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She’d been right all along about me. I hadn’t wanted to see it, but she had.
I pulled her closer still, hoping that what I was about to say wouldn’t turn her against me. I had to apologize to her, but I was afraid that by owning up to this, I would remind her of what she liked least about me.
“I’ve been doing the same thing with Michael, haven’t I?” I asked.
She stilled. “What do you mean?”
“That’s why you don’t want me talking about Branches and buddying up to him all the time. That’s why it bothers you that he emailed the directions to me instead of sending them to both of us. You’re afraid of being left out of things.”
“You make me sound like a little kid.”
“I don’t mean it that way. I’m saying… I’m saying you don’t trust me to keep you in the loop because I didn’t include you when we were younger.”
She sighed. “I know that isn’t fair to you. That was a long time ago.”
“But I haven’t given you any reason to believe that I’ve changed.”
“It’s notexactlythe same as it was.“ She settled back against my chest and leaned her head on my shoulder. “I can hang out with you and Danny now and not feel like you want me to go away.”
“I don’t want you to go away.”
“Now you don’t.”
“I was a stupid kid, Olivia. I was a stupid boy who thought girls were lame and little sisters were the worst. It’s no excuse for me treating you like I did, but I’d never do that now.”
“But you do sometimes do it now,” she said.
“The only reason I brought up Branches was to try to get some traction for it. I’m not trying to get Michael to ignore you when I do that.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Olivia said. “I mean… I do wish you’d quit doing that. But if you hadtalkedto me about it first, if you’d considered the impact it would have on me instead of going ahead without even consulting me about it, I might even have agreed to it.”
“If that’s not what you’re talking about, then what do you mean?”
“It’s the way you talk to me—the way you talkaboutme—sometimes. It’s like you still think I’m a little kid. You make fun of me.”
“I don’t make fun of you.”
“Yeah, you do, Jake,” she said. “What about when you were pitching Branches to Michael, and you told him I was someone who reallyneededa financial app because I’m not capable of managing my money?”
“I was trying to stage a cute little interaction,” I defended myself. “It’s something I could imagine a guy saying about his wife. I was trying to sell the idea that we were married.”
“Well, that’s stupid. Michael wasn’t going to be like,hey, he’s never rude and dismissive toward her, they must not be a real couple! Some husbands and wives are nice to each other, you know. We could have pretended to be a couple like that just as easily, and then you wouldn’t have had to be nasty about me in front of someone you knew I was trying to impress.”
“I really only meant to tease you a little.”
“And how would it be if I walked into a pitch meeting where you were trying to impress investors with how good Branches was and said something like that about you?
Oh, Jake’s a good programmer, but he’d forget where his head was if it wasn’t screwed on the silly thing.”
I was quiet.
“I thought I would die of embarrassment when you called me that,” she murmured. “Silly thing. Like I’m your pet or something.”
“I really didn’t mean it that way.”
“You don’t think. I know. You say these things without thinking about how they’re going to affect people.” She sighed. “That’s the problem. You’re not as mean to me as you were when we were kids, but you still treat me like I matter less than you do.”
I wanted to protest again that I’d never meant to do that, but I held back. What she needed right now was for me to listen to her. And as much as it hurt to hear these things, I could do that.
