32. Julie
32
I feel disgusted.
Once again, Jacob manages to push me into a corner, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t let him get away with it this time. I can’t just let it happen. But what am I going to do in seven days?
I need that video.
But how am I going to find out where he stores it? I don’t have access to his phone or his laptop. Not even his computer at the office. Besides, what if he has it stored somewhere else? What if he made copies?
Fuck.
I turn the car back onto the driveway of Charlotte’s home, parking it behind Hunter’s truck. I glance at my phone.
JASON: Where you at, baby?
My stomach feels like someone has put it into a washing machine. I wanna throw up. Dread courses through my veins.
JULIE: Went to help my dad with a showing.
JULIE: Are you still at Charlie’s?
JASON: No, Jensen gave me a ride home. Wanna hang tonight? Curl up and watch a movie?
That’s the only thing I want. To bury myself into his body and feel safe. To sense his warmth against mine and know I’m not alone. But if I see him now, he’ll know something is up. He always does. It’s like he has a radar for it.
JULIE: Gonna hang out with Charlie.
I’m pretty sure Charlotte is exhausted after today, but what else am I going to say? No? Sorry, not tonight, because I have to think about a way to beat your brother at his own game?
I get out of the car and cross the yard to the front door.
“Char? You in here?” I walk into the house and find my best friend swiping the countertop clean in the kitchen.
“Hey, where have you been?”
I sit down at the breakfast bar with a fake smile, hoping it doesn’t reveal I’m carrying a load that’s becoming too heavy for me.
“My dad texted if I could help him with a showing. It’s that Victorian house he loves on Holmes Avenue.”
I expect her to say something like oh, yeah, I remember that house , but what I don’t expect is for her to stop what she’s doing altogether and lock her gaze onto mine with an edge.
Her harsh expression stuns me, discomfort coiling inside me.
Charlotte is the epitome of kindness and compassion. She doesn’t pick fights, and somehow, she can always see the good in people. But the last time I saw her sport this expression, she was giving Hunter hell about something.
She continues to study me with crinkled eyes.
“What?” I finally huff out.
She sighs, casting her gaze down before they fly back up. “Your dad called me this morning.” Shit. “Asked me if it was true that you’re in town and staying with us. We started chatting. He told me you haven’t spoken with your folks in months. Walked out on the business and moved to LA.”
My mouth opens, even though nothing comes out.
“I know something is going on with you,” Charlotte goes on. “I’m trying to let you come to me when you want to and not push you like I’m sure everyone else is doing. You don’t have to tell me everything. I’m your best friend, but that doesn’t mean you owe me any explanation. But what I do expect is honesty when you do decide to share. Don’t lie to me.”
There’s hurt in her expression and my throat aches. “Charlie.”
I don’t know what else to say.
Everything is crumbling around me, and I don’t know how to make it fucking stop.
“I’m sorry,” I croak out, tears threatening to escape.
She quickly crosses the kitchen, taking me into her arms.
“You don’t have to apologize, Jules,” she whispers in my ear, and I wrap my arms around her. “But you also don’t have to figure everything out by yourself.”
“I know,” I sniff.
“Do you?” She lets go, cutting me with a sharp eye. “Because it looks to me like you’re trying to fight against the world all by yourself. Or should I say, Jacob .”
Everything freezes. My spine, my limbs, my fucking heart. My lungs. Definitely, my lungs. My tongue also refuses to move.
“You don’t have to say anything.” Charlotte saves me from choking on whatever stupid reply was forming in the back of my throat. “But I’m not stupid. I know it’s no coincidence that you broke up with Jacob and then packed your bags and moved to LA just a few weeks later. I know it has something to do with him.”
She lets go of me, moving toward the fridge. “The asshole is threatening you with something, isn’t he?”
I shut my eyes, willing my tears to move back, but when I open them, some still manage to spring free. “I can’t tell you.”
“It’s that bad?” She pulls out a couple of lemons, some ginger beers, and a bottle of vodka.
I nod.
If it was just about me, I wouldn’t care. I really wouldn’t. I don’t care what the world thinks of me as long as the people I love are unharmed.
But it’s not about me. Not even a fucking little bit.
“That son of a bitch,” she mutters, then pulls two tin cups from the cabinet before she starts making two Moscow Mules.
A smile breaks free, loving her lack of questioning. Her movement brings me back to when we were barely eighteen, and we would make Moscow Mules under the supervision of her mother.
I miss her mom. She was amazing.
The thought lifts the hairs on the back of my neck, and blood rushes down my face. What if I’m sick too? What if I’m doing that colposcopy and they tell me I can’t have kids? Nausea overwhelms me. I take in a deep breath until there’s no more room in my lungs.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I smile, then wipe my tears away.
