A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing, ya'll!
She spends the entire morning preparing herself for the occasion that she might face Bryce. How funny that she's lived across from him for years and had even shared her first kiss with him, but when she even thinks about facing him again, she feels so unsure of herself that she's sure she might unravel – that is, if it were physically possible.
She tosses outfit after outfit on her bed, feeling frustrated with herself at her sudden concern with detail. When has she ever cared about what she wore? When has she ever cared about what outfit she looked best in?
The very little sleep she'd gotten last night, having been consumed with thoughts of their upcoming encounter, is evident in the heavy bags under her eyes. She runs her fidgety fingers through her long, mousy brown hair. As she looks at herself in the mirror, having settled for a blue shirt that her mother had once said brought out her eyes, she realizes just how plain she looks.
Suddenly she feels incredibly stupid for expecting so much – from him, from her, from their history. Bryce Loski had long moved on from her. Maybe they could be friends, but there was no way they could be more than that.
She repeats that to herself, over and over again, until she's sure she understands.
ooo
When she sees him at school, she notices the dull sheen of his eyes, and the silent and heavy afterthought of how he moves. She sees that he tries his best to go back to his normal self, but Bryce Loski has never really been good at pretending.
She approaches him when he's at his locker, trying not to notice the looks she gets from her classmates. When Troy Vanhoult leaves, his locker neighbor, she hesitantly takes his spot.
"Bryce." Her palms start to sweat and she feels her heart faintly in her ears. "Hey."
When he sees her, he looks surprised for a quick second, but the look quickly turns back to an expression of stoic indifference. "Hey, Juli." He shoves his books into his locker.
"I was wondering if we could talk," she's saying, wondering if her voice really is as far above their heads as it sounds, when suddenly Nick Sansford appears beside them.
"Hey Juli," he says, cutting her off. He spares one fleeting and uninterested glance at Bryce. "I was wondering what your answer was. For the prom."
She knows her moment of bravery is broken the minute Nick arches his eyebrows in expectation, and Bryce closes his locker, walking past them to class. She catches his eye for a quick second as he leaves, and feels a dull ache inside her heart. There's nothing. Not even hate. Just nothing.
She takes a breath to recover. "I'm sorry, Nick. I don't think I'm going to the prom."
Nick slowly nods his head, his face falling in disappointment. She notices this despite the fact that her focus had left the moment Bryce did. "Okay. I accept that. But if you change your mind," he says, plastering on a goofy smile, "I would happily take you back, Juli Baker. Just say the word."
ooo
For the rest of the day she finds no opportunity to talk to Bryce. It was frustrating. When she was avoiding him, he used to be everywhere, and now that she's desperate to talk to him, he is painfully nowhere. When the last bell rang, she reached the parking lot only to see Bryce's black BMW to be the first car to be out of the lot.
When she gets invited to a party at the only beach in town, she's already made up her mind that she won't be going. But as she sits in her room, reading the latest novel her English class had assigned, she finds herself glancing at the clock every few minutes. Her mind is on the fritz. She sighs, closing her book and shutting her eyes. Her thoughts have been teetering back and forth, but they always had one common denominator: Bryce. She keeps about that look he had given her as he passed her and Nick Sansford at his locker. So indecipherable, yet disappointing. It ate away at her.
Suddenly, she puts her book down and starts pulling on her jeans. She decides to go on the off-chance that Bryce might be there. She's almost sure he's going to be. Tom Grady is holding the party, Bryce's teammate on the baseball team.
She quietly sneaks past her parents' room, holding her car keys in her hand.
When she gets there, it's about 12:30. The weather is nice and warm, even though she comes late. The water is calm, and there's a slight breeze. In the distance she sees the bonfire and the large canopies, and she can hear the loud music from the speaker system they've set up. It isn't a large party, but she's sure their entire senior class is here.
In the sea of her rambunctious, drunk classmates and their red plastic cups (they had about three kegs, from what she could see), she tries to look for Bryce, but instead finds Diana.
"Juli," she says, looking genuinely surprised, after having taken a sip of her beer. Her eyes look glazed over and her cheeks are flushed. "I didn't know you went to parties."
A boy brushes past her with a cup in each hand, bobbing along to the music. "I don't," she admits.
"I thought so. Well, I'm glad to see you living it up for once," Diana winks, giggling, before walking past her to a few members of the football team. As Juli keeps walking through the crowd, the music gets louder and the air gets hotter. She remembers how she doesn't do well with crowds, so eventually she dodges her way out, moving towards the ocean.
She takes deep breaths, and is caught in between hoping that Bryce is here and praying that he isn't. She stands there for a few minutes, clearing her head, before coming to the conclusion that she should just go home. What had she had in mind, anyway? That she could finally have that soul-searching conversation with Bryce, with hip-hop music blaring in the background and their drunken classmates pressing up against them?
She's turned and has already started walking back to her car when she suddenly hears yelling above the music. She's terrified that she recognizes the voice, even though she knows there's no way she could possibly know who it is. The crowd has stopped moving and has frozen, their attention directed towards the front of the party. Juli, on pure instinct, walks back and slowly pushes her way through.
