Chapter 20 #2
“What the hell happened in here?” I muttered.
“Nothing. God, get out. Leave.”
“You did this?” My eyes kept scanning the space. The mess. The layers after layers of bags me and the guys didn’t have enough hands for the night we broke in. And in the middle of the mess was a shoebox. Turned upside down, lid a little dented, and a piece of paper right there on top.
“Bridger, get out!” Juliette squeezed in beside me, making a quick journey to that box. To that piece of paper. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble?”
She was rushing. Shaky fingers snatched at that paper, but my quick glimpse of it had been enough.
Writing that looked like mine. I took it from her before she could get it away from me, her eyes widening, all glassy with fresh tears and older ones too.
Tears I was responsible for, and the fact had my heart hurting.
“What is this?” I asked, voice rough as I kept my gaze on her.
She reached a hand out and stepped forward. “Give it back.”
“What is it?” I asked, holding my hand right above her head, too out of reach for her to grab.
“I want it back.”
“What is it?”
“Give it back.”
“Why don’t you want me to see it?”
“None of your business.”
“You’ll always be my business.”
“Give it back, Bridger.”
“What is it?”
“Oh, like you don’t know!” she cried out.
Brows knitted, I lowered my hand, letting my eyes settle on the paper. It was a letter, and I had been right, it was covered in my handwriting. Messy, unruly, fucking impossible to decipher half the time, but it was mine. A ragged breath left my lips as I took in the first few lines.
You got to stop writing to me. I thought it was clear where we stood. I thought it was obvious, but I guess not, so here it is, in black and white.
No, no, no. This wasn’t from me. They weren’t my words. They weren’t. They looked like mine. Fuck, my handwriting still looked the fucking same and hadn’t improved in the slightest since high school, but I didn’t write the shit I was reading. I kept going. Kept scanning every last word.
I need you to get it out of your head that anything serious was gonna happen. You’re making it harder for the both of us to move on.
You know I was seeing other girls before all this shit went down, right?
No crying and begging. It’s cleaner this way, and now I don’t have to pretend. I was tired of pretending, anyway.
I don’t want to talk about your art, or your feelings and how I hurt them.
You were something different for me to try. Shiny, new rich girl pussy.
Every word looked like it was mine. The slopes, the curves, the fucking way I wrote my A’s bigger than every other letter no matter how many times my teachers tried to get me to stop.
“I didn’t send this to you,” I finally said.
“Oh, another lie,” Juliette said, letting out a bitter laugh. “If you’re gonna storm back into my life, you could at least be honest.”
“I didn’t send this shit to you!” I snapped. “Why would I?”
“Because apparently I meant nothing to you!”
“That’s so…” I shook my head, throwing the letter to the ground. “I did not send you that fucking letter.”
“Stop lying.”
“I’m not.”
“Then who sent it?”
“I don’t fucking know, but it wasn’t me!”
“It’s your handwriting!” she said, pointing a hand at the floor. “Look at that stamp. Prison. Where you were, remember? After what you did?”
“That letter did not fucking come from me.” My teeth were grinding together. “None of that shit is true. You meant everything to me, Juliette. Everything. You think I’d ever throw it all away? You really think I sat down and wrote that shit?”
She blinked at me. “You need to stop lying. You broke my art, then my heart, and then you sent this to solidify the fact that I never meant a thing to you!”
“I did not send you this shit!” I snatched the letter up from the ground, tearing it into two pieces, then into four, then so many pieces I lost track. “You really think I’d say any of that to you? That I thought that? You think I thought you were a mistake when you were everything but?”
She didn’t say anything. She just let her lips tremble, her arms tightening around herself. I hated that. Seeing her hurt, seeing her in pain. I hated the idea of being the reason for her feeling any of that even more.
My hands pushed through my hair, my nails scratching against my scalp.
“Juliette… It wasn’t me. That wasn’t from me.
None of it was me. I’m not gonna stand here and act like I’m some perfect man, that I’m some fucking upstanding citizen, but you?
For you, Juliette? I have always been honest. Always.
I would never hurt you. I would never take anything away from you like that.
I wanted that for you. I wanted you to paint and be happy and have that fucking life you always wanted. ”
She drew in a breath, shallow and shaky, tears clinging to her lashes. “Just be honest with me, Bridger.”
