Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
True to his promise, Julian spends the next several hours entirely at my service.
We take a ride home to my apartment, and after making sure I am in bed and not on my laptop, he gets an oddly compliant Onix dressed for the cold and takes him for a walk.
I sleep the rest of the day away, and Julian leaves me at peace, stocking my fridge with dinner before heading back to his apartment for a shower and change of clothes.
When I wake up several hours later for the recital, I feel more refreshed than I have in weeks.
Julian drops me off at the front of Sophie’s school while he finds parking, and I wait for him at the entrance, clutching the bouquet we got for Sophie as young families trickle in past me.
I watch him approach through the glass doors.
He walks like a model, with a devil-may-care stride, one hand tucked into the pocket of crisp pleated trousers, the other held purposefully at his side like there might be a camera trained on him at any moment.
It’s a quiet confidence that’s hard to master, attractive even at a distance.
This, I realize, is my boyfriend. Who could be anywhere on a Sunday night but is at a suburban middle school for a dance recital, all because he wants to take care of me. He meets my stare just as he pushes through the double doors, smirks, then with one finger, lifts my jaw closed.
The audacity of the move makes it drop again.
“You…what…” I start, my heart stammering with a confusing combination of mortification and arousal.
“Don’t be embarrassed. Happens all the time.” Before I can finish rolling my eyes, he leans in close, tugs at the waistband of my yoga pants, and adds, “Keep wearing these around me, and you’ll catch me doing worse.”
“Yeah?” I say, blinking away the bright bokeh lights that are dancing before my eyes.
“Yeah,” he confirms, like a pledge. His nose skims so close past my cheek that I feel the tiny hairs reaching for him, straining like leaves toward the sun.
I think he’s going to kiss me again, even though we’re in a middle school atrium, surrounded by children in baggy cargo pants and leotards and parents rushing toward seats.
Even after Deb’s warning, I think I’ll let him.
But instead Julian pulls away, and I feel his withdrawal like a gust of chill.
“You must be Winona,” he says abruptly.
He’s right. It is Winny. She’s dressed impeccably in tailored boot-cut jeans and a stylish beige blazer, and her makeup is just a touch too heavy-handed for a children’s dance recital. It’s clear that she’s come for battle, and that looking fabulous is her armor.
“And you must be Julian,” Winny says, extending a hand. She gives him an appraising look. “It seems you found your phone.”
Oops. Hell hath no fury like a woman defending her best friend’s honor. In the mess that has been the last few days, I’ve neglected to let her know that Julian was back in contact and in our good graces.
Julian takes Winny’s hand, affecting an expression that is just the right amount of contrite.
“It’s nice to meet you, Winona, and I definitely deserved that,” he says.
“I know,” Winona says. Then she turns a curious glance to me. “I can’t say that I expected us to meet today.”
I wince. I probably, no, definitely should’ve asked before bringing a date to her kid’s dance recital. I was supposed to be Winona’s plus-one. Now I’ve turned her into a third wheel. It’s an oversight I never could’ve seen myself making a few months ago.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think to ask if he could come,” I confess. “But he drove me all the way, and…”
Winona cuts me off.
“I don’t mind that. I’m more concerned about why you are here when you should be bundled up in bed right now, high off NyQuil and bingeing Vampire Diaries.”
I make a point not to look at Julian, who I imagine is giving me a knowing look. If Winona knew that I’d spent last night in the emergency room, she’d probably drop-kick me back into my downtown apartment.
“I’m all better, actually,” I say. To prove it, I do a little jog in place that earns me a smirk from a passing attendee. “See? Fit as a fiddle. Even made it to SCAI last night. Besides, I promised Sophie.”
Winona glances down at the bouquet in my hands, then releases the world’s most dramatic sigh, complete with heaving shoulders and a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree eye roll.
“You spoil her,” she says. Then, with a small smile, she adds, “You’re glowing. I just assumed it was from fever. I see it must be from something else.”
Julian and I exchange a conspiratorial glance: his smug, mine guilty. Luckily, Winona doesn’t catch it. She’s too busy eyeing the doors of the auditorium.
“Well, no point in pretending not to be relieved. Leila’s here.
I don’t exactly want to make small talk, so I’m pretending to need to use the bathroom—” She blanches, realizing too late that she’s speaking to the best man of the woman whom she’s currently avoiding. “Not that she isn’t lovely, of course…”
Julian waves her off.
