“Jen?” Claire said cautiously. She was sprawled out on the couch, her ankle propped up on a bag of ice, and a Cosmo magazine spread across her lap. She was wearing a thick, pasty mask on her face, her hair pulled back in a headband, and she had a lollipop hanging out of her mouth.
“Where did you find my secret Tootsie Pops?” I said, my eyes narrowing on her.
“Olivia?” Sean had regained his footing and straightened up in the doorway, and was now staring directly at my sister. “Is that you?”
Claire looked stunned, shifting her eyes between Sean and I as though unsure what she should do. When I caught her eye, I nodded emphatically, pleading her with my eyes. Maybe her selective psychic powers would register
this
message, if not the last. Please, Claire, please!
“Hi,” she said carefully, closing the magazine and stuffing it into the couch behind her. “Sean, right?”
Perfect! Keep it cool and aloof, Claire, and it’s over and done with. Sean would get over her, get way into me instead, and we could finish our date p
roperly. Claire
a
nd Olivia
free. Alleluia!
Unfortunately, Sean was going to need more than cool and aloof to be shaken, once and for all. He darted across the living room and joined Claire on the couch, immediately laying a caring hand to her ankle.
“Does it hurt very badly? How did this happen?” he said, all the concern from the restaurant had been woven back into his tone. This was a completely different man than the one who had been kissing my neck ten seconds earlier. It had to be. No one was this duplicitous.
“What are you doing back so early from Taiwan?”
“Oh, it’s no big deal,” Claire said, trying to shimmy away from him. “Just turned it wrong when I was working out.”
“Do you work out with Neal too?”
“Noah,” I corrected him again. Claire’s head snapped in my direction with a questioning glare. I couldn’t keep my seething anger from spilling over into my tone. Who could have?
“No, I don’t,” Claire said lightly. “It wasn’t the trainer’s fault anyway. I just stepped on it wrong.”
“Well, is there anything I can do?”
“Not really,” Claire shrugged, looking to me for back-up. I stood still, arms crossed in front of me. “I’ve got to get some rest, so why don’t we call it a night? Jen?”
I swung the door open and held it for Sean. It took him a moment, but eventually he got the hint. He stood up and walked over to Claire, placed an awkward kiss on top of her head, and then walked back to the door, hanging his head low. He didn’t look at me or say anything to me until he was most of the way outside, then he turned back and caught my eye.
“Night, Jan,” he said softly. “See you around.”
I slammed the door behind him and let out a loud sigh.
“What the hell was that all about?” Claire said, pointing to the empty seat on the couch. “Sit down and tell me what’s going on. Why
did you bring him here? And why
am I
still
Olivia?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
So I told
Claire
what happened. How close I’d gotten to distracting Sean from his fantasies about a girl
who
doesn’t exist, only to be foiled by myself.
“Who brings a guy home to the very place he should not go? To the very person he can’t see? I’m such an idiot, Claire,” I slammed a hand down on the arm of the couch. “You’d think I’d never been on a date before.”
“Well, it has been a while,” Claire offered innocently.
I shot her a lethal glare. “Not the time.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get the jiggling keys thing. I thought you were just struggling to get in. I was debating whether I hobble over to help you or not and then, there you were… both of you.”
Closing my eyes, I punched the couch cushions. “Is it so much to ask for someone to like the actual me instead of the fake version? He couldn’t even see your face and he just assumed you must be the beautiful, illustrious Olivia.
She’s not even supposed to be in the country!
”
“Well, you told him Olivia was your roommate. Who else would be sitting on your couch like this?”
“My sister!”
“Look, Jen,” she said, a warning note in her voice. “You were the one who created this imaginary world. This was supposed to be a project for your class, not a whole new problem to complicate your life. So just stop whining about it and fix the problem. It doesn’t have to be this big of a deal.”
“But I like him, Claire!”
“Do you?” She crossed her arms, studying me. It was hard to take her glare very seriously when her eyes were two white spheres amid the pasty, green face mask. “You like a guy who calls you by the wrong name, who interrupts his own make-out session with you to tend to your roommate’s ankle, and who just limped out of here like a sad puppy dog when I told him to go home?”
I blinked at her wordlessly.
“A guy who broke your heart and…well, you know.”
My shoulders slumped and I sank back against the couch. “Yes.”
