Chapter Eight Julian
CHAPTER EIGHT
JULIAN
Screams.
“Was that Julian D’Asshole?”
I wake up slowly in Nomi’s big, scratchy bush.
The irony. I cackle.
“Julie?! You okay, bro?” Marco hovers over me with a worried brow.
“Um. Maybe?” I squint my eyes, but there’s only one of him. No neuro trauma, that’s good. “Can you pull me out of here? I’m trapped—” A giggle escapes my mouth.
I’ve never giggled in my life. It happens again.
“—in Nomi’s giant bush.”
Marco’s face cracks into a luminous, relieved grin.
“He’s fine, everybody!” The party cheers as my cousins partition me into thirds, Marco grabbing me by the armpits, Aldo by the ankles, and Ellio stuck with my ass to lift me from the overgrown hedge that saved my life.
I contract muscle by muscle, starting with my toes and working my way up, testing for injury as I’ve instructed a thousand different patients.
When I squeeze my butt cheeks, Ellio curses and nearly drops me.
I cackle again. Our ridiculous D’Angelo quartet collectively stumbles, bringing us all to the ground.
“I’m sorry for squeezing my butt cheeks, bro,” I say as contritely as I can, which isn’t very because I’m howling with laughter. “That probably felt really weird.”
“Yeah, man.” Ellio laughs uncomfortably. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Oh, I ate fifty dollars and am becoming my father!” I explain, still howling. “I’m doomed!” I push up to sitting, and my arm twinges, then goes strangely numb. I check to make sure it’s still there.
It is! I smile happily and hug it to my chest.
“You’re gonna be fine, buddy.” Marco eases up to standing, brushing the dirt off the knees of his Armani Exchange jeans. I bet he hated getting them dirty, but he did it, for me. Warmth radiates through my entire chest, but then Nomi appears, like a tiny golden fairy, and pushes through the crowd.
“Julian! Are you hurt?” She falls to her knees and runs her hands frantically down my arms, over my shoulders, up both sides of my neck. Each point of contact between her and me sends a pleasurable web of sensation jolting through my nervous system. “You’re bleeding—you’re all scratched up!”
“I fell off your roof.” I smile into her eyes.
“Yes, you did,” she says slowly, her worry morphing into something else.
Is that her own small smile? “How are you feeling?” Her voice is so gentle, it feels like cool silk fluttering against hot skin.
It brings me back to the front seat in her old Subaru, fifteen years ago, when she used that soft, quiet voice to tell me all her dreams. “Concentrate for me, okay? Does anything hurt?”
I try to do what Nomi asks. Why do my thoughts feel slippery and buoyant?
Then, I remember—I was really mad about something.
Really, really mad. What was it? I gaze into Nomi’s face, searching, but what could I have possibly been angry about when she’s here, looking at me, talking to me, being with me?
There’s no trace of her usual scorn or frustration, just wide-open concern and relief.
Relief that I’m okay. That I made it out of her bush alive.
A laugh rumbles in my chest.
“What is it?” Worry rises on her face.
I shrug, then give her my most playboy smile. “Oh, I just keep ending up in your bush.”
Her eyes widen, and then she bursts out a single, shocked laugh. “I cannot believe you just said that.”
I waggle my eyebrows, unable to stop performing for her smile, her approval, her laugh. It fills me up, makes me as buoyant as my thoughts. Her happiness feels like food lifted to my starving mouth, and I’m suddenly convinced that if she’d let me, I’d sing for this supper of smiles every night.
Also, I’m starving. The hunger’s come back with a vengeance.
Nomi helps me to my feet. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”
“Okay, but can there also be food?”
Nomi laughs again as she escorts me through the back door, but it peters out into a sigh as she takes in my broad shoulders, incredible pectorals, and tight, thick torso. “You eat so much pizza, don’t you.”
“So much,” I agree as a lazy, punch-drunk grin spreads across my face. I fish out a hundred-dollar bill and crumple it into her hand. “Buy this many, please. A pepperoni one. And banana peppers. And one with sausage. And a veggie one, for balance. And—”
“Are there any pizzas you don’t want? That might be easier.”
“—AND,” I continue, diplomatically ignoring her ridiculous question, “cinnamon rolls.”
“Julian. Pizza Palace will not have cinnamon rolls.”
“Oh, ye of wittle faith!”
“That is the second time tonight you said wittle, and I just want you to know, I will not be forgetting it.” Nomi quickly orders from her phone, her tongue darting across her lower lip in concentration. I can’t stop staring at it.
