A Family Affair

10

"Will, is there a chance someone could have broken into your apartment?" Jay questions as he quickly went back into the main bedroom, silently clicking his fingers in Hailey's direction to get her attention.

Will held back a laugh on the other end. "I appreciate you being concerned but no one broke into my apartment, I would have noticed," he replies, "And even if someone did why on earth would they call you? Why on earth would they call any one for that matter?"

Jay shook his head, despite his brother not being able to see that part. "This isn't something to joke about, this could be really serious. Is there anyone you know that might have had access to your phone?" He asks, the cop interrogation part of him coming out as he slowly paced at the door of the bed.

Hailey had perked her ears up at that point, sitting up on the mattress to listen in on the phone call to the best of her ability.

"Jay you don't need to do this overprotective brother act, and you definitely don't have to do the cop act. I promise there's no one, it's only been me and Olivia in the apartment."

Jay stops suddenly mid-step and turns to Hailey, furrowing his brows deeply to what Will has just said. "I thought you said Livvy was at Nat's all weekend."

He could hear his brother nod before he speaks up. "Yeah, but she wanted to watch the end of the game so she asked if she could stay the night to do it, I'm gonna drop her back off at Nat's first thing in the morning." Just then Will goes silent for a beat as if a realisation had smacked him over the back of the head. "It was Livvy."

"What?" Jay mumbles.

"It was Livvy. She was the only one who had access to my phone, she's the only one that could have done it."

Jay slightly shakes his head as he continues his footwork along the end of the bed. "Why would Olivia call me?"

Will is silent for a beat before he blurts our his answer to his brother's previous question. "Because I told her to give you a chance, to hear you out."

A silence falls over the two of them on the phone as Jay struggles to find the words.

"You did?" He finally manages to get out after god knows how long of both brothers sat in silence.

Jay could hear Will nod again on the other end. "Yeah. I know you're trying really hard to fix this, and I know Livvy's being a stubborn pain in the ass about it."

Jay cuts in suddenly with a small smirk on his face. "Well we all know where she gets that from."

Will takes a beat as if he's contemplating whether to respond to his brother's slightly insulting comment but he chooses not to, instead deciding to circle back to before Jay cut in. "So I just thought that asking her to listen to you for me, not you, might work, and I guess it did."

Jay blinks quickly and shakes his hand next to his side. "Wait, you told her to hear me out for you?" He wonders.

"Well yeah, that was the only way she'd even consider doing it." Will reasons.

"But now she's not gonna hear me out because she wants to, it's gonna be because you asked her to. I said to her earlier that if she didn't want to hear me out then she didn't have to, and she said she didn't want to so I didn't push," Jay says, his voice slowly starting to raise, "But now because you've pushed her to listen there's no guarantee she'd actually take on the words. I wanted it to be her decision, her choice on making things right."

Will speaks up quickly, his voice sounding as though he was trying to reason with his brother. "I was just trying to help."

Jay doesn't let a beat pass before he replies back. "I didn't need your help, I had it under control."