a muted buzz.
Julian was calling me. That had to be a good thing. Unless it was a bad thing.
Now that I thought about it, there were any number of reasons Julian might be calling that could be very, very bad indeed.
“You gonna get that, or just stare at it some more?” Em said, pulling me out of my thoughts again.
I looked up to see everyone staring at me, and Em craning his neck to try to read the name on my screen. I snatched my phone up quickly, and stood up.
“I’ll get it outside.”
I was breathless as I reached the balcony, shutting the door to the great room behind me. Still conscious of everyone’s eyes on me inside, I swiped my phone on.
“Julian? You there? Is everything—”
“It’s fine.” Julian sounded surprised. “I was just—I didn’t think you were going to pick up.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I glanced over my shoulder and moved down the balcony a little bit. I didn’t want my voice to drift in through the windows. “And wait, why did you call if you—”
“I just—nevermind. It’s dumb.”
I frowned. Whatever the reason, I sincerely doubted it was dumb. But if Julian didn’t want to talk about it, I wasn’t sure if I should press.
Normally, I wouldn’t have hesitated. I would have been convinced it was something bad, something he wanted to hide, and pushed until it came out.
But with everything that had happened with Katie and his dad, I was starting to realize that my natural instincts weren’t always the right ones. It was time to try something new.
“Okay,” I said slowly, wondering what to say instead. “Um. How are things? With Katie?”
“Things are… Well, they are,” Julian said. “We met with a lawyer today. He came to our house. Katie’s staying home from school this week, and I took some time off, too. We’re going to file an official report with the police, about my dad.”
“Wow. That’s—” I broke off. “I want to say that’s good, except, you know. Not. Because none of this is good.”
“Yeah.” Julian laughed weakly. “Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”
We were both quiet then. I closed my eyes. Listened to the breeze rustling the leaves of the trees around me, and Julian’s breath over the phone. I ached to hold him.
“I told Katie I’m bi,” he said in a rush.
“You—what?” My eyes popped open. “You told her?”
“Yeah. And she told me she’d suspected for a while, apparently. So I wasn’t even doing a very good job of hiding it.” He said wryly. “So much for all my efforts in that arena.”
“How did she take it?” I asked, turning around and leaning up against the balcony railing.
“Exactly like you thought she would. She honestly didn’t seem to care at all.” He paused. “Kind of weird, actually. You spend your whole life preparing for people to hate something about you, and then you tell them and they don’t even have the decency to be mean to you about it.”
I snorted. “Rude.”
“Honestly. And she didn’t just not care. She was sad that I’d felt like I had to hide it.”
I could practically see the face he was making over the phone—touched, and embarrassed, at the same time. Julian had spent so long expecting the world to be shitty to him, he wasn’t prepared for kindness.
I caught sight of Em through the windows and thought about him and Deacon. The way I’d boxed them out at every turn, and the fact that they somehow didn’t hate me for it. Maybe Julian wasn’t the only person struggling with that feeling.
“Welcome to the world of your siblings loving you and treating you better than you deserve.” I ran a hand through my hair. “It’s fucking terrible.”
Julian laughed. “Why am I not surprised?”
“About it being a nightmare?”
“About you thinking it’s a nightmare.”
“Don’t try and pretend you don’t. I bet she told you she was lucky to have you as a brother or something, and your brain started screaming at you to deny it.”
“Shut up.”
“You’re only saying that because you know I’m right.”
“I don’t know why I called you.”
“Because you’re a glutton for punishment. Or maybe because you need someone to call you on your bullshit.”
“Maybe both.” Julian was quiet for a moment. “Listen, would you want to come over for dinner with me and Katie tonight? You can say no, obviously. But I think it might be good for her to see a friendly face that isn’t going to press her for details about what happened with Dad. Someone