Page 26 of Olivia’s Only Pretending (Sweet River #3)

Eighteen

Me

I’ll be there to pick up Watson in an hour

Victor

I think you’ve walked him more in the past six months than I have in his whole life

Me

that’s sad, Victor

he needed me

Victor

we both needed you

W atson and I had our walking routine down. I would pick him up a couple times a week. He’d jump in my car, his furry golden tail wagging against the leather seat. We’d drive to the walking trail along the river with the windows down.

We had our favorite stops with the doggy water fountains.

We walked slowly, so he could peruse the path and sniff everything his heart desired.

I’d take those moments as reminders to slow down my breathing, to look up at the sky, and notice the sun on my skin.

These walks were easy to skip before I had a walking buddy in Watson.

Now, when I considered pushing it off my schedule, I thought of how excited Watson would be to see me walk in the door with a leash in hand.

Sometimes, Victor joined us and he’d stop to look at things—the ducks in the river, the weird thing in the sky, the cooing baby in the stroller—nearly as often as Watson.

Other times, Lucy joined me. We took no time to notice the sun on our skin, instead talking a mile a minute. This time, Lucy and Gracie met us there.

“Mom has another date,” Lucy said, almost like an announcement. She looked at Gracie and me expectantly, her wavy red hair piled atop her head in a bun.

“When?” I asked.

Gracie asked, “Who with?”

“Jeff, probably,” I said, moving out of the way of a mom chasing two toddlers, my black hoodie falling from my shoulder.

“No, not Jeff,” Lucy corrected me. “Some new guy.”

“What?” I frowned. “I liked Jeff for her.”

“She said she’s not putting all of her eggs in Jeff’s basket,” Lucy said.

“I mean, I get it.” Gracie shrugged, tugging on her pink sweatshirt with a dance studio’s name embroidered across the front.

“When’s the date?” I asked.

“Tomorrow night,” Lucy said.

“I wish we could check him out like we got to check out Jeff.” I chewed on my lip, stopping so Watson could sniff some grass by the river. The rushing water was a soft murmur.

“Me too,” Lucy said. “Could you imagine—the three of us accidentally bumping into them at dinner?”

Gracie chuckled. “Fancy meeting you here, while we scoot into their booth.”

“No, no. We’d have to spy from afar, hiding behind big menus,” I joked. Watson’s leash was rough in my hands, yanking me ahead.

“I feel like we’d actually be good at it,” Lucy said, something flashing in her eyes. “We could pull it off. They’re not even going to a restaurant. They’re playing mini golf. We could easily hide around the course to hear what they’re saying.”

“ Easily hide around the course ?” I asked, brows furrowed. “Lucy Rhodes, you’re not suggesting we spy on Mom’s date for real!”

“Not for the whole date. Merely pop in for like half an hour and check the guy out. It’s not that crazy. I’m sure it happens more than we realize,” Lucy said.

“I’ve never heard of anyone spying on someone else’s date, except for on sitcoms,” I said.

“Liv, they get those ideas from somewhere.” Lucy crossed her arms.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea,” Gracie said, slowly offering up each word, her blonde hair bouncing as she walked.

“You both don’t think it’s a bad idea to spy on our mom’s date?” I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Seriously? You want to do this?”

I could think of several reasons it was a bad idea. Namely, Mom’s reaction if she caught us. Also , her date’s reaction if he caught us.

“I think I do.” Lucy grinned. “I want to check out Jeff’s competition.”

“I mean, we can bail if something goes wrong.” Gracie’s eyes were lighting up in the way they did when she was scheming.

I closed my eyes and took a breath. “Fine. I’m in.” I couldn’t let the two of them go without me, that was for sure. “But both of you have to work on your whispers.”

“Work on our whispers, how?” Lucy asked as we all started walking again at Watson’s behest.

“You both ‘whisper’ super loud,” I said, making air quotations with my fingers around the word whisper .

Lucy shook her head as if this just wasn’t true.

“We do not.” Gracie rolled her eyes. “You’ll see.”

“Let’s wear all black,” Lucy said excitedly.

“What time is the date?” I asked.

“Six. Let’s get there like fifteen minutes beforehand, so we can spot them when they walk in and can follow them,” Lucy said.

“Yeah, we can lurk around the lobby—” Gracie began.

“Lurk? Follow them? This sounds so—” I tried covering my face with my hands as best as I could with a chunky leash in my hand.

“Olivia, it’s not creepy,” Lucy said.

“I didn’t even say creepy .” I raised my eyebrows. “You used that word all by yourself.”

“I’m saying, it’s not creepy because we don’t have creepy motives. It’s sweet because we’re watching out for Mom,” Lucy said, stopping to take a sip of water from her yellow bottle.

“Plus, it’ll be pretty funny.” Gracie grinned. She was always in it for the laughs.

“Well, I’ll be there,” I said. “This guy better be another sweet one like Jeff.”

“So, how’d Jeff seem during charades? Was he fun? I feel like I missed a big chunk of the night,” Gracie said, her eyes on the sidewalk.

“Yeah, that seemed like a long phone call. Is everything okay?” Lucy said, pulling her hoodie tighter around her waist.

