Julie
I’ve never had to force such a fake smile as I did when I watched Oliver and Casey walk away, leaving me alone with Lucy. I guess it could be worse—she could just be some random girl that he picked up in the bar. She looks nervous as the awkward air captures her and makes her realize that I know she’s faking her sudden illness.
“Casey is a really nice guy.” My voice hitches a little; I don’t want her to get the wrong impression of my relationship with Casey…like Oliver does.
“Yeah, he is.” Her voice is bursting with sadness. “Is it crazy that I like him this much after only knowing him a short time?”
A real smile replaces the fake smile on my lips. “No, it’s not. Sometimes you can’t control where your life takes you, you know? Don’t discount what you two might have over time. Trust me, it’s not worth the agony you put yourself through.”
“How long have you and Oliver been together?”
I blush. “Just a few months.” Her eyes glow with denial, like my advice is no longer valid enough to make her feel good. “But we loved each other from the moment we met.”
“I’m a little jealous.” Her lips twitch. “I wish I could find that kind of love.”
There’s a commotion coming from the front of the bar. People are making their way outside where it sounds like someone is fighting.
“You never know. You and Casey could have a love like ours someday. Everyone is different.” My eyes go back to the door and my heart sinks a little because I know something is wrong. “And no matter how hard you try and believe it, there are no rules for love.”
I stand up and feel my body drift toward everyone filtering outside, panic settling in my bones as I see Casey on top of Oliver, swinging on him. I start to scream and push my way through everyone standing around but not breaking them up.
“Stop it!” I find the power in my voice. “Casey, get off him!”
A sharp blow hits the side of my face and it’s hard to breathe for a few seconds as I fall to my knees and try to focus my eyes.
“You’re fucking dead!” I hear Oliver scream. “Julie! Julie are you okay?”
“Fuck, Julie, I’m so sorry.” Casey’s voice is soft. “I didn’t know it was you…I didn’t know it was her!”
Oliver pounces on him and tries his best to continue fighting, but he cares too much for me to let me writhe in pain next to him, so he lets go of Casey’s bloody shirt and crawls the few feet over to me.
I swear I see Oliver’s mother watching the scene and when our eyes meet, she takes a man’s arm and pulls him out of view. It’s probably just the ringing in my head that’s making me hallucinate.
I can feel his warm hand on my arm. “Baby, talk to me…are you hurt?”
“Someone call an ambulance!” I hear someone in the crowd scream.
I shake my head. “No, I’m fine. He got me in the eye, but the worst that will happen is a black eye.” My vision is still blurry, but I can see the tears running down Casey’s cheek as Oliver tends to me.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He winces as Oliver whips to face him. “Julie, please don’t hate me.”
I scoff. “I don’t hate you. What is wrong with you two? Why can’t you spend a few minutes alone without starting a bar brawl?” I scold the two of them like children, but I can’t help it. They act like children when they’re left to their own devices. Oliver resents Casey because he isn’t stupid—he can see the crush Casey has for me. Even though I was late to realize it and would never tell Oliver that Casey had confessed a few days earlier.
“Let’s go home. I’ll tell you there.” Oliver stands up the best he can, holding his hand out for me. His stability isn’t exactly superhuman, but he manages to pull me up and wrap his arms around me. “I have to leave or I’m going to kill him for hurting you,” he whispers into my hair.
I know that he’s serious—I’ve seen the way he fights for me and I believe him when he says it will be hard for him to stop.
We hold onto each other as Casey keeps apologizing, following us toward the parking lot. I put Oliver into the front seat as he rubs his legs in pain. I try to focus on walking around to the other side when Casey comes up and places himself between me and the driver’s side door. I try to walk around him without looking up, but I have such a headache that it’s hard to concentrate on anything.
“Let me drive you guys home.” His soothing voice meets me. “Please, Julie. You gotta believe me…I would never hurt you.”
Lucy jogs up next to us and stays silent as Casey pleads for my forgiveness.
“Please, Julie, you know I would never hurt you intentionally. Are you okay? Can I see your eye?” He bows down a little and the car moves because Oliver has seen Casey talking to me. I shoot him a look through the back window for him to stay put and let me handle this. My fingers cover my forehead and I cringe in pain. “Let me drive you home, Julie.”
