Julian
As soon as Leti disappears inside, I round on her brother.
He doesn’t so much as flinch or step back.
And why would he? He’s my best friend. We’ve never laid hands on each other.
We’ve never once fought or argued to this degree before.
But he’s also never seen this side of me—the part that is my father’s son.
Quick to rage, and quicker to physical blows.
“Look, man—”
My arm is already swinging before those two words are out.
The first punch lands square on the mouth, but that’s as far as I get before white-hot pain erupts across my knuckles.
I have to grit my teeth to keep myself from crying out in pain.
It’s quite the antithesis to the message I’m trying to get across with my fist, isn’t it?
But I’m in too deep to possibly regret my actions.
Not when Leti is in tears because of him.
Because of me.
Andrew manages better than me. He stumbles backward but quickly rights himself before he falls over. One hand covers his bloodied mouth as he looks up at me, stunned beyond belief.
“Fucking pathetic?” I repeat his words, the ones that made tears come to Leti’s eyes and made her rush out of here before they could fall. I shake out my hand, but it does little to dull the sting. “Are you kidding me, Andrew? She’s your sister. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Dude.” His voice is so garbled, I’m surprised I can make out the word. He spits the blood from his mouth before trying again. “Did you fucking punch me, man? I could’ve lost a tooth!”
“You really think I care about your dental health right now?!” I move my arm back to swing at him again, but he ducks out of the way in the nick of time.
It’s for the better, really, since I’m pretty sure my hand wouldn’t be able to handle a second punch.
Then he runs straight at me. Andrew’s arms wrap around my middle as he throws us both to the ground.
My head knocks hard into the leg of the metal table, and I nearly see stars as my head bounces against the concrete.
“Shit, are you okay?”
Vaguely, I consider laughing at such an absurd question.
Who tackles someone to the ground and then asks if they’re okay?
But my ears are ringing and my skull is throbbing so hard it feels like it’s caved in, though logically I know I wouldn’t be conscious if that were the case.
“Holy fuck, Julian, you’re bleeding—I NEED SOME HELP OVER HERE! ”
I flinch as his voice rises, but I can hardly fault him because the panic pays off.
We’re surrounded in seconds, and I’m pulled off the ground and deposited into a chair by Diego and Mr. Maldonado.
Elena hands me a bag of frozen fruit wrapped in a dish towel for my head, and someone I was introduced to earlier but have since forgotten their name asks if they can inspect the injury.
“Take her up on it,” Andrew pipes up from behind. “She’s a nurse.”
Elena turns on her phone’s flashlight and holds it up so the nurse can take a look. “It doesn’t look very deep,” she finally says after a beat. “If the bleeding doesn’t stop in about an hour, you might need to get stitches.”
“What about a concussion?” Diego asks her.
“I saw that fall from the window. It looked like he hit his head pretty hard.” His eyes shift back and forth between me and Andrew with something akin to disapproval.
He knows damn well my injury wasn’t caused by a fall.
Still, I have no idea why Diego is inclined to cover for us.
“If his headache doesn’t go away with the bleeding, that could be a sign of a concussion,” she explains. “I’d look out for any signs of confusion, fatigue, nausea—”
She backs away just in time as I double over and heave my guts out on a pair of white sneakers. Andrew lets out a long sigh before bracing himself with a hand on my shoulder, face twisting in disgust as he steps out of his vomit-covered shoes.
“My official prognosis?” She points a finger at Andrew. “Take him to the ER.”
Diego hustles the two of us to his car, his wife trailing close behind. Elena helps me into the back seat before getting in from the other side as Diego shoves Andrew into the passenger seat. Once all the doors are shut, the interrogation begins.
“What the hell has gotten into you two?” Elena blocks my view of her brother with the back of her head as she forces him to face her.
Despite the confrontation, her voice is even so as not to aggravate my already-pounding head.
“Diego saw that tackle from the window and don’t think we haven’t noticed the way your mouth is leaking blood. Talk. Now.”
“It was my fault.”
Elena cuts her eyes to me.
“Julian, you don’t have to—”
“I do, though,” I tell Andrew before turning to his sister. “I hit him first. Your issue is with me.”
“But why?” she asks.
Andrew turns in his seat, the question in his eyes clear. I don’t know how to begin to explain my relationship with Leti, but I have to try.
“He hurt Leticia,” I say. “I wasn’t going to let it stand.”
“Leti?” Diego asks as his wife sits back in her seat. “You’re saying you hit your best friend over something to do with his sister, who you just met?”
“I’m gonna talk to her.” Elena opens the back door, expression unreadable. “You stay here,” she tells her husband. “Make sure Julian gets his head checked and that these two don’t make any more trouble.”
“You already knew her, didn’t you?” Andrew asks as we watch Elena run up the path to our apartment building. “That’s why you were kissing her and got upset when I said all that stuff to her.”
To his credit, Diego doesn’t outwardly react to this revelation but I have no doubt he’s going to text everything Andrew and I say to each other to his wife.
“Can you start the car?” I ignore his question. I’ve implicated Leti enough for one night. “My head hurts.”
“This isn’t over,” Andrew says as Diego does as I ask. “I’ve seen enough movies to know you’re not allowed to sleep if you have a concussion. This could go on all night.”
I stay resolutely silent, though I’m too weak to think of a proper response anyway.
My head isn’t throbbing nearly as hard as it was earlier and the bleeding seems to have stopped for now, but a bone-deep fatigue has washed over my body, making it harder and harder to keep my eyes open.
Even holding the makeshift ice pack to my head is draining me.
“Elena got Leti to talk, if that helps.” Diego shakes my arm from the front seat, jolting me back to consciousness. “We’re gonna find out the truth eventually. You might as well tell us what happened.”
