Chapter 11
eleven
JULIAN
I was greeted by the familiar sounds of birds squawking and a view of the cliffs that overlooked the ocean when I woke up. A layer of fog covered the sky, but it was to be expected at six in the morning. Mila and I didn’t have to be at Willow High until nine, but I had a strict routine to to follow; it was more of a constant check list in my head to keep my days running smoothly. After getting out of the Air Force, I was dancing the line between organized and having goddamn OCD. It was 6:05 after I changed into the clothes neatly hung in my color-coded closet and headed to the kitchen to make coffee. I was right on schedule.
As I walked down the hall past Mila’s room, I fought every instinct to peek in and check on her. I’d spent most of the night spiraling as I replayed her words in my head. I have a boyfriend . The thing about distance was, it was a gamble whether someone would miss or forget you, and hearing it from her own lips that she’d moved on was a punch to the gut I wasn’t prepared for. I wondered if he knew her eyes changed color in the sun, how she’d read every book in her collection at least three times, or that her favorite color was a certain shade of green; not forest or mint, but something in between.
I busied my scattering thoughts by writing out my itinerary for the day while a pot of coffee brewed.
1. Willow High presentation w/ Mila
2. Pick up supplies from the hardware store
4. Finish patching up the patio
5. Start painting the house ??
It was light compared to most days, but between fixing up the house, Sofia’s wedding, and Mila, I put everything else on hold. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I could’ve handled anything else.
“Good morning.” I looked up at the sound of her voice and gulped at how breathtaking she looked with her messy hair and smeared mascara. In a perfect world, I’d be greeted by her face every morning before we’d share a cup of coffee and plan our day out, but instead, I had to stomach the thought of someone else doing that with her.
“I was going to let you sleep in,” I said.
“I smelled coffee.” I slid a mug over to her and memorized every detail as she prepared it the way she liked and took a sip with a gentle smile. “Do you always wake up this early?” she asked.
“Yeah, the military gave me no choice but to become a morning person.” I grabbed at the dog tags I kept hidden under my clothes.
“You were in the military?” Her brows furrowed.
“I left for the Air Force after Sofia graduated.” There wasn’t enough time in the world to fill her in on everything I did to distract myself while she was gone.
“What else did you do?” It was almost poetic that the girl who once knew everything about me suddenly knew nothing.
When I looked out the open window, I saw the beach empty. Usually, I went down by myself and enjoyed the peace and quiet before it got crowded with people. “Let’s take a walk.”
I wrapped her in my jacket before we walked out, but she welcomed the strong winds that blew her hair wildly with a bright smile. I was in just as much awe of her at twenty-four as I was at sixteen—maybe even more, if it was possible.
As soon as my feet touched the warm sand, memories of bonfires after football games, sneaking past security guards late at night with Mila just to hear the waves, and jumping off the highest cliff on a stupid dare started to pour in, more vividly than before.
“Why didn’t you tell me you went to the military?” she asked as we walked along the edge of the water. It was ice cold each time it washed up over our feet, but she didn’t seem to mind.
“You didn’t ask.”
The corner of her lips tipped. “Touché. I’m asking now. How long did you serve?”
“Four years. I got back a little over a year ago.” I picked up a rock and failed my attempt to skip it across the water.
She shook her head. “You always said you’d leave Willow’s Cove behind, yet you came back.” Willow’s Cove was the kind of town you spent your entire life complaining about, but it wasn’t until you left when you appreciated its true beauty.
“And you always said you wanted to settle here. Plans change, Mila.” The dark lashes that hovered over her blue eyes shot up, and she struggled to get a word out. “So what changed your mind?”
I pondered over whether to tell her the whole truth, but after the boundaries she’d set, I opted out and only told half of it. “I thought I needed to leave to be happy, but I was still fucking miserable while traveling to different places. After my service, I could’ve gone anywhere, but back home was the place that felt right.”
She frowned. “I know the feeling.” Her head whipped around, as if she was surprised she’d said that out loud.
It’s all she ever talked about—New York was her dream, which was why I was confused at her face was grim as she looked out at the waves. “Isn’t New York the place that feels right for you?” I pried.
She spoke so softly, I could barely hear her. “I don’t even know anymore.” Before I could speak, she turned to walk towards the house. “We should get back inside.”
I stayed there and watched the sun peek through the clouds while I kept all the unsaid words in my head.
* * *
The hallways at Willow High still looked exactly like they did when Camilla and I walked down them nearly a decade before. My locker still had our initials engraved in it, and the football field still had the missing patch of grass from when our senior class painted it for our prank. The same principal even still worked there. It seemed like nothing had changed except for me and Mila.
