by Nicky Shanks
The door opens and I stick my head out of the steamy shower and frown. It isn’t Julie, it’s Nora, blushing and looking at the floor the best she can. “I think you better come downstairs,” she says in a worried voice.
“What is it?”
Nora backs out of the room. “Just hurry.”
When she closes the door, I stand in silence for a few minutes. I haven’t finished washing off the soap, so I hurry, turn off the shower, towel off, and carefully open the bathroom door to make sure Nora isn’t waiting for me.
The room is empty.
Where’s Julie?
There’s a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I rush into some jeans and a stone-colored V-neck t-shirt, not caring about shoes or combing my hair. When I open the bedroom door to step out, I hear muffled yelling and someone sobbing so I run down the stairs, frantically looking around for Julie.
The house is empty.
“Let her go!” I hear Nora yell outside.
“Dude, I’ll kick your fucking ass—don’t touch her!” Harley booms.
“Julie!” Staci cries.
“You told me you’d never leave me!” a man screams.
“Oh, shit! Is she okay? Harley—get him!” Casey shouts.
“I said don’t fucking touch her, man!” Harley yells again and I hear loud thuds; someone is punching the shit out of someone else.
My brain twists in fear as I open the front door and push outside. My friends are littered around the gravel driveway, the only light coming from the front patio, but I can still see the fear on their faces.
Harley and Victor are scuffling with another man on the ground who keeps reaching for Julie, crumpled up like a paper bag on the ground next to them.
“Julie.” I gasp and start running toward her.
“Oliver, watch out!” Nora calls my name and I feel a blow to the side of my head, bringing me to my knees. Julie’s tears hit the ground as I try to catch my breath and look up at her.
“I’m sorry,” she mouths to me.
The man who’d been scuffling with the boys is focused on me now. “You think because you’re a rich playboy that you can have her?” He screams and kicks me in the stomach, making me cough and fall to the ground completely. “Have you been fucking her this entire time? Huh? No one gets her but me!”
Oliver, get up and kick this guy’s ass.
One more kick to my side and that’s it. I growl, jump up, tackle the man, and pin him on the ground before punching him in the mouth. “Don’t talk about her like that!” I spit. Harley and Victor have to pull me off of him before I kill him. The man gurgles and sits up, spitting out blood and looking at Julie. “Don’t even fucking look at her,” I yell. “Who the fuck are you?” I almost break free.
“I’m her boyfriend.” He spits out more blood.
“Ex-boyfriend.” Nora glares at the man and then looks at me. “Brandon Whitehouse.”
Oh, this asshole better run.
My chest is on fire. I leap on him again and hold his shoulder down in the dirt. “Did you fucking hit her? I should kill you!”
Brandon laughs and spits blood in my face. “Screw you.”
I smirk and lean down; my voice is so scary that even I shiver. “No, screw you. I should kill you for hurting her. If you ever, ever, touch her again, I will fucking end you.”
“She’s mine,” Brandon croaks under my weight.
Before I know it, my hands are around his neck and he’s gasping for air. Harley and Victor try to pull me off of him and Nora screams my name; she begs me to stop, but I don’t care.
I see red—it’s blinding me.
I want to erase all of her pain.
I am going to kill him for hurting her.
Chapter Nine
Oliver
He isn’t breathing.
Wait, there he goes.
The color in his smug face drains and I can’t help but smile as he gasps for air. “Oliver, stop,” I hear Julie say and it makes me let him go.
“Get the hell out of here before she changes her mind,” I growl at him, crawling off his body and clutching my side as I try to start making my way toward Julie.
Brandon rubs his throat and chuckles, picking himself up from the ground. “You can’t protect her forever—she will come back to me, you’ll see. She’s mine…she belongs to me.”
“Not as long as I’m around.” I point toward the car parked behind him. “Leave before I do something I can’t come back from.”
Brandon turns toward Julie. “You’ll come back, just wait and see. You need me, Julie.” I push him and he nearly falls over.