“Casey—” Lucy starts to say, but he ignores her, so she closes her mouth.
I feel bad for her. I wish Casey would just focus his energy on chasing her instead of chasing me. I don’t even want this—I don’t want Casey, and how he hovers over me is starting to really piss me off. It makes me think of Brandon and his predatory stance whenever he wanted to remind me I was his property.
The paper in my pocket feels heavy.
A piece of paper is always dictating my damn life.
“Casey, move out of my way.” The chill in my voice isn’t from the cold air nipping at my skin; it’s from the level of annoyance that he’s pushing against me. “I don’t want to even look at you right now.”
“Julie, please—”
I lift my eyes to his and make sure he sees the disgust in my eyes. “Move out of my way. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to be near you.”
He sucks in air through his teeth. “You can’t mean that. We’re friends—”
“I can’t be friends with you anymore. Oliver is waiting for me.”
Lucy storms off with her arms crossed, but he doesn’t care. “Oliver isn’t a good guy—he doesn’t deserve someone like you,” he whispers. “You have to know that…he’s hiding things from you and I would never do that…”
A loud slapping noise echoes in the air as my hand collides with his face. Oliver has gotten out of the car and stops in his tracks when he sees what I’ve done. Casey holds his face and tears form in the corners of his eyes. He’s shocked and heartbroken.
“When is everyone going to understand that I’m with Oliver? I’m not free to be preyed upon by everyone who thinks I do something magical for them.” I snap. “I’m not a fucking unicorn!” My voice rises and Lucy stops running away to see how it’s going to play out.
My breath is so hot that I can see it in the air in front me. “I don’t ever want to see you again. Oliver and I are better off without you.”
The defeat on his face makes me a little uneasy. “Oliver started this. He swung on me first.”
I look at Oliver, whose mouth is wide open in shock. I move my body around Casey and he lets me pass—he doesn’t dare reach out to try and touch me. “You two make me so exhausted, you act like children. Oliver has his faults, but yours are far worse. You tried to take advantage of the situation when he was incapacitated, and that’s not fair to him. Or me.”
I open the driver’s side door and get into the car. Oliver follows me on the other side and I start the engine, waiting for Casey to move out of the way so I can back up and burn rubber out of here. So much craziness happens around me that it’s hard not to get sucked into it sometimes. It’s hard to calm down as Casey finally moves and I back the car up, his eyes bursting with sadness at the sight of me walking—or driving—away.
“Julie.” Oliver’s voice cuts through my anger. “Stop the car.”
I shake my head. “No, we’re going home.”
His warm hand sits on my thigh and everything washes away. “Baby, stop the car.”
I pull off the road into an empty parking lot and put the car in park. He takes my hand into his and holds it tightly. My body is still buzzing a little from the horrible instance we drove away from. “Casey is harmless.” His voice is low enough to penetrate my thoughts without startling me. “We fight like that sometimes. There’s no need to worry.”
“He was on top of you, punching your lights out.” I turn and look up at him. “You guys were outside for less than five minutes…when does this end? Why can’t we have one freaking day without someone getting into a brawl or causing some sort of drama?”
He clears his throat. “I’m sorry, Julie. I’ll try to be better. Just don’t leave me, okay?”
A loud laugh escapes and it grows so fast that the car shakes. “Leave you? Oliver, in case you haven’t noticed…there’s literally nothing you can say or do to make me leave you again. I love you. I just wish things weren’t so…abrasive sometimes.”
“That’s my fault. It’s my temper…”
I put the car back into drive and leave the parking lot a lot calmer this time. “No, it’s everyone. No one can just be there for each other—we have to scratch and claw and hate ourselves so much that we bring it on ourselves.”
Oliver laughs. “That’s pretty deep.”
“Shut up.” I snicker and poke his arm with my finger. “At least I never have to worry about you hurting me. You and your rules are probably the only thing that’s consistent in my life right now.”
His face looks sick but he changes the subject. “Maybe we can just move far, far away where no one else exists and be alone.”
“You would miss civilization.”
His longer, shaggier dark hair twirls around his head. “Not really. As long as I have you…what else do I need?”
A smile spreads across my lips before I can help it. “You’d miss chocolate chip pancakes too.” He chuckles and I pull into the garage of his apartment. “And you’d miss your friends. I don’t know what the hell Casey is thinking, acting like that. Has he done this before?”
