Page 49 of Caught in a Bad Fauxmance
“Nothing that glamorous, no,” he says with a snort.“Mom’s been thinking about moving for a while now. Most of her family is still out on the West Coast, and she hates the humidity here. I’m going to stay with my aunt for a bit. She knows practically every small business owner in the area, so she has a few leads lined up for potential jobs already. If everything works out, Mom’ll come over after she takes the California bar exam.”
I stiffen, hazarding a peek at him. “California?”
“Yeah…” He trails off.
“Oh…” I shift my attention to the tree hanging over us, grateful for the darkness cloaking my flushed cheeks.
California’s one of the biggest states in the country. Julian being in California doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to be in the same city. Sure, his mom is practically the pride and joy of Los Angeles, but maybe his aunt lives in Fresno. Or San Francisco. Or he could be off to become one with nature in Joshua Tree. No need to panic yet.
“Sorry, I should’ve mentioned it earlier,” Julian says, an uneasy edge to his tone. “It never felt like the right time to blurt out, ‘Hey, by the way, I’m sort of moving to LA after graduation.’ ”
Okay, never mind.
“It’s okay. I don’t own the city.” I keep my voice calm. The polar opposite of how I’m feeling internally.
All semester I’ve held out hope that the universe would put someone new in my path. A classmate, a friend, a…something more. Someone who hasn’t found their way yet either. Someone who’s as afraid of the city and the prospect of failing as I am. Someone to conquer that fear with.
And the universe gave me Julian.
The universe has a terrible sense of humor.
“So, you haven’t told your dad any of this?” I ask, trying to change the topic. I can wrestle with how I feel about everything I’ve just learned about Julian later, ideally not when he’s lying right next to me in the dreamy moonlight.
He shakes his head, tapping his knuckles against the wood. “No. I got close, though. I told him I didn’t want to play lacrosse anymore. I thought maybe if I started to come clean, it might help Stella feel like she could too. Dad wants her to focus on getting accepted into an Ivy next year, but she’s had her heart set on UCLA since she was a freshman.” He exhales, and the tapping stops abruptly. The pieces start to come together—the way he’d looked at his phone, the tension when he got back, the way he’d snapped at me.
“Dad always makes this stuff about my mom,” he says, angrier than before. “That she’s too easy on us, letting us skip practices or pull out of activities we don’t want to do. That she doesn’t care about our futures the way he does, which isrichcoming from someone like him, when that’s why Mom…” The anger in his voice that’s been growing with each syllable reaches its peak, then dies altogether. He cuts himself off midbreath, and before I can process what he’s said, he’s sitting up and reaching for his shoes. “I’m sorry, you don’t need to listen to all this. I can—”
“No.” I sit upright so abruptly the world starts to spin. I grab Julian’s arm, the way he always grabs mine. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, but don’t think that you’re a burden.”
I don’t know where those words came from. But they make Julian stay in place for a few more seconds, and for that, I’m grateful.
He sags once I let go of him, his eyes falling to the water. “I don’t want to make you feel weird, hearing about all of this.”
“Everything about us is weird,” I reply with a lopsided grin. “Why not make it weirder?”
Julian returns my smile with one of his own, setting his shoes aside and lying back down beside me. “This month’s been hard,” he whispers, so much closer this time. “Especially with the whole Liam thing.” He nudges his shoulder against mine. “You’ve made it easier, though.”
I ignore the goose bumps that blossom along my arm where it’s pressed against his. “What can I say? I’m a lifesaver too.”
The lack of distance between us is still unnerving, but I’m glad he’s not able to feel my heart thrumming against my skin.
“Sorry for hijacking your winter break,” he says. “When I came up with this plan, I didn’t imagine you’d wind up with six hundred mosquito bites three days before Christmas.”
I wave off the apology. “It’s fine. Not like we had exciting plans anyway.”
He lets out a sound that’s between a snort and a scoff. “Us either. Dad insisted he gets us on Christmas, even though holidays have always been Mom’s thing. He’s probably just gonna ditch us after breakfast to go golfing with Liam’s dad.Sofun.”
Nothing about that statement surprises me, but the way it makes my heart ache does. I know all too well how much the loss of a tradition can hurt.
“We almost didn’t come, but Dad insisted.” Julian’s sigh cuts right through me. “It…feels weird not to have Mom around. She calls all the time to make sure we’re doing okay, but…it’s not the same.”
Yeah. I get that.
He doesn’t say anything else, so neither do I. It doesn’t feel right to tell him that a part of me is glad he came after all. That, in a weird, twisted way, he’s become the highlight of my winter break. Not when he still has the power to take so much from us. Instead, we just sit, listening to the breeze and the buzz of the lake.
“My mom loved tres leches cake,” I say after what feels like hours go by. “Her sister, my titi Rosa, always made it the best. Dad used to make us drive out to her place thirty minutes earlyeveryChristmas Eve to make sure we got some before she ran out. But then she said some pretty nasty stuff after Maya said she wanted to marry a princess instead of a prince at our fifth birthday party. So she’s dead to us, and we decided to spend Christmases here instead.” Julian flips onto his side, brows knit in confusion, but he doesn’t interrupt. “We would drive for hours to find the best tres leches cake, but nothing ever lived up to the original. So, one year, Mami said we’d figure out our own recipe. One that was ten times better than Titi Rosa’s.
“Mami was really sick by then. She’d spent most of the year in the hospital, but she was able to come home in time for Christmas. Obviously, we couldn’t come down here, butwe were grateful to have her home, period. So Maya and I spent every day of our break trying to figure out that recipe. Since Mami couldn’t really leave her bed, we brought everything to her to taste test. In the end, we didn’t get super close to replicating the original. Honestly, ours was pretty gross. But Mami helped us decorate the one we had on Christmas Eve with a little smiley face made of cherries. That was my favorite part. Even though the rest of it sorta tasted like cottage cheese. We couldn’t have any family over, so we sat in her room and talked. Played board games. It wasn’t exciting, but it was still our favorite Christmas Eve.” I let out a humorless laugh, willing myself not to cry over something I’ve already shed hundreds of tears for. “And then she left us. Three days later.”