“Don’t pout, Jen.”
“Okay, okay. So he’s not what I thought he was, all right? You don’t have to rub it in. It’s bad enough that everyone who meets you falls in love with you!”
“Oh, please. Don’t turn this around on me! I didn’t do this to you, Jen.”
A knock came on the side door just then, the one connecting my apartment to my parents’ home. “Everything okay in there, girls?” It was Mom, on a not-so-stealth mission to solve her daughters’ every problem. She opened the door, which had no lock, and stuck her head in. “What’s all the shouting?”
“Nothing, Mom. It’s just Claire trying to ruin my life again,” I sighed, playing up the brat angle for my mother’s benefit.
“Again?” Claire shouted, trying to stand but failing and flopping back onto the couch. “When did I ruin your life before?”
“
Do you really want me to list the occasions?” I spat. She didn’t say anything, so I continued. “When you were born pretty. When every boy I ever liked preferred you to me.
When you were born with perfect hearing!”
“Okay, Jennifer,” my mother interjected, sternly. I half expected her to send us to bed with no supper or something, given her scolding tone. “That’s enough of that. Apologize to your sister.”
“What for?” I held my hands up, innocent.
“It’s not Claire’s fault that she doesn’t wear hearing aids. Didn’t
we talk about that enough
when you were younger? I won’t let you make her feel guilty about what she has that you don’t, just as I wouldn’t allow her to make you feel bad about it.” My mother pushed her glasses up on her nose and stared me down, waiting for that apology.
Instead, I turned on my heel and marched into my bedroom. “It’s all about Claire! It always has been!” I didn’t go as far as to slam the door, but I really wanted to. There was a certain satisfaction that came from a slammed door, one I’d grown to love as a bratty teenager. I couldn’t let myself get too caught up in playing that role anymore, not as I was staring my late twenties in the face, I didn’t wait to be totally pathetic.
But my point remained behind me, hovering in the room as my sister and mother exchanged frustrated glances. I knew what would happen next and if I were a betting woman, I would’ve put money on a knock coming on my door in three…two…one.
Knock. There it was.
“Jennifer?” My mother cooed sweetly through the door. “May I come in?”
I got up from the bed and opened the door. “I’m fine, Ma, I promise. Just being dramatic to make a point to my sister.”
“I wish you girls could just get along,” she said, chewing on her lip. I moved out of the way so she could come in and we sat next to each other on the end of my bed. “You’re sisters, after all. And you need to be there for each other.”
“We are,” I said, trying not to get too defensive. I happened to think my relationship with Claire was one of the better sister bonds I’d ever witnessed in real life. “She just gets under my skin sometimes. I feel like she got all the good stuff and I got all the… crap.”
“You know that’s not true. Look at you, with plenty of smarts, a great sense of humor, lots of ambition. You’re on your way to doing great things, Jen. You don’t need some stupid boy chasing you around.”
“You heard that, huh?” I stared down at my hands.
“The
se walls are thinner than you and
your sister want to admit to yourselves,” she said, suppressing a laugh. “The point is, there is more to life than a handsome guy who wants to kiss you. Your sister has had plenty of guys chasing her, but she’s sitting in your living room, just as single as you are.”
It was not the time to bring up Tom, so I let the comment go without a response.
“The difference is, all of those guys were quite distracting for your sister,” my mother said, tucking my hair behind my ear. She said she liked looking at my hearing aids because they were a miracle that had helped her baby talk to her. “And Claire had her heart broken a few times by the ones who arrived in disguise as ‘nice guys.’ Take advantage of the time you have to yourself, Jennifer, and don’t waste it wishing for things you don’t have.”
I sighed heavily, and my mother pulled me against her shoulder.
“You have too many things going for you to get bogged down by the stuff that isn’t within your control,” she squeezed me tightly. “The right one will come along, when you’re not looking for him. Okay, honey?”
As my mother let herself out of my room, and then my apartment, I let her comforting words wash around me. Was there really someone out there who would like the Jen that I was, just as she was? Or was he just waiting for me to shave off the rest of these pounds?
Can’t I just hurry up and get finished with this already?
****
“So that’s what I interrupted that day?” my mom says now, grimacing at me. “I had no idea you were fighting about Sean again.”
