Chapter Sixteen #2
Sure enough, it is Brandon—and he’s in Julian’s face, a fist curled into the collar of his sweater.
“Brandon,” Winona hisses. “What are you doing?”
He doesn’t turn, doesn’t twitch, doesn’t make any indication that he’s heard his ex-wife speak. His eyes are trained on Julian and they are filled with fury.
“Move, asshole,” he snarls, “or I’ll make you move.”
To his credit, Julian treats being physically accosted by a crazed man spitting flecks of saliva in his face with aplomb.
“Leila,” he says in an exasperated drawl. “Can you please take care of this so that I don’t have to?”
I can’t see Leila over the two men. I don’t know if she is watching the scene unfold before her in dismay or delight.
But I do hear her voice. It carries, melodic and resonant, like a whisper in the wind, and a reptilian part of my brain tells me to sit still and listen.
“Brandon, baby,” she says. “Just sit on the floor.”
Brandon obeys instantly. The room is dark, but I watch his face slacken, see his fingers loosen their grip on Julian’s sweater before dropping away altogether. Obediently, he shuffles backward out of the row and drops, like a chastised dog, on the dirty auditorium aisle next to Leila.
The whole ordeal can’t have lasted more than thirty seconds, but it feels like a bomb has just gone off in our row.
I hear people chittering around us, but my gaze is fixed on the stage, on Sophie, whose smile has been replaced with a look of fierce determination.
She hits every beat. When I turn to look at Winona, her expression mirrors her daughter’s.
It’s as if they have both come to the same conclusion at once: We don’t need him. We’ll be fine on our own.
When the performance is over, Brandon is the first to stand.
He slaps his hands together haphazardly, and the sloppy claps echo alone in the theater before they are joined by a round of applause.
From afar, he probably looks like a proud, if overenthusiastic, father, but from up close he looks eerie, like someone has taken over his body and is still figuring out the controls.
My gaze drifts, almost reflexively, to Julian. As if he can feel me looking, he turns and gives me a small, inscrutable smile. I can’t even consider what it might mean before Winona suddenly crashes into me.
“Oh my gosh, Sophie!”
Sophie giggles wickedly, having snuck up on her mom from behind. Her hair is falling out of its ponytail, but I’m relieved to find her looking so happy after the debacle that was her father’s interruption.
“You didn’t hear me coming at all!” she declares, delighted with herself. She gives her mom a hug, and Winona pulls her in close. They hold each other for one beautiful moment until Sophie bursts free and turns to me.
“Are those for me?” she asks, greedily reaching for the flowers. I hand them over, and she pulls them to her nose. “They smell so fresh! Thanks, Auntie.”
“Of course, nugget,” I start, but Sophie is already distracted, having noticed who is standing beside me.
“It’s you,” she says, aghast. “From the wedding.”
“Nice to see you again, Sophia,” Julian says, and I can tell he’s holding back laughter. Sophie turns a smug look to me, cocking a hip to the side.
“I knew it,” she said. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me he was your boyfriend, Auntie Sean!”
I almost tell her that I didn’t know he was my boyfriend myself until a few days ago, but Julian has already turned on his charm for her.
“You were fantastic up there,” he says. “Congratulations.”
Sophie’s expression flickers with knowing. It confirms what I’ve been asking myself: if she saw what happened between Julian and her father from the stage. It saddens me some when she doesn’t address it. It’s the surest sign that Winona’s baby girl is growing up: she has learned artifice.
When Sophie squeezes past us to greet her dad and stepmom at the end of the row, Julian pulls me into him.
“She’s a great kid,” he says softly, watching Sophie’s three parents put aside their personal enmities to celebrate their daughter. He sounds almost wistful, and I study his face in profile. Anxiety tickles my throat. I can never give him this, and he knows that. He has to know that.
“Is that what you want?” I say softly.
Julian turns to me. The amber auditorium lights shroud him in a halo. He swallows, and I follow the course of his Adam’s apple like a ball drop.
“I don’t think I’d make a very good parent.
And that’s okay. Family doesn’t have to look one way,” he says.
He tucks a loc behind my ear, and the tenderness of the motion assures me more than his words.
“I might like something like what you have with Sophie. Being an impactful adult in a child’s life. It looks nice.”
“It is,” I confess. “Getting to watch her grow up, figure out her passions, form thoughts and ideas…it’s been rewarding.”
Julian nods, pensive. I’m about to ask him if he’s considered mentoring youth alongside his entrepreneurs when he freezes, his fingers stilling on my face.
“What?” I ask, watching his brows furrow with concern.
“Your hair,” he whispers.
I squint up at him in confusion, but Leila’s voice cuts through the din before I can respond.
“Julian!” she says, waving. “We’re heading out!”
Julian twitches back to life.
“One moment,” he says to me. To Leila, in a voice like thunder, “Wait. We need to talk.”
My gaze swings reflexively to Brandon, whose attention has already locked on to Julian. Leila gives them both a beatific smile, then tells her husband, “Why don’t you wait right here, honey. Spend a little more time with Sophie.”
Brandon doesn’t look pleased with being grounded, but he steps aside and lets them go.
And then there were four.
When Winona, Sophie, and I hang out, it always feels natural.
But after Brandon’s infidelity came to light, adding him into the mix has always made me feel like I’m imposing.
I shuffle just slightly outside their circle as Sophie demands her parents’ opinion and tries to make a case for Applebee’s.
When ten minutes pass and Leila and Julian are still nowhere to be found, the panic begins.
It comes in a rush: sweat beading on my forehead, my stomach twisting into knots, the sort of nauseating anticipation triggered by receiving a phone call from an ex or walking onto a stage for a big presentation.
I imagine Julian and Leila tangled together in bathroom stalls and darkened corridors, stealing away to sneak passionate kisses behind one of the theater’s heavy metal doors.
The feeling doesn’t feel quite my own, and the images are improbable to the level of absurdity—Leila and Julian interact more like siblings than friends, with a mixture of affection and contempt—but they linger in a way I can’t shake.
I turn and catch Brandon’s eye, the anxiety breeding behind it. I suspect that he feels the same way, and that the only reason why he hasn’t already given chase is because his beloved told him to wait.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I announce as Sophie changes her mind and suggests a trip to Steak ’n Shake instead.