Seventeen

Austin

I dashed after Julia as she disappeared through the back door. This was the exact reason that I hadn’t wanted Maggie to be here. I hadn’t had contact with her in weeks. I’d had no clue she would be at the parade event. And I certainly hadn’t wanted for Julia to see me talking to her. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

“Jules!” I called after her.

She didn’t stop walking. She opened the gate to the fence and started down the driveway in the back and out into the alleyway. I followed her as she paced down the alley.

“Leave me alone,” she called over her shoulder.

“No way in hell.”

She finally whirled around and put her hands out. “I need space. Just leave me alone to process.”

“Can’t do that, Jules.”

“Stop calling me that!” I cried. “I hate that nickname.”

“You didn’t have a problem with me calling you that when I was inside you.”

“Sex! Is that all it’s going to fucking come back to with you?” She ground her teeth together and kicked a stray rock.

“This isn’t about sex. This is about you jumping to conclusions and getting pissed at me.”

“I’m not pissed at you!”

I raised my eyebrows in question as she nearly shouted at me. “Sure sounds like you are.”

“I’m mad at me.”

“What? Why?” I asked in frustration.

I really, really did not want to be dealing with this shit right now. Julia and I were finally back together, finally in a good place again. It had seemed too good to be true. Seemed like the saying was right. If it looked like it, it probably was.

“God, don’t you see it?” she asked. Her eyes met mine, and she looked ready to sprint away all over again. “This is the reason we broke up, Austin!”

“I know why we broke up.”

“Really? Should I give you a refresher? Because you must have forgotten if Maggie was here.”

“I didn’t even know she’d be here!”

“Yeah, and last time, I had to find out that you had a fuck buddy the hard way! When I found her at your house, naked!”

“I know,” I said softly.

“And then to find out that not only was she there, naked, as if this were some stupid mistake you had gone through, but she was also your fuck buddy! You had been together for a couple of years. On and off and on again. Apparently, whenever the other one gets bored.”

“Jules, I know,” I ground out.

“Yeah, well, it was wonderful to find out that the only reason you hooked up with me was because she was out of town for the holidays. You used me, Austin. You were my mistake. A Wright mistake. How ironic.”

The memory of that night two years ago hit me fresh all over again. Julia and I had been together for the best six weeks of my life. The girl of my dreams. And then something had happened. I’d choked. I’d totally freaked out about my feelings for her.

It was stupid. I knew that now. I’d had a long-ass time to think about it. But catching real feelings for someone made me vulnerable. It made Julia vulnerable. And she didn’t even know that loving me was as good as putting her Glock to her head and pulling the trigger.

I couldn’t let that happen to her. And I hadn’t been able to tell the truth. It was easier to let her think the worst about Maggie than to own up to how I felt about her.

“Maggie and I weren’t together two years ago,” I told her.

“I saw her in your bed, Austin! The day before Valentine’s Day!”

“I know you did. I won’t deny that she was there, and she was there to seduce me. That we’d been together as fuck buddies for a couple of years. And all of that.” I held my palms up in front of me. “But we didn’t hook up when you and I were together, and I wasn’t with her that day.”

“Then, what was she doing there?” Julia asked. Her voice was still as icy as a glacier, but at least she was listening to me.

“Exactly what you suspect she was doing there. She showed up as a surprise for me for Valentine’s Day. Mags doesn’t really care who she hurts when she wants something. She was dating someone then, too.”

“Don’t call her Mags,” Julia snapped.

“I’m not going to try to justify what happened two years ago. I was an ass. I let you believe the worst about Maggie and me even though nothing was going on.”

“You let me believe it.” She snorted and glanced off at the horizon. “You didn’t even tell me about Maggie. You let me find her!”

“To be fair, I didn’t know she was going to be there when we showed up at my place.”

“That’s not fair! That’s bullshit. We dated for six weeks and not one word about any ex-girlfriends. Not one!”

“Did you tell me about any of your exes?” I shot back. I ran a hand back through my hair in frustration. “We didn’t exactly have the who-was-the-last-person-you-fucked conversation. We were too busy enjoying our lives and moving on.”

Julia didn’t meet my eyes and seemed to be contemplating what to say. Eventually, she just shook her head. “I hate this. I hate arguing with you.”

“You do?” I asked skeptically.

“I hate it when it’s about this shit. It was two years ago. I’d thought I was over it. But then I saw Maggie standing there so casually while you talked to her, and I just lost it. I’m not over Maggie. I don’t like seeing you two together. I’ll never be okay with that.”

