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Chapter Thirty-Four
Ollie was tired. After she closed the door on her relationship with Jackson, she’d inhaled the entire bottle of wine and woke up the next morning feeling like shit. She missed her class at Tiny Dancers and her shift at the Barrel because she stayed in bed the whole time. Sure, she was getting paid to show up to both jobs, but when your heart was broken, it was impossible to do anything.
Let alone get out of bed.
Her phone rang constantly. She read every text, listened to every voicemail, but didn’t respond. And ghosting everyone was definitelyhealthy. She knew it was ridiculous, but Ollie was hurting.
The conversation with Lisbeth was totally predictable. She knew right from the moment they met, Jackson’s sister was going to attack her in every way possible. Pierce might not have been so forward, but he’d done it. Chipping away at her strength and her confidence because she never reacted. Almost everything Lisbeth said, Pierce had said once or twice. The difference was, Pierce said it with a joking tone as they cuddled on the couch or lay in bed. Until they broke up, she didn’t realize how terrible he was. He obviously kept saying it because Ollie hadn’t been reacting the way he hoped.
And the opposite happened with Lisbeth.
She said something horrible and instead of cowering and running away, Ollie snapped. She hadn’t spent her whole life in America to have some high and mighty white girl tell her she didn’t belong there. Lisbeth was just one of the many racist assholes in the country and she could handle her.
What she couldn’t handle was Jackson.
The whole time they’d been dating, they’d never once talked about her race. Because it had never seemed important—she was a woman who was dating a man and that was it. Sure, they talked about her sexuality and her family, but it had never occurred to her that Jackson might notunderstand.
He stood there and listened to her speak, and instead of trying to learn or understand, Jackson kept repeating the same things over and over again. And worse, he used words Pierce did when Ollie was trying to make a point.
Jackson and Pierce weren’t the same, not even by a long shot, but it was triggering enough that she ended it. She’d spent three years with Pierce and he’d basically tortured and hurt her till she was unable to function. But she wasn’t going to let that happen with Jackson. She loved him. But, she could not be with him until he understood where Beth went wrong.
Jackson’s lack of knowledge about racial issues was their undoing. Ollie wasn’t going to educate him. If he couldn’t learn on his own, then she wasn’t going to spend all her time trying to teach him.
Just thinking about him, about the conversation and how he barely even fought to understand what was going on brought tears to her eyes. Ollie appreciated that Jackson understood her words were final and she wasn’t in the mood to argue, but at the same time—why didn’t he try harder?
Startling awakewhen her phone rang, Ollie groaned and reached for it, only for it to stop suddenly as the screen went black. Cursing under her breath, she carefully got out of bed, tripping over her shoes and the bottle of wine she’d emptied and plugged her phone in to charge. The apartment was silent, which meant Lachlan was gone again. Ollie didn’t care. She watched her phone come back to life and sighed when it started ringing again.
“What?” She spat out the word as she answered it.
“Good morning to you too.”
“What do you want, Frankie?”
“To see your face, really.”
Ollie sighed. “Nothing has ever stopped you from showing up at my front door before.”
“Well, you seem to be in such a wonderful mood, I didn’t want to take any chances.”
“I’m fine.” She forced a little pep in her voice.
“Said everyone who was ever not fine.”
“Frankie…” Trailing off, Ollie closed her eyes and rubbed them with the heel of her free hand.
“Look, your parents are worried—they’ve been calling me constantly.”
“It’s been like a day.”
Frankie chuckled. “Anders, you’ve been MIA for four days.”
“What?”
“Exactly! You tuned out for four whole days and your family is worried.”
“What the actual fuck?”
Frankie sighed. “I’m coming over, so you better be decent, because I have food and more booze, not that you need any. And we’re going to talk.”
