on, slammed the door, and then ghosted him. And he already has abandonment issues from being adopted.”
Annie still sits next to me on the couch, but she’s switched to more defensive body language. Her arms are crossed, and her expression tells me how unhappy she is with me. It’s not a side of Annie I see often because she doesn’t like confrontation. It signals how serious this situation is.
I let her words sink in, and my heart breaks all over again. For Gage and the pain he’s going through because of me.
I know it’s a cop-out response, but I murmur, “I didn’t mean to.”
And I didn’t, but after everything he shared with me this summer about his feelings around his adoption, I should have realized how it would feel to him for me to leave like that.
I realize now how gracious it is for Annie to be here at all. She’s giving me a chance to explain and to make it right, when she’d be totally justified in writing me off for the way I’ve played with her brother’s feelings.
Although, again, I didn’t mean to. “I was scared,” I admit. “I wasn’t thinking.”
Annie heaves a gusting sigh and pulls me into a hug. “It’s not me you need to convince. Do you want my advice?”
My soft voice is muffled against her shoulder. “Yes, please.”
“Give him some time right now. Let him start school in peace. While you’re waiting, make a plan to show him you’re serious about a relationship with him this time. Give him plenty of reasons to trust that you’ll stay.”
Her instructions feel daunting, but it’s the most important assignment I’ve ever received. I pull in a determined breath. “Will you help me?”
She presses her lips together and leans away.
“Here’s the thing. He’s my brother and you’re my best friend.
I refuse to be in the middle here. Don’t ask me for information about him, because I won’t tell you.
Likewise, I’m not going to feed him any information about you.
This is the last thing I’ll say, and then you’re on your own.
Get your stuff together and get him back. ”
Annie stays to help me clean up the house.
After she leaves, I take a shower and put on clean clothes, and already I feel mostly human again.
I make myself pasta for dinner—well, I boil dehydrated noodles and add jarred tomato sauce, but it’s a start—and go for a run.
I take another shower when I get back and let the hot water blast my skin so long that my shoulders turn pink and my fingers prune.
I go to sleep early, in my bed instead of on the couch in front of a movie. In the morning, I actually feel rested, so I decide to tackle some other tasks I’ve been neglecting, like clearing out the notifications on my phone.
I unlock the screen, and the first thing I do, after several fortifying breaths, is unblock Gage’s number.
I move on to checking my email, where I find a message from the Brightline School for Science, the charter school in North Austin I applied to back at the same time as Virtus.
I have to reread the email three times to make sure I’m getting it right. They want to schedule an interview with me. I check the date stamp on the message and am relieved to see it came in yesterday and not four days ago when I first crashed out.
I email them back right away. By the end of the day, I have an in-person interview set up for next week with a Ms. Carolina Brown, the school director.
Of course, the first person I want to call with this news is Gage, but I don’t contact him.
Instead, I think about what Annie said about triggering Gage’s fear of abandonment by leaving camp without talking to him.
The parallels between how I broke up with Gage at camp and how I rejected him back at graduation are undeniable.
I had fear and weak excuses, and I left and ghosted him again.
And I lied. Again. I have to stop doing that.
But what it all means is that like Annie said, I need to give us a little breathing room before I do anything else regarding Gage.
I need to sit in my insecurities by myself for a little longer, so I don’t go to him raw and emotional.
I need to be sure and encouraging and solid, so he knows it’s safe to trust me again. I need to make sure I am trustworthy.