Chapter Forty-Four Julia
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“I fucking love to dance.”
—Remington
Julia
“Are you quite all right, Miss Julia?”
I glanced over at Bernard. “Huh?”
“You appear distracted,” he said, gesturing to the way I was sitting on the couch, gnawing on a pen cap and staring into space.
I was definitely distracted, obsessively distracted by the upcoming ball. I couldn’t stop dreading it. I’d started dreaming about it, for God’s sake, nightmares that wouldn’t go away; that was how stressed I was.
Because I couldn’t help but feel like this was everyone’s chance to mock me while I was in the spotlight.
If they’d enjoyed messing with me during mundane weekday classes before Damion and I became inseparable, imagine how much more they’d enjoy it while at an elegant ball, all dressed up in formalwear?
And the idea of something happening in front of Damion was too much to bear. I was so into him—too into him, really—that the idea of him seeing me ridiculed, even though he’d seen it before, was beyond embarrassing.
I didn’t think my heart could take it.
I was still getting the chilly reception from the Skins at school, the mocking laughter every time I walked by, but he was never around to see it, thank God.
“I’m just thinking about the ball,” I said, “and how it has the potential to be quite the spectacle.”
“In a wonderful way,” he said assuredly.
“In a wonderfully awful way,” I corrected, shaking my head. “I mean, I don’t even know how to dance, not formally, so I’m probably going to look like a fool when the spotlight is on me and Damion.”
He looked at me for a long minute, then pulled the phone out of the breast pocket of his suit jacket. A minute later, after a few clicks, he set it down on the coffee table, and classical music began playing from its speaker.
“May I have this dance, Miss Julia?” he asked.
I wanted to say no, but as he gave me that knowing look, it occurred to me that I needed him.
Desperately.
“Of course,” I said, climbing to my feet. “Please help me, Bernie.”
“At your service,” he said with a warm smile, lifting his arms and straightening his posture, gesturing me to step forward.
Then he calmly ran through the basics of a waltz, showing me the steps.
Box step, step-step turn, change of places.
Once it started to become less… foreign to me, Bernard stopped talking through it and just danced with me.
“So how are you adjusting to life here?” he asked, leading me around our huge living room. “You seem more… content since returning from Nebraska.”
More content.
Yeah, that was definitely one way to put it, I thought as I followed his steps. Box step, step-step turn, change of places.
The truth was that I was head over heels for Damion, content because we’d been spending so much time together.
Blissfully, magically content, but also terrified.
Because it felt too perfect in its wild imperfection.
He was cocky and sarcastic like no one I’d ever known, yet he randomly texted me poems—at all hours of the day—that he thought I would like.
He was waiting at my locker every day after school so he could walk me home.
He trash-talked at the courts like he’d been hired to roast his friends, yet he brought Clank catnip every time we went to the park so she wouldn’t freak out when we stopped to bird-watch.
I mean, he looked like that and he freaking bird-watched, for God’s sake.
He was a walking contradiction that I had fallen so hard for.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. I wasn’t sure what to say about that to Bernard. I knew he knew everything that went on in Gardenwood, but I wasn’t sure I could talk to him about Damion.
It felt like I liked him more than I’d ever liked Will, which was terrifying. I was so “in like” with him it was mind-blowing.
“Things are good with the young Mr. Rutledge?” he asked, of course reading my mind.
“They are,” I said, failing to hold in the smile.
Box step, step-step turn, change of places.
“Excellent,” he replied, his grin warm and fatherly.
“Do you like him?” I asked. “I mean, do you approve, Bernie?”
“Your opinion of him is the only one that matters,” he said stoically, ever the diplomat. “But I strongly suspect there are many layers under Damion’s rebellious exterior.”
“You do?” I was in shock. “How well do you know him?”
“Everyone knows everyone in these circles,” he said enigmatically. “And I just think he seems like someone who might be more complicated than he appears.”
Yeah, that was probably true.
Sometimes I worried about his “rebel” reputation. Like, was there more to it than I knew? What things had he done to make all of Gardenwood think of him that way?
Because he wasn’t that way when he was with me.
But he did have his complicated layers.
The other day when we were studying, Damion’s dad was text-yelling at him about something to do with Dartmouth, and he shocked the hell out of me with the confession that he didn’t actually want to go to an Ivy League school at all.
And he had no interest in studying business. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it and immediately changed the subject, but I’d been surprised by the resolution in his voice. From the look on his face, I wondered exactly how much pressure his father put on him about his future.
I wasn’t a fan of my own cluelessness regarding college, but I’d definitely hate a forced plan even more.
Which was why I’d been forced to distract him in a delightful way.
“How do you read people so well?” I asked Bernard, and I also wondered how my family was lucky enough to know him at all. He’d become a part of our family somehow, and we were all better because of it.
“A lifetime of experience,” he said. “Now tell me, young lady, have you ever heard of the cosmic dip?”
“The what?”
“Watch and learn, Miss Julia.”