Page 64 of Caught in a Bad Fauxmance
Winding roads and dimly lit streets lead us to the north side of the lake, only a few miles away from Allegheny Park. A behemoth of a waterslide towers over the tops of the trees, lit up by a spotlight even though the park is closed for the night. If I’d spotted it weeks ago, it would’ve made me drool, and Maya and I would’ve found a way to sneak in without tickets. Getting to know Liam may have soured all things Allegheny Park, but the thought of going doesn’t interest me much anymore. I loved Lake Andreas when I was five, when it was bursting with new faces and the possibility of adventure. And I think I might love it even more now with its frayed, yellowed edges.
We settle down on the grass, leaning against mighty oak trees. The adrenaline that had been thrumming through our veins has run its course, so we sip our iced lattes slowly,stretching the caffeine as far as it’ll take us. Julian is opposite me, closing his eyes and playing music off his phone because we’re too exhausted to make conversation.
Bringing my sketchbook had seemed like a silly decision at the time, but I’d brought it just in case. You never know when you might need something to occupy your hands. I balance it on my lap, straining my eyes until the page comes into view. Having Julian in front of me as a reference is helpful. Even better with his eyes closed. There are lots of things I’d missed while working off memory—the scar on his upper lip, the one strand of hair above his left ear that never seems to behave.
“Wow. What a handsome young man,” Julian says, voice weighed down by sleepiness and warm against my cheek.
The pencil flies out of my hand when I realize how close he is. I’d been so focused on the sketch that I hadn’t noticed him waking up or coming over to sit beside me. The ache in my eyes eases as the glow of the rising sun slowly stretches toward us.
“It’s the latest installment in my ‘obnoxious hot guys with huge egos’ series.”
I don’t need the sun to tell that he’s smirking; I can hear it in his voice. “So youdothink I’m hot.”
I press myself farther back against the tree with a sigh. “I think you have a serious case of selective hearing. You should get that checked out.”
He laughs, quiet and adorable, crawling back to the tree opposite me.
I could tell him to stay, but I don’t. I could say something else, but I don’t do that either.
“You should use the portrait of your mom,” he says once he’s settled back down against his tree. “For the mentorship.”
It takes a second for me to ground myself and shake off the jitters that bubble up whenever Julian gets too close. “You think?”
“Yeah.” There’s a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his lips, his eyes focused over my shoulder, his mind somewhere else. “When I saw that portrait, I just…gotit. All these intense feelings…like I was there and knew her—like,reallyknew her.” He holds up his index finger. “And I never ‘get’ art.”
The undignified snort I let out makes him laugh again and me blush down to my toes. It’s a welcome distraction as I sit with what he’s said, smiling to myself as I consider the drawing of him, wondering if it had the same effect on him.
“Did it scare you?” he asks when I don’t respond, knees pulled up to his chest. “Art school? Moving to California?”
“Shitless,” I reply, one of the few times I don’t have to overthink a reply to him. “Beyondshitless. And it still does, every day.” A moment of pause as I set down my pencil. “Does it scare you?”
He nods, picking at blades of grass until they pull free. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel worth it. I could probably work in business management or consulting, if I studied hard enough. Not at Princeton.” He yanks the blade between his fingers, earth coming up with it. “But somewhere else. Play it safe, be miserable, probably. But safe. Stable.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
It’s an argument I’ve had with myself dozens, if nothundreds, of times over this past semester. Late at night and during class and every time I found myself panicking over the stack of unfinished assignments on my desk.
Dad and Mami didn’t give themselves the luxury of options because they knew it meant they could pass them down to us instead. Medicine. Engineering. Stable work, stable money. The kind of money that could help get you out of the pit you dug to get the job in the first place. It didn’t matter that Mami liked literature more than biology or that Dad wanted to design comics instead of buildings. They gave up passion for practicality so that I wouldn’t have to.
And I’m barely staying above water.
There’ll never be enough words in either of our languages for me to thank them for putting our lives ahead of theirs before they even knew us. But even luxuries come with fine print. Nightmares in the form of Dad’s voice. A question I’m terrified he’ll ask me someday.
Are you sure you made the right choice?
What if I’m not good enough? What if I fail at the one thing I thought was meant for me? What if we sank all this money into a dream I can’t deliver on? Maya gave up on her dream when she saw the price tag—why did I think I could still have mine? I can’t even come up with a subject for a piece that’s supposed to be about me. How can I expect to compete with people who’ve known they were going to be artists since they could hold a pencil?
What if my parents gave up their possibilities for me to pick the wrong one?
“It’s weird,” Julian says, pulling me back to the present. “Ithought I’d feel better about giving up on the whole Princeton thing. But I think I’m just as scared of not knowing what I want to do as I was of doing something I’d regret.”
“Whatever you decide to do, you’re going to be amazing at it,” I say, because at least that’s something I’m sure of. “Since you’re good at everything.”
He chuckles, slow and soft like he’s half asleep. “And you’re going to be a great artist.” He leans down onto the grass, stretching himself out until his head is resting beside my knee. His eyes twinkle in the darkness. “You already are.”
I set my sketchbook beside him, Portrait Julian looking over his shoulder at his living, breathing counterpart. There’s a sadness in Portrait Julian’s eyes, as if he knows he’ll never live up to the real thing.
Without thinking, I grip the corner of the page and rip it free. The sound cuts through my heart, makes me wince, but not as much as I thought it would. It was a good idea, but something like this, a piece that was closer to my heart than I ever intended for it to be, isn’t right for the mentorship either. I’d rather let it live with him than let a stranger—albeit an impressive stranger—analyze it. Wonder who he was and what he meant to me when I’m not even sure myself.
