The Reason Is You

Chapter 6

It was almost noon when Olivia woke up the next day, so she was surprised to see Lisa sitting at the dining table with her laptop.

"Hey Liv," Lisa greeted. "There's some tea and pastries in the kitchen if you'd like some."

Olivia walked to the kettle to pour herself a cup of tea and joined Lisa at the dining table. "You don't have work today?" she asked.

"No, I decided to work from home. Needed a break from all the bridezillas," Lisa joked as she shut her laptop closed and turned to Olivia. "How are you doing?"

Olivia sighed. "Better than last night. The tea is really helping, thanks." She paused and took a sip from her mug. "I'm really sorry for how I acted last night..."

Lisa shook her head. "No Liv, don't be silly. You had every right to react the way you did. I would've too. Actually, I probably would've been worse. Probably would've killed my brother, which I almost did," Lisa joked.

"How is Gabe?" Olivia asked. "I should talk to him."

"He's okay, don't worry about him," Lisa assured. "He's more worried about you, actually. He didn't really understand why you were so upset and why it was such a big deal, so I explained it to him. After you left, he thought that you absolutely didn't want anything to do with Josh anymore, so he didn't tell you. He didn't realize you still cared," Lisa explained.

"I feel so bad. I really hope he doesn't hate me..."

"Oh my gosh, Liv. Seriously. Gabe would never hate you," Lisa interrupted. "You have to stop worrying about others and how they feel. You need to look after yourself too. You were pretty much run over by a bulldozer with what you found out last night. You're allowed to get mad and to get upset," Lisa reminded her friend.

"I know but..."

"No buts! Liv, I love you and everything, but you have this tendency to always take the blame. It's not always your fault. You need to learn to accept the fact that you're allowed to feel hurt too. You don't always need to put on a brave face, especially around us. And yeah, you found out that Josh had a crisis, and that sucks, but before that Liv, there were already problems between the two of you, and you can't forget that."

Olivia took a moment to digest what Lisa had just said. It was a lot, but it was true. She was aware that she did tend to always want to fix things or take the blame whenever she could. She spent all of last night crying because she kept blaming herself for what happened. She kept repeating to herself that she abandoned Josh at a time that he would've needed her the most and kept chastising herself for being a horrible person to someone she cared about, but Lisa was right, she couldn't forget everything that happened before that.

"Liv, stop thinking about it right now. It's not gonna get you anywhere. You can't change the past, no matter how much you dwell on it," Lisa spoke as if she could read what was going on in Olivia's mind. "You're leaving the day after tomorrow and we've barely had some quality time together without those two idiots. You didn't come back here to deal with drama, and I didn't take a day off for nothing. This wasn't supposed to be the kind of week we were supposed to have. We were supposed to have fun and catch up."

"I know," Olivia sighed. "I'm sorry for all this drama."

Lisa glared at Olivia. "Olivia, what did I just tell you?"

Olivia sighed again, "That I need to stop taking the blame for everything and it's not always my fault."

"Yes, exactly. It's not your fault. If anything, we can blame Gabe. He's the one that took you to that bar when he knew Josh was there to begin with."