Of all the shitty things I’ve done in my life, and there are a few, this is the shittiest.
I don’t know what I was thinking would happen. That we’d all sit down around the dining table and I’d amuse myself at the little melodrama going on around me? That Olivia would all of a sudden open up, tell me all of her secrets, and explain what exactly it is that drove her to Maine to be my babysitter?
You’d think I’d have learned my lesson about giving Liv her privacy after texting Michael, but I’m an ass. So I eavesdropped. I listened in on the whole damn thing.
Olivia cheated on Golden Boy with Michael. And then I forced them into the same room together. I thought I was an ass, but that doesn’t even begin to describe what I am. By the time I realized just how major an apology was due, Michael was nowhere to be seen, and Olivia had locked herself in her room.
She’s been in there for two hours. I know because I’ve been sitting on the other side of the door for all 120 minutes of that time. For every single one of those minutes, she’s been crying. And not delicate, girly sniffles. We’re talking big, heart-wrenching sobs.
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the door. The coward in me wants to skulk off to my room, call my dad, and tell him to get Olivia the hell away from me, where I can’t do any more damage to her.
But I’m done being a coward. I need to face her myself.
Slowly, deliberately, I climb to my feet. I lift a hand and knock gently with one knuckle, but the crying doesn’t so much as break. I knock harder. This time there’s a pause. A little hiccup. But the door doesn’t open.
“Olivia.” My voice is hoarse. “Can I come in?”
I’m prepared for all of the possible responses she could toss at me. Silence. Fuck off. I hate you. Go away. But I’m not really prepared for her to open the door. And I’m certainly not prepared for the pressure in my chest when I see her.
I barely register the swollen eyes, red nose, and matted hair. I can’t seem to get past the immeasurable hurt written all over her face.
I do the only thing I can think of. I wrap my arms around her.
She lets me.
I caused her heart-wrenching pain, and she’s letting me hold her.
Nothing has ever felt so good.
I inch her backward into the bedroom just enough to kick the door shut before gathering her as close as possible. She buries her face in my shoulder and sobs. I don’t know how she has any tears left, but she does.
I rub my hands up and down her back and over her shoulders in the most soothing motions I can think of. I turn my face into her soft hair. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, my lips pressed to her head. “I’m so damned sorry.”
Her sobs turn to cries, the cries to hiccups, the hiccups to shuddering breaths. And then finally, finally, she falls silent. She leans back slightly to look at me, and I tense, ready for the words I know I deserve.
But she doesn’t lay into me or call me names. She doesn’t let me know in explicit detail that I deserve to die a miserable death. (Although I do. I know I do).
Instead, she does the last thing I expect. She talks to me. She rests her forehead against my collarbone and just talks.
“I didn’t mean to, you know,” she says, her voice raspy from crying. “I’ve asked myself a million times if some little part of me knew what Michael was going to tell me…what he was going to do…when I went over there that day. But I’ve replayed it a million times, and I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known. I wouldn’t have willingly put myself in the situation of hurting Ethan. If you could have seen his face…”