Chapter 31 Lottie

Chapter 31

Lottie

I woke up to an empty tub of ice cream from the night before still lying next to me in bed. The spoon I'd used stuck to my nightstand. It had been five days since Nolan had ripped my heart out. I had given him the day off on Monday, partly because he needed the rest for his body and partly because I wanted to avoid seeing him. At practice, I had reverted back to my avoidance tactics with his therapy. I'd left a sheet of exercises for him to do on his normal training bed and only stopped to ask him how he was feeling. Even that question had felt like the hardest sentence I'd ever had to say to someone.

Nolan looked as worse for wear as I did with unkempt hair and rumpled clothes. He seemed pained to watch me return to such professionalism with him, but I knew it hurt me more.

The rest of the week was much of the same: trying to avoid any unnecessary communication with him and sticking only to the interactions required for his performance.

Today's practice was in the afternoon, and I was dreading it. It was the practice that Nolan and I normally spent the entire time together as we tried to get his body ready for the game, which was on a Saturday this week.

I'd been miserable this entire week. It was the first time in my life that I hadn't felt excited to go to work. The moment that I decided to give Nolan a chance, I gave him a piece of my heart, which now felt broken. I didn't know exactly how I felt about him—all I knew was that I really loved being around him and I'd started to consider him one of the more important people in my life. That chance I'd taken on him turned out to hurt me more than anything.

"I come bearing gifts," my sister's voice rang out in my apartment. She walked into my bedroom with two large coffees in her hands.

"Oh, yes," I breathed, reaching out to grab it from her.

Olivia eyed the spoon and empty ice cream tub with a raised eyebrow. "Not a good week, huh?"

"It could be better," I admitted as I took my first sips of caffeine for the day.

My sister pulled the covers back on the other side of my bed and slid in next to me. "Want to talk about it?"

It felt like all the times that I had done the same to her while she was in middle school, feeling terrible after being bullied at school. Except now the roles were reversed and I was the one needing the advice and comfort this time.

"Does it have anything to do with that interview Nolan did with Harper Nelson?" Olivia asked.

Quiet stretched out between us as I figured out how I wanted to navigate this conversation with her. Because neither of us had truly discussed the trauma we had courtesy of our father.

"When he told me he was considering coming back for another year, I felt like I was twelve years old again, doing everything I could to get our dad's attention, but still always playing second fiddle to what he wanted," I told her.

Olivia sat quietly for a moment before she responded. "Does Nolan know about Dad?"

I cringed every time Olivia called our father "Dad". I'd stopped calling him that the moment he forced me to play the role as parent for him. But I'd made sure to protect Olivia the best I could so that she never had to see all the ugliness our father truly had.

"Pieces of the story." I remembered seeing our father in the grocery store those weeks before with Nolan on my yes day. "I saw him the other day."

"Who?"

"Our father," I told her. I watched her freeze, and her eyes widen, like the reaction I had when I saw him that day.

"When?" Olivia asked. Her voice had dropped down to a whisper. Neither she nor I had seen him since her high school graduation where he'd left halfway through.

"At a grocery store on my yes day."

Hurt flickered through Olivia's eyes for a split second when she realized how many weeks ago this was.

"I didn't talk to him. I bolted out of the aisle I saw him in and dragged Nolan with me before he could see us."

"I never realized how badly our childhood had affected you or how much you'd done to make sure I didn't have to take the brunt of it like you did." My sister reached her free hand down to squeeze mine. "I know where he lives."

"Our father?" I asked her, completely shocked. The disbelief was like a heavy weight pulling me under. I'd tried so hard to protect my little sister from the wrath of our father, to keep her from his clutches, yet she'd still sought him out behind my back.

Olivia nodded, her body stiffening like she was preparing for a blow. "He sent me a card after my high school graduation apologizing for not having been able to stay the whole time. I've kept tabs on him since then. He's still at the address he listed on the envelope."

"And you didn't think to tell me?" I asked her, ignoring the way she flinched at the bite in my words. How could she think I wouldn't be angry to hear that she'd known his whereabouts all this time without bothering to tell me until now.

I clutched at my chest as my breathing grew shallow, the betrayal like a knife slipping between my ribs.

"You made it clear you wanted nothing to do with him for years!" My sister fought back. "But that's what you wanted. I can make my own decisions."

"And you decided that you wanted to have a way to contact that man if you ever wanted to?" I asked incredulously. "After everything he did?"

"You got to leave sooner than I did. You got to sever that relationship while I didn't. I've reconciled his actions in my mind. But it doesn't seem like you have."

