44 Leti
Leti
Julian insists on having lunch together every day this week, despite how tense and awkward each thirty-minute break is. On Wednesday, he finally breaks down and tells me the entire Andrew story.
“He found me crying into my yogurt cup outside class one day,” he says.
“Which makes me sound about as weak and pathetic as I was that day, if you’re wondering why I’ve waited so long to tell you the full story.
We’d only interacted minimally up to that point, but when he checked up on me, I blurted out everything I’d been going through.
All the shit with my dad, the fight he got into with my uncle, how miserable and guilty I felt over splitting up my family.
He barely knew me, and he let me move into his apartment rent-free.
Sure, it was just a couch, but he gave me the escape I desperately needed after blowing up my life. ”
I can’t say this sounds like something Andrew would do because if I’m being honest, I don’t think I’ve ever truly known him. For the first time in my life, I can admit (at least to myself) that it’s a shame I don’t know my brother the same way Julian does.
“Everyone tells me I’m not the one at fault here. My dad is. It’s what my mom and Angela and Andrew and everyone else in my life tells me.”
“Don’t you think if everyone in your life is telling you the same thing, that it must be true?”
He lets out a dry laugh, and I furrow my brows at him.
“What’s so funny?”
“Irony,” he says. “I said the exact same thing to your brother once.”
“About what?” At his knowing look, I take a guess. “Ah. About me and Andrew.”
“Yeah,” he says. “But my point is, they’ve all seen a side of me I never wanted you to witness.
Talking about my dad and how Andrew and I became friends—it brings up all the misery I’ve spent months trying to bury.
Around you, I’m sunshine. But around them?
I’m a storm cloud with no sign of stopping. ”
“I don’t want you to feel like you have to hide that from me.
” I reach across the table and squeeze his arm.
“Julian, you’ve already seen me at my best and worst and in between.
That’s how relationships work. We talk to each other.
We’re real with each other. And for the record, you’ll always be my sunshine boy—no matter how sad or angry you get. ”
“I know,” he says, meeting my eyes. “That’s what I want. Believe me. It’s what I want more than anything.”
“Which I guess means I need to be real with you too.” I let out a long sigh. “What you said the other day, that what we have doesn’t work if my brother and I don’t get along? That it would be easier? It brought up a lot of stuff for me.”
“That was a bad way to put it,” he tells me.
“I was frustrated, and it came out in the laziest wording possible. Our relationship has nothing to do with your brother, and it was fucked up to say it’d be easier if you guys got along when I know the reasons you can’t. I shouldn’t have put that on you.”
It’s a relief to hear him say that, until he adds, “But you were in the wrong here.”
“Excuse me?”
“You guys are never going to fix anything if you constantly keep jabbing at each other like this,” he says.
“Whether it’s the first blow or payback for something that happened earlier.
You saw him at his lowest and still chose to tell him he deserved for Kayla to have cheated on him.
Tell me that wasn’t you getting back at him for calling you ‘fucking pathetic.’”
Well, shit if he hasn’t clocked me.
This is what I was afraid would happen if Julian and I got together. That he’d get sick of me and Andrew fighting all the time and eventually take his side over mine. And it didn’t take very long to happen either.
“So, what are you saying? I’m not allowed to fight back?
” I scoff. “He’s off the hook because you punched him for me and got hurt in the process?
I never asked you to do any of that. In fact, I think I’ve told you repeatedly to stay out of it.
And I certainly never asked you to make him apologize, which, by the way, he did a shitty job of doing. ”
“One, he’s not off the hook. Two, that’s an awfully uncharitable way to put it, and three, I’ll talk to him again.”
I hate how calm he sounds. I also hate the way he’s glaring at me right now. It’s almost scarier than mine.
“Don’t you get it?” God, I feel like I’m going crazy. “Your interference isn’t working, and it’s not going to. It doesn’t matter how many times you talk to him. He’s not sorry, he’s never been sorry, and he’s never going to be sorry. And you know what? Neither am I.”
“Well, that doesn’t work for me!” he shouts over the bell. “And staying out of it doesn’t work for me either. He’s my best friend and you’re the woman I love. You two are going to get your shit together one way or another, even if it kills me, and it’s sure looking like it will.”
“Well, good fucking luck with that, Julian. Let me know how that works out for you.”
I bypass a group of kids who definitely overhead the last half of that conversation, but I’m so angry I don’t even care.
So angry, in fact, that it doesn’t register that he called me the woman he loves until I make it all the way back to my next class.
All I can do is sink my head into my hands and force back a sob before the kids notice their sub is in hysterics.
He couldn’t have picked a worse time to say it. And I couldn’t have picked a worse time to love him back.