I hissed, taking a step forward and making sure my boot hit the pieces of that stupid fucking torn up letter.
“You want honesty? The honest fucking truth is that I spent every day thinking about you. Not just after I found you, but every. Fucking. Day. I think about how much I loved you, how I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, how I wanted it to be me in that fucking bed waking up with you next to me.” I pointed towards the doorway.
“But that and you were ripped away from me. And now I see you again. I see you in the fucking flesh instead of in my head and in my dreams and in my fucking nightmares where you’re being taken away from me, but still, you think I did that.
Do you know how excited I was to see your paintings?
I was fucking counting down the days to see ‘em, because I knew they’d look beautiful, just like everything else you painted, because everything you fucking did was beautiful.
You have no idea how much it hurts to look at you knowing you’re fucking married to him. You’ve got no clue, Juliette.”
She shook her head. “What you said the other night. When… When we…”
“What? What did I say?”
“Dumb rich girl pussy,” she said, teeth a little gritted. “Same thing you said in the letter. Same goddamn thing. That was all I ever was to you. Just some stupid idiotic rich girl for you to use.”
My head shook wildly. I had forgotten I said that to her until she brought it up. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not stupid, Bridger.”
“I know that.”
“Except that’s what you called me. Right there, in black and white.”
“I didn’t send you that shit.”
“You haven’t changed at all.”
I groaned, dragging my hands down my face like it might erase this whole conversation. “I said that because I’m an asshole, not because it meant anything.”
She scoffed, arms folding tight across her chest. “Right. That makes it so much better.”
“I didn’t mean it like the letter meant it. You think I thought that back then? You think I ever thought you were just dumb, rich girl pussy?”
“You said it yourself the other night!”
“I didn’t say dumb!”
“Oh, that one word changes everything.” Her eyes rolled. “Then what the hell did you mean, Bridger? Tell me. Enlighten me. Explain it.”
“I don’t know!” I snapped. “I just… said it, okay? I said it and it was dumb and it was a mistake. I felt like I had you in a way I hadn’t had in years that night.”
She looked bored, but most importantly, she looked unconvinced. “That’s a great explanation.”
“You don’t get it. You don’t know what I think and feel when I look at you.
What I’ve always thought and felt. Guys from the South Side don’t get to have girls who grew up in mansions in Branmore.
And you were there and perfect and beautiful and everything I’ve ever fucking wanted but wasn’t supposed to have, and I felt like you were gonna disappear again.
So, I said something shitty. I lashed out.
I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry, okay?
I’m sorry I upset you, that I said something that made you mad. ”
She just stared at me like she didn’t know if she wanted to cry or slap me across the face or do both at the same time.
“I didn’t say it to piss you off,” I said, my voice calmer now. “And I’m sorry if I did. If I crossed a line.”
Still, she stayed quiet, eyes on me, arms crossed against her chest all tight and strained.
“You fuckin’ see how I can apologize for shit I actually do, Juliette?
When I fuck up, I own it. I can say sorry,” I said, slapping a hand to my chest. “I can acknowledge when I make a mistake, especially when it comes to you. But… I didn’t know about the letter.
Didn’t know they said that to you. Didn’t know they used my name to do it. If I had—”
“What?” She cut in. “Wouldn’t have said it?”
A deep, frustrated sigh left me. “Yes. I wouldn’t have said it. You’re not that, Juliette. You’re not some rich girl I just wanted to use and fuck and try out so I could get bragging rights. You weren’t ever that to me, Juliette. Never.”
Her bottom lip wobbled. “That letter…”
“Was not from me,” I said. “I was so ready, Juliette, so fucking ready. For us. For that future we talked about. You think I forgot about that? I didn’t.
Us moving away. Renting some little one bedroom apartment until I could get you something better.
You going to school. Me working shitty fucking jobs to keep the lights on.
Juliette, I would’ve done anything for you.
Worked all goddamn day and night just so you could follow your dreams. So they could be real, so you didn’t have to hide all your art shit at my place just so you could do what you loved.
I would have fucking starved for you if it meant you were happy, Juliette. ”
“No, because…” She was whispering now, her voice so soft I could barely hear it. “After you were arrested, they showed me. They showed me the evidence. The photos.”
“What evidence?”