Chapter 15
JULIA
The sound of something heavy crashing into the floor above us makes my body shudder. My eyes move frantically between the stairwell and Brody, standing stoic and unmoving against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.
Hazel eyes bore into mine as he looks down at me through the lenses of his glasses. A hand clamps down on his forearm, the other gesturing wildly behind him and into the stairwell.
“Please,” I beg him. I can hardly see him through the cloud of tears filling my eyes. “You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t,” he tells me.
“I need to go in there, Brody, please,” I plead with him. “He’s in pain.”
“Yes, he is.”
All I can hear is the destruction of our bedroom and the life that I knew through the sound of my own desperate sobs until one final thud sounds from upstairs. Pushing my way past my brother-in-law, I rush back up the stairs, nearly tripping over my feet as I do.
The violent shaking of my hands makes it difficult to slide the master key into the doorknob, but once I finally manage, I carefully push open the door and take a step inside, pain hitting me like a javelin as I take in the scene of our once-tidy bedroom.
Our mattress has been thrown against the far wall, Tripp’s night stand drawers are dumped out onto the floor, our armoire is left open with Tripp’s clothes strewn across our box spring.
My husband sits on the floor at the foot of the bed frame with one knee pulled up and a hand pressing into his right side. His head is leaned backward, and I’m not sure if the tears leaving streaks down his face are because of emotional pain or physical.
Does it matter which? Either way, I’m to blame.
“Tripp,” I whisper with a sniffle, dropping to my knees next to him. I reach for his face – his beautiful face, now bruised, swollen, and scabbed – and I cup it between my hands, forcing him to hold my gaze. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
My husband doesn’t cry. He gets angry, he laughs loudly enough that it startles me sometimes; loud enough to rattle the loosely-fitted window in the living room which we have yet to have fixed, but he doesn’t cry. I’ve only seen it twice in all of the years that I’ve known him.
‘Montgomery men don’t cry.’
Looking at his eyes, now bloodshot and filled with tears, it rips a hole open inside of me.
“You fucked him,” he says.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him again, my hands moving to brush through his hair. “We didn’t mean…it wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“How many times?”
My lip trembles as my eyes fill with tears again, one of them spilling over onto my cheek. “Tripp, I—”
“Fuck, Julia,” he cries, his elbow sitting on his knee as his hand scrubs down his face. “We’ve been married eleven years.”
“I know, I’m sorry.” I sniff as I reach for his face again, my hands stroking his hair. “Lovey, please. I can’t lose you. Please let me fix this. I can fix it.”
Closing the distance between us, I press my lips to his. For one perfect moment, he reciprocates, leaning into me as the two of us cry together.
Only for one moment.
Pulling away from me, he shakes his head.
“I gotta get out of here.” A pained grunt escapes him as he brings himself to a standing position, his hand taking its place again at his aching rib cage. “Where’s my cat?”
“Tripp—”
He carefully steps around me, making a path out of the bedroom in search of Drumstick, and I crawl toward the door, finally standing to leave the room as I try to stay close to him.
“Please,” I hiccup, “don’t walk away. Please don’t leave me here!”
Hoisting our cat under his arm, he treks down the stairs and past his brother with a shake of his head, his free hand scrubbing down his face as a harsh sniff carves itself from his nose.
Brody silently places his own body between ours, using himself as some sort of human shield as if my husband needs to be protected from me.
My fingers claw at my shirt in the space above my heart, trying to stop the searing pain in my chest as the distance between us grows. Only once in my life have I ever felt as empty as I do watching the love of my life pull open the front door and step out of it.
“Tripp!”
“Just—” I can almost feel the warning radiating off of Brody’s body as my husband turns to face me and a hand stops him from moving further, pressing firmly into his chest. “Give me a couple days.”
My breathing is harsh and jagged as I watch the two of them walk out of the front door, closing it behind them.
The muffled sound of Tripp cursing seeps through the door as I lower myself to the floor in front of it, curling my knees up to my chest as I lay on my side and sharp, painful sobs rip their way through my throat.
The very first time that Tripp Montgomery kissed me was on his seventeenth birthday.
It was one of the best days of my life.
16 years old
My lungs ache, forcing me to stop on the track and brace my hands against my knees. I pull in deep breaths through my nose, slowly letting them out through my mouth, but the effort proves useless and I quickly dissolve back into heavy pants.
With a frustrated groan, I stalk toward the bleachers where my water bottle and backpack are waiting for me, and I drop onto the sun-warmed metal with a huff as I reach for my drink.
“You’re blocking my light, you know,” I hear a familiar voice call out from underneath me.
Bending down to look below the bleachers, I find Tripp Montgomery, sitting alone in a patch of dirt. His backpack is on the ground next to him, the top of which is littered with a handful of disassembled pens, a metal tin, a lighter, and a package of sewing needles.
“What are you doing down there?” I ask him with a giggle.
“I dunno,” he shrugs, pushing his fingers back through his loose, dark curls. “I had an idea, but…”
I climb down from my seat and make my way toward the bottom of the bleachers, ducking beneath a support bar to keep myself from hitting my head on the way in. Sunlight streams in from the space I was occupying to light up his features as he smiles at me.
