Waking Olivia (9 page)

For a single moment, I think his brain shut down too.

A
fter I’ve put
on the running clothes I sleep in, there's a knock on the door. Dorothy pops her head in and smiles. "Just making sure you didn't need anything. I used to make Will drink a glass of warm milk the night before a meet. Would you like one?"

I feel a pang of envy and joy simultaneously. “No, thank you," I say, stumbling over my words a little. "I'm fine."

“Okay." She grins. "Sleep tight."

I lie down and turn the lamp off. I imagine Will here once upon a time, getting tucked in. A part of me is jealous, but I'm glad he had this growing up. Even if I could take this memory, make it my own instead of his, I wouldn’t.

I feel peaceful, imagining him here, and it makes me feel safe knowing he’s on the other side of the door. It seems possible that tonight I won't even dream.

I
exhale
with a groan when she finally goes to bed.

I’ve spent the last three hours pretending to not be completely freaked out by what happened in the kitchen. When she turned and I found her pressed against me like that, looking up at me with those big eyes and that mouth of hers, a mouth which could inspire bad thoughts at any hour of the day—
and has—
I didn’t just
think
about kissing her. I planned on it. Some baser part of me took charge and demanded a hundred different things it had wanted before I came to my senses.

I must have been out of my mind.

She does that to me. She does that to everyone as far as I can tell, but it’s only me I’m worried about. It’s not just that I’d lose my job. It’s that it’s
wrong
. She trusts me. She’s counting on me to help her with this, make her the runner she is capable of being, and there I was not just imagining kissing her but getting ready to actually do it.

She can’t stay here again. I’ll explain the situation to Peter in the morning, the way I should have when I first found out. The school may very well be forced to take her off the team. Keeping someone on board with psychological issues like that makes them liable if something goes wrong, which is the reason I never told him in the first place, but maybe he can come up with something else. Maybe if she agrees to counseling he can find some female chaperone on nights before meets. All I know is it can’t be me.

Ever again.

I haven’t been asleep long when I’m jolted awake, realizing slightly too late that it’s Olivia I heard and that in the time it’s taken me to wake up she’s already out the door. I vault over the couch, jump from the top of the porch to the ground and bypass the steps entirely. She’s flying, halfway to the stables by the time I hit the ground. I struggle to catch her and when I do it’s not pretty, more of a football tackle than a rescue, and we both end up face first on the ground. She scrambles to get up as I roll off her, but my arm is around her and she can’t get far. She screams, begs, fights. It’s unintelligible and heartbreaking. Wherever she is right now, she’s begging for her life and she sounds very, very young.

I pull her against me, heedless of the dirt and grass underfoot, binding her with my arms so she can’t flail. “It’s okay, Olivia,” I plead. “I promise. It’s okay. No one’s going to hurt you. It’s just a dream.”

I tell her these things again and again until the fight leaves her, until her eyes close, until it’s the two of us laying in the middle of the open field late at night, one of us sound asleep. Gingerly, I lift her. Her face at rest is perhaps the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. As pretty as she is in real life, what I see right now is a thousand times more compelling: Olivia, safe and trusting. Trusting me of all people not to hurt her, to help her through this. I look at that face and know I’m not telling Peter anything tomorrow. I’ll find a way to deal with my own demons.

Right now all I care about in the entire world is making sure we deal with hers.

T
here's
a knock on the door early in the morning, and Dorothy peeks in again.

"Rise and shine!" she sings. She is just too fucking cheerful for this hour of the day, equal parts irritating and endearing. "It's your big day!"

I sit up and realize that I'm still in bed. "I didn't run?" I ask, beginning to smile.

Oh my God—if Will has solved this there are no words for what a relief it will be.

Dorothy’s frowning as she walks closer and reaches up, pulling a leaf out of my hair. "What's all over your shirt?" she asks. "And your legs?"

I look down. Dirt and grass stains.

Will comes to the doorway and we both look at him. He glances at my knees. "Sorry," he says. "I, um, sort of ended up tackling you in the grass."

I flinch and look down at my legs. Dorothy silently retreats.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

I nod. "Just embarrassed," I sigh.

He sits in the chair across from me, hands clasped between his knees. "There's nothing to be embarrassed about."

"Sure. It's completely normal to need your track coach to tackle you in the middle of the night to keep you from losing your scholarship. Did I hurt you?"

“No, but I landed on you pretty hard. I was more worried about you."

"Did I say or do anything … stupid?"

"No one is going to hold you responsible for what you do when you're not even aware you're doing it,” he replies, which doesn’t really answer my question.

"I just … I don't like having this piece of me out there that even I don't know," I explain. "I do enough stupid shit when I'm conscious."

"You don't do anything stupid," he says, rising. "In fact, you're a lot more lovable asleep than you are awake."

"So you think I'm lovable?" I tease.

