His voice comes out hurried. “Send me the address, I’ll be there in five minutes.”
I text him the address, waiting outside because I know he’ll be arriving any minute now. Then suddenly it begins pouring down. I smile, feeling the breeze soak into my skin. It’s raining and I don’t care. I stand in the rain as long as I can because for the first time in my life, I feel alive!
Juliette.MyJuliette. The girl I’ve hated for as long as I can remember and have fallen in love with. So hopelessly. So irrevocably.
I think I’ve always felt this way. When I saw her at age twelve and I couldn’t breathe. When she slashed me with her words and all I could think about was how pretty she looked. When we slept together for the first time and I felt like I was skin deep within her. She’s woven so tightly within me; every moment of my adolescence has been shaped around her and I want the rest of my life to be shaped around her too.
The rain soaks my hair, but I don’t feel the cold at all. I can barely see when a red Ferrari comes racing down the road and I run up to the passenger side. The door opens automatically and Kai grins at me.
“Juliette has been insufferable the last two days. This apology better be momentous,” he tells me as I slip into his car, he doesn’t even complain about how I’ve soaked his seats, he just drives, possibly the fastest I’ve ever seen anyone drive in my life.
***
Kai pulls up outside Juliette’s house in record time and I almost slip out of the car in urgency. The rain hasn’t stopped at all; I’m taking it as a sign that I need to make some grand romantic gesture.
“Go get your girl!” he hollers at me and I giggle at his words before running across the road. When I reach her black gates, I enter the key code: 2305.
I knock on her door hurriedly, fixing my hair even though it’s completely soaked, as are my Jeans—wet jeans are the worst thing in the world but I can’t bring myself to care.
The door opens and Juliette is standing in front of me, shocked. “Addie?”
I hurry and walk inside excitedly. “I can’t keep it in anymore, Juliette, I’m so sor—” my words are halted when I see a familiar face in Juliette’s house. The words die in my throat almost instantly.
It’s Stacey. What is Stacey doing here? My eyes turn to Juliette who looks…different.
Normally, her demeanour is self-assured, not like it is right now; her shoulders are hunched, her gaze flickering back and forth between me and Stacey. For some reason, the gut feeling in my stomach is rippling with anxiety.
“What are you doing here?” I direct the question towards Stacey.
“I think I should be askingyouthat.” She arches her eyebrow, snapping me back into reality.
Oh God. I almost forgot that no one knows about me and Juliette.Shit. Shit. I straighten my back and pretend to be nonchalant. It isn’t my best acting, but to be fair, I was caught off guard by Stacey being here.
I clear my throat. “Well, I’m just here to tutor her.”
Juliette keeps avoiding eye contact with me and Stacey just smiles maliciously.
“Brilliant performance, really. But you can cut the shit. I know all about you and Juliette.”
“Know what?” I play dumb, how would she know? Did Juliette tell her that?
My heart plummets a million miles down and I feel like I’ve somehow betrayed Juliette in some way by not acting well enough. Is this what Juliette felt when she found out that my friends knew about her? The paranoia is debilitating—as if someone is reaching inside me and peeking into my very soul.
“Oh, stop it!” Stacey says, her voice rising. “Juliette, I think it’s time you come clean to her.”
Come clean to me? What is really going on here? I look over to Juliette questioningly and her eyes are downcast, like it’s hurting her to even breathe.
“Juliette,” Stacey says again, urging her with her voice.
Just at that moment it’s like a switch is flipped, Juliette’s eyes darken, her face mirroring something I’ve seen before; something cruel. It reminds me of the first time she ever called me a dyke and I have to stomp the urge to run.
She tilts her head to the side, narrowing her eyes at me. “Oh, come on Stacey, there isn’t much to know,” she leans against the wall gesturing over to me, “just that I’ve been experimenting with little Miss Dyke over here.”
I feel a pang hit my chest at her words. She hasn’t called me that in so long and now it’s rolling off her tongue like it never left in the first place.This can’t be right, she’s scared, that’s all this is.
I swallow the anger that is building inside of me, I need to remind myself that Juliette is scared of being outed. She isn’t like me, she’s paranoid and she has much more to lose. She doesn’t mean it. She can’t mean it. No.
“Juliette, it’s okay.” I walk closer to her. “Look, she knows, it’s fine. We can’t go back in time, but it’s okay—”