“Dude, you better go before he really kills you,” Harley says next to me, keeping a tight grip on my t-shirt to hold me back from pouncing on him again. Brandon doesn’t look impressed but he decides against talking to Julie again and gets into the running car and backs out of the long driveway. It takes me a few minutes to catch my breath and calm myself down before I can look at her. The tears stain her cheeks but I can’t move.
What the hell was she thinking, coming out here with him at night?
Nora gets Julie on her feet and hugs her, brushing the hair from her eyes. Man, she actually does care about her. Again, I need to apologize to Nora for being such an ass, but Julie sniffles into Nora’s frizzy hair and I want to tuck her into my pocket and run away with her to make her pain go away.
“I can take her inside,” I say, and Nora nods at me. Julie lets me pick her up and carry her inside, nestling herself into my chest and silently drifting off to sleep. “She was tired when I left her to go shower—what the hell happened?” I whisper to Nora once I place Julie back in our bed.
Our bed.
Nora motions for me to meet her downstairs where the rest of them wait. Everyone’s trying to calm down after the display of fireworks Brandon caused outside. The girls are shaken up and the guys all still look pretty pissed off and ready to take action. No matter how big sleazebags Harley, Victor, and Casey can be, they still treat women with respect and don’t like when someone hurts one, especially right in front of them. I sit down across from them in an armchair and breathe deeply. “Okay, explain to me what the hell just happened out there.”
At first, the girls are silent. Then, Staci nudges Nora and she finally breaks. “Brandon wasn’t the best boyfriend to Julie, but I guess you can see that.” I narrow my eyes at her and nod slowly. “They were high school sweethearts. She was a cheerleader and he was…pretty much a lost cause. Well, after high school, Julie worked a lot and Brandon took a lot of her money…she never really had anything of her own and then Brandon met his boss’ daughter, Rachel, and he started sleeping with her behind Julie’s back.”
“And then Julie found out and he started abusing her, mentally and sometimes physically, so she stayed and he kept sleeping around,” Staci adds. “Mainly with Rachel but with other girls too.” Her words slice through my anger like a knife.
Oh, I am pissed now.
“Dude, calm down,” Casey says to me. “It’s over now.”
“Calm down? Are you fucking kidding me? You—” I point toward Casey. “—You brought me here and you—” I move my finger to Nora. “—What kind of friend are you to let her go through something like that? Why didn’t you make her leave?”
Nora doesn’t like when she’s in trouble. “I-I tried, Oliver, I really did.”
“Not hard enough, apparently.”
Casey snaps his fingers at me. “Hey, now. This isn’t her fault—don’t blame Nora for something that she had no control over.” I don’t take his one-sided bullshit anymore. I’ve had enough with dancing around sensitive subjects and playing it safe.
“This is probably why I don’t remember you,” I say with a scowl. “You weren’t someone worth remembering.” Even I know it’s harsh. Nora’s eyes well up with tears, but she doesn’t let them fall. Casey looks like he’s about to kick my ass, but I don’t care.
Okay, I care. Julie makes me care.
“I’m sorry, Nora.” The words feel bitter in my mouth. “I didn’t mean that. I’m just really pissed off. It’s hard knowing I give two shits about her and you both act like this isn’t a big deal. It’s a big fucking deal!” My voice booms throughout the living room. The anger rises again; I do nothing to stop it. “So now I’m stuck giving a shit about this girl when I really don’t want to!”
Nora looks sick as the group notices someone behind me. “Nora, can you take me home?” Julie’s voice is strained. “I’d really like to go home now.”
“No, you’re not going anywhere tonight,” I say to her and turn around. My heart races; did she hear what I said?
Her face is pale and scared.
She heard me.
“Okay,” she whispers and disappears back up the staircase. I can’t take hurting her…I groan and bury my face in my hands. The feeling of a thousand hands pulling me in different directions creeps into my stomach and rips my insides apart. “I can’t believe you guys have done this to me.”
