Summertime & Butterflies

Twenty-One

"Can you just answer your phone?" Stephanie pleaded, rolling her eyes as Olivia's phone vibrated against the coffee table. "He's phoned, like four hundred times!"

Olivia let out a sigh. "I don't want to talk to him," she told her sister. Since leaving Harry's house the night before and hiking down to some sushi restaurant on Sunset to wait for Stephanie to pick her up, Harry had tried to call Olivia countless times – maybe not quite four hundred, but a lot. Each time, she ignored him. Olivia didn't know what to say to him. She didn't know if she was overreacting or under-reacting or perfectly reacting. She didn't know if she could forget about Taylor kissing him. Every time it crossed her mind, a painful cocktail of rage and anguish built up inside.

"He loves you," Stephanie reminded Olivia. "He's going to keep calling you. Just... talk to him! He didn't do anything wrong, anyway," she added matter-of-factly, an opinion she'd stated to Olivia numerous times over the last twelve hours.

"He kissed another girl!" Olivia reminded her sister. "On what planet is that actually fucking okay?" she asked, forgetting – or not caring – about the kids in the room.

Stephanie rolled her eyes again. "Another girl kissed him," she corrected. "He was just caught in the line of fire. It probably happened so fast, he had no time to react. You're being a bit harsh on him," she told Olivia with a shrug.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah..." Olivia sighed, standing up. "I don't want to talk about this anymore. Your Team Harry t-shirt is in the mail," she snapped, stepping over the kids sprawled out on the living room floor before making her way upstairs to the guest room.

She flopped onto the bed, pulling her knees to her chest. Was Stephanie right? Was Olivia in the wrong, and not Harry? Or was Taylor the only one in the wrong and getting what she clearly wanted – a rift between Harry and Olivia? Olivia wished she could rewind and make the entire night different and slam the door in Taylor's face the moment she arrived. She couldn't, but she didn't know what to do.

Olivia huffed out a loud groan. She didn't want to be at Stephanie's house, curled up alone in the spare bedroom. She wanted to be with her boy, dancing in their underwear on the couch, skinny dipping in the pool, watching horrible D-list movies in bed. But he let a girl kiss him, and while Olivia didn't expect him to shove Taylor away from him with force, he could have stepped aside and prevented that troll from making out with him. But he didn't.

Olivia rolled over, stretching her legs out and draping her arm over her eyes. She drew in a shaky breath, her mind still racing with thoughts from the night before. She had slept little, and the wine she'd drank before leaving Harry had given her a headache, but she didn't think her brain would slow down enough for her to have a nap. Olivia sighed again, closing her eyes. Maybe she could try.

The sun was different when Olivia opened her eyes, showing she had fallen asleep. She looked at her phone and saw she missed three hours and two phone calls. She covered her face with her hands; her nap hadn't helped her determine what to do about Harry, but she couldn't ignore him forever.

Olivia swung her legs over the edge of the bed, grabbing a hair tie from the bedside table. She could smell Stephanie's barbecue outside and realised it was dinner time. Suddenly, she was ravenous and couldn't remember the last time she ate. Though her sister was a terrible cook, Olivia was hungry enough to eat almost anything.

Olivia wrapped the elastic around her hair as she descended the stairs to the living room, stifling a yawn. As the couch came into view, Olivia stopped short when she saw Harry tucked into the corner of the sofa, hands clasped in his lap. He looked up at her as he heard her footsteps, his sad, red-rimmed eyes tugging on Olivia's heartstrings. She was still so angry at him, but he looked like such a sad little boy.