Waking Olivia (10 page)

I
can tell
something has changed when I get to the track on Monday.

It’s the women’s first win in over five years, and there’s this buzz in all of us, a renewed dedication. Everyone works hard, pulls from a reserve we never guessed was there. It’s not until practice ends, as we go to gather around Will, that all that good feeling dissipates, at least for me.

"Finn, if you take first again next week we will totally place," gushes Nicole.

I wish she hadn’t said it. I guess everyone was thinking it anyway, but now it’s out there and it’s official. They all need me to take first and if I don’t, they’ll be disappointed. It’s entirely on me, and I don’t want it to be.

"There's a 50% chance she'll just pass out in the middle of the course instead," snorts Betsy. She’s right of course, and it’s probably
because
she’s right that it makes me so angry.

"If that happens you could pick up the slack, right Bets?” I snap. “Oh … No, wait, you’ve never placed, have you?"

"I'm not willing to become anorexic just to win some dumb race," she replies.

I laugh. "You are
far
from anorexic."

"That's enough, you two," Will says. "Olivia, I’d like to speak to you for a moment.
Now
."

If Betsy were a smarter girl, she'd wipe that smug smile off her face because she’s about 30 seconds from getting it punched off.

When everyone walks away, I explode. "You
always
blame me. She started it. You heard her."

"Yeah, I heard her."

"So why am
I
the one over here?" I demand.

"Because you're the only one who's off the team if there's another incident, remember? If you're going to lead this team, you're going to have to do better. And maybe that starts with realizing that Betsy's jealous and giving her a pass."

"I don't want to lead this team," I reply. "I want them to stop depending on me."

"I know you do," he sighs, “but it’s only because you’re not sure they should. Well,
I’m
sure, Olivia. I’m sure they should. And if I do anything this season, it’s going to be making you believe that yourself.”

T
he next Friday
we’re once again heading to his mother's house after he gets off work. "You're sure this is okay?" I ask as he takes my overnight bag from my hand.

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"Because it's a lot ... Your mom can't be fired up about having me there again so soon."

"Get in the car. My mother likes you. She's excited you're coming today."

I glance over at him in surprise. Will doesn't lie, I know he doesn’t, but this seems hard to believe.

He sees the look I've cast his way and shrugs. "It's as much a mystery to me as it is you."

W
hen we arrive
, there’s a beat-up Honda Civic in the driveway that I don’t recognize. I look over at Will.

“Brendan,” he says, sounding not entirely pleased. “My brother.”

From the little I’ve heard, Brendan sounds like a bit more of a wild card than Will, but then who
isn’t
more of a wild card than Will? I’ve seen pictures of him—a cute kid with a kind of impish smile. I get the sense that the impishness is still there, and that while Dorothy enjoys it, it’s an irritant to Will.
As am I…

Maybe Brendan and I will get along just fine.

I don’t have to wait long to meet him. The man himself comes running out of the house and tackles his completely unaware older brother while I look on. Brendan is a rangier version of Will. He has the same ice blue eyes, the same light tan, the same wide mouth, but there’s something boyish about him that no longer exists in Will.

Brendan jumps up and whoops, then runs in a circle shouting “Vic-tor-y! Vic-tor-y!”

“Brendan,” sighs Will, climbing to his feet, “stop being an idiot and say hi to Olivia.”

It’s only then that Brendan seems to see me at all. “Oh. Holy shit. I mean, hi.” He laughs at himself. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you. I mean, I knew Will was bringing a student home I just didn’t know it would … Wow. I’m sorry. I’m gonna stop talking now.”

“Good plan, jackass,” says Will, picking my bag up and slinging it hard at Brendan, who staggers backward.

“Hey!” I object. “Don’t use my bag as a weapon. What if it had been full of priceless glass objects?”

“Yeah,” smirks Will, “you seem just like the type who’d collect priceless glass objects.”

“
I
can totally see you collecting priceless glass objects, Olivia,” says Brendan with a wide smile. Brendan, like his brother, is insanely hot. Also like his brother, he seems well aware of it.