“Look, Jules. You know you can tell me anything.”
I do know that. But this is different. This is serious shit. This isn’t some he-said-she-said. If Charlotte finds out what Jacob did, there’s no way she’ll keep her mouth shut against Hunter, and when Hunter knows, it doesn’t take long before Jason knows.
And when Jason knows…
“I’m so sorry, Charlie. You’re my best friend, and I trust you more than anyone, but I can’t tell you. Not this.”
Her expression softens, kind green eyes that remind me of her mother focusing on me. “You don’t have to apologize. I’m just sorry you feel like you can’t share this with anyone. Whatever this is.”
“It could ruin lives.”
“But isn’t it already ruining yours?”
You have no idea.
“I have something else I have to tell you.” My cheeks hollow as I blow out a breath, while Charlotte holds up a tin cup.
The mix of sweets, bitters, and sours is welcomed on my tongue, and I let it linger in my mouth.
“What is it?” Charlotte sits beside me.
My stomach still twists a little. “I went for a check-up of my cervix a couple weeks ago. They found some disturbed cells. My gynecologist did a colposcopy. To check if there aren’t more disturbed cells.”
“A what?” Her eyes grow wide above her cup.
“It’s where they take a piece of your cervix to make sure you don’t have cancer.”
She winces at the c-word, probably more frightened of those six letters combined than I am. “Are they certain it’s cancer if they do find more disturbed cells?”
“No. But I’m still nervous.”
“Of course you are nervous.” She takes a big sip of her drink, the cubs ticking against the rim. “I’d be more than a little nervous. Jules, I’m so sorry. You’ve been carrying this around all by yourself?”
Well, actually, no.
“Jason knows.” I hide a little behind my cup.
His face pops into my head, my eyes drawn to my phone faced up on the counter.
Three missed calls.
My stomach turns, my inside spinning in it like a washing machine. You’re ghosting him, Jules. I’m not ghosting him. I just…I just…I don’t want to pretend with him.
I will call him tomorrow.
“Jason knows? Bros before hos, huh?”
It’s a joke, and I playfully swat her arm. “Shut up.”
“I’m kidding.”
“He came with me,” I mention carefully.
This is the moment where anyone else would use it as the go ahead to fire away a thousand questions about our relationship or whatever it is, but she just smiles.
“That’s nice of him. I’m happy you didn’t have to go by yourself.”
I nod, smiling with my lips closed. “Part of me thinks everything is fine.”
There are days where I don’t even think about it like all of today, or where I wake up in the morning and be like; this happens to thousands of women. I’m gonna be totally fine.
It’s just a precaution, and that’s a good thing.
Charlotte’s hand falls on my thigh, and I meet her gaze. “But the other part is throwing you back to all the hospital visits with my mom.”
Exactly.
“Yeah. Is that bad?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t blame you.” Her palm squeezes my leg. “You’re not my mom, though. Let’s just wait and see first. And I’ll be here no matter what happens.”
“Thank you.”
“So,” she drawls, and I smile, knowing what’s coming, “you and Jason are getting serious?
“I think so.”
I hope so.
I have to find a solution so I can tell him. I don’t wanna lie to him. I can’t lie to him. It’s bad enough I have something to hide.
“You look worried.”
I sigh.
The beating of my heart becomes heavier, as if the organ added a couple of pounds. “I don’t know. Sometimes I just wonder if maybe he and I aren’t meant to be. Timing always seems to be off.”
Sometimes I curse myself for falling for Jacob’s smooth and silky words so fast, because not long after I started dating Jacob, I couldn’t deny there were also feelings growing for Jason. But it was never the right situation.
Jacob and I broke up and Jason was fooling around with someone else.
Jacob and I got back together, but somehow, I was spending more time with Jason.
Jacob and I broke up, and Jason moved to LA.
It’s been going like this for years, and up until the last, and final, time I broke up with Jacob, I never had the balls to confess how I really felt for Jason.
How just friends never really cut it for me.
And now I wonder if I waited too long. If I fucked it all up by being such a coward, ruining what little thing was going on between us.
“Timing seems right now? Or is it not?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
If only I can get this hiccup out of the way. As if he can fucking hear me, my phone buzzes around on the white marble, my heart having a hiccup of his own.
Jason.
Fuck.
I can almost feel his annoyance dripping through the device, a scrunched-up expression on his beautiful face flickering across my vision.
“You need to take that?” Charlotte asks.
I do. I really, really do.
“Nope.” I click my phone off, plastering a smile on my cheeks as I look at my best friend. “Tonight, I’m gonna hang with you.”
And pretend my life isn’t a shitshow.
I will call Jason tomorrow.
I will.
I really will.