“What exactly did we do to you?” Nora snaps, the bangles of her earrings swaying with her fierce head shake. “It’s your fault you slept with her. It means more to her than it does to you.”
“You don’t know what it means to me,” I growl, and Nora looks a little freaked out by the rage reaching out to get her.
Casey whistles between his teeth and waves his arms in front of us. “Okay, okay, let’s all calm down. Ollie, man—your ex did a number on you, okay? It’s natural to get scared when you start feeling things for someone else.”
Nora’s eyebrows raise. “Do you have feelings for Julie?”
Something isn’t right here.
I don’t feel like myself.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on anymore,” I groan. “But yeah, I guess I do.”
“Then get the hell upstairs and go talk to her.” Casey points toward the staircase. “She’s vulnerable, scared, and embarrassed. I doubt she lets anyone in but you right now.” I nod and do what he says, patting him on the shoulder as I pass him. Sometimes Casey can be the best friend anyone could have.
The fire is the only light in the room when I slowly open the door. I hope she isn’t asleep. Her small body sits in front of the fire; she’s still curling into herself like she’s on the defense.
“Hey, you,” I say softly and almost tiptoe toward her. I can hear her quietly sniffling, trying not to let me know she’s crying, but I can feel it even if I can’t see it. “I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have yelled at you down there.” The room is warm, but that doesn’t stop me from sitting next to her and reaching for the strands of hair around her face before she sobs into her hands.
“You don’t owe me anything; we’re basically strangers,” she says through her quiet, heaving sobs. “I don’t expect anything from you; I told you I didn’t need someone to fix me.”
She did hear me.
I sigh. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Julie. I don’t want to fix you because you’re perfect just the way you are. This is you and me, now. Here. Together.” Before I know it, she’s climbed into my lap and kissed me, her lips salty from her tears. I lift my hands to her face and wipe the rest of them away, letting her snuggle into my chest again. I listen to her fractured breathing from the remnants of her cries, and I can still feel the conviction in her bones: She doesn’t trust me.
I close my eyes and regret what I say to her before I even let the words past my lips. “Okay, you’re worried that we hardly know each other.” She nods. “And that I can be a total ass.” She nods again.
Her eyes are filled with darkness, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting her as much as I do. “The past is the past—why spend any more time on it? What do you want to know?” She stays silent. “Fine, I’ll start. Where did you grow up? Where are your parents?” I nudge her and smile. “I want to know every single thing that makes you who you are.”
While she decides on what she wants to do, she bites her inner cheek and stares at me. “My parents live in Oakland; I haven’t seen them in a long time.”
“Why?” I push her, but she shakes her head. “Julie, come on. How can I know anything about you if you refuse to tell me?”
She gulps and it makes me uneasy, so I push her again.
“Okay, they aren’t good people, all right?” she says. “They like to steal things and manipulate people into getting what they want. I’m pretty sure they’d opened up a half dozen credit cards in my name—and dozens of other people’s names—before I was old enough to drive.”
“Seriously?” My eyes grow wide. “Did you turn them in?”
She nods and looks flushed. “They were caught, they went to jail for a while and I came to live with my Aunt Shelly in Rockford, then I met Brandon our senior year of high school and Shelly died a few years ago from a heart attack.”
“That’s tough luck.” I frown. “My grandfather died from lung cancer.”
Julie wipes away a tear. “I’m sorry, Oliver.”
I laugh and wave her off. “Oh, don’t be, he was a cranky old bastard who hated everyone and everything. He just didn’t want the state to take his money, so he left it to me.”
She smiles at my aloofness. God, she’s beautiful. I’m not sure why I fought it so much before. The way the corners of her eyes crinkle when she smiles and her full lips tuck into each other when I know she’s thinking about kissing me—and she thinks about kissing me a lot—I can see it. I am losing myself in her and I’m in so much trouble when it comes to her, there’s no turning back now. “Julie, I don’t know what you’re doing to me, but when I’m with you, I get this burning in my stomach and I feel like I’m falling in space, like I can’t get a grip on myself.”
