32. Broken Hearts #2
Hudson’s the first to speak, his words thick and broken. “I’m the enforcer.”
Fen’s even quieter. “I’m the cheerleader.”
Nolan doesn’t have to say anything.
My eyes can’t leave the video, but my heart has left the scene. It’s floating somewhere outside of myself, searching for the one who can stop the bleed.
Nana Mae clutches my forearm. She’s wedging herself between me and Hudson on the sectional, and I hadn’t even seen her move.
“But they were young, with lives of their own. They had classes, and girlfriends, and stressors. It’s where my bully thrived.
While smiling at the boy I loved and tormenting me behind his back.
Then, she drew a line in the sand that changed my found family forever.
It ripped us apart. It broke my eighteen-year-old heart. ”
A numbness creeps over my limbs, making everything cold and uncoordinated.
“I learned at a young age that spite was a quick remedy for pain, and I leaned on it often. When the world first learned who I was, it was during my second heartbreak. I’d just learned my best friend, Grace—my only friend, really—was having an affair with my boyfriend.
Trust has never come easily to me, and you saw me choose spite because they had ripped apart my spirit in ways I didn’t know it could tear. ”
Fen spliced the video here. It’s a montage of video clips showing Junie and Grace’s friendship over time. Then it cuts again to Junie on the bar top, a bottle of liquor in her hand that she’s pretending is a microphone. He cut it down to twelve seconds, but it’s twelve seconds too long.
“Mother of God,” Mae murmurs. “Look at her face.”
I did. It’s burned into my memory for all time.
“Then you saw the aftermath. The I’m not sorry versus I am sorry without ever having the full context.
Social media spins in favor of beauty and lights and smoke and mirrors.
Not the broken girl with the broken heart who wasn’t mature enough to simply call out bad behavior and move on.
So I did what I do best—I hung on to my anger. I ran.”
She ran to me.
“I fell in love with my brother’s best friend all over again.”
“Oh, fuck.” It slips from my mouth because every ounce of anger I’ve been holding onto evaporates with that one line.
“But sadly, this isn’t the brother’s best friend story many of us love to read. This is real life, with real villains and real hearts.”
What? No! No, no, no. We don’t end here. We can’t.
I hadn’t realized I’d stood until Nolan’s loud exhale is muted by Hudson’s louder growl.
“Suddenly, I’m filling your screens again, only this version of me is that scared sixteen-year-old who had just lost her mom. That version of me was used to create a new narrative of spite. But in my story, I was taking something stolen and returning it to its rightful owner.”
She just repositioned herself from someone who chooses spite to someone who chooses what’s right.
“That fissure that happened when I was eighteen, my first love and my first bully, all converged in a mess of tangled limbs that spread six years of pain. Natalie, like Grace, only told you the version of the story that gave her the outcome she desired. She didn’t mention that she attached her name to stolen designs.
She didn’t tell you that she stole my private moments, pilfered from my home when she was there as a guest. She didn’t tell you that every time I react, it’s because I’ve been pushed to the point of destruction.
Social media is a powerful tool, but it also carries the weight of total loss and despair that keyboard warriors often ignore. ”
Nana Mae breaks down, but she doesn’t stop watching.
Fen spliced the video again here. It’s something from Junie’s teenage vlog.
Fuck me. It’s from my birthday party.
Tears fill my eyes as she hands me her gift. A cup she painted at a local pottery place. She meant it to hold my charcoals. I have it upstairs.
The video scans and lands on Natalie.
Rage like I’ve never experienced rips from my chest in a roar that no one questions.
“You’re pathetic,” Natalie hisses. “You should have died instead of your mother.”
Every man in the room lunges for the screen—our only outlet for a pain we didn’t know existed but are now seeing with our own eyes.
It’s devastating.
The video returns to Junie, but none of us takes a step back. We stand shoulder to shoulder as though we can carry her pain.
“She didn’t tell you that while she’s creating campaigns, I’ve been silently filling out forms, applying for grants, and ensuring that her brother, an innocent in all of this, did not pay for her poor choices. I’ve lived that pain—he shouldn’t have to.”
My stomach heaves, and I nearly double over.
Junie’s protecting Marcus. She’s doing the exact thing I’ve been trying to do for her for six years, but better, faster, without the possibility of anyone getting hurt.
“He’ll be fine,” Nolan says quietly.
“Once again, you only had part of the story. Theirs. Now you have mine.”
“Jesus, Junie.” Nolan’s voice falters.
When I glance around the room, I understand for the first time just how Junie’s confessions have shattered us all for different reasons.
“And when I sign off today, it will be without social media. Natalie and Grace can continue with their false narratives that make them feel powerful. But I won’t be part of it.
From this moment on, I’m removing myself from their stories, and they can find a new villain to blame.
And now, you can decide the truth. I’m at peace with mine. ”
The video ends.
The black square that sits on the TV where Junie’s face was a second ago is the loudest thing in the room.
Hudson stares at his hands.
Fenway studies his blank iPad.
Nolan’s eyes are closed, as if he’s trying to block out the pain we just witnessed.
Nana Mae holds a hand over her mouth.
None of us knew that this is what Junie’s carried.
I find myself standing at the window, staring at nothing, because the collective guilt in this room is suffocating.
“I—I need help.” My voice cracks like a wheel that hasn’t been greased in fifty years. I don’t try to correct it. “I’ve spent the last six years fighting for her from afar. Now, I need—please help me fight to get her back.”
I turn to face them.
Each of my friends has a melancholy type of smile, like they’re remembering the girl she used to be before the world stole her spark.
“I’ve been designing a house for the memory I had of her. I have hallways wide enough for her to walk through while reading so she doesn’t run into the wall because she used to do that every day—”
“She doesn’t do that anymore,” Nolan says.
“No, she doesn’t.” I run a hand through my hair. “Now she sits on her knees when she gets excited about a TV show. She waves wildly with both hands when she’s fired up about a theory or telling a story. She retreats when she feels threatened and she sighs when I hold her.”
I can tell by the blank stares that no one is following me.
“When I left Boston, my feelings for Junie had changed, and Natalie had recognized that long before I did. She weaponized it, collecting evidence while I had no idea we were at war. And what she did with that knowledge changed the course of all our lives.”
Nolan tries to hand me a bottle of water, but I ignore it.
“Then Junie showed up here. She’s spent the last two months becoming a woman who dismantles sabotage because her mind was built for forensics the way some people were built for marathons.
She just told a million people that she’s removing herself from social media and she doesn’t give a shit what they say about her.
She’s not going to want a reading nook under the stairs.
She’s going to want—” My mind is working faster than I can speak.
“We’ll need an office big enough for two.
Light that creates shadows and rainbows in equal measure. ”
Behind me, Hudson clears his throat. “What are you asking us, Cole?”
I face him with manic energy making my limbs twitch. All four of them stare at me wearing the same expression—like a family who has finally staged an intervention that worked.
And in some ways, it did, because I’m asking for help.
Again.
“I need help building a new model quickly because I’ve already wasted too much time and I don’t know how long she’ll be gone. But she’s coming back. I know she is.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Nolan asks.
“Then I’ll go to her.”
“What scale?” Fen asks, rolling up his sleeves. They watched me learn to build these things for long enough they know the basics.