She hesitates, then leads me into what must be her bedroom. “I’ll get the first-aid kit. You stay here.”
My eyes drink it all in. I saw her high school bedroom once—covered in band posters, everything in shades of witchy black and lavender.
But this room is a dark, emerald green, the color of a winter forest. The curtains are velvet, the mirrors trimmed in brass.
The wooden furniture gleams like copper, antique but restored.
It’s so… mature.
“Wow,” I mumble as I sit on the bed, my eyes snagging on the nightstand. “That’s a huge vibrator.”
“What?!” Nomi screeches from the attached bathroom. I lean over, possessed by the need to hold it.
“Oh man, this joker’s a plug-in? This must have some serious horses power.” In my hand, it feels like an old-timey microphone. A gigantic one. I tap it and wink at myself in the mirror. “Is this thing on?”
Nomi appears suddenly, her arms full of medical supplies.
“Put that down!”
“’Cause I’m your ladaaaaaay!” I belt out, pointing to her as she drops the supplies and lunges at me. “And you are my maaaayaaah-yaaah-an.”
“Why are you singing Céline Dion?!”
“It’s our song, don’t you remember? It played when we first held hands.
” I wrestle the vibrator away like a toy I’m refusing to share, which, I guess it is.
“Whenever you REAAACH for meeeee,” I wheeze out, laughing as Nomi climbs over me, grabbing at it wildly, starting to laugh now, too.
“I’ll do all that I caaaaaayaaah-yaaaah-an! ”
I finally manage to find the on switch, and it roars to life just as Nomi sends me sprawling onto my back, fully atop me, breasts smushed against my chest, her hand clasped around mine which is clasped around the teeth-rattling behemoth she uses to pleasure herself.
The thought rings like a bell through my entire body, stiffening my dick in a delicious rush.
My laughter turns to groans beneath her, my body thoroughly confused as to what’s happening right now.
Just then, steps pause outside Nomi’s open bedroom door.
“Hey, cuz? We’re heading out, you need a—HEYOOO!
” Marco’s eyebrows meet his gelled-back bangs as he sees me on my back, Nomi straddling my lap, and the giant vibrator buzzing in our joined grip.
His hands shoot into the air. “Excuse me! Did not mean to disturb youse!”
“Marco!” Nomi shrieks, still fumbling to turn off the vibrator. “It’s not what it looks like!”
“PLEASE! As you were!” Marco flashes me a huge wink and closes the door, through which I can hear his muffled announcement: “The hostess has retired for the evening. Let no man, woman, or nonbinary individual disturb this room!”
Fuck, Marco is cool. How did I not realize this before?
My eyes return to Nomi’s, and I see the happy confusion I’m feeling staring back at me.
“You remember?” she asks breathlessly. “The song that played when we first held hands?” Her cheeks are flushed a pretty pink from our wrestling, and her bottom lip, so pouty and full, is partially hidden where she’s biting it in.
The flush carries down her neck, across her collarbone, down the tops of her round breasts brimming the low neckline of her dress.
“I remember everything.” My confession leads to a sharp intake of her breath.
Both of her hands are clasped around my one, over my head, and my one free arm longs to caress the arch of her back, dig my fingers into her hip, and grind her against me.
My arm actually flops a bit at my side, like it wants to but can’t.
Concerning, really. I’d be more worried, but shooting stars explode at every point of contact between us, and I’m too dazzled by the sensation to think of anything else.
She shifts against me to steal her vibrator back, but the movement puts the apex of her thighs directly against the massive erection throbbing beneath these summer-weight chinos.
Her eyes flutter shut, and forget it, I was practically flaccid before compared to the column of rock slotted against her now.
“Oh, God, I’m Stonehenge,” I murmur, dazed with excruciating pleasure. “The balance beam, and you’re my gymnast.”
Nomi blinks dreamily down at me. “What?”
“Can I kiss you?” I let go of the vibrator to run my good hand down the side of her face, fingers dipping into her long waves.
“Please, Nomi? Oh, God, please?” I’m begging, and I don’t even care, I’ve never wanted anything more.
I murmur please over and over again as her beautiful, confused face draws closer, giving us both time to avert this kiss before it happens.
I’m still begging when her full mouth drops lightly onto mine, and a seismic shift upends my entire world.
Land torn apart, then crushed together anew, all the continents of who I am reborn under one new flag, ruled by a new empire—Nomi.