Mr. M’s salt-and-pepper mustache furrowed when we walked into the office to retrieve our visitors’ badges. “Julian Perez. I was hoping I’d see you some day.” Before Mila, my friends and I were frequent visitors to his office, so he knew my face all too well. “We’d love to have you come talk to the boys on the football team. They could use a pep talk after last season’s losing streak.” I once loved the sport, but I blamed my dad for putting a sour taste in my mouth at any mention of football.
I stuck my visitor’s badge on my shirt. “I’ll consider it, but today, I’m only here for Miss Vega’s presentation.” I took it as a sign to call her that more often when her eyes rolled to the back of her head.
“Of course. Thank you for taking the time from your book tour to talk to the kids, Camilla. It means a lot that you remembered us.”
“It’s no problem, but it’s Julian you should be thanking, since he set this up.” I couldn’t hold back my smile as I followed behind them to the cafeteria, where a full room of students waited. I could tell she was nervous from how she picked at her nails, but I wasn’t sure why, since she’d done book signings for crowds bigger than the population of Willow High. It was nice to see she wasn’t the superhuman she always tried to be.
“You’re going to be great,” I said confidently.
She leaned in close to my ear as Mr. M spoke at the microphone. “Holy shit, I wasn’t expecting there to be so many of them.” I fought the pull I felt towards her hand and kept it at my side instead. “I wouldn’t have set this up if I didn’t think you could do it. You’re a bestseller, so go act like it.” Her eyes brightened, as if I’d said just the right words to give her the courage to walk on stage. We always used to say we could make everyone else disappear with just a glance, and I knew I did that for her when she found my eyes in the back of the room.
Her face lit up, and I heard her shaky breaths ease over the microphone. “Hi, I’m Camilla Vega. I’m a romance author living in New York City, but I was once sitting exactly where you are. I grew up in Willow’s Cove and found comfort in reading all the books in its library, dreaming of writing some of my own one day. I was invited here to answer questions on how my career came to be and everything in between, but if you take anything away from today, let it be this: whatever career path you choose, there are going to be people telling you that you can’t, or shouldn’t, but that’s all the more reason why you should. Are there any questions to start us off?” After admiring her from a distance for years, I was in awe of finally getting to watch her be who she was always meant to be.
Almost every hand shot up, but she did exactly what I knew she would and picked on a girl hovering in the back quietly. “I really loved your book. Can I ask what the inspiration behind the story was?” Her eyes quickly darted to me, then back to the girl. “I wanted to write about how beautiful and crazy first loves can be. In a way, I sort of wrote the book for myself at your age using fictional characters.” Her eyes darted to me again, but they lingered a little longer before she picked on another student. “You knew you’d be a writer someday, but did any of your friends or family know too, or was it a surprise to them?”
I was possessed with the impulse to speak. “We always knew.” Everyone’s heads snapped to the back of the room where I stood with my arms folded.
“You might recognize Julian Perez’s face. There are photos of him in Willow High’s Hall of Fame from when he was a lot younger.” If over three hundred kids hadn’t been staring at me, I would have flipped her the finger, and that was the first time in six years I felt a glimpse of our old, playful dynamic.
“How’d you know?” I wasn’t expecting a follow-up question, but I didn’t have to think twice. I only looked at Mila as I spoke. “She’s the smartest girl I’ve ever met. She had this glow in English class that she didn’t have in others; I knew because I would look at her a lot. Some people have something special about them, and Camilla always did.”
Her breath echoed when it hitched into the microphone, and we held each other’s gaze longer than we should have while being surrounded by high school students, but she found a way to recover the conversation. “That’s why I’m here. You guys have potential, and I’m hoping you know it after today. It sounds cheesy, but no dream is too crazy, even if you may have to work a little harder for it.”
I knew the advice was for the students, but I took the last part for myself and sank against the wall when the realization hit me. I only had one dream, and making it happen meant I had to make a borderline stupid decision, but I was willing to work a little harder for it.
* * *
Nostalgia hit me over the head on our drive back from Willow High when I looked over and saw her singing along to the radio while her hair kissed the wind. I’d relived the image of her in my head for six years, and suddenly she was real again, wrapping me in a blanket of sunshine every time she smiled.
“That was less nerve-racking than I was expecting,” she said.
“I told you. The kids respected the hell out of you. Mr. M told me they decided not to send them to third period because they had so many questions.” I didn’t tell her I promised to talk to the football team if he did that; I didn’t want her smile to disappear.
“Did you mean what you said about always knowing I’d be a writer?” I imagined her at seventeen, writing in her green journal at her desk. “I’ve always believed in you, Mila, even when you didn’t.” I had to pry myself away from her dreamy blue eyes as I turned onto the road that led downtown.
