Chapter 26 #2
“You and Ry both know that I love Liz,” he begins.
“Yeah.”
“You also both know that I’m bi. It took me a while to be comfortable with that fact—with understanding that it was okay for me to like both girls and guys. People who disagree with that are, honestly, inconsequential. I won’t allow anyone to dictate how I live my life or tell me who I can love.”
My brother says that now, but he struggled for a long time with revealing his sexuality to me, our parents, and our friends.
The only person he trusted enough to tell was Liz.
After I found out, I kind of hated her for it at the time.
I didn’t understand why Jules would trust her more than me, his own brother.
But I get it now. Liz was the person Jules needed at the time and she helped him in ways that I think neither Ry nor I could.
Liz is one of the main reasons my brother and Elijah are together today, happy and not afraid to show their love for one another.
“As much as I love Elijah now, I would have given anything back then to be the guy who crawled through Liz’s window that night and kissed her for the first time,” Jules ruminates. “E understands my feelings for her, and he knows that I still love her. I just love him more.”
His confession strangles my heart and causes a visceral ache to lodge itself deep inside the beating organ. “Why are you telling me this now?” I ask him, not fully understanding where he’s going with this.
“What I’m trying to say—and probably not very well, based on the look on your face that tells me you are two seconds away from kicking my ass—is that you, me, Ry, and Liz understand better than anyone about the concept of being in an unorthodox relationship.
What we all share together may not make sense to most people, but it works for us.
Even when she was with you, it didn’t stop how she and Ry felt about each other—or how I felt about her even though I was attracted to E. ”
I blink a few times, still not getting what he’s trying to tell me.
“We’ve been in a love quadrangle with Liz since the third grade,” Jules explains. “And if Fallon has thrown his hat into the ring, it would now be a love pentangle.”
“What?” I about choke when he adds Fallon’s name. The squirrel that had been searching the grass for food, scurries up the magnolia tree at my loud outburst.
Jules gives me an incredulous look. “Who did Liz run off with?”
Those old, possessive feelings rise up inside of me.
They are the same emotions I felt the night Ry confessed his love for Liz, asking me and Julien permission to date her.
It’s the same hair-trigger response I had when after hearing Ry’s words, I ran to Liz’s house and staked my claim on her first.
“Point taken,” I grit out, none too happy as I stop myself from going nuclear at the thought of Fallon and Liz together.
Julien leans closer to me and states quietly, “I never told you this, and if E ever finds out, I will kill you. But I asked Liz to give me a shot.”
I thought he had shocked me before. “When?
“The day you and I had our argument at the beach.”
Thinking back to that day, I recollect how he and Liz walked off and didn’t come back for a while.
“I kissed her too… before the beach. It was the day we had lunch. Please don’t hit me,” he quickly adds, leaning away from me.
“You kissed Liz?”
He winces. “Yeah.”
I thought he was in a good place with Elijah. Does Elijah know about this?
“She told me she was in love with Ry, and she didn’t want me to ruin anything with Elijah. Of course, she was right. You have to swear not to tell E.”
“Huh,” I grunt.
He shoves me. “Swear it, Jay.”
I hold my hands up, palms forward. “Elijah will not hear it from me. But you may want to consider telling him before he finds out from someone else. Need I remind you about the bonfire incident with Jacinda?”
I kept a lot of stuff from Liz back then, thinking I was sparing her feelings. Liz hates Jacinda, and she has every right to. Jacinda is nothing but trouble with a capital T. She thrives on causing chaos. Anything to garner attention for herself and messing with Liz seems to be a hobby for her.
I pull my knees up to my chest and rest my head sideways on my folded arms so I can see Julien. “I just want Liz back,” I tell him with a rueful sigh. “I want my friendship with Ry to go back to the way it used to be.”
“I know you do. So do I. And if I was being honest, I don’t think Liz knows what she wants yet. Maybe that’s why she left with Fallon. Maybe she needed to get away from us so she could decide what she wanted. I can only imagine how confused she must have been to get her memories back.”
I hadn’t thought about that. Liz would never do anything to intentionally hurt any of us.
She’s not the type of girl who sleeps around either.
And she would never have left us and run off with Fallon without a good reason.
Liz doesn’t break her promises. She also must now remember the car accident and what happened to her parents.
Just thinking about her reliving that night breaks my heart.
Not only did she lose her mom and dad, but she also sustained life-threatening injuries.
Liz was bleeding and alone in a crumpled piece of metal on the side of the road, and I had no clue.
Apparently, I still have no clue. I’ve been too steeped in my own jealousy to see that my girl was…
is hurting. She needed me and I failed her.
Ry and I have been fighting over her like toddlers do over a coveted toy.
The shame I feel knowing all of that is almost crippling.
While I ponder over my regrets, Jules says, “The four of us have been such a tight unit since we were kids; it doesn’t surprise me that we fell in love with her, and she fell in love with us.
She was always conflicted. Once I took myself out of the equation and started dating Elijah, she supported me one hundred percent.
That’s the way love works. You want the other person to be happy even if it’s not with you. ”
“I think Ryder figured that one out first.”
“Yeah, he did. He stood by and watched Liz be with you and still remained your friend. If she’s happy with him, let her be happy.”
“Isn’t that what I’ve been trying to talk to you about the last twenty minutes?”
Julien shrugs. “Maybe I needed someone to talk to as well.
We stand up at the same time and he brings me in, looping his arm around my shoulder.
“We haven’t had a night with just the two of us in a while. Let’s go out tonight and do something together. Just you and me,” he suggests.
“Sounds like a plan.”