“More the type to beat up priceless glass objects,” mutters Will. “Put her bag in my room.”

Brendan raises a brow and has a smile on his face so dirty that there’s no doubt what’s going through his head.

“It’s not like that, dickhead,” says Will, pushing me inside.

“You should come out with us,” Brendan says to me, ignoring Will entirely. “We’re going to Jimmy’s, in town. Have you been?”

“She’s not going drinking the night before a meet,” snarls Will, which sort of irritates me. It’s not like I was going to agree.

Brendan glances over at me, giving me another of those sly half-smiles. “I don’t have to leave right away,” he says to his mom. “Maybe I’ll stay for dinner after all.”

“I was going to hold dinner so Olivia could go riding first,” says Dorothy.

“Cool,” says Brendan. “I’ll go with her.”

Will’s face has gone, over the course of this conversation, from its standard stern look to something far more grim. Right now he’s giving Brendan a scowl I thought he’d reserved only for me.

“You hate horseback riding,” he says.

Brendan grins. “Under the right circumstances I don’t.”

I
can’t remember
the last time I wanted to hit my brother as much as I do right now.

I’ve certainly had better reasons for wanting to hit him. Technically, he’s not doing anything wrong, but my brother runs through pretty girls the way Starbucks runs through coffee, and he loves a challenge. And right now he’s looking at Olivia like a mountain climber staring at Everest from its base.

He not only invites her out, but when she refuses (okay, I guess I actually refused on her behalf) he starts waffling about whether or not he’s going to go out
at all
, when he just drove three fucking hours to see his friends, proving he still does 90% of his thinking with his dick.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I tell him, between clenched teeth.

“Walk?” he asks, meeting my eye. “Don’t you think we should stay back and make sure our guest is comfortable?”

“Brendan,” my mother sighs unhappily, “go with your brother.”

I head toward the stables in silence, trying to pull my thoughts together. When he catches up with me, I round on him, any hope of diplomacy abandoned. “She’s off limits, Brendan.”

“Why?” he taunts. “Saving her for yourself?”

“I’m her coach, asshole.”

“Exactly. So if she wants to go out with me, the road is clear, right? And it’s also none of your fucking business.”

“She doesn’t want to go out with you.”

He arches a brow. “So now you’re psychic? Because I never heard
her
say she doesn’t want to go out with me.”

“Leave her alone,” I hiss, grabbing his collar and yanking him toward me before I’m even aware I’ve done it. The two of us stare at each other in shock. It’s the first time since we were kids that I’ve even come close to threatening him, and both of us know it. Our entire lives it was me, standing between him and my father, protecting him. I have no idea why I’ve gotten so carried away, why the idea of him with her makes me feel crazy.

I drop my hands and back away from him. “I’m sorry. It’s just … she’s been through a lot, okay? She seems tough but she isn’t, not at all, and you know how you are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you tend to tire of people pretty quickly.”

“Trust me,” he says in a way that makes me want to punch him all over again, “it would take a long, long time for me to tire of that girl.”

The desire to hit him overwhelms me. I’ve always had Brendan’s back. I’ve covered for him too many times to count over the years, but it’s about to end here. “Lay a finger on her and I tell Mom you got busted for possession last year.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“Go inside, say goodbye to Mom and Olivia, and get the fuck out of here. And I’d better not see your face again until Olivia is gone.”

“Seriously, bro,” Brendan says, shaking his head. “What’s going on with you and that girl?”

“Nothing, but she’s our first shot at a title in over a decade, and I don’t want anything messing that up.”

He looks like he doesn’t believe me. I’m not sure I believe it myself.

W
hen he leaves
, it feels like a burden’s been lifted. I ignore the strange look from my mother and ask Olivia if she wants to go riding. I’m not sure why I do it because I swore to myself that this time I’d be strictly professional, that I’d eat dinner with her but have no other interaction, but the thing with Brendan got me riled up, so fuck it. I want to go riding, and for some bizarre reason, I want her to be there too.

