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I wanted to tell her that it was real. It was the realest fucking thing I’d ever felt.
But I also needed to read theroom—and Olivia’sroomwas telling me that that kind of comment wasn’t going to get me anywhere right now.
“I’ll see you after the shower?” I told her, hoping the desperation wasn’t seeping out of my pores as I stood there.
“Bye,” she said simply, not answering my question as she slipped inside, and making me feel like a complete failure because I hadn’t yet figured out how I was going to make her happy.
I stood at the door for a long moment, hoping she’d throw it open and pull me inside, just as desperate to be near me as I was to be near her.
It took me a couple of minutes to finally resign myself to the fact that wasn’t going to happen.
I walked back to my room, checking my email to see where I was supposed to be today.
Pool Party: 2:00 pm.
Alright, I could wrap myself around the idea of a little sun.
My phone rang and I saw that it was Parker calling.
“What’s up, little brother?” I asked.
“Mom’s not eating again,” he answered solemnly, and I cursed…because wasn’t it always something?
“Did you call Dr. Calloway? Can he see her?”
“She’s been seeing Dr. Calloway. She’s just…” he sighed, and I heard everything he wanted to say.
Like the fact that our mother was broken.
Irreparably it seemed—since our dad had been gone for ten years now, and she’d never recovered.
Sure, there had been some months where she seemed like she was…okay.
But that never lasted long.
“Do—” I swallowed because the last thing I wanted was to leave. “Do you need me to come home?”
Parker had taken a football scholarship at University of Tennessee instead of on the west coast, so he could stay close to Mom and help out if needed. He got the brunt of her…issues.
Cole and I hadn’t handled it well…we’d just left.
“Aww, you must love me, if you’re offering to leave your looooover to come help me,” he teased, easing the tension that had built in my shoulders. If he could still joke around, things weren’t dire yet.
Or at least that was what I was telling myself.
I’m not sure that Olivia was prepared for me to kidnap her and take her to Tennessee.
Baby steps and all of that.
“You get your girl…Disney. And try not to get arrested while you do it.” he drawled. “I’ll get Mom to eat…one way or another.”
“I’m sorry,” I finally said, because that’s all I could say. My little brother was my hero on most days. Doing what Cole and I couldn’t stand to do—watch our mother rot away.
“K, you’re getting weepy on me. Cut it out,” Parker said, and I chuckled…because it was true.
But as I hung up, all I could hope was that my mother could keep her shit together long enough for me to figure out my current situation. The last thing that Olivia needed in her life was a problem like my mother.
She had enough problems with her own.
