Chapter Thirty-Eight Julia
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“Sometimes you have to stop thinking and make shit happen.”
—Remington
Julia
“Don’t say The Notebook,” he said, shaking his head.
“I can’t help it,” I said with a laugh. “It’s the oars. You rowing while I sit here and watch just screams of that movie.”
“It’s nothing like that. It’s sunny out, not raining,” he said. “We’re in Nebraska, not wherever the hell they were, and there are no ducks to be found.”
“I think they were swans,” I said under my breath.
“Regardless of the species of waterfowl, know-it-all,” he said, giving me his patented mocking stare, “this is nothing like that. We aren’t about to fight, you’re not engaged to a rich dude, and I’m working up a sweat over here.
For the record, this isn’t as easy as Gosling made it look. My shoulders are screaming.”
“Do you want me to help?” I asked. “I can do one oar while you do the other—”
“And make me feel like less of a man? I don’t think so.”
“Is that fragile masculinity talking?”
“Knock off the shit or I’m dumping you in the drink, wiseass.”
I laughed as I leaned my head back, letting the warm autumn sun heat my face.
“This is nice. I’m glad we’re doing this.”
“As long as we don’t get arrested for trespassing,” he added.
“Don’t worry. My Uncle Dave is friends with the sheriff. It’ll be fine.”
That made him scoff in disbelief. “So are you related to everyone in town? Is that how this works?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “My parents are kind of transplants. When they got married, they were both desperate for this small-town sort of life, I think because they both had suburban childhoods with divorced parents and a lot of unhappiness. They wanted a life where they were connected to a lot of people. So they bought our house when they were completely broke but wanting the American dream. They fixed it up themselves because they couldn’t afford to pay someone else, and they made this whole vision of theirs happen. ”
The second it came out of my mouth I realized what I’d said, and I wasn’t sure how to recover. But I also trusted him.
Oh my God. I trusted him. As much as my brain told me better, my heart told me he was safe. Worth the risk, maybe.
He wasn’t looking at me like he’d caught on to the fact that we hadn’t always been rich. No, he was looking at me like he wanted to know everything about the real me.
And I wanted him to know.
So I continued. “Then the previous owner of the store put it up for sale and they did it again—they bought the market and worked like crazy. Now we have all those small-town connections, and my parents love it. I think they love all the connections and relationships they made through the store more than actually having it be a source of income. And my Uncle Dave technically isn’t my uncle, by the way. He is my dad’s best friend’s cousin.”
“This place is so backward,” he teased.
“I know.”
“And it feels a million miles away from New York.” He let go of the oars and we just sat there, soaking up the sun. His eyes were on the pond, like he was trying to memorize the spot, and there was a soft vulnerability to his face that I wouldn’t have imagined before today.
Although, today’s version of Damion was impossible to comprehend.
I’d never be over the fact that he’d had tears in his eyes when I was talking about Lou. That he empathized me with that much. That he cared. And that it was real. All of it felt real. Him showing up here. In Nebraska. On my front porch because, let’s face it, he was worried.
About me.
I felt special, as lame as that was. I felt important to him, like my happiness mattered, and as I watched him stare out over Lou’s pond, I was scared.
I’d been deluding myself since the day we’d met.
I was very, very into Damion Rutledge.
And the thought was terrifying.
“It’s a different genre of beauty,” he said, his eyes still on the horizon. “Because, God help me, there is something about this. It’s like a pared-down, shaved-off version that’s raw and simple. Uncomplicated.”
My heart squeezed as I watched him take in the surroundings. “You love Nebraska, don’t you?”
His gaze slowly left the sky and inched its way toward mine. Blue eyes today as he looked at me. “I kind of do.”
Oh God. I’m in trouble.
After we finally tied the boat to the dock and walked back over to the truck, he grabbed the front of my jacket and pulled me a little closer to him.
My stomach went weightless as he gave me a look that I couldn’t read, as his eyes slid over my face in a way that made the oxygen get sucked out of my lungs.
“Thanks for showing me this,” he said, swallowing.
“Thanks for letting me,” I managed, my voice coming out all breathy and soft. His face was so close, above mine but so so close, and I wondered again what it’d be like to kiss him.
God, what am I thinking??
I cleared my throat and stepped back, tucking my hair behind my ears. “We should go?” I managed to say. “There’s a party tonight. I promised Lauren and my friend Teanna I’d be there.”
He looked at me, still impossible to read, and then he gave me a nod. “Right. You have to go.”
And because there was something in the tone of his voice that reminded me of a sad puppy, I heard myself say, “Do you want to come?”
“This is a first for me.”
I looked at Damion in the darkness, and the funny grin he was giving me made my heart pinch in my chest. We were sitting on the tailgate of my dad’s truck and he was smiling like a little kid.
“Which part?” I asked, taking a gulp from my red Solo cup.
“All of it.” He could’ve meant the vehicles (mostly trucks) parked out in the middle of the mowed-down cornfield, the groups of people standing around, someone’s radio playing “Love You Tonight” while the only light was the bright harvest moon above, or the key bucket.
He’d seemed downright shocked when I had to dump the truck keys in the bin and he learned I couldn’t get them back until I—or someone with me—blew a good number into the traveling breathalyzer.
Party rule number one was If you wanna go, you gotta blow.
Memorial crosses next to dirt roads resulted in unwritten traffic rules.
He said, “Saturday night hits different here.”
“Yeah, it’s light-years away from Gardenwood, isn’t it?” I agreed, inhaling a deep breath of air that smelled like dried leaves and bonfire smoke.
He gave a nod and looked into his cup before taking a drink.
I glanced in the direction of the makeshift bonfire, feeling relaxed and terrifyingly happy, but then I saw Will and Hannah approaching.
