Page 52 of Rebellious Hearts
“You’re quiet,” Sofia said, her eyes resting on me.
We sat in silence for a while, sipping our drinks.
I nodded.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“With a bit of luck, this project will go through, and that’s a plus, right?” she probed.
“Yeah, Alex will be happy with that, at least.”
“At least?”
I hesitated again. It was hard to talk about what I felt, but Sofia’s eyes bore into my soul and it was so damn easy to talk to her.
“I just feel like it’s hard to please him,” I admitted. “It’s hard to do what everyone else does, to pull my weight in the company.”
“In what way?” Sofia asked. “How do you think you don’t pull your weight? Don’t you manage the plane sales department?”
“Well, yeah.” It was a quarter of the work. All of us worked equally hard, even if it was in different ways. “I don’t know what it is. I just always feel like I’m not like the rest of them. I can’t do what they do, no matter how hard you try.”
Sofia nodded as I talked.
“Do you have to do what they do?” she asked.
“What?”
“You said you can’t do what they do. What is it they do that you feel you have to do, too?”
I froze. I wasn’t sure how to answer that. It wasn’t that I had to do exactly what they did all the time. We each had our strengths, we each did our jobs in the company to keep it working. It was a well-oiled machine, and we were all cogs working together.
“I just feel like I should be able to do more. Be better. You know? Getting this project will help, but it won’t be long before there’s the next thing…” My voice trailed off. I wasn’t even sure why I was saying what I was saying, and I’d already opened up more than I’d meant to. The words just tumbled out of my mouth with her.
She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. The contact was warm and reassuring and it was mesmerizing how her touch could feel differently—electric the one moment, charged with sexual need, and warm and reassuring the next, filled with care.
“You can’t always compare yourself to your brothers.”
“Much easier said than done.”
“But it’s not the right thing to do. I mean, you guys might all be cut from the same Blackwood cloth, but that doesn’t mean that any of you are the same. You each have your own strengths. Wasn’t it Einstein who said if you tell a fish to climb a tree, it will believe its whole life it’s stupid? Something like that, right?”
“Right.”
“You have certain strengths I’m sure they don’t have, and vice versa, and if you focus on those strengths, on what youcando that they can’t, then you won’t focus so much on what youcan’tdo that they can.”
“Huh,” I said.
“What?”
“You know, some people go to therapy for years to find out what you just put together in two sentences.”
Her eyes lit up, and she chuckled. She retrieved her hand and I missed her warmth immediately, but a moment later the pizza arrived.
It was enormous.
“Oh, wow,” Sofia breathed. “We might have to ask for a takeaway.”
