47 Leti
Leti
Everyone is hovering.
Bella nearly had a heart attack when I came in wearing a cast and sling, Julian and Andrew close behind.
Approximately two seconds after crossing into the apartment, my brother called Elena, who drove straight over with Diego and the kids in tow.
I’ve never been more envious of Andrew, who got to escape the circus currently in my apartment by heading to HEB for a pharmacy and snack run.
Someone has to pick up your pain meds, he’d said before making a run for it.
Just when I’d announced to everyone that I wanted to take a nap and finally got a moment of peace and quiet in my bedroom, my mom called.
“Leticia.” Part of the reason I fought against Julian calling me by my full name in the beginning is because there’s no better way to give me childhood flashbacks of my mother yelling at me when I did something stupid.
But he changed all that for me so quickly, and now it’s ruined all over again.
“You were in the hospital when you texted me and you didn’t tell us? ”
“You said not to need you.” I shrug even though she can’t see. “What was I gonna do? Ask you and Dad to come back home?”
“Aye, Leti, you always do this.” She lets out a long, aggrieved sigh as if she is the one who broke her arm. “You take everything so seriously, or the wrong way entirely. I swear you do this on purpose to raise my blood pressure.”
“So now I broke my arm to raise your blood pressure?” As the words come out, I know I’m doing exactly what she said I always do.
Twisting her words, being too much, making it all about me.
Just another case of attention seeking, middle-child syndrome to the max.
I take a beat to calm down, holding the phone against my stomach so I don’t have to listen to her rebuttal.
Once she’s stopped talking, I place the phone back to my ear.
“Mom, don’t cancel your plans on my account. The apartment is full enough as it is.”
“Don’t be ridiculous—of course we’re coming,” she says. “I’ve been meaning to call you anyway. Your brother finally told us what happened on his birthday to cause that fight.”
For a moment, everything goes blank. I’m fifteen all over again, only this time I’m coming in for the kill. Reconciliation? Nice try. Old habits? More like oldest companions. Andrew? Dead. Fucking. Meat.
Just like your relationship, if you go down this road again.
“You know, your father and I were so proud of how far you’ve come this year. And then you had to go and ruin it with that boy—”
“Mom, if you’d let me explain what happened—”
“I don’t need to hear what happened. I know what happened.
I thought I was going to have a stroke when I found out how you humiliated yourself.
You’d never even met this boy before. You introduced another boy entirely to me and your father.
I know my son, which is how I knew this talk of fighting couldn’t have possibly been his fault.
He doesn’t get into fistfights on his own.
It’s no surprise, really, that you had something to do with it.
And Nathaniel, that poor sweet boy you had us meet, I should’ve known it was too good to be true—”
I put her on mute when I can’t stand to hear any more. She’ll yell at me some more when she gets here.
A knock sounds, and then Julian pushes the door open. Just what I need. More arguing. “Are you okay? I thought I heard yelling in here.”
“My mom.” I hold up my phone and roll my eyes. “She knows why you really punched Andrew.”
“Is she coming?” He seems disturbingly unconcerned by what I said.
“To rain hell on my ass? Oh yeah.” I sink back under the covers with a groan. “God, I’m exhausted. Forget the nap. I may go straight to sleep right now.”
“Sounds like a good idea. You need the rest,” he says. “Andrew’s back with your medicine if you need it before you go to sleep. How’s the pain?”
“I’ll manage.”
“Let me go grab them.”
“Can you go kill my brother for me while you’re at it?”
“This again.” He shakes his head. “I thought you guys made up?”
“We did,” I say. “That was until my mom decided to pin the blame for your fistfight on me.”
“Wait, what?”
“What’s going on?” Andrew comes in with my medicine and a water bottle. When I level a glare at him, he takes a step back from the door. “Oh shit. You talked to Mom. I meant to tell you about that—”
“You really buried the lede on that reconciliation call, didn’t you?”
“I’ll fix this, okay?” he says. “I’m not bullshitting you. I will.”
I’m far too exhausted to threaten him into honoring his word. He scurries away, and Julian shuts the door and makes a grab for the prescription.
“Thanks.” I watch as he tears through the packaging and deposits a single pill from the bottle into my left hand and opens the cap of the water bottle. Once I wash the pill down, I give him a thumbs-up. “All done.”
“Want some help changing into your pajamas?” he asks, then pushes when I shake my head. “You’re wearing work clothes. They can’t be comfortable to sleep in. Come on, get up.”