No, no, no.
My eyes met Will’s and my stomach got the feeling it always did when I thought of him, a mix between butterflies and the world’s biggest stomach pain.
“Hey, Jules,” he said when he reached the tailgate, a can of Busch Light in his hand and a carefree expression on his face.
God, his smile was the smile I knew as well as my own, and I wanted to hug him and scratch his eyes out, all at the same time. I missed him, the boy who’d always been there in my life. But I also wanted to push him to the ground for destroying a lifetime of memories.
I hated him for destroying that.
Hannah gave me a polite smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“I didn’t know you were back,” he said, his gaze shifting over to Damion.
So they didn’t see me at the Thai restaurant.
“Yeah, I just came back for the weekend, for Teanna’s birthday,” I said, hating the way he smelled the way he always did, the way his smile looked the same as it had when he used to smile at me in his basement while we watched movies together.
“Ah,” he said, nodding with another smile.
God, don’t smile at me.
I didn’t want him back, and I didn’t care about him—not really—but it still hurt to talk to him.
His smile was something that still had the power to crush my heart.
“Who’s this?” I heard, and then I felt Damion’s arm settle over my shoulders as he pulled me closer to him.
Holy shit, I thought, glancing at him out of the corner of my eye.
He had me in one of those adorable-couple headlocks, where the crook of his elbow cradled my neck, and he gave me a look that I couldn’t quite interpret.
There was something teasing about it, but there was also heat there, like he was intense or jealous or… something.
He couldn’t be jealous, could he?
No way.
“This is Hannah and Will,” I managed, suddenly breathless, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of his hands on me and his cologne in my nose or the presence of Will after all this time. “I went to school with them here.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Damion,” he said. “Jules told me about most of her friends, but I don’t think she mentioned you.”
“She didn’t?” Will said, his eyes lingering on my face.
“Why would I?” I said, feeling absolutely like I’d won something as he looked even more surprised by those three words.
I wasn’t sure what Damion was doing or why, but I didn’t hate it.
“So you’re from New York, then?” Hannah asked Damion.
Duh, I thought.
“I am,” he said.
“You came back for the birthday party too?” Will asked.
“Not exactly,” Damion said. “Jules came back, but then I missed her too much, so I flew in this morning.”
Damion the Rebel, maybe he isn’t too bad, I thought as he messed with Will.
“Yeah?” Will said, his eyes darting between Damion and me like he was trying to figure something out.
I just raised an eyebrow and smiled, because it felt good. Will knew me well, so I knew he could see on my face what I was thinking, the smugness of it all, but I didn’t care. I wanted him to know that I was smug about this, about the fact that he didn’t matter to me anymore.
“Well, we’re going to go grab another beer,” he said. “Nice meeting you.”
“Yeah, you too,” Damion said.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly as soon as they walked away, his voice low and kind of rumbling in my ear. His voice did wild things to my stomach, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, not when his arm was still around me and I was still resting so close to him.
When his mouth was that close to my ear.
“Don’t apologize,” I managed, wondering why he wasn’t letting go. “That was perfect.”
“I don’t like him,” he said.
“You don’t like him?” I said with a laugh. “You don’t even know him.”
“I know what he did to you and that’s enough,” he said, and the accusation in his tone made me weak. He sounded like he wanted to slug Will even though he really knew nothing about him, and something about that was unbelievably swoony.
“That little shit keeps looking at you,” he murmured in my ear. “He knows what he lost.”
“You’re wrong,” I said, wondering how I was supposed to keep my thoughts in order when the warmth of his breath was on my cheek as he said ridiculously incredible things, oh God.
“Would it matter to you?” he asked, and God help me, something in his voice made me think he cared about the answer.
“No and yes,” I admitted, surprised that I wanted to talk about Will at all, much less with Damion.
I finally looked at him, at that ridiculously handsome face, and said, “It’d matter because I want him to miss me, but it wouldn’t change anything. I’d never get back with him.”
“So it feels a little good, yes?” he teased, giving me one of his wicked smiles. “You like the way it feels to mess with them, don’t you?”
Oh, hello, Damion the Rebel.
I looked at his mouth and thought again, Maybe he really isn’t TOO bad.
“Yeah,” I admitted, my stomach dipping because I had no idea what was happening. Damion and I were together in the back of a truck in a cornfield, talking about Will.
Like, what?
“I love it,” I admitted. “I don’t care that it probably makes me petty and small—I love it. Feels good.”
“See,” he whispered. This time there wasn’t space between us. His lips brushed my ear, and his tone shifted to something… dangerous. “Being a rebel can be a lot of fun.”
Oh God.
“Follow my lead,” he said, and then he leaned closer. His eyes were… something as they went down to my lips.
Oh my God, he’s going to kiss me.
He raised one eyebrow, a wordless request for consent, and I couldn’t help myself.
I smiled. Permission granted.
His mouth came down on mine. Hard and soft at the same time. Damion Rutledge held me in place and kissed me, his hands finding my cheeks, gently angling my head as his lips slid over mine.
There had never been a question that he’d be a good kisser. You met Damion Rutledge and you just knew that the boy could kiss.
But he only gave me a sample. Always a tease. I felt his breath lingering between us. Could feel his deep sigh as he pulled back.
He looked down at me, his eyes asking a million questions, and it felt like my heart stopped beating as I met his gaze.
Because the question no longer had to do with making anyone jealous.
The question had to do with me and Damion.
The moment paused, frozen, as we looked at each other.
What are we doing? I thought as he watched me.
What do I want? I wondered, and then the Ella Langley on the speaker hit, the moonlit country lyrics crashing over me.
When the stars are out, boy, I want you to hold me…
And then I lost my mind.
My fingers found the hard line of his jaw, and pulled him right back to me.