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Chapter 20
Holland
I was a girl with a plan. I had always been a girl with a plan. I was cautious and careful, and I did irritating things like make lists of pros and cons. I thought through outcomes before I acted. Sometimes I even rehearsed situations from life when I was alone so I could be sure I’d do well when the real thing came. That was how I’d been as long as I could remember. That was what kept me on track, kept me safe.
And I’d pretty much disregarded all of that when it came to Oliver. I’d shut my eyes and done the equivalent of a trust fall backward into the unknown. And now everything was ruined. This was exactly why I’d had the plan.
One week apart from Oliver had felt like the longest and emptiest of my life. I’d tried to keep the pain at bay with long hours at work. I’d spent evenings at my desk, ignoring everything and everyone. I’d even canceled on Delia the day after we’d broken up, blaming the MLB work for keeping me busy. At Delia’s for dinner that next Wednesday, I’d planned to act as if everything was normal. But that was the thing about Deel. She knew me well. Maybe better than I knew myself.
“What?” she asked, the second I walked into the kitchen where Olivia was sitting in the middle of the floor with a tiny microscope in her lap, surrounded by rocks.
“What?” I kept my voice light, reaching for the glass of wine she held out.
“What’s wrong? You have that line between your eyebrows.” She reached a finger out and pressed it to my forehead, pressing my worry line flat. “This is gonna age you, Holl. You need to relax. You can’t control everything.”
“Wrong. That’s exactly the issue. I need to control everything.” I swatted her hand away and took a healthy swallow of wine. “When I follow the plan, control the pieces, then everything goes as it should.”
Delia walked me to the living room. Spring was beginning to appear in the air outside and it was warmer in the evenings. “Well, Carl had to work late and isn’t coming for dinner. So I didn’t cook. Pizza’s on the way, we have plenty of wine, and you can tell me exactly what’s going so wrong.”
Olivia trundled into the room behind us and carefully piled her rocks in the center of the floor and then flopped down on her stomach in front of the microscope. “Hi, Ha-wen.”
“Hi, Olivia,” I said, finding an easy smile for my favorite three-year-old.
“Gigi’s watching a movie,” Delia said, answering my next question without me having to ask it. “I couldn’t take Frozen one more time, so she’s in my room.”
Olivia smiled up at her mom, a mischievous glint in her eye, and started singing “Let It Go” in her tiny soprano.
“No, Liv,” Delia wailed. “Scientists don’t sing. I can’t take it!”
Olivia got to her feet and put her fists to her hips, taking a break from the song to announce, “Scientist singer.”
“Of course. Well, if you’re going to sing Frozen tunes, you need to go join your sister or I might have to use my freezing fingers on you.” Delia waggled her fingers at the little girl and made a crazy face.
Olivia hesitated, and then gathered her rocks into the front of her yellow T-shirt and picked up her microscope, trudging off to the back of the house, strains of “Let It Go” wafting down the hall after her. My heart squeezed as I exchanged a smile with Delia. She had everything, and it amplified the pain in my chest to realize how far from her life my own still was.
My wine tasted strangely sour, and instead of making me feel better, it was turning my stomach, so I put it down. “Oliver and I broke up.”
Delia’s face immediately turned sad, as she pressed her lips together and furrowed her own eyebrows. “Oh, honey.” She reached to lay a hand on mine and then crossed to me and pulled me into a hug. “What was his reason? What did he say?”
I pushed her away. “Why do you assume he broke up with me?”
She shook her head, the tight braids shining in the glow coming from the tall windows behind her as she sat back down. “Sorry. I don’t know. It was you?”
I nodded.
“Why?” Her voice was a whisper.
“It just wasn’t right, Deel. I was sleeping with my boss!”
“That again? Seriously?”
“It’s not ethical,” I told her, annoyed that I’d have to explain it. “I got a raise, pulled in the MLB deal, took a promotion…and I don’t get to be happy about it because it feels like maybe none of it would have happened without Oliver.”
“So shouldn’t you be thanking him instead of saying ‘Get out’?”
“No!” Anger flared in my head, making the lingering headache I’d had all day throb in my temples. “No, Deel. Don’t you see how it looks? Even if I did all that myself, all anyone will think is that I got it by sleeping with the CEO.”
She shrugged. “You know that’s not true, though,” she said. “You earned all of it.”
