Chapter 19
I hadn’t been able to sit still ever since Alek dropped me off at Mia’s apartment, kissing my cheek and vowing to see me later.
The dark look in his eyes made me shiver, and I had to peel myself from his grasp.
I wasn’t sure my body could take another round with him, not to mention I had limited time to get ready before Jules came to pick me up.
Half an hour later, Mia was applying glitter on my eyelids with a small smile to herself. “We’re going to make you look so damn angelic that Jules has to hear you out. I want him to ask himself if this sweet face would ever be irresponsible.”
I wasn’t sure about her strategy, but I liked glitter, so I wasn’t going to argue.
“So what’s your tea?” I asked a few minutes later when she was curling my hair.
I didn’t necessarily need her help getting ready for a simple dinner with my brother, but Mia had a secret passion for beauty.
She once told me that in another life, she might have been a hairdresser or makeup artist instead of a ballerina.
I encouraged her to follow wherever her heart led her, but she had just shrugged before saying that helping me get beautified before each show and night out scratched her itch.
Mia sighed dramatically. “You will not believe this. Guess who—”
“Hey, Mia, can you take me to the pharmacy to get my meds?” a smooth, quiet voice asked from the doorway. I turned only to shriek in surprise, jumping up and wrapping Charlotte, Mia’s younger sister and my college friend, in a hug.
“Charlotte! What are you doing here?” I exclaimed, hugging her tightly.
She was so thin that it felt like holding bones. I pulled back, worried, my eyes darting between her and her sister’s tight smile.
“Charlotte has decided to drop out of school,” Mia said through clenched teeth.
“And since she refuses to tell our parents about her decision—because she knows it’s a stupid one—guess who has a roommate?
That’s right! Me! Only instead of a normal roommate, this one sleeps on my couch, eats all my food, and doesn’t pay rent. ”
“And she doesn’t complain about it at all,” Charlotte said dryly, her eyes almost rolling.
Unlike her older sister, Charlotte was the definition of a closed book.
She never smiled when she danced, never betrayed her emotions on her face, never let anyone know what she was feeling.
Where Mia was a raging waterfall—full of mist and rainbows and splashes in your face—Charlotte was a river, one whose depths were invisible, not realizing it was deep until you were drowning in the current.
I loved her, but sometimes she worried me.
But I knew that Charlotte would talk about things whenever she was ready. And I would be there for her through it all, no matter what.
Charlotte looked around the room with her pale gray eyes, her expression unchanged. She pushed a strand of long, black hair out of her face and said, “I’m deferring my enrollment. I’m not dropping out. I just need some space for a while.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, trying to keep my voice supportive.
She shrugged before walking out of the bathroom. Mia and I watched her go, both of us wearing identical frowns. “Is she all right?” I whispered as soon as I was certain she was out of earshot.
“I don’t know. Probably not,” Mia said. Her gray eyes, identical to her sister’s, failed to contain her worry.
“You know what the university director has said. Charlotte is the best dancer the program has ever had… a program that is over a century old. Charlotte used to love dancing. It was the only thing we could ever get her to talk about. But now, she’s here, sleeping on my couch and only speaking when she needs something.
So, no, I don’t think she’s okay, but if I know my sister, it’s best to let her come to us.
If we push her too hard right now, she’ll completely shut down.
Whatever it is, she’ll tell us when she’s ready. I hope.”
My frown deepened. I supposed Charlotte’s story was one for another day, though I would keep her tucked in the back of my mind until then.
Mia plastered a fake smile on her face. I knew because I wore the same one often. “No more talk of upsetting stuff. Sit back down. I need to get you ready for war.”
I played with the hem of my pink skirt as I sat down on the leather sofa in my brother’s living room.
The air smelled like polished wood, and the scent had taken up a permanent residence in my nose.
It was so cold and sterile that I kept wrinkling my nose, wishing he would light a candle or something.
But that would make the room cozy, and Jules’s house was anything but that.
The smell of wood, the feeling of it pressing around me, was familiar.
This was the home I grew up in until my parents passed it to Jules to enjoy being empty nesters around the world.
Mahogany carvings lined the walls and ceiling, reminding me of a jail cell.
This place was suffocating. It was never my home, never someplace I wanted to go.
All it did was remind me of being alone.
That wasn’t to say my brother hadn’t tried to make it nicer. He’d attempted to liven up the place with mismatched throw pillows and redid my bedroom to make it pink, even going as far as to string bows along the canopy bed and hang twinkling string lights from the ceilings.
But it felt like putting makeup on a monster. There was something dark beneath the bones of this house. Something that made my skin crawl.
Maybe that was just the echoes of my childhood making me nervous.
My brother handed me a fluffy pink blanket, and I used it to cover my goosebump-riddled legs. He cocked a brow. “You didn’t have to wear a dress to dinner. It’s just going to be us. Elsie couldn’t make it.”
