Chapter Thirty-Three Julia
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Wanting to stay forever while at the same time wanting to run away as fast as you can? That means you’ve gone home again.”
—Remington
Julia
“This is SO good,” I said, shoveling beef fried rice into my mouth.
“Right?” Teanna agreed as she twirled drunken noodles around her fork. “The best.”
As if it weren’t enough to come home for Teanna’s birthday, she was having her dinner at Sweet Rice, my absolute favorite Thai restaurant, which sat right on Main Street.
Talk about a win-win.
“I might have missed the food here more than I missed you two.”
“Ha. Ha. Ha,” Lauren teased. “Liar.”
I was so happy to be back with my friends, but as I watched them together, I felt lonely.
Alone.
I missed being part of our little threesome, having friends who cared about making me happy. Donovan and Jasmine were nice, but I didn’t feel comfortable with them the way I did with friends I’d known my entire life.
These were the two I’d chased fireflies with during countless Fourth of July block parties, the two who’d been there for me every time I’d ever been sad, the two who’d sat with me huddled in blankets and given me tissues when Will decided it was over between us.
Will, the other “friend” I’d known my entire life.
Ugh.
And as we continued eating and they were catching me up on all the gossip of Springfield—apparently Mr. Fabian, who owned the hardware store, had gotten a pet iguana that he let run around the shop, quite the scandal—my world suddenly came to a screeching halt.
Will and Hannah were at the restaurant.
Together.
Walking through the door, hand in hand.
Springfield was a town of under two thousand people, so it wasn’t unusual to see someone you knew at a restaurant.
No, not unusual. Heartbreaking.
Oh God.
Everything went quiet as I watched him set his hand on her lower back as they walked to a table. As he looked lovingly at her, and as he smiled at her like he was completely obsessed with everything about her.
Has he ever smiled at me like that?
God, why did it still hurt so much to see them together?
He looked the same, right down to the NU hoodie that I knew smelled like Downy. Blue eyes, baseball cap, a kind face that was warm and handsome.
Will.
He was easy, he was happy. He was a golden retriever. The kind of guy who’d pull his car over during a raging thunderstorm to help a stranger change a flat tire or carefully give you directions if you were lost.
The kind of guy who took care of everything.
My stomach hurt as I watched him giving her all that happy energy.
I went silent. Head down, pretending I was enjoying my food too much to join in on Lauren and Teanna’s gossiping. I was afraid to look up and spot Will treating Hannah like he used to treat me.
But the nausea I felt as I avoided watching them wasn’t exactly about him anymore.
Not really, not specifically.
It was more about me missing the past, missing this life that I knew.
And it was about the pathetic fact that since the breakup, I’d done nothing. All these wild things had happened to me, but I hadn’t done anything.
I still had no idea what I was doing with my future, where I was going to college.
This past version of me, with Will, had at least known she was doing something with him, because steadfast Will was going to make sure that she did. He was there for her, at her side, so of course she was going to figure everything out.
But I didn’t even know who I was without him.
And that thought completely and utterly crushed me.
Who am I?
“Do either of you have any ibuprofen?” I asked Lauren and Teanna as we drove away from the restaurant. “I’ve got a screaming headache.”
Somehow, neither of them had noticed that my ex and his new girlfriend were cuddling at a table nearby. They’d been facing the other way, thank God, but my friends were clueless over the emotional trauma I’d just endured.
“Yeah, in my purse,” Lauren said, gesturing to the bag that was sitting beside me in the back seat.
I rummaged through her purse until I found a bottle, and I popped two tablets. “Thanks.”
She glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Did you just take a PM?”
“What?” I looked at the bottle in my hand. It was dark and I had to squint to see the label, but then I saw it. The little “PM” and the picture of the moon. “Oh my God, I did. Why do you have sleeping pills, Lo, and what’s going to happen to me now?”
She rolled her eyes and smiled. “They aren’t sleeping pills; they just make you a little drowsy. And I only have them because I was sick last week and my mom thought they’d help me sleep.”
“Oh my God,” I said, picturing my slightly irresponsible aunt. “That’s not reassuring at all.”
“It’s just pain reliever with diphenhydramine,” she said calmly, looking at me in the rearview mirror and reminding me that she wanted to be a pharmacist, that she was going to school in order to eventually become a pharmacist. “No big deal, Jules, I promise.”
“But I’m always super sensitive to, like, cold medicine,” I said, trying not to worry. “I have ZERO tolerance. And I took two!!”
The look Lauren and Teanna shared did not ease my concern.
“Guys??!!”
“It’s nothing illegal, calm down,” Teanna said.
“I promise, you’ll be okay,” Lauren reassured me. “You’ll be drowsy and preeeetty sleepy, but you will be fine.”
My cousin was a liar.
Because fine I was not.
They dropped me off at the house so I could start “calming my pants and settling in” while Lauren took Teanna home, so I went straight upstairs.
Or… crawled into bed, more accurately.
But even with the accidental sleeping aid, sleep was elusive.
I couldn’t find anything to watch that’d take my mind off Will, off Damion, off my uncertainty about the future.
I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, where a few random glow-in-the-dark stickers (with no more glow) still hung from middle school, as it all raced through my head.
I kept picturing Will and Hannah, how happy they looked, and it kept bringing the tears back to my eyes. I didn’t want him anymore, but it felt so… sad, I felt so sad, that he looked so unbelievably happy in his new life, where I didn’t exist.
And what was my new life? Every time I started shifting my thoughts to New York, Damion’s face sprang to mind.
His beautiful, bespectacled, gorgeous face that was not to be trusted.
Like, at all.
Yes, he’d shown me a new side of himself while we’d hung out at the park, but that didn’t make him any less of a rebellious, arrogant, wildly flirtatious trust-fund baby. It was possible for him to have a fun side and still be the poster child for affluent bad boys.
Honestly, it added to his dangerous charisma.
When I forced myself not to think about him, all I was left with was my confusion about college and the painful way it felt to have everyone at the academy hate me.
That picture of me, printed out and hung all over the school, still haunted my thoughts.
I felt helpless.
“Gahhhh,” I moaned into my pillow, wishing for sleep. Wanting to do anything except the one thing I was about to do.
Cry.
I rolled onto my side and grabbed my phone. Drowsiness was starting to set in, but I wanted to text Liam before my phone, which was just about dead, shut off.
My brother always made everything a little better, made me feel a little less alone.
I noticed a few missed messages. Of course Liam would be checking in on me. He said he would the moment my plane landed and I completely forgot.
I texted: Hey.
Sadness and drowsiness and all the things weighing on my head were pressing down on me.
I texted: I hate everything right now.
Which I did. The fear crawling up my spine. The worry, the sadness. The smile on Will’s face. His hand on another girl’s back.
That used to be my back.
Nebraska was supposed to be an escape, but it felt more like a crushing reality check that I wasn’t prepared for.
I waited a few moments but Liam still hadn’t responded. That ass. No joke, no “keep your chin up.”
Nothing.
I felt myself dozing off.
Me: Why aren’t you here with me??
I flipped over onto my other side and pulled up the covers.
I was suddenly very sleepy.
Which was good, I thought. If I fell asleep, all the worries would be gone. I sent Liam one last text.
Me: HELP me.