Page 34 of Waking Olivia

I smile up at him, wishing I could say something or do something that I can't do. I want to thank him for believing in me. I want to wrap my arms around his neck and hug him the way his mother hugged me.

Instead, I stand there speechless, gratitude caught somewhere in my throat.

25

Will

ItoldJessica that I'd head to her place after the meet, but instead I find that I am pulling up to my mother's farm, almost surprised to find myself there.

"Didn't expect to see you again today," my mother says, beaming. It saddens me how happy she is to see me when I'm already here every day. She went from a full house to living alone in three years’ time.

"I can't stay long," I tell her. “Thought I'd just stop by for a second and check on the horses."

My mother knows me well. And she knows this is what I do when I need to work something out in my head.

"How did Olivia do?" she asks.

I can't stop my smile from spreading, creeping out from the corners of my mouth. "She broke the course record."

"I really liked her," she says.

This I knew. Olivia brought out the maternal in my mother the way a newborn would. She was one step away from putting Olivia in a high chair and spoon-feeding her. "No accounting for taste," I reply.

She clucks her tongue. "Now what kind of thing is that to say? She was lovely."

"She's a nuisance."

My mother glares at me in a way I haven't seen in a long time. "In whatpossibleway is she a nuisance?"

She’s totally right, of course. Olivia wasn’t a nuisance in any way. Sure, she still didn’t listen for shit about anything—the horses or the dishes or even the eating, because for all her complaints she barely ate anything. But it was oddly … easy, her being here, unexpectedly so. It felt as if she’d been here her entire life, and perhaps that’s what made her dangerous. It made me let my guard down, and suddenly things like that moment in the kitchen happened.The length of her pressed against me and that mouth of hers ripe and waiting…

Disliking Olivia is a hell of a lot safer than the alternative.

“I thought you were going to Jessica's after the meet?" my mother asks.

I sigh. Yes, Jessica, mygirlfriend,the one I completely forgot existed several times last night. "I'll get there."

"But it's going well?"

"It's fine. It's good."

"You've dated her for quite a while now. Don’t you think it ought to be better than fine?"

"What are you getting at?” I ask tersely.

“Nothing, I just think that Jessica is a little more serious about this whole thing than you are."

"Mom, we've only dated for a year and we're both young. I’ve already told her I’m not getting married for a good long time.”

“Just because you’ve said it,” my mother warns, “doesn’t mean she believes it.”

I go to the stables, suddenly feeling like there are now too many things I have to avoid thinking about.All of them female.

I work until I'm too tired to think. At one time, I’d used climbing to accomplish this, but it feels self-indulgent now, with so much to be done here. By the time I emerge from my worry and begin to feel steady again, the sun is setting.

Which means I am very, very late.

Jessica made dinner. It's cold.

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