“So that was Brendan, huh?” she asks as we walk to the stables. “You two always get along that well?”

I shrug. “We used to be close. It’s been a little tense since my dad died, I guess.”

“What changed?”

“Not him, that’s for damn sure,” I mutter. My life ended when my dad died, but Brendan is still doing his thing. Hanging with his bros, getting high, sleeping with everything that moves, doing just enough work in college to avoid getting kicked out. I had to become an adult, while it’s looking like he never will.

“My dad left a ton of debt when he died. The farm was failing and none of us knew it, so we had to give up a lot of things. Maybe I just resent the fact that I’m the only one who had to give anything up.” I don’t really know why I’m telling this to Olivia. Jessica has asked about this too, and I’ve always brushed her off.

“Did you guys ever think about selling the farm?”

“We did sell part of it. We had to. But it’s my mother’s only source of revenue, and she’s lived here her entire adult life. I can’t take that away from her. Even if she sold it, I can’t make enough as a guide or as a coach to support myself and her, plus cover Brendan’s tuition. Not to mention that it will take years to pay off the second mortgage my dad took out.”

“And you think Brendan should have dropped out of school to help?”

“No,” I sigh. “I don’t. He deserves to at least get through college. I want him to finish. It’s just that now he’s talking about all this bullshit. Auditioning for some reality TV show when he graduates, maybe going to Europe for a year. He doesn’t have a single actual goal, but he’s still not planning to come back and help.”

“While you had a goal and had to abandon it. It seems like he ought to come back.”

Except my dad never wanted Brendan to take over the farm. He wanted me to. It’s caused this rift between me and Brendan, this bitterness I can’t seem to escape. Even in death, my dad is still causing me trouble.

O
nce again that night
, Olivia picks at her food, pushing it around her plate as if that’s going to convince anyone over the age of five that she’s actually eaten.

“You aren’t eating much,” my mother frets. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s delicious,” Olivia says. For whatever reason, that hostility that seems to mark Olivia’s every interaction is completely absent when she deals with my mom. “I’m just nervous about tomorrow.”

"There's nothing to be nervous about, honey," my mother soothes. "You go out and run your own race, and what happens, happens."

"That's not the way the rest of the team sees it," Olivia says. "They’re looking at me like I'm about to cure cancer."

"You don't need to worry about what they think or want. Tell them if they're so desperate to go to regionals, then they should run faster."

"That's awesome, Mom," I sigh. "That's just what Olivia needs, advice on standing up for herself. Maybe you can teach her some new fighting techniques next."

My mother scowls at me but Olivia’s mouth twitches with the desire to laugh.

"Are your parents coming to the meet?" my mother asks her.

Olivia grows wary. "Uh, no, we aren't close."

I look over at her. "I thought you said they were traveling."

“Yes, and their travel plans don't include a visit to me."

It’s a lie, and now both of us know it.

T
hat night
, while Olivia is in the shower, my mother calls to me from the porch. “What was that today?” she asks. “The thing with Brendan.”

It’s an effort to make my voice sound neutral. “You saw the way he was looking at her.”

“She’s a beautiful girl, Will. I imagine that’s how most men look at her.”

“He wasn’t just looking, though. You heard him. He was gonna change his plans so he could sit here and hit on her all night.”

She sighs. “I don’t see the harm. That’s just Brendan being Brendan.”

“Well, he can go ‘be Brendan’ around some other girl. Olivia doesn’t need that shit. She has enough going on right now without adding him to the mix.”

My mother opens her mouth as if to argue, but then leans her head back and closes her eyes. “Maybe it’s time you told Peter what’s going on with her.”

“I can’t, Mom. If Peter knows, then the school is liable if something happens to her. They’ll kick her off the team.”

“It just seems like this is too much for you to deal with.”

“I don’t know why you’d say that. I was able to stop her last weekend. I’ll be able to stop her tonight.”

She stands and kisses my cheek. “Honey,” she says, turning to go inside, “I think we both know I’m not talking about the running.”