Twenty-Six

JULIEN

Sangria night morphs into a surprise going away party for Greg. Julien stands on a ladder, hanging up a sparkly banner announcing the departure of the first guy he's fallen for in ages. It's depressingly poetic.

Aunt Augustine and Uncle Martin have gone all out. They covertly passed around a card to the staff the night before so they could all sign their well wishes. They even wrote Greg a little going-away bonus check and stuffed it inside the envelope before they sealed it.

Julien hasn't said a word about Greg leaving to anyone for fear they might read into it, hear his heartbreak acutely. The last thing he wants is sympathy. He knew Greg for, what, six months?

But he supposes his face is too expressive for its own good because as soon as they tie the knots to the beams above them and fold up the ladders, Aunt Augustine corners him and asks the question he knows she's been itching to ask. "Did you ever tell Greg about your feelings for him?"

He flounders, unable to lie to his mother figure. "Not exactly."

"So, that's a no." She narrows her eyes.

"The timing was wrong." Julien sighs. "He'd made his choice."

"What happened to what we talked about before you left?" Her confusion is evident by her closed-off stance.

He shrugs, nonplussed. "Greg drove me to the airport and sprang his interview on me. He kept saying how it was better pay and a good opportunity."

"What did you say?" There's an urgency embedded in her question that cuts through to Julien's core.

"I said we hit the list and that we didn't need him anymore." He hates having to relay all of this. As if his mind weren't supplying it intrusively every night after he shuts off the light. Sometimes, even before darkness takes hold of his empty bedroom.

Aunt Augustine's eyes bug out, though she remains silent for seconds longer than Julien can be comfortable with.

"What?"

"Say that again."

"Say what again?"

"What you said to me that you said to him."

Julien squints but rolls the tape back once more, enduring the pain for the sake of this torturous but probably necessary conversation. "That we hit the list and we didn't necessarily need him anymore."

"So that's where he got it!" She is nodding to herself, not letting Julien in on her private thoughts. She shifts her weight, appearing incredulous.

"I feel like we're having two totally different conversations." Julien props the ladder up against the wall, wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. The quicker they can set this up, the quicker it will be over, and the quicker Greg will be gone. Just like Colin before him, Julien will spend several weeks dissecting his leave-ability and then ultimately hop back on the apps to start the process all over again.

Though there is a bothersome vibrating in his chest that tells him this time isn't like the others. This time, the hurt is going to stick around for a while like gum in the grooves of the soles on his favorite shoes.

"When Greg put in his notice, he said we didn't really need him anymore," Aunt Augustine says. "You get to know a guy for half a year, and you start to predict what he would and wouldn't say. That's not something the Greg Harlow who came here in September would say unless he heard it somewhere, and I knew it wasn't from your uncle or me."

This statement creates a lump in the back of Julien's throat. "Are you..." he tries to get his words out around the stubborn lump, but it's difficult "...suggesting this is my fault?"

"No, Julien, of course not, but can't you see how that might've come across as hurtful?"

They've had conversations like this one a lot. In childhood, because of Julien's mostly undiagnosed mental health problems, he spent many social interactions sucked deep into his own mind. Which sometimes meant he responded rudely, and it wasn't until reflection that he was able to see more clearly where he'd gone astray.

Julien seriously hasn't considered that he'd been rude, but realizing it now still doesn't quite color in the situation the way Aunt Augustine seems to think it does. "He waited until the last minute to tell me about the interview, he'd already accepted it, and he was going off about how good the pay was going to be. He wanted my permission to leave, so I gave it to him."

Aunt Augustine puckers her lips before saying, "Or, hear me out on this, maybe he wanted you to give him a concrete reason to stay."

Stay?No. In Julien's experience, people don't stay. Not his parents. Not Colin. When Uncle Martin and Aunt Augustine hit retirement age, they'll pass the restaurant on to Julien and head south to Florida for good. Leave him here.

Leave him.

Leave.

Patterns don't break just because you want them to.

Julien shakes his head fast. The quicker he does it, the quicker his brain will click back into place. "That's not it at all. He accepted the interview before even talking to me. On top of that, he met up with his ex while he was in Manhattan. That's who he's been with all weekend. I saw the photos of them at some restaurant in Tribeca on Instagram."

He can't get those photos or that gaudy watch out of his head. He could never, in his present post and financial situation, compete with a man who can give Greg gifts like that and take him to restaurants with four dollar signs on Yelp. Julien can't be part of Greg's old world. It's clear now that Greg was only pretending to be part of Julien's current one.

Maybe if Julien were a master already, things would be different, but he's not, so they aren't, and that's that.

"That sounds an awful lot like an excuse not to be vulnerable. I know trust doesn't come easy for you, but you trust me, right?"

Julien takes stock of Aunt Augustine's kind blue eyes, her fiery red hair, and the bright orange pointed acrylics glued to her fingernails. Above anyone, he trusts her, so he nods.

"Wouldn't you say I earned that? After everything you went through, all the ugliness with your parents, it was clear you couldn't just let your uncle and me into your life, no questions asked. We knew that. Do you remember that period, right at the beginning, when you were scared to get in the car with me?"

