Page 236 of The Long Way Home

Fifty-Six

Magnolia

It was peculiar that night in the club. Merciful timing, I suppose. Jordan announcing that her and BJ are flitting off for a sexy trip right as Julian started trying to strangle Carmelo.

It made it easier to walk away from BJ in the moment, because Julian needed me. But actually, quietly, I probably would have gone to Julian in an instance like that no matter what.

It’s nice to be needed sometimes.

BJ doesn’t need me, I don’t think. I need him but it’s not the other way around, it never has been. All my life, he was all I had in so many ways. More than just my boyfriend and my best friend and my protector and my confidant, I needed him because when he was gone I felt horribly alone. But he didn’t. He’s never needed me, not with his functional family with his loving parents and siblings coming out of his eyeballs, and all his aunts and uncles and grandparents who are sober and checked in, who love him very overtly and very loudly. All the time, at his rugby games, when he did well at school, on his birthday — they were there for him how you need your family to be. He didn’t need much from me. Actually, I think the only thing he’s ever really needed from me was — well — he met that need with someone else in a bathtub one night.

I calmed Julian down, stopped the fight. Jules asked me to leave with him. I looked for BJ — not for any real reason, mostly out of reflex — but he was gone. So I did leave with Jules. We walked past BJ’s car in the alley behind the club. Fogged up windows, movement behind them. Julian didn’t notice and I didn’t say a word, but I nearly started crying on the spot so I fucked Julian in the back of his car just to make it even.

“I see a psychologist,” he told me afterwards with me still straddling him in the backseat. Just in his black elastic waist straight trousers from Y-3, sitting there all shirtless and perfect. His off-white flocked cotton-jersey Fear of God tee and black appliquéd faux leather panelled wool-blend bomber jacket from Kapital cast behind us.

My hands were draped behind his neck and I moved them up into his hair.

“Do you?” I asked.

He nodded, put his hand on my waist and leaned back against the seat.

“What for?”

He shrugged. “Everything.”

I shifted a bit closer to him and he watched me as I did, this new calm now over him and I wondered if I might be bringing it to him.

“Everything like what?”

“Like always worrying something’s going to happen to my sister.” He breathed out a breath I didn’t realise he was holding. “Like my parents dying in front of me.” He gave me a tired smile.

“Julian,” I said as I put my hand on his face because I wasn’t sure what else to do, and he held it against him and kissed my palm and didn’t say anything else about it. Laid me down in the back street and kissed me more.

A few days later, he and I go to brunch with my sister and Gus at The Athenaeum.

My sister is being her staunchest self and pretending she still doesn’t like Julian, who is actually nearly impossible not to like, and I’m being sincere when I say that.

There’s something about him, how he looks at you, how he speaks to you — instant and total buy in — that’s why I believe there are men that would follow him anywhere, right off a cliff with bullets in their chests, if he asked.

There’s something wildly seductive about him and not even in an overtly sexual way, just in the way where, whatever he says, you’re in.

Chinese for dinner? Sure.

Can he have the rest of my salad? Absolutely.

Wouldn’t it be so fun if I went to get him a coffee? Of course it would.

And it’s different from how it is with BJ where it feels like everything — even the worst things — are fun. But Julian just manages to make you feel like everything he says is the cleverest, best idea.

Did I think it was genuinely a good or hygienic idea to have sex in the men’s room stall at Verona a couple of nights ago? No, I didn’t.

Do I have any regrets? No, I don’t.

But he’s still working on winning my sister over, so he’s talking about the dangers of China as an economic superpower and I’m a million percent not listening.

“—no, but it’s also their investment in overseas infrastructure.” He nods at my sister. “You know what I mean?”

He’s playing to her intelligence while she fiddles with her earrings — thread silver-plated hoop earrings from Jennifer Fisher — and then nods.