Chapter Twenty-Six Julian #2
“Stop! Just stop!” Nomi’s hands shake in front of her face as if she can brush this entire conversation away. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you! You’re not my doctor, Julian. My health is not your concern!”
“You were never going to tell me.” I blink at her, reading the panic on her face, feeling it sink like a heavy stone to the depths of my stomach. “I’m in love with you, and this whole time, you’ve just been waiting for me to leave.”
“You can’t be in love with me, Julian!” Nomi rears back. “That’s ridiculous!”
“Well, guess what? I am!” I throw my hands in the air. “I’m fucking ridiculous, okay? I’m intense and obnoxious, and I’m fucking ridiculously, intensely, obnoxiously in love with you, so get over it!”
“Jesus, Julian, it hasn’t even been a whole month!”
I swallow the knot in my throat, but it keeps bobbing back up. “I’ve known since senior year.”
“Oh, come on, that’s not true,” Nomi says, her voice scoffing and tinged with tears.
“Just because you look at me and see some pathetic try-hard you mess around with every fifteen years until you feel like disappearing on me doesn’t mean I don’t love you, Nomi.”
I run my hand through my hair a final time, not caring that my neatly arranged curls are sloppy and wild now, or that my shoes are dusty from pacing across this dead lawn.
“It just means I’m a loser you don’t love back.”
JULIAN
There’s weed at Edna’s Big Party, and it has my name on it.
Aunt Edna left me her stash box with a note that says: For Julian and his followed by a picture of a star.
Not a five-pointed classic, but the easy kind that’s just intersecting lines.
I stare at it for too long, dead-eyed and stuporous, until Mom looks over my shoulder.
“That’s supposed to be your butthole, sweetie. ”
“Oh.” Aunt Edna got one last crack at me, after all.
I poke through the box’s many compartments, inspecting all the jars and tinctures labeled in Nomi’s tiny, precise handwriting because it’s easier than talking to family right now.
One tray holds ten perfectly rolled joints, its label reading: Party Time!
I run my finger over them and sigh miserably.
Mom nudges me with her shoulder. “Want to get high with your ma?”
I close my red, swollen eyes, face crumpling inward from zero provocation.
“Oh, Julie. Let’s go.” Mom gently tugs me upward until I stand, head stooped to hide the tears streaming down my face. She leads me onto Aunt Edna’s back porch and the bench swing. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything. Everything is wrong.”
She smiles, then produces one of Edna’s joints, lights it, and inhales from it gracefully. “My God, you sound like Grandpa Fabrizio. So dramatic. Please elaborate.” She passes me the joint, and after staring at it for a long second, I accept it.
“I told Nomi I’m in love with her.” I take a deep drag off the joint and spend the next two minutes coughing.
Mom pats my back. “Oh, Julie! I’m so happy for you.”
“Don’t be. She didn’t say it back, and we had a huge fight.”
“Well, it’s only been what… a month? Two?
” Mom chuckles, takes another big hit. “You D’Angelo men—you’re so passionate.
When you love, you love with your whole being.
That’s a lot for a woman. Give her time, Nomi’s a smart girl.
She’ll see what an amazing partner you’ll be.
” Mom passes back the joint. “That’s how it went between me and your dad, anyway.
” She snorts. “He told me he loved me on the second date.”
After a second, I lean my head on Mom’s shoulder. “Nomi’s very sick. I’m worried.”
“She finally told you? That’s a good sign. She doesn’t tell almost anyone.”
“No,” I admit. “I saw her bloodwork and confronted her about it.”
“Oh, Julie.” Mom shakes her head and relights the joint. “That was stupid.”
I glance up. “Well, how did you know?”
“Her mother and I talk. It’s hard raising stubborn geniuses who love to argue. We commiserate.”
“But why wouldn’t Nomi tell me, Mom? I’ve tried so hard to become someone she can trust—”
“By looking at her medical records?” Mom arches an eyebrow at me.
“It was an accident!”
“She probably didn’t tell you for the same reason your dad preferred to stay home.
It’s hard carrying that kind of pain around, for both the person who’s in pain, and the people who witness it.
It naturally isolates you. Makes you feel like a burden to those who love you.
” Mom sighs. “Nomi’s barely dated anyone, you know. ”
“You mean lately?”
“I mean ever. Her mom worries about how lonely she is, but Nomi’s always been too scared to put herself out there. Until you.” Mom eyes me meaningfully. “Cut her some slack. Trusting someone with her illness is new to her, and a very big deal.”
“I acted like a complete asshole about it.” I run my palms down my face.
“Another trait you get from your father.” Mom smiles.
“Listen, all you can do is own up to how you acted, apologize, and learn what being there for Nomi looks like. You don’t get to be the boss of her body or her health.