"Vaguely." All of Julien's memories from that time are a little fuzzy. His therapist says that's expected when children go through severe trauma.

Julien can tell these words are painful for Aunt Augustine to say. "When you came to live with us, we couldn't get you in a car. It made sense. You were in the back seat when your mom got into that drunk-driving accident. Luckily, she'd had enough clarity of mind to buckle you into your car seat before taking off. Thank God those airbags worked. When we got to the hospital, she was in a neck brace, and the doctors told us all you got were some bruises from the seat belt yanking you back, but I knew that wasn't true. Well, physically it was true, but mentally, I wasn't convinced. Especially not with everything that came after."

Julien is burdened anew by those tenuous years of hearings and caseworkers and fights on the front lawn for the neighbors to see. He'd close his eyes and squeeze his muscles and wish against all might that he could make himself small enough to disappear.

Augustine continues, "We got you on the LANTA bus and the school bus no problem, though, which made us realize that it was us, not the car itself, you didn't trust. So under the guidance of your therapist at the time, we started small. Quick trips to the Wawa around the corner to get SnoBalls and blue raspberry Icees. We'd sit in the parking lot drinking them until we got brain freeze, then we'd stick our thumbs up to the roofs of our mouths to make the numbness subside."

"I remember that part." A smile creeps up onto Julien's face, the phantom taste tickling over his tongue.

"It was a four-minute drive, maybe five if we hit a red light, but it was quick. Then the next time, I asked, ‘Do you want to go to Wawa?' and you got all excited, except this time I drove in the opposite direction. I purposefully went to the Wawa in the town over. You were so perceptive, even then, and when I glanced in the rearview mirror, I saw panic on your face. I nearly turned right back around, but instead I said, ‘Heard the Icee machine at ours is broken.' And you made it. There were no tears. Just Icees and brain freezes and a sugar high on the drive back. You caught on to my plot eventually, going to farther and farther Wawas, but by the time we hit the Wawa by the New Jersey border, it didn't matter. You trusted me. You knew I was not going to make the same mistakes your mom did. That I was going to keep you safe. That I was going to adhere to the speed limit and be cautious and always double-check your seat belt. You never, not once, cried on any of those trips, but I did, when we got home. God, I was practically inconsolable."

"Why?" he asks.

"Because you'd been through so much, and I wanted you to feel safe with us, that we weren't some fractured, replacement family. We were your family for the long haul. That we would be different."

"You were," Julien is quick to say, reassuring her even though he suspects she's trying to reassure him. Of what? He's not quite certain yet.

"I know. And I know, also, that the situations aren't completely comparable, but hasn't Greg earned your trust as well? Wouldn't you trust him to drive you to Wawa for a blue raspberry Icee and remind you what to do when you inevitably get brain freeze?"

Julien does, and he would. He would sit in a parking lot for hours with Greg and never get bored, never grow tired of listening to his laugh and his stories about the academy or bartending school, or of looking at that ridiculously handsome face.

But Greg accepted the other job, and after overhearing him talk with some of the bussers, Julien knew he went apartment hunting last weekend. "It's too late, though."

Aunt Augustine takes Julien by the shoulders. "No, it's not. There's no such thing as too late. I thought, after all those failed IVF attempts and adoption attempts, that it was too late for me to be a mom and then the universe brought me you." There are tears in her eyes now.

Julien dabs at his own before throwing himself into a big, sloppy hug. "Thank you. I love you."

"I love you, too," she says into his hair, holding him tightly.

This is one element about his family Julien knew the kids who teased him would never have when it came to their families: a choice. He doesn't mean in blood relation or address or where his meals came from; he means in how free he could be with his heart.

From birth, there is a social obligation to adore your parents. But he learned an important lesson at a very young age: parents are people, too. Flawed people. People who make mistakes and can be careless. Sometimes, people who just aren't meant to be or don't want to be parents.

At first, Julien only knew Martin and Augustine tangentially from Christmas cards and—when his parents had it together enough to recognize the day and didn't have to work—the occasional Thanksgiving dinner. So when he landed on their doorstep, there was no built-in expectation, no greeting-card industrial complex to feed with clichéd affection.

Martin and Augustine could've easily deferred their rights, sent Julien to Florida to stay with the grandparents he'd never even met, and if they wouldn't take him, he could've just as easily been swallowed into the foster system. But Martin and Augustine chose Julien, and after many car rides and SnoBalls and blue raspberry Icees, Julien chose them.

This is how Julien has always handled his heart.

They earned his trust, so he gave his love.

There's no denying that Greg earned his trust over the last six months. One withheld interview can't change that. Julien couldn't have told Greg about his parents, taken Greg to his sacred paint-and-sip, and let Greg fuck him without a condom if he hadn't.

So he should let Greg know that he has a choice. Julien will choose Greg if Greg wants to choose him back. Even if that also means choosing to overcome misunderstandings, lifestyle differences, and the new state line between them.

Because Julien knows in his heart that Greg is worth it.

After all of this, he just hopes Greg feels the same.