Page 65 of Waking Olivia

It’s the first time I’ve willingly told someone my story. It still humiliates me, but having brought my secret out in the light to Will and Dorothy makes it seems slightly less dark than it did before.

“That’s kind of awesome,” he says when I conclude. “You get your entire workout out of the way and you don’t even know you’ve done it.”

Calling it ‘awesome’ seems like a stretch, but it’s better than what he could have said.

“So you and my brother are sleeping under the same roof and you see him every morning and he’d rather spend time with you than his girlfriend, butnothing’shappening.”

“He’s my coach, Brendan,” I reply. “He’d get fired. And neither of us is interested anyway.” Okay, that’s sort of a lie. But based on the way he freaking ran from me tonight I suppose it’s true for one of us.

“You know,” Brendan says, scooting closer, “I heard his brother is super hot. And available.”

I smile. “I don’t think Will would be a fan of that idea.”

“Exactly,” says Brendan. “Maybe it would help him get his priorities straight.”

“No, it’s not that he likes me,” I explain. “It’s just that things are tense between you guys and that would make it worse.”

Brendan’s eyes seem to twinkle slightly less. “He used to be my best friend,” he says. “I still don’t know what the hell happened.”

43

Will

Saturday getsoff to a rollicking start.

First there’s my brother, who’s been sniffing around Olivia like a dog in heat since the minute she got out of my truck. Then I’m stuck on campus for hours because of visiting day, knowing that Brendan is probably going to be humping her leg the entire time I’m gone while I’m stuck here remembering last night, the way she pressed herself against me and my reaction. Christ, you could probably see my hard-on fromspace.

And lastly there’s Jessica, who got royally pissed off last night when I told her I was sleeping at my mom’s. “It’s ridiculous that you’re sleeping on the couch at your mother’s,” she argued. “Olivia should find a family of her own.”

Jessica, with her doting parents and her siblings and their annual ski trips and beach trips and group photos, telling me that the little we can offer Olivia is too much.

“Her only family member has Alzheimer’s, so where exactly do you suggest she go find one? Because I’m sure she’d be all ears.”

She exhaled in exasperation. “You know what I’m saying, Will. You don’t have to be the only person in her life. You’ve already gone above and beyond for this girl, but the charity has to end at some point.”

I stared at her then as if I’d never seen her before, except the truth was that I had seen it. All through high school I’d seen it, but somehow I’d allowed my father’s opinion to supersede my own. He saw her as anicegirl. She was a cheerleader, the homecoming queen, while I was the kid routinely handcuffed in the back of a police car. He must have suggested a hundred times that if I cleaned up my act, I could wind up with someone like her.

Of course, I’dwound upwith her already, on the floor of someone’s bedroom during a party I don’t even remember, but I didn’t tell him that. I barely remembered the sex, to be honest, only the aftermath. She spent the next year suggesting I come over when her parents weren’t home, inviting me by myself to her parents’ lake house and then getting pissed off when I turned her down. But for years after, my dad would say, “Now that Jessica Harper.That’sa girl you settle down with.”

I’m not sure he’d stand by that statement if he could hear her right now. And maybe deferring to the opinion of someone who never really knew her doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

IpickJessica up on the way back from campus. Honestly, I don’t want her at the farm and I really don’t want her around Olivia, but what choice do I have? If we go out tonight, I’m giving my asshole brother unfettered access to Olivia.Not fucking happening.

Jessica shouts from the bedroom that she’s almost ready, but then she peeks her head out. “Come sit in here,” she says suggestively. “We have plenty of time until dinner.”

I shake my head, avoiding her eye as I turn on the TV. “My mom asked me to hurry back.” It’s a lie, but right now the last thing in the world I want to do is sleep with Jessica.

She pouts. “Five minutes?”

“I’m gonna watch the game,” I say, without looking back at her.

Olivia is out when we get to the farm. Brendan, naturally, is sitting on the couch watching football, not a care in the world. In moments like this, when I think about the two jobs I’m working to keep him fed and in school, I understand my father’s anger toward me. He’d expected me to put the family first, begin to take on some of the weight, and like the selfish little prick I was, I looked at the farm and the trouble he had and couldn’t run fast enough.

Jessica goes to look for my mom so I sit in the chair across from him, and attempt civility. “So how’s school?”

He shrugs. “How’s having two girlfriends?”

“I don’t have two girlfriends,” I exhale testily.