Chapter Seven - Julius
CHAPTER SEVEN
Julius
“IS THAT FUCKING Cat?” Dom said from my left.
We were waiting in the food line of this nightmare quarantine zone we had been dragged to. Initially, we’d been on our way to a Pure Black show, a metal band from Boston. Once we got into the city, we had to make a last-minute stop at a store so Dom could get a pack of cigarettes. When we walked in we’d found no one behind the counter, so I rang the bell, thinking maybe they were just in the back stocking or something.
That was when the cashier came bounding out of the back, covered in blood with cloudy dead eyes and dark veins covering their face. We had barely made it out the door, slamming it shut behind us and shoving a metal broom through the handles of the double doors.
I thanked my lucky stars the door opened inwards otherwise we would have been fucked. We didn’t stick around to see how long it’d hold with the cashier banging crimson fists against the glass. We tried to get the fuck out of Rotlington, but that’s about when the stars stopped being so fruitful.
We were forced to leave my car where it was parked and got carted off to this place. I fucking love my car. I swear someone’s going to pay if it isn’t there when I get out of this place. I’d spent months pouring blood, sweat, and tears into that thing. Not to mention half my paychecks. Luckily, my vendor was able to get the parts for a good price and I didn’t have to pay for labor by doing the work myself.
Now the cherry on top of this shit sundae. I look in the direction Dom’s pointing and I see the one, the only, Catherine Marie Bailey.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I muttered.
She was sitting with some small blonde girl I didn’t recognize at a table directly across from us, a pretzel in her hand chatting away without a care in the world. She hadn’t changed at all except for now being a few years older and was just as breathtaking as ever. It’d been a long four years since I’d seen her last. All the things left unsaid between us danced around my mind. Not that I’d been afraid to tell her how I felt. She just never gave me the chance.
When she moved, she left without a single word to Dom or me. Sure, the last time we had spoken was during a heated fight, but I thought we meant more to each other than to just end our friendship over one argument. She had to have known I was just angry, I didn’t really mean all the things I said. Not that it was an acceptable excuse, but she didn’t even give me the opportunity to apologize.
Time had certainly given me plenty of openings to stew about it, though. A part of me held myself responsible for the way things were, but the other part of me was pissed the fuck off. I had told her how I felt and thought she felt the same only for her to throw it in my face less than a month later. Told her I didn’t want anyone but her before she’d slept curled tightly against my chest the entire night.
It was the best night of my life and had been absolute bliss. Spent barely sleeping because I didn’t want to shut my eyes and miss a single second. I know we were only kids, but it felt so real. I spent years silently pining after her, years trying to hold my feelings back, not wanting to spoil our friendship.
That night she came to me with tears filling her eyes, looking for a place to escape from her dad and I’d mistaken it for her perhaps feeling what I had between us. I thought something had changed. If I had told her how I felt only for her to tell me we were better off as friends, as hard as it would have been, I would have lived with it.
What I was having a hard time living with was the way she kissed me back and told me she wanted me, getting my hopes up that we could be something all for nothing. Sometimes I wish I never put things on a pause that night and stopped us from going all the way. Did she not think of me as a real man? Is that why she did what she did that night of the party?
“What are the fucking chances of that?” Dom cursed.
He was just as mad at her as I was, if not more. I understood for the most part but it’s not like it was him she’d kissed then almost immediately went and stomped on their heart. Maybe it was the fact he’d had to deal with my mopey ass after and was left to pick up the broken pieces. Lord knows I hated a few of his exes but in my defense he had awful taste.
Not that he ever really had what you could consider ‘girlfriends’, more like friends with benefits who more often than not had a hard time coming to terms with the fact they’d never make the transition into relationship territory. But he had been close to her too, so I couldn’t ignore the fact that he was left with some hurt feelings when Cat left.
It was then that her little friend said something to her and then pointed in our direction. Cat’s head whipped our way and the second she saw us, the pretzel she was holding dropped from her hand. She looked like she’d seen a ghost, I guess in a way she had. Two ghosts from her past were standing in front of her in the flesh.
She thought she could just abandon us like we never meant anything to her and it would never come back to confront her. Her friend shook her arm, trying to say something to her but she just continued to gape. Paralyzed with shock, her eyes just fluttered back and forth between Dom and me.
All of a sudden, she popped up out of her seat and hauled ass back toward the tent area. Her friend scrambled to grab the food from the table before chasing off after her. I scoffed, I’d be scared to face us too if I was her . I never painted her as a coward, though. She’d endured her father’s abuse without uttering a word to anyone about it. She was one of the strongest people I knew and after all these years, she still couldn’t face us? Dom chuckled next to me.
“I have a feeling we’re gonna be here a lot longer than we’d like to be. She can’t avoid us forever,” he said with a mischievous smirk.
She could run from us, try to hide even, but we were going to get our explanation one way or another. She’d moved away without a trace. Believe me, I tried to track her down. Now she was right here, stuck in the same place as us, and I wasn’t going to make it easy for her to pretend like I didn’t exist anymore.