“No worries,” he says. “Happy to be a buffer.”
It’s a testament to how out of sorts I still feel that it only occurs to me that someone else should be taking on that role when we’re walking down the aisle of the auditorium.
“Is Brandon not here?” I ask.
From behind, Winona’s body stiffens.
“Nope,” she says in a deceptively pleasant tone, and then we stop at a row of seats close to the stage and she holds her arms out in a polite After you.
We find Leila at the end of the aisle. When she sees Julian, she raises both eyebrows in an expression that could almost be mistaken for disdain before it turns quickly to delight.
“Oh my gosh, what are you doing here?”
She throws herself into his arms. It’s the familiar embrace of two people whose comfort in each other has built over years, who have seen each other in sweats and smelled each other’s stinky socks and know what toppings the other likes on their pizza.
Objectively, I know that there’s nothing romantic about it.
And yet I want to tear her small, man-stealing arms from around his waist.
Which is wrong. I know it’s wrong. The feeling is alien; even as it rushes through me, I know that it doesn’t fit, like a too-small bra found at the bottom of my drawer.
Hating a woman for a man’s disloyalty has never been my style; I’m much less likely to get jealous and far more likely to get lost. Still, a more vicious voice rings louder: Was Brandon not enough, you whore?
Winona places a hand on my thigh.
“You sure you’re okay?” she whispers. “You’re…staring.”
The moment she says it, I realize my eyes are so wide that the distant gust of air from the auditorium heaters scratches like sandpaper against my corneas.
“Fine,” I say, blinking away just as Leila leans forward in her seat to greet me.
“Hi, Sean!” she says brightly.
“Nice to see you, Leila,” I say. “Brandon feeling any better today?”
“Yup,” she says cryptically. She gestures toward Julian. “Oh, and thanks for going to check in on Julian. Even if it was a false alarm.”
Julian stiffens.
“You shouldn’t have sent her,” he says coolly to Leila. “Who knows what she could’ve walked into.”
“Sean can take care of herself,” Leila says.
“You don’t know that,” he says frostily, and I squint up at him, not sure what I’ve missed.
“You’ve never seen her in the lab,” Leila retorts. “She gets the jugular on the first stick.”
She jabs an unseen needle into the air to demonstrate my prowess, and the grin she gives me is sharp-fanged and wild-eyed and so out of character that I recoil.
Julian must sense my discomfort, because he squeezes my knee.
Before he can speak, though, the lights dim, and a man in stylishly baggy clothes walks to the mic to start the show.
Next to me, Winona is throwing furtive glances to the now closed auditorium door, and my heart breaks for her.
Brandon has been letting her down for a long time, but letting Sophie down is different.
She’s been working up to this recital for months, and we both know that she’ll note her dad’s absence.
But the door doesn’t open, and we sit together, an almost ragtag crew, and watch the recital without him.
It’s about as riveting as expected. With the exception of a few standouts, identifiable by their perfectly slicked-back ponytails and the dance moms crowding the aisles to record their performances, most of the kids have more enthusiasm than talent.
Sophie is no exception, but she’s still satisfying to watch, her thick eyebrows furrowing in concentration as she bounces through the choreography.
They’re about halfway through the song when a door bangs open at the other side of the hall.
A collective gasp fills the auditorium, a frozen moment when everyone in attendance peers at the source and decides if they need to run.
A few of the dancers miss their cues, distracted, but not even their instructor notices, because his and all of our attention is trained stage right.
A tall, thin figure stalls at the door. Light pours into the auditorium behind him, and his shadow casts ghoulishly along the floor.
A teacher rushes to him and ushers him inside, closing the door, and our focus drifts back to the stage.
When I look back at Sophie, her mouth is set into a frown. She stumbles. I wince.
“Shit,” Winona says next to me. “I think that’s Brandon.”
It’s too dark to know for sure, but I think it’s him too. Praying he’ll stay where he is, I loop my arm through Winona’s and she grasps it tight. We focus on the dance for another song, clap as the girls take their position for the next. Here or not, we will not let Brandon ruin—
“I don’t know what you think this is,” a gravelly voice says, just loud enough to be heard over the music. “But that’s my wife you’re next to, and my daughter on that stage. So if you don’t get your ass out of this seat right now, I’ll be putting on a different show.”