“I think that’s totally understandable. I was telling her to leave. I don’t want her there.”

She sighed. “But she’s always going to be there. Lubbock isn’t small, but it’s small enough. With my luck, we’re going to run into her again.”

“I can’t guarantee that you’ll never see her again. Unfortunately, Patrick is talking to Mindi again, and that’s her new roommate.”

“Maggie and Mindi?” Julia asked with an exaggerated eye roll. “Great. Now, I’m going to hate M and Ms.”

I took a step forward and reached for Julia. She yanked her arm back and shook her head. Things were not good.

Once again, I had fucked up.

The first time had been when she found out about my drinking. She’d gone home to Ohio for Christmas, pissed at me for not revealing my bad habits. I’d shrugged it off, like it didn’t matter, and she’d gotten irrationally pissed at me.

When she’d come home, she’d decided to give us a try again. Then, Maggie had happened.

Now, here I was again, with my old issues hindering me from moving forward all over again.

“I don’t care if you hate them both. I’m telling you that, two years ago, I was so afraid of my feelings for you that I let you believe that Maggie and I had been together rather than admitting how I was feeling.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!”

“I know,” I said. I couldn’t tell her why it made sense to me in my fucked up head. But it did. It had at the time at least. “But I told you I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes. I want us to work, Jules.”

“And you haven’t seen Maggie since we’ve been together?” she asked hesitantly.

I shook my head. “That was the first time I’d seen her in weeks.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“It’s not the same. I don’t want Maggie. I want nothing to do with her. She doesn’t understand the first thing about me. She tried to offer me a beer, for fuck’s sake.”

Julia leaned toward me, as if the very thought of tempting a recovering alcoholic made her visibly nauseated. “She didn’t!”

“Well, she doesn’t know that I’m not drinking like I was before. She thought I was joking.”

“That’s shitty.”

“You get me.” I reached out and took her hand this time. “You help me. We work together. I’m not afraid to admit how I feel now. You have to believe that I wouldn’t let Maggie come between us a second time.”

I threaded our fingers together. She stared down at our clasped hands. Mine were so much bigger than her small, delicate hands. I was just relieved that she hadn’t pulled away.

“I don’t know how to explain this, Austin. I feel like a crazy person for getting so worked up, but I’m so worried about the future. I want a future with you. I want to believe that’s possible.”

“It is,” I insisted.

“And it’s not so much that Maggie is here. It’s a public place. She could show up anywhere, I suppose. It’s more the trend. My fear is that the past will repeat itself. Then, I’ll be the idiot for falling for it twice.” She stroked her thumb up my hand. “Seeing her brought all my old fears to the surface. I don’t want Maggie to be a backup plan.”

“She’s not.”

She took a deep breath and then expelled it. “I’m sorry I freaked out like that.”

“No need to apologize. If I saw you with Trevor, I’d probably blow a gasket, too.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You cannot be jealous of Trevor. He’s so…Trevor.”

“Insanely jealous.”

“No way.”

“The thought of putting my fist through his face did cross my mind every time I saw him.”

Her big brown eyes rounded. “I never would have guessed. You always acted like you didn’t care.”

“I pushed you away. I hurt you. I figured seeing you with someone like that was my punishment.”

“What about the times you came on to me?”

I shrugged unapologetically. “Usually, I was drunk enough to let my feelings show.”

“You have a funny way of showing that you like me.”

“I do.” I nodded my head back toward the house. I was glad that this conversation hadn’t completely dissolved. There was no fucking way I was going to lose her over Maggie again. Not when things had been going so well. “Want to head back in?”

She sighed. “Is she going to still be there?”

“I can get Jensen on it. He’s the fixer.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I should just go.”

“Jules…”

“It was a wake-up call. I don’t trust her. I don’t trust her motives. I think, if she feels threatened, she’ll do stupid shit. I’ve known other girls like her. I don’t want any part of it.”

I slipped my hand up to her cheek and memorized every inch of her beautiful face. “Then, I’ll leave with you.”

“Don’t you have family stuff?”

“Screw family stuff.”

“No, Austin,” she said with a resigned sigh as she disentangled herself from me. “I think I want to be alone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Are we okay?”

“We’re fine,” she said, repeating the mantra I’d said every time she asked about my drinking.

I didn’t realize how hollow it sounded until that moment.