I’ve had a crush on Tripp for the past two years, at least. He is one of the coolest guys in the entire school, if not the coolest, and he is so cute.
Like, write about him in your journal and scribble his name in hearts kind of cute.
Write your first name next to his last name to see how they sound together, kind of cute.
No, I haven’t done that – but I’ve definitely thought about doing it.
“What’s your idea?”
“I wanna give myself a tattoo,” he tells me, using his eyes to gesture toward the supplies laid out on his bag. “Can’t figure out the best place to put it to really piss off my parents, though.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Because if I come home with something that will embarrass them in public, something they can’t just hide or wash away, they won’t make me go to church tonight for my ‘birthday party,’” he tells me, rolling his eyes with a curl of his lip as his fingers make air quotes.
“I didn’t know,” I say, sitting on the ground in front of him. “Happy birthday.”
“Pretend you still don’t know,” he tells me plainly, and it seems like, at least as far as he’s concerned, that’s the end of the birthday discussion.
Bringing a knee to my chest, I tuck a fallen strand of hair behind my ear and work to fix the tie on my tennis shoe. I feel Tripp’s eyes on me, and it’s like they’re burning holes into my skin.
“You’re really pretty,” he tells me, and I can feel my cheeks burning as I try to fight off the blush rising to their surface. “I mean, you have this whole cheerleader thing going on, but once you get past that…”
“As if I could be a cheerleader,” I chortle.
My hands fidget with the fabric of my athletic shirt in an effort to pull it away from my skin to keep him from seeing the shape of my stomach underneath it.
Leaning away from me just a few inches, he narrows his eyes and looks me up and down.
“Why couldn’t you?”
“Look at me,” I tell him. “I’m not exactly a size two.”
His face pinches, his neck pulling backward, and I can’t help but to think that he seems almost offended by my comment.
“What the fuck does that have to do with you being pretty?”
Peeling open the package of sewing needles, he pulls one of them out and reaches for his lighter, bringing it to life as he holds the end of the needle over the flame. I watch him dip the sharp end of the needle into his collected pen ink, bringing it to the outstretched palm of his left hand.
Despite the horror that I feel watching the sharp point pierce his skin over and over again in rapid succession, I can’t help but to blurt out, “Can you give me one, too?”
Shining brown eyes the color of almonds flick to me, studying me for just a moment with an arched brow.
“Alright,” he says, gesturing toward the track with his head, “but only if you promise to stop worrying so much about shit that doesn’t really matter.”
I offer him a nod, biting down on the inside of my cheek, and as he finishes poking a half circle into his palm, he reaches for a new needle from the package, giving it the same lighter sterilization that he used for his own before he reaches for my hand and pulls it toward him.
I hiss as he presses the ink into the skin beneath the heel of my palm, stinging with every quick poke that hits until a small lowercase T is left behind in black ink.
“You initialed me,” I point out – as if he didn’t know that.
Smooth, Jules.
“So when you look at it, you’ll remember this conversation,” he tells me. “I don’t wanna see you running like that again unless you just wanna feel the wind in your hair; in which case, call me and I’ll come do it with you.”
My cheeks heat again, and the lift at the corner of his mouth tells me that he can see the blush that must be taking over my entire face.
Tripp Montgomery wants to hang out with me.
I think I might pass out, and I don’t know if that’s because I just got a tattoo under the track and field bleachers, or because of him.
Both, maybe.
“That sounds like a date,” I tell him.
“Do you want it to be?”
I stammer in nonsense syllables as he throws all of his supplies back into his backpack and hoists it over his shoulder, bringing himself to a standing position.
A light chuckle breezes through him at my complete and utter awkwardness, and he bends down, firmly cupping my face with his hand. His lips meet mine and fireworks explode across my skin, my heart feeling like it might burst as his tongue slips into my mouth and brushes against my own.
When he pulls away from me, he wets his lower lip with a smile and tells me, “I’ll catch you later, Jules.”
Present day
I need to get off of the floor.
Get up, Julia.
Stand up.
I repeat the messages to myself for what has to be the eightieth time since I first laid down here. The afternoon sun is pouring in from the small window at the top of the door and into the living room from the windows next to our couch.
It’s so sunny. So warm.
This is the kind of day that I’d find any reason to spend outside, but my body is glued to its spot on the floor. I haven’t been able to move at all since Tripp left last night. My swollen face and my body ache. I’ve had to pee for the past half hour, but I can’t get up.
I can’t exist without knowing that my husband is coming home to me.
I think my phone must have died at some point, because it was vibrating wildly against the coffee table for hours, then it suddenly stopped.
My battery is gone, too, I think.
My stomach growls loudly, the sting of bile following in my throat at the mere thought of trying to eat something. I’m too empty.
The sound of a car door slamming shut outside is the only thing that forces me to my feet.
I desperately reach for the door handle and pull it open, running toward the driveway, but there isn’t anything there.
Scanning the street with my eyes, I see a neighbor across the way pulling grocery bags from their trunk, and my heart plummets once more through the empty vessel that is now my body.
All I can hear as I stare at the empty pavement in front of our house is seventeen-year-old Tripp’s voice.
‘I’ll catch you later, Jules.’