Loving someone doesn’t work that way. Hell, being someone’s doctor doesn’t work that way.
You can’t make her get better. But you can learn how to make her feel less alone and how to be there for her as a partner.
” Mom leans back on the swing. “If you do all that in a pair of short shorts, you’ll be set, honey. ”
“Mom.”
“That’s why God gave the D’Angelo men great thighs. It’s how you get by for having such impetuous personalities and tight little buttholes to match. Aunt Edna left you Uncle Joseph’s entire summer wardrobe, by the way.”
I huff out a bittersweet laugh, feeling lighter and yet, sadder, than I have all day. I run a hand down the smooth wood of the stash box. “God, I’m going to miss her.”
“Me, too, sweetie.”
Just then, a small ball of floof hops up onto my lap, two little brown eyes gazing up at me through shaggy bangs. I flinch at first, then tentatively hug BonBon Jovi into my arms. “Hey, little guy.” I kiss the top of his head.
Mom smiles. “She left you BonBon, too.”
I blink. “Are you serious?”
“She said caring for a puppy would help your butthole. I’ve already packed up BonBon’s things so we can take him home later.” Mom smacks my leg and stands. “I’m going to find Vijay. You think about what I said, honey.”
“Vijay?” I arch an eyebrow, accepting BonBon’s furtive facial licking because he, too, is in grief, and I suddenly love him with my whole heart. “Since when did Dr. Appa become Vijay?”
“Since we made out six months ago and started going steady.”
“What?!”
“Julian!” Marco, Aldo, and Ellio burst onto the porch in quick succession, then promptly start coughing and waving their hands in front of their faces. “Damn, is there a fire back here?”
“Here, you can have the rest.” Mom offers the joint to Ellio. “We were honoring Aunt Edna.”
“You’re—” I stare at Mom. “With Doctor…him?!”
She blows me a kiss, then disappears inside.
“Julian—hey.” Marco snaps his fingers in front of my face. “You’ve got to focus. This is big. Tell him, Aldo.”
“Tell me what?” I blink, my eyes feeling fully chapped by the weed.
“Last night, I was cleaning up the chambers late, and I overheard Mike Tonuto on the phone as he was leaving his office. I could’ve sworn he said the word dispensary.” Aldo lifts his brows.
I snap up straight, which is impressive since I feel like a giant noodle. “Yeah?”
“I snuck up behind him so I could listen.” He taps his ear. Aldo doesn’t usually tell the stories in this trio of brothers, and you can tell he’s enjoying it. “And you won’t believe what I heard.”
I lean over so far, the porch swing nearly deposits me and BonBon on the ground. “What, man?”
“He was talking shit on Nomi!” Ellio bursts out in a bell of smoke. “Said it was ‘only a matter of time before the little lady folds and gives up the lease!’”
Aldo narrows his eyes at Ellio. “Way to steal my thunder, bro.”
“Huh.” So Tonuto is targeting Nomi specifically. Does he want her lease for himself? How could a sitting council member rent a building owned by the city council?
“Can you guys stay on him? Keep an eye out for anything that might suggest Tonuto’s benefitting personally from thwarting Nomi’s dispensary?”
The Ohs nod, and I stumble up to standing, my head feeling light and airy even as the thick, molten sadness of losing Aunt Edna and my big fight with Nomi weigh the rest of me down.
“Bro, I almost forgot.” Marco claps me on the back. “There’s a guy out there asking for you.”
I make my way back inside to Aunt Edna’s living room, where a man with short, neatly combed hair stands, arms crossed, watching Edna’s slideshow.
“Eric?” I press my hand to my chest. BonBon licks that, too.
He turns around, his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Julian. Hey, buddy.”
“What are you doing here?” I stand rooted on the spot.
“Other than developing a crush on your late Aunt Edna?” He gestures at the slideshow, squarely in the middle of The Sexy Years. “I thought you could use some support today. Was I wro—”
Before he can get the last word out, I’ve wrapped him in a three-way bone-crushing hug. “Thank you for coming, I—” My voice comes out strained and raw. I might be getting tears on his suit coat, but I just squeeze him tighter. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me, sir.”
Eric sniffs pointedly from within my boa constrictor embrace. “Dr. D’Angelo. Are you stoned?”
“Very much so, sir.” I release Eric, who’s now grinning.
“I’m proud of you, Julian. Who’s this little fella?”
“BonBon Jovi.” A beam of pure love shoots straight out of my chest. “My son.”
“Well, congratulations to the new father.”
The party’s winding down, with only a few clumps of family having beers and sharing Edna stories. “Are you and BonBon hungry?” Eric asks, squinting an eye at me. “It’s been a while since I partook, but I recall munchies being egregious.”
I shake my head in awe. “You are, simply, always on point.”