Oliver violently shakes his head. “No, I didn’t know he even slept with Heather until he told me a few weeks ago. He never openly tried to take her from me like he’s done with you. Although…”
My eyebrows rise and I know what he’s going to say.
“…I don’t blame him.”
I snort. “Well, I do.”
“Julie…” His deep breath shakes me. “You have to understand what you do to people to be able to understand why they chase you. You radiate so much goodness that it’s hard to resist wanting to even be near you sometimes.”
I cross my arms. “Well, I don’t mean to.”
“I know that. It’s just something that comes natural to you. You’re an angel to a lot of people. You just don’t realize.”
I slam my hands on the steering wheel. “I don’t want to be! I can hardly handle myself, let alone be that for other people!”
We don’t speak for the rest of the ride home; even in the elevator, the air between us is so stale that it rips my lungs when I breathe.
I thought Casey was my friend.
Now, I’ve lost him because he can’t figure out his own emotions.
Oliver has known him longer, but he doesn’t seem to care that he’s lost him, like this sort of thing happens all the time and they’ll be back to being best friends.
Not me.
I don’t ever want to see Casey again.
Oliver shuts the door of the apartment behind us and his rough hand grabs my arm, pulling me around to face him. “Let me see your eye.” He smiles and touches the tender part below my eye. I wince in pain and he smacks his lips, trying not to show me his anger. “Casey is lucky I didn’t kill him for hurting you…You’re gonna have a black eye, baby.” He lightly grazes the skin again and clicks his tongue. His lips find the side of my cheek and he gently kisses me, in fear that he’ll hurt me.
I wrap my arms around his neck and sob into his chest. “Life is bullshit,” I mumble against his warm skin, listening to his heartbeat grow faster with each second I cling to him. “At least I have you…I’m lucky to still have you.”
“Hey, now…” He pulls my arms down and holds them at my sides. “I’m not going anywhere, you hear me? What else can happen to me?”
“Don’t say that out loud. You never know what’ll happen when you don’t follow the rules.” His lips turn into a smile. “Even though your rules aren’t good for anything.”
He playfully acts offended. “They mean something! How dare you say that.”
I feel my eyelashes touch my cheeks as I lock my eyes on the floor. “You broke your first rule and it worked out for both of us. You broke your second rule and almost died. What do you think is going to happen if we keep trying to follow your rules, Oliver?”
The paper from Brandon’s house burns a hole in my pocket.
I want to show Oliver what it is, but I don’t want him to get homicidal for the second time today.
“Let’s just calm down and think about something else.” He holds my hand lightly. “We have a long time to think about all this other bad shit. But, I can tell you want to ask one more question. So, ask away, but then we’re done with it for a long time.”
“Okay…” I suck in air. “What were you and Casey fighting about?”
His tongue glides across his perfect teeth. “He was talking about my mother.”
“Really? Like a ‘yo mama’ joke?”
The sick look on his face returns. “No, he said that we share a mother. Like, my mother is also his mother.”
Holy crap.
“Is that true?” I squeak. “Wouldn’t you have known before now?”
He caresses my cheek and kisses my forehead, walking around me to enter the living room so he can sit down and rest his legs. I follow him and make sure my thighs are touching his as I sit next to him. “Probably not. My mother wasn’t exactly faithful to my father. It’s weird, though…I knew Casey was adopted but no one ever told me we share a mother.”
Well people don’t always tell their loved ones the truth if it’ll hurt them.
I swallow, and it hurts because my throat is dangerously dry. I carefully snake my leg around his and he smiles, like sunlight has finally broken through a long, cloudy day. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love him. Even before I met him, I could feel him in my bones.
I felt him before I laid eyes on him.
Something would call to my heart when Brandon tormented me—something that told me that deep down, I knew that something better was waiting for me.
And that something better is Oliver Jackson.
All of Oliver Jackson.
His wide smile when I capture his bright eyes with mine.
The invisible, warm safety net he casts over my body when he’s near.
The lies on the tip of his tongue as his mouth opens and closes tightly.
He has secrets.
We all have secrets.
Looks like we’re finally obeying one of his rules: Rule number three.
We’re keeping our secrets safe.
Or…at least I intend to.