Chapter 37
Liv
Now
The week after the conference was always a bit of a whirlwind: getting back into the swing of a normal workweek, getting caught up on the ‘real work’ that got pushed aside for the week dedicated to training and development. Liv had hundreds of emails to get through, and it was a good distraction.
She totally didn’t spend every day thinking of Quinn. She definitely didn’t spend every night reliving the feeling of Quinn’s lips on her skin, Quinn’s fingers inside her, Quinn’s arms— those arms —wrapped around her.
She just kept telling herself that the week, the few days that they’d had together, really, was a gift, and maybe it was time for her to move on.
Maybe it was time to truly let go of Quinn.
Maybe this truly was just…goodbye. It wasn’t what she wanted, but she hadn’t heard from Quinn in the days since they’d seen each other, and she was trying to respect her need for space.
One pleasant surprise, though, was that she had heard from Emma in the intervening days.
She messaged and talked to her regularly, in fact—whether it was just a quick picture of Paisley at the library, or a note about a book that Emma enjoyed, or a call just to check in on Liv while Emma made her family dinner.
It was lovely to be back in touch, to have that piece of her old life back.
And she was trying to make sure that she didn’t sink into old habits.
She’d kept her life cut in two back in college: when she was in Michigan, with her college friends, she did whatever she could to not talk about her life in Chicago.
When she was in Chicago, with her family, she didn’t talk about Michigan, except to update her parents on school.
She had shared brief things with Quinn and Emma about her family, the situation with Conner, her life back home.
But she’d worked diligently to keep the conversations brief, trying to control the narrative.
Now, she was trying to be purposeful in how she talked to Emma, to share what her life really looked like here.
She texted photos from her apartment in the Chicago suburbs.
One night, they had a video call, and she gave Emma a tour of her place.
She told her about work, about how much she actually enjoyed her job, even if sometimes it still felt like she was carrying her family with her through each day.
They talked openly, at least, as openly as they could while keeping major topics off the table. They didn’t often discuss college. They stuck more to their current lives, deftly avoiding the subject of why they hadn’t spoken in ten years.
And, of course, they didn’t discuss Quinn.
Liv wanted to ask how she was doing, wanted to ask Emma’s opinion on this whole thing, but she wasn’t going to bring it up.
If Emma wanted to talk about something, to give her opinion or advice, she certainly wasn’t shy about it back in college, so Liv assumed that she wouldn’t hesitate to share her viewpoints now.
So, Liv was okay. She was rebuilding a friendship, she was getting back into the groove of things at work, and she was not— she wasn’t —preoccupied with Quinn.
Her parents had invited her over for dinner on the following Friday night, something they always tried to do, just the three of them, when any of them had been gone a while on a trip.
Though she’d obviously seen her mom since her return from Australia, it had been in the midst of the chaos of the conference, of Rhea’s visit, and, of course, unbeknownst to her parents, her personal emotional turmoil of seeing Quinn, so she figured it made sense for them to have that time to reset .
Neither of Liv’s parents cooked much. They’d had a live-in nanny and a housekeeper when she was growing up who split meal preparation tasks, though now they mostly subsisted on a ready-to-eat meal plan service and takeout.
On this night, they’d had dinner brought in from her favorite local restaurant, a simple rice and chicken dish that her mom had served on chinaware older than Liv.
Liv was powering through this meal, trying desperately to pay attention as her mom talked about drama that had happened during her trip, but Liv found that she just couldn’t quite focus.
“You’ve been quiet this evening,” Liv’s mom said, and yeah, it must be bad if her mom was calling her out.
“I’m just…exhausted,” Liv replied, but she knew they weren’t going to accept that as an answer. They’d been in therapy for years, working nonstop on their communication. There was no way they weren’t going to push, even if only lightly.
“Olivia,” her dad said gently. “Is everything okay?”
It was, right? She was returning to her routine, and she was okay, or at least she knew that she would be. She just needed to get past the aftershocks of seeing Quinn again, and she would be good.
“Livvie.” Her mom was trying to add to the gentle parenting attempt, her eyes soft, her tone kind. “Are you okay?”
And, regardless of how difficult their relationship had been, regardless of how she was still working to develop the connection with her mother beyond surface topics, the way her mom asked that question made her feel like a little kid, like her parents had the power to make everything better.
“Last week was kind of overwhelming for me,” Liv admitted. She was purposely not looking at them, focusing instead on the design of her plate, a pattern that she’d memorized long ago.
“Did we put too much on you for the conference?” her dad asked. “I thought you were managing it well, but we can certainly make adjustments for next year if it’s too much, or if your oversight of the event was eating too much into your regular duties?”
“No, nothing like that,” Liv assured him. “I enjoy planning the event. It’s, um. It’s not work related.”
