I need some peace of mind.
The gym equipment in the center offers me that peace, even if just for an hour. I don’t check my phone. I’m able to pretendthat Julia Montgomery doesn’t exist. It’s just me and my aching muscles and a city that I haven’t yet made a mistake in.
As soon as that hour ends and I answer my ringing my phone, the mask of my delusion is gone with it.
“You didn’t answer my text,” Julia says.
Her voice is like sugar pouring through the speaker; sweet and addictive.
There isn’t anything inherently sexual about what she’s saying or the way that she’s saying it, and still, the tip of my tongue finds its way to my lip, and all I can taste is her pussy, and all I can think about is how badly I want to bury my face in it.
“It feels weird to take a lunch by myself,” she chuckles. “It feels weird to take a lunch and actuallyeatlunch.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “Listen, I’ll be back in a few days. We can…talk.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
I drag my hand along the length of my face, groaning. “He’s your husband, and we’re lying to him, Julia. We’ve taken this too far. I can’t keep lying to my best friend.”
The line is quiet while she absorbs what I’ve said. The only sound that comes through the receiver is that of a long sigh that she lets out.
“I know,” she finally breathes, her voice thick with shame. “It’s complicated now, though. I— Connor, I really—”
“Please don’t finish that sentence,” I plead. “I have to go. We’ll talk when I’m back.”
I hang up the phone before she has the opportunity to say anything more. I’m not sure if I don’t want to hear what she has to say, or if I justcan’thear it.
As soon as I’m back inside my sister’s house, I turn off my phone and tuck it away in the hopes of forgetting that it exists; and by extension, everything else that I left back in Miami.
I find myself snooping through Irina’s house, and I try to convince myself that it’s because it’s my job to be her nosy, annoying, big brother, but I know that it’s really just because I feel guilty. I feel guilty for not visiting her more often. I feel guilty for the mistakes I made while I was trying to raise her.
I feel guilty for showing up now, of all times, becauseIneedher.
When I reach the bedroom, I survey the messy, cluttered top of the dresser. There are at least ten different types of body sprays and lotions, a handful of clothes – likely rejected options from her dressing this morning, and a collection of photos in mismatched frames that sit next to a stack of psychology textbooks.
I pick up each of the photos to inspect them – some from outings she’s had with her boyfriend, a collage of photos with a group of her girlfriends, one of the two of us at her high school graduation.
The only one not covered in a layer of dust is an old family photo. Irina is sitting happily on our mom’s lap, the two of them sharing one of those old fold-out beach loungers that no one actually finds comfortable. My hair is dyed black and hanging in my face, hiding my eyes, but I’m wearing a smile. My dad’s hand is resting on my shoulder.
This was our last vacation together as a family. I didn’t know it when this photo was taken, but two weeks later, I would come home after staying out for hours past my curfew, and I’d find them dead; and the last thing I would have ever said to them was that they were shitty parents.
The last thing that I said to them was a lie.
Pressing a kiss to the frame, I carefully set the photo back in its place among the clutter, and I make my way back out to the living room to drown out the noise in my mind with more crappy TV.
Mindlessness, once again.
Chapter 11
JULIA
Ihave been on my feet for six hours, working with the same client. She came in with an at-home bleach job gone very, very wrong, and try as I did, I couldn’t save most of it. After hours of treatments, we finally decided that the gummy lengths of her hair had to go, and I feel horrible for her as I send inches upon inches of what was previously healthy hair falling to the floor.
Hair is such an important part of self expression, and now, the waist-length blonde tresses that she was hoping for will be a mousy brown pixie cut by the time that she leaves here.
Having to give someone a cut and color that they don’t want, but don’t have any choice in, always feels less like I’m cutting their hair and more like I’m hacking away at a part of who they are.
I shouldn’t, but as I take her up to pay for her services, I charge her only for the cost of the products used and not for my time.
