“I don’t know,” I muttered.
“You do. So tell me.”
I blew out a cloud of hot air and sat back on the couch, searching my thoughts for any positive thing that had happened in the past week. Still, I struggled.
“I finished a song.”
Abigail’s eyes widened with joy as she wrote that down in her notebook. “That’s fantastic. What else?”
“Nothing.”
She smiled warmly and shook her head. “No. What else, Oliver?”
She never let me get away with simply one good thing. It was kind of annoying, honestly. “I left the house and didn’t have a complete panic attack when I went to the store, thinking people would spot me.”
“Even bigger than the first thing. What else?”
“Kelly has been eating regularly. Something she hadn’t been able to do since Alex passed away.”
“Good. This is so good, Oliver. What else? Just one more victory.”
“Emery.”
Abigail’s eyes flashed with instant comfort as she paused her pen. “Anything specific about her?”
“No . . . just her as a whole.”
“Beautiful,” she breathed out as she wrote down Emery’s name. She sat back in her chair and reread the good things that had happened to me. My miniature victories. “See? No matter what, there’s some good. Even in the worst times, we have some victories.”
“Can we talk about the failures of the week now?”
“No failures. Just opportunities to learn about yourself and your triggers more. But yes, do tell me.”
I told her about the interview. About how Cam had made it her mission to ruin me out of spite due to me ending our already failing relationship. How I was making everything harder for everyone on my team. How I felt like every time I tried to step forward, I’d stumble back.
“Alex would’ve handled it better than me,” I told her as I reached into my wallet and pulled out his heart necklace. “He would’ve never gotten himself into that situation to begin with.”
“Maybe. Or perhaps, he would’ve handled it worse. Who’s to say? Regardless, it’s not your job to compare yourself to your brother. You shouldn’t be comparing yourself to anyone, because at the end of the day, even though we are all human beings, none of our situations are close enough for us to even compare. Not even you and your brother’s lives were the same, because you were both living uniquely different realities based on perspective. It’s like comparing Picasso to Van Gogh. They might both be artists, but their work is solely theirs. The good, the bad, and the painful. And one doesn’t cancel out how great the other is. There’s space in the world for everyone to be extraordinary.”
“But with Alex—”
“How many times a day do you do that?” she asked, interrupting me. That was the first time Abigail had ever cut me off.
“Do what?”
“Compare yourself to him?”
Too many times to count.
She shifted around in her seat and crossed her legs. “Do you think your brother was better than you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why?”
“Where do I even start?” I snickered sarcastically. “There’s a million reasons.”
“Just give me a few.”
“He was good with people. He always knew what to say and how to handle a situation. He never twisted his words or thoughts and fumbled them during interviews.”
“Do you think you were a burden for him?”
My brows knitted as I sank deeper into the couch cushion. “Sometimes, I think he would’ve been better off as a solo artist, instead of feeling as if he needed to carry me alongside him.”
Abigail did that therapist thing where she stared at me as if she was examining every inch of my being. Then she reached into her oversize purse and pulled out her laptop. “I need you to watch something for me.”
She pulled up a video and set the laptop on the table in front of me. Then she hit play.
It was a video of Alex being interviewed by some person. Whenever Alex did solo interviews, it was normally because I couldn’t manage to bring myself to join him because my anxiety was fucking up the situation. Still, he went and performed by being the charming person he’d always been.
“What was the question again?” Alex asked as he puffed on a cigarette, sitting relaxed in a director’s chair.
“Do you think your brother’s social flaws have damaged your success as a duo?”
“First, thank you for the question. Second, that’s a fucked-up question,” Alex remarked, making me smile a little. “Oliver is the true talent of this duo. Yeah, maybe he’s quieter, and he stays a bit behind the curtain of success and fame, but that’s because that shit doesn’t matter to him. To him, the main importance is always the music. So, yeah. People see me as more lively, more engaging, more quote unquote ‘normal,’ but they are missing out on the truth.”
“And what’s that truth?”
“I’d be nothing without my brother. Oliver has more depth in the tip of his pinky than most people have in their whole body. He cares about others more than he cares about himself. He pours everything he has into our music, into the lyrics, into the songs that everyone loves. Maybe I do better in certain situations than he does, but it goes both ways. He has more heart than me. He feels deeper than me, he understands people more than I do, even though he’d never admit it. I might be the hype man of Alex & Oliver, but Oliver is truly the mastermind. He is the magic behind us. The true wizard behind the curtain, and it pisses me off that you people don’t see it. The truth of the matter is, without Ollie, there is no music. He’s my better half, and I’d give my life for that guy without a moment’s hesitation, because I know he’d do the same for me. He’s the light to my shadows. He’s my best friend, end of story.” Alex flicked off the ashes from his burning cigarette and sat back in his chair. He gave the interviewer an award-winning smile and said, “Next question.”
The clip ended, and Abigail shut the computer down. Alex’s words kept moving through my head as she continued the conversation. “There are dozens and dozens of interviews like that online. Have you watched any of those ones since he passed away?”
“No.”
“But you’ve watched and read the negative commentary?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve done the same with the commentary surrounding the situation with Cam, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Why is that? Why do you turn to the negative opinions of others rather than the positive ones?”
I shrugged and clasped my hands together. “I don’t know.”
“You do,” she disagreed. “You just don’t want to admit it. You turn to the negative because that’s what you’ve spent so much of your life believing. So these individuals, these naysayers, are somewhat enforcing a flawed thought process that’s been on repeat probably since you were a child. Probably leading back to the first time you felt that you didn’t fit in. That led you to navigate through life dealing with people and situations that then pushed that anchor of self-doubt deeper into the ground of your soul. You were just following the narrative that your brain was creating. But you know the cool thing about this narrative? It’s never too late to change it. If you hear a song on the radio that you hate, do you just continue to let it play? No. You change the station. So, go ahead, Oliver. Change the station.”