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I’d have been willing to do almost anything to get in a room with Michael Sanders and pitch him on Branches 2.0. Pretending to be Olivia’s husband for a few weeks was a small price to pay.
“Is Olivia okay with all this?” Danny asked.
I shrugged. “What does she have to complain about? This is going to help her hang on to a dream job.”
Though, to be fair, I hadn’t told her my intention to be involved had anything to do with a desire to market Branches. I wasn’t sure what she would have said if she had known the truth. She might not have liked it very much. Olivia had never been interested in our technological endeavors.
And she’d been hesitant to involve me in the whole affair. If she had known that my main objective was to promote the app, she might have concluded it wasn’t worth it.
That would have been completely unreasonable. It’s not like I wasn’t willing to play the role of her husband. And I was perfectly qualified to serve as a consultant on this movie. As far as I was concerned, it was a win-win.
But Danny was looking doubtful. “I’m surprised Olivia even agreed to it,” he said. “You two have never been each other’s biggest fans.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, you know what I’m talking about, Jake. Come on. You always treated her like an annoying pest when we were little kids.”
“Shewasan annoying pest when we were little kids.”
“Do you remember the summer you came with my family to Key West?”
I nodded. Danny’s family had often brought me along on vacations. Neither of our families had been wealthy growing up, but Danny’s had been able to afford yearly trips that always lasted a week or two, whereas my parents could never get away from work for such a long period of time. It had been sweet of them to include me, and it had always meant a lot to me that they had.
“What about Key West?” I asked.
“It was the summer we learned to surf,” Danny reminded me.
I nodded. We were twelve, and we’d taught ourselves on a rented board we shared. “It was an amazing summer.”
“Olivia wanted to go out with us too, remember? And we never let her.”
“She was only ten. She was too little. She would have been crushed by those waves.”
“Yeah,” Danny said. “That’s what we told her. That’s what we told ourselves. And then, do you remember what happened?”
“Not really.”
“She got her hands on a boogie board and learned how to ride it.”
“Well, boogie boards are more the right speed for a ten-year-old girl.”
“I know, but my point is, she went out anyway. It wasn’t like she was staying home after we told her she couldn’t come with us. And even then, after we knew what she was doing, we still didn’t invite her along. She could have boarded with us while we surfed, and in fact, it would have beensaferbecause she would have had someone keeping an eye on her, but we never let her come with us.”
“You think she’s still mad about something from when she was ten?”
“No, of course not. She’s not mad about it. I’m saying… that’s how it always was. You and I were always running off to do things and not including her, and she hated it.”
“Well, it’s pretty normal for an older brother to leave his sister behind. Why would we have brought your little sister along all the time?”
“I know, that’s what I told myself at the time. It wasn’t our job to look out for her.”
“Nah, I know it wasn’t. But I always got to bring my best friend along on family trips, and she never understood why. I mean, by rights, she and I should have been hanging out together on those vacations. And you’ve got to admit, you were the one who was usually pushing to leave her behind.”
“I was not.”
“Yeah, you were, Jake. I didn’t ignore her when you weren’t around. I know it was partly me, but it was only because I wanted to hang out with you, and I could tell you didn’t want her around.”
I had no idea why we were rehashing the past. “This was all years ago,” I said. “I’m sure she doesn’t think about that shit anymore.”