"Everyone is lovable. Some of us more so than others,” he grumbles. "Get dressed. We're leaving in 10.”

I
thank
his mother as we go and she pulls me into a fierce hug that surprises me so much it nearly disables me. "I loved having you here, Olivia," she says. "Come anytime."

"Your mom is a nice woman," I tell Will in the car.

"She's the best," he agrees.

"How'd you turn out to be such an asshole?" I grin.

He rolls his eyes, but I can tell he wants to smile. "No one thinks that but you.”

"You sure about that?"

He laughs. "Not entirely."

O
n the bus
ride to the meet, my serenity slowly seeps away. I got a good night’s sleep, but I still don’t feel good. We arrive and discover the course is muddy, so we're wearing long spikes, which I dislike. My teeth begin to grind and I press my hands into my stomach and walk away.

It's bad.

This is bad.

It's a new course. I'm in new spikes. I ate last night.

Peter comes out to talk to us. Despite my initial chagrin at being coached by Will instead, I’ve begun to suspect that, for me, he's a better fit. Peter's advice is generic. Don’t go out too fast and don't get cocky when you're ahead. When he finishes up, everyone who’s come out for the meet surrounds us, making me feel like I can't breathe. Their excitement just makes this thing in my stomach worse. Nicole introduces me to her parents and asks if mine are still traveling. I notice Will look over when she asks.

"Yeah," I say. "I think so."

"Must be nice,” Nicole says, turning to her parents. "Finn's parents have been traveling for
weeks
. Why don't you guys do that?"

Her father grumbles something about having to pay for her frequent trips to Macy's and I extricate myself, breaking from the group and pacing in the field behind us. I thought escaping would make the anxiety better, but it doesn’t. I slept last night and this should be an incredible day, a perfect run, but it won't be. I feel it in my bones. I've now had every benefit I've been denied at past meets and I'm still going to implode. And then what happens to this unfounded belief I had in my potential?

"This is all fucked up," I whisper to myself again and again. "This is all fucked up."

Will walks out to find me. "You look sick," he says. "Are you okay?"

I shake my head. "I have a bad feeling. You shouldn't have made me eat. God, why did I listen to you? I’m going to tank."

"Liv, everyone has a bad feeling before a race. It's called nerves.”

I shake my head again. My own belief in my imminent failure is too strong to be dissuaded.

“Listen to me.” He holds his hand to my shoulder, forcing me to meet his eye. "You. Have. This. You do. Just go out and run your own race. I know Peter told you all not to get cocky in the last mile, but I’m telling you different. Get cocky. Sprint. You have it. You always have it leftover when we're done and you'll have it today."

I nod. A tiny part of me is inclined to believe him.

When the gun goes off, I try to focus on what Will said to me, but instead hear my own ranting.

I feel weak.

I shouldn't have eaten.

That food is sitting in my gut just weighing me down.

The spikes are throwing me off. They don't feel right. I should have trained in them more than I did.

Why the hell didn't Will make us train more in these conditions? It shouldn’t feel this hard in the first mile.

I listen and begin to panic, until I force myself to remember what Will said. He believes I have this, and maybe he’s right. That’s when we get our one-mile split and I realize that we are
blazing
, these two other girls and me. It felt hard because we just ran a fast first mile, which means that no matter how bad I thought I felt, I'm performing as if I'm good.

I have it today. Whatever it is I need, I have. The moment I realize this, I break ahead and forget about everyone behind me.

I make myself do what Will said.

I run my own race, compete against my own desire to slow, to rest my legs.

With one mile left, I blow it out. I'm sprinting and I'm still
fine
when I see the finish line in the distance, when I come around the curve and hear the clang of cowbells and the shouts. That’s when I know that I'm really going to do it. I blow through and the first person I look for is Will. He’s already running toward me, exultant, and I feel something in my chest that pulls me toward him as well, as if we are tethered. He comes at me fast and then stops himself short, clapping me on the shoulder.

"You did it.” He grins. "You broke the course record, 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.

I
told
Jessica 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 what
possible
way 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, my
girlfriend,
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.

J
essica made dinner
. It's cold.

I apologize and tell her I had to go to my mom’s, which isn’t technically true, but I can't exactly explain that going to the farm makes me feel peaceful, and coming to her apartment does not.

"It's okay," she says. "I'll just warm it up."

"You didn't have to do all this. I thought we were eating out."

"We can't eat out all the time," she tsks. "You ought to let me take care of you more."

I suppose I should feel grateful, but instead the statement makes me slightly anxious. There's something a little pointed about Jessica's domesticity these days. She even offered to do my laundry a few weeks back, though I refused. I’ve told her so many times that I don’t want to settle down. I’ve even implied that I’m not sure I
ever
want that.

Yet now I find myself worrying that my mom might have been right.