“Yeah, it wasn’t an emergency or anything,” Gracie said. She licked her lips, squinting as if she were weighing something in her mind. Maybe her next words. “It was Austin.”

Austin . That answered all my questions. Austin and Gracie talking might not be an emergency, but it was always a big, miserable mess. Every single time.

“Are you two …” I let the sentence trail off. I thought part of me didn’t even want to say his name out loud.

“Sort of,” she said, shoulders up to her ears. “We’re talking again. Tentatively.”

Lucy was being uncharacteristically quiet. I shot her a glance.

“Tentatively is probably good.” I nodded. “Last time …” Last time, Gracie had called me in tears. Last time, Austin had called it off after disappearing on her for two weeks. Last time, she’d said she wouldn’t let him treat her like that ever again.

“Last time, he was in a weird place. He wasn’t prepared for a real commitment. He was busy with school and wanted to enjoy his freedom,” Gracie said.

“Enjoy his freedom? Being with you, Gracie Rhodes, is the real joy. The biggest, brightest joy, and he’s dumber than I thought if he thinks there’s anything more fun than being with you!” Lucy burst out.

Gracie half smiled, half groaned—touched but frustrated, that unique emotion sisters tended to bring out.

“What makes you think he’s out of that weird place?” I asked.

“We’re almost done with school, so I think the freedom thing isn’t such an issue …” she said, her voice growing smaller with every word. “Plus, he said he was tired of fighting his feelings. What the two of us have … we can’t turn it off.”

The sun hid behind a cloud, offering a respite of shade overhead.

Lucy asked, “What do you feel for each other?”

Gracie sighed. “Drawn to each other. I think about him all the time. He said he can’t get me out of his head. I mean, it feels impossible not to answer my phone when he calls, even after everything.”

I chewed on my lip. “I get that you can’t turn feelings off.”

“So, you have feelings for each other. And those feelings probably feel good sometimes,” Lucy started.

“And sometimes feel like agony.” Gracie laughed.

“But how does he make you feel? Not how do your feelings for him feel, but how does Austin make you feel?” Lucy asked.

It was quiet, except for our footsteps hitting the cement and the river streaming beside us. No one else was on the sidewalk for a few moments, just the three of us mulling over Lucy’s question.

“It’s hard to answer that question, you know?” Gracie mumbled. “He’s made me feel a lot of things. Our history has made me feel good and bad and crazy and sad and high.”

“But do the good feelings outweigh the bad?” I asked.

“Because relationships aren’t solely about what you feel for the person,” Lucy said.

“It’s also about how the person makes you feel, especially about yourself.

How your relationship with them makes you feel.

Adam has made me feel a lot of things, but primarily good things.

He makes me feel hilarious, beautiful, worth sticking around for, interesting, smart, strong.

Our relationship makes me feel braver, safer.

Sure, sometimes Adam makes me feel pissed off.

But, primarily, like Olivia asked, the good outweighs the bad. ”

Gracie swallowed. “Is this some intervention or something? Did y’all plan this?” Her voice was shaky.

“No, no.” I grabbed her hand. “This was super unplanned.”

She pushed out her bottom lip. “I hate that you asked me this,” she said, her head turning to Lucy.

“Because mostly, if I think about it, Austin makes me feel like I’m lucky to have his attention, lucky if he calls me back, and if I don’t do enough, if I can’t be enough, I could lose it in an instant. ”

I tugged Gracie into a hug, and Lucy threw her arms around both of us while Watson circled our huddle, slowly wrapping the leash around us.

For the rest of the walk, Lucy’s question echoed in my mind. How did Victor make me feel about myself? Many of the words she used were true for me, too. He made me feel interesting, strong, and smart. Our friendship made me feel brave. It made me feel safe.

But there was more, too. Victor made me feel silly and carefree, like the goofball kiddo I’d decided to tuck away when my dad left, so I could be the mature eldest daughter my mom needed. She was let loose in his presence. She finally got her time.

And he made me feel good about things I’d been taught to apologize for. With Victor, my know-it-all self wasn’t something to tone down. He always treated it like an impressive asset.

The good our relationship brought far and away outweighed the bad.

But the bad was a giant neon sign flashing one word: terrified. I was terrified of ruining all this good with my new, confusing feelings.

I was stuck in my head while Gracie and Lucy discussed some celebrity gossip I knew nothing about.

Their voices were background noise. Watson veered off the sidewalk, nose twitching as he sniffed something in a bush.

He pawed at something hidden in the leaves; his ears perked at attention before he jumped back with a loud whimper.

“Watson?” I jogged toward him.

My sisters crowded around him, too.

He couldn’t step on his right front paw, whimpering when he tried to stand on it.

“What do I do?” My mouth went dry. I scrambled for my phone. I tried Victor, but he didn’t answer.

Lucy tried Adam in case they were together, but he was driving back from a meeting and not around Victor.

I tried Victor again—nothing. I glanced at poor Watson, who kept his paw curled up in pain.

“I know where Watson’s vet office is,” I said to my sisters.

Both were kneeling down, stroking Watson’s golden fur. He looked up at me with his big, amber eyes.

“I think I should just take him myself.”