“I want to argue with all of it, but I’ll let you finish first.”
She rolls her eyes, but keeps talking.
“I tried to be more outgoing in high school, and got invited to this party, not realizing that my brothers set it up so I wouldn’t feel like they kept bringing me to parties I wasn’t wanted at. Everyone was super nice, and I was thrilled. Eventually I felt confident enough to tell my brothers they didn’t have to come with me anymore…but then the invites dried up. It didn’t occur to me that people were inviting me so my brothers would come.”
“Fuck, people are assholes in high school. I’m sorry.” I cup her neck and pull her in for a kiss, and she gives me the tiniest of reassuring smiles. “Kinsey was one of those bitches?”
“They weren’t bitches,” she argues. “And no, Kinsey is the only person I had left after that. I sort of assumed anyone who asked me to do anything was just trying to get close to my brothers, which is on me, but—I think being alone hurt less than falling for something fake.”
The guilt settles in my stomach, but this isn’t fake…which means she’s talking about Kinsey.
“We grew up together. Even if she made pointed comments about my weight or tended not to introduce me to new friend groups…she was still there for me.”
I hate that for her. That she felt she couldn’t make friends, so she just let someone treat her terribly and accepted it as what she deserves.
“That’s not friendship. That’s…”
“I know,” Savannah assures me. “Last year, Kinsey came for a visit and sort of threw herself at my oldest brother. He turned her down, because he saw her as a little sister, and when she tried to argue, he told her it didn’t matter because he would never risk getting between his sister and her best friend. Which I think an actual best friend might have appreciated and somehow overcome, but it turns out that ever since we were little, whenever Kinsey was doing something with her friends, her mom told her to invite me. It got to the point that she would be allowed to stay out later or go to parties she wouldn’t normally be allowed to, as long as she brought me.” Savannah sighs, and I see the weight of that discovery, why she would have trouble trusting anything else after that. “I don’t blame Kinsey for hating the girl she was forced to hang out with, or her mother for thinking she was setting the foundation for a lasting friendship like the one she has with my mom. But if you grow up with your best friend sometimes acting like you’re a burden she wishes she didn’t have to deal with, you internalize it. You don’t approach people, because you assume they’ll feel the same. You don’t make new friends, because there must be something wrong with you.”
“I blame her,” I argue, but Sav looks at me sadly.
“I blame her for taking my brother’s rejection out on me. She told me about her mom’s rules, how we were never actually friends, she just felt sorry for me, and then she retaliated by sleeping with the guy I had a crush on.”
“I would never hit a woman, but God do I want to right now.”
“It’s fine. I’m better off without her. I know that. And I’m starting to see that I’m not as bad as she made me feel, it was just impossible circumstances. But that’s part of why I have low self-esteem, and might have trouble believing you want me to come to your games or sleep over or…just in general. Because my default is to think that no one really wants me unless I can give them something.”
Fuck, I knew from Parker that assholes were capitalizing on her brothers’ careers, but I had no clue this had been going on her whole life. All I want to do is show her how wrong they were.
“You give me you Sav, and that’s more than enough. You’re enough.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
Savannah
Not a Single Game
I feel raw after telling Noah about Kinsey, and I hate that it upset him. He’s trying to pretend he isn’t, probably because he doesn’t want to make me feel worse, like an unwanted burden. I think it’s why he admits that his mom doesn’t go to any of his hockey games while we’re making midnight cookies. Rather, I’m making cookies and he’s watching while sampling the dough. Colt and David are home now, but other than huge grins when they see I’m there, they retreat to the living room for video games, which I think are just to ensure they’ll get cookies when they’re ready.
“Not a single game?” I ask Noah. No matter how busy our family was, there was never a single game that didn’t have at least one family member there, even if it was sometimes grandparents, an aunt, an uncle, or a cousin.
“No, well, she used to. My dad was in charge of six a.m. practices, but she’d come to most if not at all my games.”
“When did she stop?”
“When he died,” he admits. “She was at the arena when she found out, and she didn’t handle it well. The one time she tried to come back, it was just too painful.”
“I think she’s missing out,” I say in what I hope is a completely unbiased way, just about her son playing a game he loves, but I also absolutely love watching him.
“I don’t want to push her. But it meant a lot to have you there tonight. And when you bring Izzie. It’s nice looking up and having people there for me.”
I could let him drop it, but I can tell he’s not as okay with it as he claims.
“My mom used to try to protect my dad like that too. When they found out my mom was pregnant in college, he gave up on his football dreams in favor of a steady paycheck.”
“That’s…” Noah looks kind of like he’s resigned to making the same decision, which might explain why he was so opposed to dating. “Your mom tried to stop your brothers from playing sports? Or just football?”
“She would never stop us from something we wanted to do, but she made it so she was always the one handling football practice, making playdates for me on game days and making him be the one to take me.”