I don’t fight when he grabs my good hand and lifts me from my slanted position on the bed to a full stand.
Not that I’m willing to admit it, especially when he’s still mad at me—I can tell in the way his jaw locks and how he’s unable to hold eye contact for longer than five seconds—but I like the way he takes care of me.
“Can we please have this fight so we can get it over with?” I ask as he helps me into a pair of pajama bottoms. If he thinks this is a weird question to ask when he’s face-to-face with my strawberry-print underwear, he doesn’t say.
In fact, his expression gives nothing away as he pulls the shorts up my body. “Julian—”
“We don’t have to get into this now,” he says. “Get some sleep. We’ll talk about this later.”
“We talked plenty when you had a concussion,” I remind him. “You’re mad at me. I should’ve called you, and I didn’t.”
“You think that’s why I’m mad?” He rises to his feet, and though we’re close enough in height it feels as if he’s towering over me.
“You should’ve called someone, Leticia, even if it wasn’t me.
Do you have any idea how terrifying it was to find out you were sitting in a hospital room?
Or to imagine you hurting, all alone, inside a building five feet from me and I was fucking clueless to it? ”
“Oh, I don’t know, Julian. Probably very similar to how I felt when I found out you fought my brother and hurt your head while you were just downstairs from me,” I counter. “But I didn’t yell at you for it.”
“That was a completely different situation.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t know where we stood with each other. I had no idea how you felt about me, or if you’d even care—”
“What do you mean, if I’d even care?” I scoff at him. “Of course I care! I wanted to throttle Andrew with my bare hands when I heard what he did to you! Did you think I was that fucking heartless? That I wouldn’t come running to see with my own two eyes that you were okay?”
“I didn’t know how you felt about me,” he says through gritted teeth. “And I still don’t.”
“What?”
“I’m well aware of what I said yesterday,” he says. “It slipped out at the worst time possible, but it’s out there. You know. You know, and I don’t.”
“Julian, you know how I feel about you. We would not be together if you didn’t know.
I wouldn’t have let you call yourself my boyfriend if you didn’t know.
” Even when he was trying to hold back his temper, my heart fluttered when I heard that word from him.
Like, actually fluttered. I’m so lost over this man, I’m sickening to even myself.
“That doesn’t change the fact that you’ve never said it aloud and I have.
” His arms slap at his sides. “Not that you need to say you love me if you don’t mean it.
I want you to mean it when you say it, and that’s not even what I’m really talking about.
I just…I need something here. You’re pulling away from me, Leticia.
All week, you’ve been pulling away from me and I need to know that I’m not about to lose you. ”
He kisses me before I can tell him it’s not true, and I desperately want to, but he needs this more.
It’s a lot like our second kiss, hard and angry and bruising.
I clutch at his chest with my good hand, balling my fist in the fabric as I pull him closer.
He pours his pain into me, and it lands with a crushing weight on my chest. I only pull away when I feel wetness against my cheeks and am alarmed to find the source of it falling from Julian’s eyes.
“Julian.”
He lets out a shuddering breath that breaks my heart as I wipe the tears from one side of his face with my thumb, the sight inexplicably making my own eyes sting all over again.
“My sunshine boy. Please, don’t cry. You’re not losing me. I promise.”
“You swear?”
“I do,” I say. “I’m sorry for pulling away from you. I never meant to hurt you. I did it because I was hurting. I mean, fuck, you gave me the most impossible task of a lifetime. Or so I thought.”
“In my head, it was never your task,” he says. “It was mine.”
“Meddler.” He chuckles against my lips. “It was always my task. Mine and Andrew’s. But you played a good part, I’ll give you that. He only called me because you told him to.”
“See?” His mouth quirks, a ghost of a smile. “Meddling works.”
I breathe into him, a well of relief filling me. This was the real reconciliation I needed this week.
“I can’t lose you, Leticia.” His hands sink into my hair as he kisses the side of my mouth, trailing up to my temple, and then the crown of my head.
“I need you to be more careful. I need you to ask for help when you need it, because if you ever get yourself into another situation like this, my heart won’t be able to take it. ”
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll be more careful. Promise.”
“Good,” he says. “Get some rest.”
I pull him with me onto the bed, curling myself into his chest and reveling in the feeling of his arm wrapped around my waist. I’m not sure when I drift to sleep, only that it hits me like a brick as my last thoughts fill with Julian.
I love him. I love Julian. He needs to know I love him.