They were blatantly bewildered by that, which… rude . But also fair. Liv didn’t have much going on outside of work, so she supposed she could understand their confusion.
Liv was quiet for a few seconds, all of them letting the moment breathe. “I know we haven’t talked much about it…but do you guys remember when I told you that there was someone at college? Someone who I was…kind of…in a relationship with?”
She caught it as her parents glanced at each other for an instant before nodding. It was her mom who spoke. “Your female friend?”
The moment was a little tense, sure, but she laughed, nodding. “My gal pal, yes.”
“Of course we remember this,” her dad said.
“You said you thought you could have been happy with her,” her mom added, and while Liv didn’t recall using those words, it certainly sounded like something she would have said.
Liv nodded again. “She was here last week.”
“In Chicago,” her mom said, sounding both surprised and extremely interested in the gossip. Liv had to admit that she loved hearing her mom amused by the conversation.
“At the conference,” Liv corrected, and her mom’s jaw dropped. “One of the speakers.”
“Your ex is one of the ‘do it badly’ girls,” her dad realized, awestruck, referencing their viral video in a way that almost sounded like he thought of them as celebrities.
“Yeah, Audrey said that you had talked to them about Livingston,” Liv said, not bothering to try to explain that Quinn wasn’t exactly her ‘ex.’ “Quinn, the one with shorter hair, she was… Well, we were good friends while I was there.”
“She seemed like a good kid,” he replied .
“We’re thirty-one, Dad,” Liv reminded him, rolling her eyes at him.
“You’re all kids to me,” he responded, waving her off. “I just meant, she seemed like she had a good head on her shoulders. I liked them both.”
“Me too,” Liv said simply. “It’s complicated, though.”
“How do you mean?” her mom asked.
Liv took another few seconds to try to figure out how to answer this question. Her parents had supported her, in their own way, but they still struggled to talk about feelings. Certainly not romantic feelings, at least, other than her lack of them in the context of her marriage…
She wanted to be honest with them. She just wasn’t sure that she knew how to do it. Finally, Liv offered, “There’s always been things standing in our way.”
“How do you mean?” her dad repeated.
“There’s a lot, Dad. We have a complicated history. We live in different states.”
“Ah, yes, we don’t have any offices in Michigan that you could work out of,” her dad said facetiously.
Liv stared at her dad in shock, but it was her mom who spoke first. “She’s not going to move to another state.”
“Michigan is an hour-long flight,” her dad said, his tone towards her mother almost scolding. “We’d basically still be neighbors.”
“My job is here,” Liv reminded her dad, which was weird, she could admit, given she worked for him.
“As Operations Director for the Midwest region,” he said, and now it was like he was trying to remind her, before tapping his chin in a faux ‘thinking’ face. “Remind me, where is Michigan again?”
“Like Mom said, I can’t move to another state,” Liv replied, exasperated. Because, really. What would that look like?
“Why not? Weren’t you happy there?” Her dad was genuinely confused by her resistance .
“I was,” Liv allowed, and she didn’t need to add that she was happy largely because of Quinn, because of the life she had there, not just because of the location. “But it truly is complicated. She said she didn’t want to talk. She set a clear boundary.”
It was her dad’s turn to take a minute to think, while her mom just sort of looked back and forth between them, like she wasn’t sure how to join in. “I’m not ever going to advocate for you overstepping someone’s boundary.”
Liv was fascinated with his verbiage. “Wow, that’s like…next level therapizing. I’m impressed.”
“Thank you, thank you,” he replied with a mock bow. “But, sweetheart…if you’re waiting for it to be easy, it’s never going to happen."
“That’s the thing, though,” Liv replied. “Being around her, it wasn’t hard. I’m the one who made it hard.”
“You’re still punishing yourself for things you did when you were…
not one hundred percent okay,” her mom said, and Liv was stunned by her contribution, even if minimal.
Because even though they’d been through countless hours of therapy as a family, her mom sometimes had a hard time acknowledging that Liv was struggling pretty significantly back then.
She’d done a decent job, until she didn’t , making everyone think she was fine, and she couldn’t blame her mom for her lack of understanding when it was by Liv’s very own design.
“I’m not,” Liv said. “At least, I don’t think I am. I know more than anyone that I’m not that person anymore.”
At that, her parents both nodded, and Liv could tell that they were proud of her, for how far she’d come. Because she’d been so lost, so afraid, and she’d completely boxed herself into a life she didn’t want, all because… why ?
Because she thought they all believed that was what was best for their family, thought her own happiness didn’t matter .
“Do you think she’s the exact same person she was at twenty-one, twenty-two years old?” her mom asked. “Wouldn’t that be awful if we didn’t change?”
Her dad added, “Maybe you should introduce her to who you are now, and let her decide what she wants from there?”
And, well…that was something that Liv would have to think about.