Which was true, but I’d wanted to look cute for Alek.
The pink sweater dress was fairly cozy, with little bows on the bell sleeves to match the one Mia put in my hair and the kitten heels that hung off my feet.
It was nicer than I normally looked to see Jules, but I didn’t feel too out of place since he still wore a green button-down from work, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms to reveal a tattoo of three interconnected Celtic knots that he got when he was sixteen.
“Speaking of that,” I began, my voice trembling, and my face already contorting into a wince. “I have something to tell you…”
Jules whipped to face me, eyes turning black. He clenched his jaw as he yanked me up from the couch and began to inspect me for injuries. “What’s wrong? Did someone try to hurt you? Is there someone I need to take care of?”
I pushed his hands off. Well, I tried to. Jules still kept a tight grip on my bicep, and I was too weak to actually push him off. But he did take a step back after I said, “No. Nothing like that.”
“Well, what is it, Evangeline?”
I frowned because he was using my full name. He was being serious. More than he normally was, at least.
“There’s someone I wanted to come to dinner tonight.”
If I thought Jules’s expression was dark before, it was murderous now. Behind his dark eyes, there was a thunderstorm. I worried he would break his jaw with how hard he was clenching it.
“Evangeline Vale. You'd better say that this ‘someone’ is a new girl you met at the ballet.”
I bit my lip before shaking my head with the look of a sullen child who had been scolded.
“Fuck. A boy?” Jules looked like he was one wrong word away from going on a rampage. There was a reason I hadn’t said Alek’s name yet—so Jules wouldn’t do something stupid like trying to kill him.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“No. No way,” Jules said, shaking his head vehemently. “Not a chance, Evangeline. You’re not going to date anyone for a long time. Maybe never. I don’t care if this man is Jesus fucking Christ himself. You are not seeing him anymore.”
My lips parted, eyes stinging with tears that began to blur my vision. “That’s not fair! You have Elsie. How come you can date, and I can’t?”
"Elsie and I are not dating, and even if we were, it’s because I'm..." But he trailed off.
And it hurt. Because I knew exactly what he was going to say.
Because I'm me. Because you're you. Because you're weak. Because you're not strong enough. You never have been.
I ripped my arm from his grasp and took a few steps backward. My whole body trembled. For once, I didn’t feel the need to mend the cracks I had created. The urge to apologize, to make myself small again, didn’t appear. Even my voice was silent.
I took a few deep breaths before I said in a shaking voice.
“I’m twenty-one years old, Jules. I have hardly any friends.
I haven’t been out of state since I was four.
And I’ve never dated anyone. I’m kept in a cage while you have the freedom to do anything you want.
You lock me up and dangle the key in front of me like it’s nothing.
And now, when I’ve finally met someone who makes me feel free for the first time in my life, you want to take that away from me?
You want me to give it up because you aren't ready, even though I am? How does that seem fair?"
His face fell. "Annie, I—"
“Don’t call me that. I don’t want to hear any more from you,” I whispered, my voice cracking at the end as I did the one thing I never thought I would do.
I began to build a wall between us. The only family I had left. My brother. My closest friend. The one person I trusted to be there for me no matter what. The one person I’d never kept anything from.
But if he forced me to pick between him and Alek, I was beginning to think he wouldn’t like the choice I would make.
A lone tear fell down my cheek, and I hurriedly wiped it away. I began to stalk out of the room only for a hand to grab my own and pull me back. I refused to look at my brother, even while he tried to wrap his arms around me in a tight hug.
“Annie, please. Listen to me.”
Sighing, I turned to face him. Jules was looking at me, his brown eyes filled with concern. All of the anger was gone. That was the thing about having a hotheaded older brother. Yes, he lost his temper sometimes, but he gained control back quickly.
"I'm listening," I muttered.
"I will meet the boy," Jules said in a tight voice that showed how truly painful it was for him to say it.
My hopeful heart skipped a beat. "Really?"
"Really. I can't promise that I'll like him, but if he's nice and he treats you well, then—"
Jules broke off when I threw my arms around his neck and squeezed him tightly, cutting off the circulation to his head. “Thank you, Jules! Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
He chuckled and hugged me back, picking me up off the ground as he spun me around. "You're welcome, Annie. I will try. But that’s all I can promise."
“That’s more than enough,” I said, squeezing his hand.
I could hardly contain the excitement radiating through my pores. What if this went really, really well? What if Alek and Jules became friends? What if our relationship could be real?
Somewhere deep in my chest, a strange, fluttering feeling bloomed—like standing on the edge of something enormous, something inevitable. I told myself it was excitement. Romeo and Juliet finally getting their happy ending.
After all, what could go wrong with a simple dinner?
I had no idea I was standing at the precipice of something major, smiling like a girl who forgot the real ending to Romeo and Juliet.
A girl who forgot it was a tragedy.