Leavehim.
Leave.
Patterns don’t break just because you want them to.
Julien shakes his head fast. The quicker he does it, the quicker his brain will click back into place. “That’s not it at all. He accepted the interview before even talking to me. On top of that, he met up with his ex while he was in Manhattan. That’s who he’s been with all weekend. I saw the photos of them at some restaurant in Tribeca on Instagram.”
He can’t get those photos or that gaudy watch out of his head. He could never, in his present post and financial situation, compete with a man who can give Greg gifts like that and take him to restaurants with four dollar signs on Yelp. Julien can’t be part of Greg’s old world. It’s clear now that Greg was only pretending to be part of Julien’s current one.
Maybe if Julien were a master already, things would be different, but he’s not, so they aren’t, and that’s that.
“That sounds an awful lot like an excuse not to be vulnerable. I know trust doesn’t come easy for you, but you trust me, right?”
Julien takes stock of Aunt Augustine’s kind blue eyes, her fiery red hair, and the bright orange pointed acrylics glued to her fingernails. Above anyone, he trusts her, so he nods.
“Wouldn’t you say I earned that? After everything you went through, all the ugliness with your parents, it was clear you couldn’t just let your uncle and me into your life, no questions asked. We knew that. Do you remember that period, right at the beginning, when you were scared to get in the car with me?”
“Vaguely.” All of Julien’s memories from that time are a little fuzzy. His therapist says that’s expected when children go through severe trauma.
Julien can tell these words are painful for Aunt Augustine to say. “When you came to live with us, we couldn’t get you in a car. It made sense. You were in the back seat when your mom got into that drunk-driving accident. Luckily, she’d had enough clarity of mind to buckle you into your car seat before taking off. Thank God those airbags worked. When we got to the hospital, she was in a neck brace, and the doctors told us all you got were some bruises from the seat belt yanking you back, but I knew that wasn’t true. Well, physically it was true, but mentally, I wasn’t convinced. Especially not with everything that came after.”
Julien is burdened anew by those tenuous years of hearings and caseworkers and fights on the front lawn for the neighbors to see. He’d close his eyes and squeeze his muscles and wish against all might that he could make himself small enough to disappear.
Augustine continues, “We got you on the LANTA bus and the school bus no problem, though, which made us realize that it wasus, not the car itself, you didn’t trust. So under the guidance of your therapist at the time, we started small. Quick trips to the Wawa around the corner to get SnoBalls and blue raspberry Icees. We’d sit in the parking lot drinking them until we got brain freeze, then we’d stick our thumbs up to the roofs of our mouths to make the numbness subside.”
“I remember that part.” A smile creeps up onto Julien’s face, the phantom taste tickling over his tongue.
“It was a four-minute drive, maybe five if we hit a red light, but it was quick. Then the next time, I asked, ‘Do you want to go to Wawa?’ and you got all excited, except this time I drove in the opposite direction. I purposefully went to the Wawa in the town over. You were so perceptive, even then, and when I glanced in the rearview mirror, I saw panic on your face. I nearly turned right back around, but instead I said, ‘Heard the Icee machine at ours is broken.’ And you made it. There were no tears. Just Icees and brain freezes and a sugar high on the drive back. You caught on to my plot eventually, going to farther and farther Wawas, but by the time we hit the Wawa by the New Jersey border, it didn’t matter. You trusted me. You knew I was not going to make the same mistakes your mom did. That I was going to keep you safe. That I was going to adhere to the speed limit and be cautious and always double-check your seat belt. You never, not once, cried on any of those trips, but I did, when we got home. God, I was practically inconsolable.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Because you’d been through so much, and I wanted you to feel safe with us, that we weren’t some fractured, replacement family. We were your family for the long haul. That we would be different.”
“You were,” Julien is quick to say, reassuring her even though he suspects she’s trying to reassure him. Of what? He’s not quite certain yet.
“I know. And I know, also, that the situations aren’t completely comparable, but hasn’t Greg earned your trust as well? Wouldn’t you trust him to drive you to Wawa for a blue raspberry Icee and remind you what to do when you inevitably get brain freeze?”
Julien does, and he would. He would sit in a parking lot for hours with Greg and never get bored, never grow tired of listening to his laugh and his stories about the academy or bartending school, or of looking at that ridiculously handsome face.
But Greg accepted the other job, and after overhearing him talk with some of the bussers, Julien knew he went apartment hunting last weekend. “It’s too late, though.”
Aunt Augustine takes Julien by the shoulders. “No, it’s not. There’s no such thing as too late. I thought, after all those failed IVF attempts and adoption attempts, that it was too late for me to be a mom and then the universe brought me you.” There are tears in her eyes now.
Julien dabs at his own before throwing himself into a big, sloppy hug. “Thank you. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she says into his hair, holding him tightly.
This is one element about his family Julien knew the kids who teased him would never have when it came to their families: a choice. He doesn’t mean in blood relation or address or where his meals came from; he means in how free he could be with his heart.
From birth, there is a social obligation to adore your parents. But he learned an important lesson at a very young age: parents are people, too. Flawed people. People who make mistakes and can be careless. Sometimes, people who just aren’t meant to be or don’t want to be parents.
At first, Julien only knew Martin and Augustine tangentially from Christmas cards and—when his parents had it together enough to recognize the day and didn’t have to work—the occasional Thanksgiving dinner. So when he landed on their doorstep, there was no built-in expectation, no greeting-card industrial complex to feed with clichéd affection.
Martin and Augustine could’ve easily deferred their rights, sent Julien to Florida to stay with the grandparents he’d never even met, and if they wouldn’t take him, he could’ve just as easily been swallowed into the foster system. But Martin and AugustinechoseJulien, and after many car rides and SnoBalls and blue raspberry Icees, Julienchosethem.
This is how Julien has always handled his heart.
They earned his trust, so he gave his love.