The fire in Olivia's eyes made me pause. She'd never stood up to me like this on any other topic before. It made me wonder if I'd been too quick to anger. Only viewing our father through my experience while abandoning any grace toward Olivia and the many more years she'd had with him.

I sighed. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gotten angry."

Olivia reached an arm over my shoulder. "It's okay. Your relationship with Dad is much different than mine. You can be mad at him while I'm not. I've already come to terms with his actions and forgiven him. Maybe it's your turn to do the same."

I squeezed my sister's hand again, wanting to convey to her how badly I'd hoped to shield her from the pain I had to endure, but I realized that I'd only made it worse for myself in the process.

The two of us sat in silence, both of us reliving our own moments with our father.

"Have you tried to think about Nolan's situation from his point of view?" Olivia asked as the two of us sipped on our coffee.

"Of course I have," I told her. "I told him I'd always support him, but I can't put myself in a position to go through what our father put me through again."

Olivia frowned at me. "You don't give Nolan enough credit. He's not our dad. He has to make the best decision for himself. He's facing a scary time in his life, moving into the unknown. But I know he's nothing like our father because I've watched him constantly treat you better than anybody else possibly could. Don't forget that man threw us a Christmas."

"Of course, I know what he's having to do is difficult," I tried to defend myself.

"It's only one more year at the most, Lottie. Even if he decided that was what he wanted to do, he deserves to be given a chance and not be compared to someone who never would have done half of the things for you that Nolan has."

I hated how logical my little sister sounded because for one moment she was the adult teaching me instead of the other way around.

"Since when did you grow up?" I asked her, wondering when Olivia had changed from the little girl that had been my baby sister into the beautiful woman she was today.

"I'm just following in your footsteps," she told me with a smile.

"How are you doing?" I asked her, realizing these past few months had been mostly focused on me and I really had no idea what was going on in my sister's life.

"I've been thinking about branching out into something different with my career. I love my job with the Cougars, but it hasn't been as fulfilling as it once was. I'm not sure what it is I want to do yet. I'm waiting for a sign." Olivia gave me a smile, a hint of sadness dulling its usual shine. "And being single has just been harder than normal recently. Being around everyone."

My sister had never shown any desire for finding a serious partner outside of her normal dates that she went on simply for entertainment. My eyes prickled with tears when I realized this might be the moment that Olivia shed the last bits of her youth and she would no longer be the little sister I needed to care for.

"You'll find somebody that is so enthralled with you—even all of your craziness." I grabbed Olivia's cup of coffee and set both hers and mine on my nightstand before I pulled her into my side. "And if you want to try new things in your career, I'll be the first person to tell you to take the risk. Whatever you want to do, I'm here to support you."

Olivia wrapped her arms around my waist and buried her head in my hair like she used to do as a little kid. No matter what happened—who we fell in love with, who broke our hearts, or whether our hearts would ever be whole again after suffering a thousand cuts from our father—we would always have each other.

"You deserve love, Liv," I told her, my lips pressed against her forehead.

"You should listen to your own advice," Olivia replied softly. "I'm not sure what you have to do—if you have some sort of soul searching you need to do first, or healing. But I can feel it in my heart that you and Nolan aren't over."

Olivia lifted her head so she could look me square in the eyes. "You deserve love too, Lottie," she said more fiercely.

"Thanks, Liv." I squeezed one more time before I let her go.

Despite the pang of hurt that felt like it might pull my heart in two after learning my father had been this close, but still hadn't bothered to reach out to us, now that I'd seen him again after all these years, I wondered if I was only setting myself up for more disappointment at even considering going to see him. But maybe I needed to go through disappointment once more to close this chapter and move on.

"Are you going to stop trying to avoid Nolan at practice today? Because I know you have already thought about it and I think you should." Olivia gave me a knowing look.

I wanted to disappear into my mattress, embarrassed by Olivia needing to call me out for my antics.

"We'll see," I mumbled with my hands covering my face.

"I expect an update tonight."

I winced as Olivia jabbed a finger toward me. "Don't you have something to do today?" I asked her, suddenly ready to be done with the lecture.

"It's the off-season for me. I have nothing but free time on my hands. All I care about right now is if the Bobcats win the Super Bowl because I'm forcing Nolan to take both of us to Disney with him if you two manage to make up."

My heart sank at the thought of Nolan achieving everything he wanted to when he set out on this season and then not being able to celebrate fully with him.

"Will you be alright?" Olivia asked me as she rolled out of my bed.

I don't know.

But I nodded anyways with the hope that eventually my heart would stop aching. Maybe I had been foolish to think someone like me deserved to be happy and was capable of being in a relationship because the truth was, I wasn't sure if I actually knew how.