Everything for You (Bergman Brothers #5)(56)
What have I missed while I’ve been wrapped up in my life? Twisted up with Gavin lately, the pressures of the new season, the weight of responsibility since being named captain. When did I lose track of my little sister?
“Ziggy,” I say quietly, reaching down and stroking her hair, which she always likes. “What’s making you feel this way? Did something happen?”
She shrugs, dabs her nose and blinks away the first threat of tears in her eyes. “Not one specific thing, no. It’s just…” Groaning, she scrubs her face. “In the family, I’m always going to be the baby. The one everyone just…”
“Adores?” I offer.
“Yes!” she yells, like this is the worst offense.
“You poor kid.”
“Shut up.” She punches my thigh without even looking and nails my quad perfectly.
“No dead-legging me. My legs are my livelihood.” I lean down and poke her armpit, making her squeal. She sits up and wipes away tears from her cheeks.
I hand her a tissue and say, “You sure nothing specific happened?”
“No.” She shakes her head, then blows loudly. “It feels like this everywhere. In the classroom. On the team. In study groups. I know I’m quiet until I’m not and then I’m blurting stuff. I know I can be awkward and I’ve got habits and behaviors that make me seem immature, but I’m an adult. I take care of myself, and I know my needs and my limits and how to advocate for myself, and I’m trying so hard to be perceived as independent and mature and I’m not.”
She sucks in a breath and says, “I just want to feel like people respect me. Like they don’t see me as this timid weird girl, but instead…as a woman who can do brave things and unexpected things, and be, like…cool.”
“Ziggy.” My heart twists. “You are cool.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re my brother. You’re obligated to say that.”
“I mean it, though. You’re cool. You’re genuine and smart and have incredible deadpan humor. You have the most impressive vocabulary of anyone I have ever met. You’re beautiful and a veritable fountain of random trivia knowledge. I always want you on my team when Trivial Pursuit time happens at the A-frame.”
Laughing faintly, she stares down at her hands. “Thanks, Ollie.” After a long stretch of silence, she says, “Do you ever just feel like…you’re outgrowing yourself? Like there are these parts of yourself you thought would never change that are rearranging inside you? Like the things you thought you knew most about what you wanted from others, from yourself, are morphing you into a person you’re not sure you’re ready to be, but you can’t stand for things to stay the way they are, either?”
I stare at her, feeling my pulse pound as her words reverberate in my heart and through my limbs. Not that losing our self-control and getting physical was objectively “good,” but I think about how good it’s felt since Gavin and I came to blows on the field—the relief it’s been since the tension I’d compressed and compounded inside myself cracked my kill-him-with-kindness facade and spilled into pranks and honesty, trust and even a little laughter…and pleasure, even closeness. Just a bit of closeness. Somewhere we’d never have gotten if I’d just kept gritting my teeth and smiling my way through my misery.
I think about how long I’ve told myself I couldn’t have those good things with someone if they so much as brushed shoulders with soccer. And I think about how unsatisfying it’s felt to live such a compartmentalized life. Because that’s not who I am, or…if it was, it’s not who I always want to be. For a time, putting my head down, pursuing my goals with single-minded focus, served me, but that doesn’t mean it always will or that what was right for one season is right forever. Ziggy’s right. You outgrow parts of yourself, and maybe this way of dealing with my fear is something I’ve outgrown. That doesn’t mean my fear, my very real reservations about mixing pleasure and my profession, has just evaporated, but it feels…freeing, to acknowledge how I’ve been handling it might need to change, might bear reexamination.
Peering down at Ziggy, I tell her quietly, “Yeah, Zigs. I know how you feel.”
The kettle starts to whistle, and while I fill our mugs, then carry them to my living room, Ziggy stares out my window to the moon, a heavy pearl, low and glowing in the sky.
“I’ve been feeling such…restlessness,” she says as I sit close to her, set down our mugs of tea, then hold out my hand. She sets her hand in mine, and I clasp it firmly, reassuring her. “I’ve been so angry lately. But I didn’t know who I was angry with, or even exactly why.”
I squeeze her hand gently. “Do you feel like you’ve figured it out?”
She nods. “I’m angry with myself. I’ve been holding myself back, believing things about myself that aren’t true, that make me feel frustrated and misunderstood and stuck. I hate feeling stuck.”
Again, my stomach knots. I remember what our brothers told me in Freya and Aiden’s backyard, that they didn’t recognize me, that maybe all that anger I thought was caused by Gavin was caused by myself, too, because of what I’d been denying, hiding, suppressing, all in the name of doing what I thought would protect my dream of succeeding on the team, would keep me protected from ever experiencing the pain and mess that my relationship with Bryce wreaked on my college career.