I stare at Andrew, but he doesn’t look at me. His gaze is focused out the windshield.
“I’d say I’m sorry for punching you, but we both know I’d be lying,” I say.
“Still, there was a better way for me to tell you how shitty you were acting toward your sister. She didn’t deserve any of that, and you should’ve known better.
But I knew better too. I shouldn’t have punched you. That’s not me. That’s—”
“Your dad,” he answers, because of course he would remember.
Even though I’ve told Andrew everything about that day and afterward, I still have no words for the way my father’s face contorted in anger the first time he saw me hand in hand with another man or the way he’d sneer at me every time he saw me afterward.
He never hit me, but I can’t say he never wanted to.
I was an adult, but I was still his child.
It was one line he wouldn’t cross in the twisted moral code he’d written for himself.
Never mind that it only ever made sense to him.
Which is why when my uncle defended me, when he called out my father for turning away his own blood, my dad decided it was acceptable to take a swing at him instead.
Not that he got very far before my uncle shut that shit down, but still.
My hands turn to fists that shake at the memory, and I could kick myself for being no better than my father. For turning around and doing the same thing to my best friend.
“It’s no excuse,” I say, because it’s the truth. “If you want me to move out, I understand.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Andrew lets out a grunt as Diego turns into the hospital parking lot. “You’re not moving out. I’m the one who gave you a concussion. I should be begging you to forgive me.”
“You were defending yourself, and it was an accident,” I tell him. “What I did was on purpose.”
“As sweet as this moment is, Julian here should probably get his head checked out,” Diego says, pushing open the car door. “Can you walk?”
“I’m good,” I say. “Let’s go.”
After we get checked in, a nurse at the front desk lets us know it might be a while before a doctor can look me over. All this waiting does is give Andrew and Diego more chances to interrogate me.
“She’s the one you told me about, isn’t she?” Andrew asks after a beat of blissful silence in the waiting room. “The one you’re in love with who hated you at first?”
“Yeah.” I let out a long sigh. “She is.”
“And you knew she was my sister?” he asks. “The whole time?”
“Almost the whole time,” I say. “I met her four years ago. One of her classmates set us up, and we went out. It was the first time I’d ever been on a date. I was nervous and stupid and ate an entire basket of nine-dollar truffle fries that she paid for.”
“She hated you for four years for eating her fries?” Diego lifts a brow before thinking better of it. “Wait, that does sound like Leti.”
“No,” I tell him. “She hated me for one day before forgetting all about me. We ran into each other back in April at my cousin’s party and she had no idea who I was.
And when we matched on a dating app back in August, she still had no clue.
She had no memory of who I was until we went out for the second time, only she didn’t realize it was the second time until I ate a sushi roll off her plate. ”
“She got flashbacks, huh?”
I cut Andrew an unamused look.
“What happened after that?”
“She ended the date early,” I tell him, then wince at the memory of what came next. “But as soon as I got back home, we ran into each other in the parking lot and she accused me of stalking her.”
“Yikes.” Diego grimaces in sympathy. “Bet it didn’t go over well with her to learn you guys lived in the same building.”
“Or that we work at the same school.”
“And the hits keep coming.” Andrew huffs a laugh. “She must’ve given you so much hell.”
“More like the other way around, if you ask her.” I smirk to myself. “Not that I could help it. I was…intrigued isn’t a strong enough word. A masochist, maybe. Interacting with her became the best part of my day, even when I was nothing but a nuisance to her.”
“Very romantic of you.”
“Your sarcasm hurts, Andrew.”
“You’re really in love with Leti?” he asks, expression all skepticism. When I nod, he says, “She’s not at all who I would’ve picked for you. She’s too—”
“Watch it,” I warn him. “Remember how we got into this mess in the first place?”
“Sorry.” He takes a breath. I can practically see the wheels turning inside his brain as he chooses his words more carefully. “We’ve never been able to get along. The convent thing was a joke, but she’s never been able to take any of my jokes well.”
“Gee, I wonder why.”
He rolls his eyes at me.
“Is that all it is to you? You’re giving her a hard time for kicks?”
“Look, man, she doesn’t care what anyone in our family thinks of her.
Least of all me. Sometimes I envy her that, but mostly I just resent her for it.
” He lets out a long sigh. “The worst day of my life was when I had to tell my parents I failed two finals. Not because of any punishment or lecture, but because disappointing them crushed me. I expected them to be a lot harder on me than they were, but I think they took pity on me because I couldn’t stop beating myself up about it.
Leti’s never been like that. When she moved back in with our parents, she had no shame.
She didn’t tell a single one of us what her plan was, which drove our parents bonkers.
We didn’t find out she was streaming or that she was making money from it until she moved in with Bella. ”
“She cares,” I say. “More than any of you know. Believe me.”
“Not about me,” he says. “She made up a lie to get out of helping me move and spent the entire day streaming. And if she had her way, she would’ve sent me an impersonal happy birthday text instead of celebrating my birthday tonight.”
“It’s a two-way street, I get it,” I say.
“But it’s on you to try, especially after tonight.
And you can start by apologizing for all the bullshit you said to her earlier.
None of it is true, but I know her. She took your words to heart.
As much as she tries to act like it, she’s not nearly as unflappable as everyone thinks. ”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment.
“You really hurt her, Andrew,” I tell him. “Maybe even more than all the other times. Calling her pathetic? It was low.”
“Yeah, I know.” He blows out a long breath. “I’ll talk to her. I’ll apologize.”
I’m about to argue more when a nurse practitioner calls my name. This kind of behavior isn’t going to fly with me. If he doesn’t get his act together, he will soon. I’ll make sure of it.