“Where are we going?” She gazed out of the window at the trees passing by. When you lived in a small town, hardly anything changed, but she took it all in as if she was experiencing it for the first time.
“I just need to grab a few things.” I learned to appreciate Willow’s Cove more when I grew up and realized everything I needed was in one place. You could pick up your hardware, groceries, a book, something from the bakery, and maybe even a souvenir all on one decorated block.
Mila was in a daze when I opened her door and let her see all the new shops, but what captivated her was the farmer’s market that took up most of the street. At the time, it was new to everyone in town.
“Can we check it out?” It never got any easier to say no to her. “How about we pick up some stuff from the hardware store today, and I promise we’ll come back before you leave?”
Her French-tip nails grazed my arm. “I’ll hold you to that, Perez.” I watched as she skipped to the store, where the owner, Bill, greeted us as we walked inside.
“I wasn’t expecting you until later.” He adjusted his Bill’s Hardware cap.
“You know you’re my favorite old man, Billy. I can’t stay away.” He hated when I called him Billy, and even more when I called him an old man. Most people in town started going to the new hardware store, but I’d known Bill and his family since I was a kid, so I was more than happy to give him my business instead. He never had to say it; I knew he appreciated when I came in.
He nudged toward Mila scoping the place out. “Who’s the new face?”
“An old friend visiting from New York. She’s staying with me for Sofia’s wedding.” My gaze never strayed away from her. He clicked his tongue and smacked me on the back of my neck. “I know that look, and it’ll get you into trouble.”
I acted oblivious. “What look?”
“I’m old, Julian, not an idiot. A man only has that look for one woman in his lifetime.” He’d been married to the same woman for over forty years, so if I was going to listen to anyone, it was him.
Before I could muster up anything to say, Mila approached us. “What are we here for?” I had a plan for the house before she arrived, but when she said she’d stay, I decided I wanted her to be a part of it. “Paint. You’re helping me pick the color of the house.” There was only one color I intended on painting my house. I’d kept it stored in my mind since the moment she mentioned it on our first date, but I had to act like I didn’t so she’d feel included. I also didn’t want her to think I was pathetic enough to remember the color she talked about years before.
“You should pick it. It’s your house.”
I smiled. It might’ve been mine, but anytime I looked at it, all I saw was her. “You always had better taste than me.”
“Can’t argue with you there.” She headed to where hundreds of paint samples were spread out on the wall and did exactly what I knew she would—go straight for the selection of greens.
“What about this one?” I grabbed a color I knew she wouldn’t like, and she made her disgust obvious before picking the only sage green shade Bill carried in the store. “This one is perfect.” What she didn’t know was that weeks before, I’d decided on the same color. “That one it is.”
“Are you sure? You’re the one who has to look at the house every day, so it should be a color you like.” It was on the tip of my tongue to admit it had been my favorite color for nearly a decade because it reminded me of her. “I’m sure, Mila.”
We headed to the counter, where Bill started to make the paint in the shade she’d chosen. “I’ll finish up here. I’m sure Mrs. Wilson will be happy to see you stop by the bakery.”
“Don’t mind if I do. I’ve been thinking about her blueberry scones for years.” I watched her hurry out and walk across the street to where Mr. And Mrs. Wilson made the best fresh baked goods money could buy. I never got enough of the sight of her.
“There’s that look again. What was she? First love?” Bill asked.
“More like the love.” Mila was everything .
“I see. What happened between you two? Is she the one that got away, as they say?” The last thing I wanted to do was relive the biggest mistake of my life. “Let’s just say I’m paying for a decision I made at eighteen, tenfold.”
A smile grew under his grey mustache. “I made a few mistakes with my wife too. Being stupid sort of comes with the territory of being that young, but take my advice, kid: before you do anything hasty, make sure you’re both on the same page. I’d hate for you to be moping around my store.”
I peeked with interest. “If it was your wife, would you do anything to get her back, even if it meant it could blow up in your face?” When he immediately nodded, it only solidified my thoughts from earlier. “Without question.”I offered him a smile and handed him a fifty-dollar bill to cover the twenty dollar total. “Always a pleasure, old man. Keep the change.”
“Thanks, Julian. By the way, my truck’s making that sound again. You mind taking a look at it?” Most of the townspeople considered me their unofficial maintenance guy. I took a mechanics class in high school, but what really honed my skills was being a crew chief in the Air Force. I was good with my hands, and working on cars was a nice side gig to help finance the house rebuild.
I winked. “I’ll be there after my sister’s wedding chaos.” As I walked out, his words flooded my ears. A man only has that look for one woman in his lifetime. If he’d noticed the way I looked at Mila after five minutes, I wondered if she had too.