Sweet Relief

Your Kids

The stress of her work day and their upcoming dinner is beginning to get to Olivia. She can hear Elliot in her head, telling her she's going to pace a hole in the floor but she can't make herself stop. She glances out the window and stops for a second to watch Elliot and Emma as he chases her around the courtyard, half playing soccer and have playing. A small smile spreads across her face. They were supposed to come in twenty minutes ago but they've clearly lost track of time.

A large part of her wants to let them keep going, play through dinner and feign forgetfulness when Elliot realizes time for dinner has come and gone. She considers it seriously for a moment but she talks herself out of it.  She pulls her phone out to call Elliot and watches through the window as he picks it up and then shoves it back into his pocket. She watches him hold up a finger, telling Emma she can take one more shot before they have to come inside.

Emma and Elliot comes bounding into the apartment and they both stop when they see Olivia standing with her arms crossed. Emma walks past her mother quickly, trying to avoid a scolding for being late. Elliot scratches the back of his head, sensing the irritation radiating off of Olivia.

"You are a terrible influence." She says shaking her head.

"But did you see that goal?" Elliot says, giving her a quick kiss on the lips.

"I did. She's getting good."

"Good?" Elliot says, "She's great! She's gonna make that competitive team for sure."

Elliot pulls a beer out of the fridge but puts it back when he sees the look Olivia's giving him. He knew tonight was stressing her out but he hadn't realized quite how much until he saw the look on her face.  "I know, I know." He says, "Shower and get dressed."

Olivia lets out a tense laugh, "They're your kids, El."

"And they already think I've gone off the rails..." He says, "Probably shouldn't be late and unshowered."

Elliot disappears into their bedroom and once again, Olivia finds herself pacing while she waits for them. She pours herself a glass of wine and drinks it in one long gulp before she pours another and begins to pace again. She's been putting dinner off, but Elliot has been pushing for Emma to meet her siblings. He keeps promising that they're good kids, that they'll be more than accepting of their sister but Olivia's had a pit in the bottom of her stomach since they scheduled it.

Elliot broke the news to each of them a few weeks after he met Emma, almost six months ago so she knows they've had time to digest the news. But they still haven't met her, or Noah.

She knows Elliot kids are good people, but they also love their mother. And although she would never change the choice she and Elliot made because it gave her her daughter, she would be silly to think that his children would think the same about a sibling they've never met. Dinner a few weeks ago eased her anxiety about Emma meeting the older girls, but it's been well over a decade since she's seen the twins or Eli. It's probably not fair of her to judge Dickie by the rage he possessed for her at age seventeen, but it's the most recent interaction she has to go off of.

Emma's so happy right now, and the bond she's building with Elliot amazes Olivia everyday, but she knows all too well that meeting her siblings has the potential to make Emma feel so far outside of her own family, and she can't bear the thought.

Right now Emma feels secure in her relationship with Elliot, and she should, he loves her more than anything in the world. But meeting the sibling her father raised from birth created insecurities in Olivia that had never existed before, and she fears it will do the same to Emma, no matter how kind they are to her.

They planned dinner for tonight because Eli and Kathy are visiting from Rome and Elliot wanted him to meet her before they go back, but Olivia had been secretly hoping Eli wouldn't want to come or wouldn't be able to. He was by far the most the angry with Elliot, and the they still have no made a recovery since he broke the news.