*screenshot of list.
Julian:Woot woot!
Julian:We should be good to throw the party at my apartment. Kayla has agreed to kidnap him for the day, so we’ll have plenty of time to set up.
Elena:Thanks for letting me know!
Julian’s in the group chat. This shouldn’t be surprising to me. And yet, reading his text interactions with my sister is bizarre. A foreign concept. Like I’ve tricked myself into believing he only exists in one corner of my life, completely separate from my family. I read through the rest of the messages, contemplating whether it’s safe for me to say something.
I can’t get Elena’s disappointed voice out of my head all day. The least I can do is try. Orpretend, as she so aptly put it.Tomorrow, I decide. Once I’ve shaken myself out of the shock of seeing Julian and me placed in the same group chat as my sister. Once I’ve gotten used to these two separate corners of my world meeting and have prepared myself on how to proceed.
My audiobook is interrupted yet again after school while I’m at the end of the massive line to get out of the parking lot. Julian’s name flashes across my car’s screen.
“What.”
“You sound annoyed.” His voice surrounds me on all sides. I should’ve thought better than to answer his call on Bluetooth. There’s no escaping him. But then, I’ve never been able to escape him.
“Weird day.” I shiver, turning down the AC. Won’t be needing that now that the front seat of my car has turned into a cold spot. “What’s up?”
“You didn’t answer your sister in the group chat.”
For a moment, I’m stunned that he thought this was a good reason to call me out of the blue. A wave of frustration crashes over me. I can handle fighting with my siblings, holding on to these small grudges simply because I’m used to it by now. But I can’t handle Julian being thrown into the mix.
“She asked if you could bring plastic silverware and paper plates to the surprise party.”
“Now is not the time to get all sunshiny on me, sunshine boy.”
“I’m sorry, what part of me relaying your sister’s message is sunshiny?”
His chuckle is a low rumble that goes straight to my core.Goddammit.It’s really not helping matters that I’ve been inadvertently edging myself all weekend.
“The part where your voice is so chipper, it’s giving me a headache.”
“It’s kinda weird, isn’t it?”
“No kidding.” I relax now that he’s voiced the same thought I’ve had all day. “When did you meet Elena?”
“Her kids stayed with us for the weekend about a month and a half ago,” he says. “She kinda cornered me before she left, but I get it.I’d want to make sure my kids were in good hands too. She probably wanted to make sure I had Andrew’s best interest as well.”
“That’s Elena.” I sigh. “Always the mother hen, even before she became an actual mother.”
“She’s cool, though,” he says. “Anyway, she asked if you could buy the plastic silverware and swing by early to help set up.”
“Tell her—” I cut myself off, biting down on my tongue. He can’t tell her anything, because we’re not supposed to know each other. I didn’t realize until this moment that keeping our friendship a secret from Andrew meant keeping it from Elena too. From a much bigger corner of my world than I’d previously accounted for. “Never mind. I’ll text her back in the chat.”
“This party’s gonna be so strange.” He lets out a nervous laugh. “We’ll have to pretend we don’t know each other. Unless you think we should tell everyone?”
“No, definitely not.” It comes out more vehement than I mean it to. “Fuck. We really will have to pretend around my family. There’s no good alternative, is there?”
“We don’t have to tell Andrew how we met,” he says. “We could make something up.”
“He’ll think we’re dating.” The silence on the other end is loud. Was that too blunt? We did date.Twice.But so far, we’ve avoided talking about that, and we’re friends now. What does it matter that we went on two first dates that didn’t work out? “Which might be worse than the truth. He’ll think we’re hiding it from him, and then he’ll become so insufferable that we’ll have to come clean.”
“You have a very different relationship with Andrew then I do,” he says casually. “He can’t be that bad. He’ll understand a simple explanation.”
“But he won’t understand why we kept it from him for this long.” I take in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “It’s like you said. We don’tknow the same Andrew. Sometimes I can’t believe you’re friends with him.” I didn’t mean to let that slip. Julian knows me too much. He’ll pounce on any scrap of vulnerability, and I just gave him the perfect opening.
“What does that mean?”
