III.
I gaped at Julian. We were sitting in the very back booth of the small diner he’d steered me into.
When we’d come in, he’d introduced me to the man who’d greeted us at the door.
“This is Joe, my manager Mikey’s little brother,” he said. And then once we’d taken a seat at the booth he’d added, “Good people. The whole family.”
An untouched plate of French fries sat in front of us. And two similarly untouched vanilla milk shakes. The whipped cream had begun to melt, and the maraschino cherry was dangerously close to nose-diving into the ice cream.
“She just left?”
Julian shrugged and stretched out his hands, drumming his fingers against the table. I stared at the fries, which were starting to look particularly greasy under the fluorescent lights of the diner.
“Yeah, kid. She just left.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Tell me about it.”
I gave him a you-know-what-I-mean glare. “Didn’t you call her?”
“I called her over and over again. I flew to try and visit her. She rebuffed me, Taliah. She wanted nothing to do with me.”
“And you just gave up?”
He hung his head. “I had to respect what she wanted. I didn’t let go, but I let her let go. That’s all there was left to do.”
A rosy-tinted love song came on over the diner’s speakers. Julian flinched a little.
“Not your jam?” I asked.
“Not particularly,” he admitted, smiling sheepishly.
“Was your way of not letting go to write songs about Mom?”
He nodded. “That’s kind of my brand, isn’t it? A certain type of unrequited melancholy.” He tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “You know the pause in ‘That Night’?”
I nodded. Of course I did. It was one of S.I.T.A.’s biggest hits, if not their most famous song, and was well known for a part where the music cuts out completely. You think the song is over, and then all of a sudden, the music starts again at full blast. It takes the listener by surprise, and the first time you hear it, you’re truly thrilled to realize the song isn’t actually over yet.
“That pause was always sort of a metaphor for my inability to let go.” He shrugged in a way that made him seem younger. Helpless, almost. “I’ve never been good at endings.”
My insides swelled with several different conflicting emotions. I couldn’t believe that Mom in some ways was directly responsible for one of the most famous stylistic choices in a modern rock song. That was pretty freaking cool. But it was also devastatingly sad. As I looked at Julian, I could see that even after all these years, he still wasn’t sure how to let it go.
“I think most of your songs end in a pretty satisfactory way,” I offered.
He gave me a little nod.
I thought about it some more. “I still don’t understand why she just left. Why then?” I narrowed my eyes. “Are you sure you’re telling me everything?”
Julian fidgeted. Something crossed his face, but it was gone quickly.
“What?” I said.
Julian kept folding and unfolding his sunglasses. Putting them on the edge of the table and picking them back up.
“What is it?” I pressed.
He let out a deep sigh. “I mean, your mom and I weren’t in the best place then.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know,” he hedged.
“No. I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”
He tilted his head back and ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Taliah. We were fighting a lot. She thought I was partying too much. She thought I was cheating on her.” He held up his hands. “Which I wasn’t. I maybe was too flirtatious with fans at times, but I never cheated on her.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, unsure that I fully believed him.
“And I thought she resented my success. So you see, we fought over normal, petty things and suspicions. I just didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until it was over.”
I wasn’t sure what he was describing fell firmly into the category of normal, given that most people weren’t famous musicians, but I understood what he was trying to say. “You think her mother’s death just changed her?”
He slumped down in a defeatist way. “I think that was probably the catalyst for it. But she gave up on me, on us. She left.”
I felt like I should defend Mom, but I didn’t know how to. A knot formed in my throat. “Do you think she knew about me? You know, she always told me that my father was someone from back home in Jordan. She says they reconnected during her mother’s funeral, and she didn’t realize she was pregnant until she was back in the States.”
Julian pinched his lips together. “I don’t know if she knew she was pregnant at the time she left, but I’ve been wondering that too. And I can’t decide if that makes it better or worse.”
I nodded a little. “It just doesn’t seem like Mom. She’s never struck me as a rash person.”
Julian made a noncommittal sound.
“Okay, okay. But you know what I mean,” I offered. I reached out for my milk shake. I gripped the sides of the cold glass and spun it around.
“Yeah,” he said. “Something doesn’t add up. But sometimes I wonder if I think something is off because I want it to be. Instead of the cold hard truth—that she just didn’t want me anymore. That she was done waiting for me to turn into a person who didn’t disappoint her.”
I leaned forward in the booth. There was something I wanted to say but was afraid to. “For what it’s worth,” I said slowly, “you haven’t been a disappointment to me.”
Julian’s face slowly broke into a smile. A small one. But a smile nonetheless. “Really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
“That’s something, Tal. That’s really something.” The vulnerability and rawness of his voice reminded me of the way he sang some of S.I.T.A.’s most popular songs. It also made me want to cry. Julian’s hand instinctively went to his eyes. I could tell he was a little embarrassed that he was getting so emotional. He put his sunglasses back on and crossed his arms, slouching back down in the booth.
I chewed on my lower lip. “I’m sorry.”
He jerked to look at me. “Sorry? What for?”
I shrugged and sank into the booth. “For being difficult. For being sort of distant. It’s just hard for me … it’s always just been me and Mom, you know? I’m trying to figure out how this—you, this other piece—fits.”
“I get that.” He gave me a sad smile. “Is that why you don’t want to talk to me about your own music?”
I stared down at the booth’s tabletop. “Not exactly.”
“Taliah, what is it?”
“It’s just,” I said, squirming in my seat, “I feel dumb. You’re like a rock star. And I’m this wannabe. I don’t want to be some second-rate carbon copy of you.”
“Look,” he said, and he reached across the table. “You never have to worry about being some second-rate carbon copy of me.”
I blushed. “You don’t know that. You’ve only heard one of my songs. The rest of them could all be like the musical equivalent of bad fan fiction of your albums.”
He laughed. “I doubt that.” And then paused. “Wait. Are they?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head and laughing a little. “Maybe someday I’ll play the rest of them for you.”
His whole face broke into a grin. “I’d love that.”
“Not yet, though,” I said quickly.
“I know,” he said. “I’m willing to wait. We have time.”
Something washed over his face. Sadness maybe. Longing.
“Are you thinking about your dad?” I asked softly.
He nodded. “I think the thing that hurts the most right now is I’m grieving all the moments I lost. All the times I didn’t call home or visit. All the times I didn’t just sit him down and force him to talk about our issues with me.” He sighed. “I wish I was spending more time feeling nostalgic for the memories I do have, and less time feeling greedy and bitter about the memories I don’t.”
Before I could say anything in response, his phone started to ring. “Hello?” he answered.
His face fell. He nodded to himself and tersely said, “Okay. We’ll be there.”
Once he’d hung up, he turned to me. “We need to go to the hospital.”