She giggles and feels my forehead with the tips of her long fingers. “You need sleep, or maybe some vodka.”
“No, I need you.” I lift her chin to look her in the eyes. “I need you, Julie.”
She searches my eyes with confusion. “Oliver, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, just don’t ever forget that, okay?” She nods in silence as I pick her up and place her gently on the bed, making sure she doesn’t get up this time. I tuck myself in next to her and hold her against me as I let what happened run through my mind. Brandon isn’t ever going to lay another finger on her as long as I am alive to protect her.
My Julie.
I wait for her to drift off to sleep and when I hear her breathing slow and she snuggles deeper into the cocoon of my body, I think about Heather and realize that I hate her for making me wait to be with someone like Julie.
I deserve Julie.
***
“Hey, Oliver?” I hear a woman call to me from another room. “Baby, can you come in here?” I feel myself smile and jump out of a chair, following her voice like a puppy dog until I find her standing in the middle of a bedroom, wearing a cocktail dress that is a few sizes too small, but I don’t dare say a word. Julie’s honey blonde hair falls down her back as she frowns into the full-length mirror in front of her and says, “Can you see if you can zip me up?” I wasn’t going to ask her why her dress wouldn’t fit, but instead I run my hand down her back and squeeze her ass gently, making a low growl.
She swats me away and giggles. “Be serious—you have to zip me up, okay? We have that charity dinner in an hour and this is the only dress that hasn’t betrayed me yet. Not to mention, that—” She points to the lower half of my body and smiles. “—is how we got this.” Her short fingers rub the large, round bump on her torso.
I manage to zip up the dress and she looks miserable in it, but the ring on her finger suggests that I spent a good chunk of change making her happy, even if she sobs into her hands about a cocktail dress not fitting her.
“Oh, God,” she sobs and runs into my arms. “This one is too small now too…what am I going to do?”
I stroke her hair and comfort her. “Why don’t you just buy bigger ones, baby?”
The glare she gives me sends s
hivers down my spine.
“Is that the solution? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” She lets herself free from my grip. “I guess each time the baby gets bigger when he’s born, you’re going to suggest that we just…what? Get a smaller baby?!” Her tone is frantic.
“Baby? What baby? My…baby?” I choke, focusing on her growing stomach. It’s the size of a perfectly round basketball.
“Are you okay? You should probably get ready while I find a bigger dress that isn’t hideous on me.” She frowns and looks at me. “You’re pale as a sheet—are you sure you’re okay? Oliver?” She waves her hand in front of me. I stare blankly at her and pull her down onto my lap, placing my hand on her stomach. A small kick scares the shit out of me. “That’s a baby in there!” I squeak and she laughs.
“His name is Colin, remember? Not ‘A Baby.’”
Colin.
My father’s name was Colin.
“I don’t want to wake up from this,” I say, but she doesn’t hear me as I watch her saunter from the room, humming a nursery rhyme and closing the door behind her.
I can hear her struggling with another dress as I look around the oiled and shiny office. I smile at a picture of us on the desk behind me.
Me and Julie.
Together in this moment.
I never want to leave this place.
Chapter Ten
Julie
“Hump day, hump day, what day is it?” I hear Harley chanting downstairs, the rest of the group laughing and talking loudly, not caring if Oliver and I are still asleep or not. “Hump day!” Staci giggles and no doubt smothers him with lip gloss and her slobber.
“My friend will be here tonight!” Nora’s excited voice bleeds through the others. I can feel Oliver’s large, warm body behind me and when I move to sit up, he pulls me back down into his embrace and locks his arms around me tight.
“I can’t wait to meet her, babe,” we hear Casey say, and their lips smacking together echoes through the stairwell and into the room. Oliver breathes in so deeply that I can feel his chest expanding into the small of my back before he lets the air go and his rough fingers slide down my arm, traveling toward my hand. His fingers twist around mine.