“Well, your advice was still sound, even without context,” I shrug, smiling weakly. “It meant a lot to me what you said that day. I think it helped me decide what to do.”
“That’s something, I guess.”
Mom shifts on the couch, pulling one leg up underneath the other. I can see she’s getting tired, especially considering the lateness of the hour, but I’m so close to finishing… she’d never let me stop talking now. As she stifles a yawn, I consider where to start back up again.
“Let’s recap,” she says, propping up on one elbow and widening her eyes. She’s fighting to stay awake and I love her for it. “Sean wants Olivia, who he thinks is Claire. Claire thinks she has Tom, but he’s too busy stalking Olivia. You still want Sean, even after all these years. But this Noah guy is just sitting around, oblivious to all of this, wanting to take you out to dinner?”
I sigh. “Why does oversimplifying everything make me sound like an idiot?”
“Well, sometimes you just need to look at the bare bones of things to understand what’s really happening…” she says, trailing off. I can’t help thinking that I should’ve just gone to her for advice in the first place, months ago when this all started.
“As I was saying,” I groan, attempting to get us back on track. I sit cross-legged on the couch and lean forward to stretch my aching back. “Tom finally replied that he would meet up with Olivia, so all I had to do was convince Claire to go out to the club with me and catch him in the act.”
I pause, studying my mother’s face for a reaction but she gives nothing away.
“And she did, saying it would be good for her to get out and about, stretch the ankle again. But in the meantime, while I was waiting for the big night to arrive, things were getting tricky in other areas as well…”
****
Sitting in Dr. Chase’s office a few days later, I felt like an errant child getting slapped on the hand. So I’d gotten a bad grade on a quiz. So what? It was just a quiz and this wasn’t high school. I didn’t really have to prove that I understood a bunch of definitions about sociology to this woman, did I?
I knew damn wel
l that I did, assuming
I
still
wanted to earn my Master’s degree with honors, as was the plan; I just preferred to play ‘obstinate child’ in these scenarios. And Dr. C
hase
was doing a good job at playing ‘disappointed school principle,’ so I worked with what she was giving me.
“I’ve got to be frank with you, Jen,” Dr. Chase said, folding her hands on her desk. “I know there’s something pulling your focus away from my class, and your studies in general, and I want it to stop. As your advisor, I can’t just sit here and let you goof off for the rest of the year.”
“I’m not goofing off,” I said, a bit scalded by her tone. “I just got one bad quiz grade. One.” I held up my index finger to reinforce my point.
“For some other students, that wouldn’t be as big of a sign to me. But coming from you, it’s too out of character to let it slide. What’s going on? Is this project overloading you?”
I looked at her blankly, racking my brain for a constructive class-related response to that question. Blinking, I just said, “Define overloading.”
She sighed, closing her eyes. “Is it the research aspect? Something about the field report? How can I help you to manage so that I don’t have to watch you flounder for the rest of your degree process?”
“It’s nice of you to offer, Dr. C,” I wanted to sound polite, but tell her to leave me alone all at once. Claire was born with all the tact, so I worried about my ability to walk this fine line. “But I think it’s under control. It’s just become more involved than I expected, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“Well, I certainly hope you’re right,” Dr. Chase pushed her chair back and stood up. “But if it gets to be too much…”
“I know, I know,” I shook her hand. “I’ll be the first one
knocking on
your door.”
She let me go without any further explanation and I was relieved to get away with minimal damage. No more surfing during class and blowing off study time to play Olivia online. No more wasting my time on idiot men and other fruitless distractions. Gym, school, gym, school. That is your life, Jennifer Smith, and you’d better learn to enjoy it.
Speaking of the gym, that afternoon found me back at Tom’s Workout World and less than enthusiastic about it. Tom didn’t seem motivated to train me without Claire present and Noah was off that day, so I wound up working out with some skinny, bubbly chick that I could probably have crushed like a whoopee cushion. I imagined she’d make at least a similar sound, too, were I to actually sit on her.
It was a good workout, that left me sweating like a pig at a roast, but it just wasn’t the same. I knew I hadn’t pushed as hard as I could have, that I had more energy deep down in there to burn. I’d found a way to access it with Noah calling the shots and, I had to wonder, would I learn how to do that on my own, without him someday? If not, I was just going to have to follow Noah around from gym to gym for the rest of his career just to keep the extra weight from my frame.