I hear another knock and since the door doesn’t crack open with the second one, I know it’s Cole. He’s made that mistake once with Penelope and we will never let him live that down.
“Cole, get in here,” I respond after the third knocking sequence starts. He opens the door, holding his hands together in front of him at his waist, which inevitably means he is apologizing for something.
He stands at the foot of my bed, where I'm leaning against the headboard. It honestly blows my mind how much Cole and I look like our mom, but Carter and Penelope look like our father. The small age gap between the boys and me means people often mistake Cole and me for twins. He remains standing there in silence in his jeans and gray crew neck hoodie. I know exactly where this going and I’m going to make him sweat it out a bit since we haven’t talked since that night I was at the bar.
“Liv, I'm so sorry that I told Noah you were coming home,” he says finally, looking up to look me in the eyes.
I want to respond with something witty and funny, but he looks genuinely sad, with big, green puppy dog eyes. Sometimes I wonder if Cole was a dog in a past life, and not one of those big mean dogs, but a big fluffy loveable one where you just want to squeeze their face. So I elect to be the kind sister that I am and not risk him feeling any worse.
“Cole, it’s my choice to see him. That has nothing to do with you,” I say, as reassuring as I can.
“After everything that happened in Oklahoma and you not really trying to date anyone else,” he starts to say but then stops abruptly.
I narrow my eyes on him because I’ve made a point not to talk to him about my dating life which means he must be talking to either Caroline or Mason. I quickly weigh my options on whether that is a conversation or fight I want to have with him today and realize the answer is no. I make a mental note to text Caroline after this conversation and question how often she’s in touch with Cole.
“I am just really sorry, Liv. I know he hurt you.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like we haven’t talked in ten years. You know we text at Christmas every year,” I reply.
“You haven’t seen him in ten years, though, and I know you seeing him tonight stems from that night,” he counters, looking at the edge of the bed, avoiding eye contact. So he was listening to my conversation with Mom.
“One: Stop listening to my conversations. Two: I'm an adult who can make decisions for herself. If I didn’t want to go, I wouldn’t. And three: I forgive you. So get that sad puppy dog look off your face and let's go help Mom with the cookies,” I reply, wanting this conversation to be over.
I'm trying not to overthink about tonight. Though there's a pit in my stomach telling me that I really want to see Noah.
Chapter 6
Noah
Usuallyrunningalwaysclearsmy head and prepares me for anything coming my way, but after reading Ollie’s text, I can't think of anything aside from the last time we saw each other. How terrible that ended, how our friendship stopped when I closed that door.
I don’t regret that day, or my choice. I do, however, regret hurting her as deeply as I did and allowing our friendship to crumble under us. I follow her on social media and see everything that she’s posted over the years, and I really couldn’t be more proud of the person she has become. She is a doctor now while also making a difference in the lives of her community. She has a life in Milwaukee, sans me, with some friends who seem like they treat her better than I ever did.
“Are you going to tell her you’re out?” my mom asks as she catches me looking at a photo of our family with Ollie and her brothers in it. We were quite the group of kids, always getting into trouble with the three of us and then Ollie finding some way to tag along. Sometimes it gets to me that Cole and Carter are not speaking to me anymore, and I barely get one-word answers from Ollie when we talk.
“I don’t know. She lives in the city now anyway,” I respond swiftly.
That's not the first conversation I want to have after being apart for so many years. The first goal needs to be to apologize and have a good time. To show her that we can be the friends that we were in high school.
Mom just shakes her head and walks away, and I immediately know she thinks that's the wrong choice. The one thing I’ve grown to love about my mom is her honesty. She will always let me know if she thinks I’m making the right choice, always supports the choice, and is always there to pick up the pieces when I have to admit that she's right.
Typically, around this time of year, we are getting new orders and preparing for our next move or deployment, so “retirement” feels foreign. Like there’s a part of me that is missing. It has been three full weeks of being home with nothing to do and I’m starting to lose my mind. Living in the middle of nowhere has its perks when you’re used to traveling the world but when you have to be here long term, I don’t understand how our families have done it for the last hundred years.
I started volunteering with the volunteer fire company in Fisher Creek for something to do. The only problem is that Cole has been working full-time with the fire company since we graduated high school, and then helping out on the farm when he's not at the station.
Cole was one of my closest friends since I met Ollie, always hanging out with just the three of us, his parents even let me work on the farm the summer of our senior year so I could help my family out by making some money, and not have to worry about missing any soccer training.
But after that night in Oklahoma, the messages started to thin out and Cole and I became even more distant than Ollie and me. I can’t blame him, Ollie is his little sister, and if he hurt Bec that badly, I don’t even want to think about what would happen. I'm lucky he even said hello to me two weeks ago at Fishy’s, let alone tell me that Ollie was coming home for the holidays. I'm even more grateful that he let me join the fire department, although I think it was mostly out of pity. It's still nice to be around him again.
Before I know it, I hear a shriek followed by laughter coming from the front of the house and I just know my sister has opened the door to Olivia for the first time in years. I know they still keep in touch periodically because she has a heart of gold, and whenever Bec and I are fighting, Ollie is usually the one Bec goes to.
I walk into the living room trying to make it seem like I’m calm, cool, and collected but can’t help but stop and stare as I see her standing with her back up against the door, being bombarded by the pups. Her long chestnut brown hair falls with loose curls just over her shoulders. She’s wearing a flowy, red turtleneck that sits right at the hem of her distressed black jeans. As she bends to give Archie his required head scratches, the back of her shirt slides up showing her olive skin. Milwaukee has changed her. She has grown up since I last saw her, she’s filled out her body from that skinny preteen to a woman.
“Hey,” I say, snapping out of a state of oblivion.
“Hey,” she responds quietly, looking up from Archie, who proceeds to plant the biggest dog kiss on her cheek, causing her to burst into laughter. “I know, Archeroo, I missed you too.” She’s always had a silly nickname for the dogs, and I can’t even remember how this one came about but hearing it again has my chest warming.
I chuckle and respond, “You ready to go?”