It's Bryce. He's yelling, and drunk. His old friend Garrett is on the other side, in the same deplorable condition. Not one person is holding them back or trying to calm them down. Instead, they've turned the music down. She spies Tom Grady to the side with a beer can in his hand, watching on with an amused look on his face, and Juli feels disgusted at whom Bryce calls "his friends."
Before she knows it she's catapulted herself through the crowd, trying to reach Bryce as fast as she can. His voice is so loud that she can hear it ringing in her ears, like thunder, and suddenly it dawns on her about what they're fighting about when she hears her name. She can't believe it. She's so shocked she almost freezes where she is. They're fighting about her.
She'd known that Garrett never liked her. He and Bryce used to be best friends up until the eighth grade, when everything had started. She'd heard Garrett call her and her family retarded by association in the stacks, and had painfully stood by as Bryce agreed and laughed along. After that, she'd heard from Diana that Bryce and Garrett were no longer friends – because of her. All because of her.
At the time, she'd thought they would grow out of it. Girls were known for holding grudges and cutting people out of social groups, not boys. But eighth grade turned into ninth grade, ninth grade turned into tenth, and tenth turned into eleventh. Come senior year, the most they had ever spoken to each other was during PE when they had been paired up to do drills. In a way, Juli had never understood it. Wasn't it over? Weren't she and Bryce – whatever they had been – over?
"I don't blame your dad, you know," Garrett was spitting. "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it? You both have terrible taste in women."
Juli throws herself at Bryce as he's lunging forward. His drink spills all over her but she doesn't care. "Bryce, stop it," she whispers to him.
When he sees her, she feels as if he doesn't really see her. His eyes are icy and clouded over with rage. His empty red cup topples down near their feet and she hears whispers erupt all around them.
"Get out of my way, Juli," he lowly says to her.
It's then that she realizes that she is terrified of him – this Bryce. This new Bryce that was angry, and drunk, and violent. This wasn't the Bryce she'd kissed on the playground, or the same Bryce that had planted the sycamore tree in her front yard. This wasn't the Bryce that she knew and dreamed about.
It scares her to think that maybe the old Bryce was gone. That, maybe, this was who he really was now.
"No," she says, trying to hide the quiver in her voice. "Let it go, Bryce."
He stares at her, long and hard. She wonders if he's trying to scare her off like this. If he had it in him to hit her, or shove her away. But no. No. Bryce was not Rick. Bryce was not his father.
She doesn't know how it happens, but the crowd slowly moves. Garrett, sniggering, yells out, "Hey, fuck you, Bryce," before disappearing. But she isn't aware of any of this. She stares back at him for what seems like days, until he finally closes his eyes and says, quietly, "Juli."
And that's it. That's all he says.
"Come with me," Juli says, and she stays with him as they move past the crowd. As she looks down she suddenly has the urge to hold his hand, but instead folds her arms across her chest. This isn't the time, or the place, and she knows that.
During the drive back home, neither of them say a word. Juli tries to veil the awkwardness by turning on the radio. Bryce is in the passenger seat, his head turned towards the window. She gets the hint that he doesn't want to talk. She turns the volume up louder, just a little.
As she's driving her mind is swimming from what had just happened. Had they really been fighting over her? How did it all start, anyway? And why didn't his friends do anything? What was she going to tell Mrs. Loski when she dropped off her son at one in the morning, drunk out of his mind?
That's when she makes a decision. At the stoplight, she fishes out her cell phone and dials in the Loskis' home phone. As expected, Mrs. Loski answers, her voice worried and full of concern. She had been waiting up for Bryce.
"Hi, Mrs. Loski, this is Juli. I'm sorry to be calling so late but Bryce and I were studying for Calculus tonight and it got to be really late, and he sort of dozed off. I don't want to wake him. Would it be okay if he just stayed the night?"
Mrs. Loski sighs with relief over the phone. Juli bites her lip, wondering if Mrs. Loski would believe such a lie. Beside her, she knows that Bryce is listening intently to her phone call.
"Okay, Juli. Of course he can. Thank you for calling."
Juli sets her phone beside her, silently sighing. Their street is coming up, and she knows her parents are already sound asleep.
"Thanks," Bryce tells her.
Juli keeps her eyes on the road, her hands tensely clasped on the wheel. "Don't mention it."
ooo
She feels stupid that she feels so nervous bringing him up to her room. She flips on her light switch and suddenly she regrets not having cleaned up more, even though she isn't exactly a messy person. She wonders if he can tell how uneasy she is. She wonders if he is, too, or whether he's too drunk to tell the difference. If he is, he does a good job of hiding it. She's seen plenty of drunks and so far, with exception of almost violently assaulting Garrett on the beach, he has been, by far, the most tame.
"You have a nice room," Bryce comments, and she thanks him as she puts her keys down on her desk.
She's never had a boy sleep over before, so she has no idea what the proper etiquette is. Should she take the floor? But she didn't have any extra sheets or a sleeping bag. Would it be so terrible if they shared the same bed? Suddenly she regrets her parents having turned her brothers' room into a storage room after they'd left to pursue their music.
"I don't have a sleeping bag, so I guess we're going to have to share the bed."
He nods his head. He doesn't seem nervous at all. She feels a pang of jealousy as her mind automatically jumps to the conclusion that he's probably had much more experience with co-ed sleepovers than she has.
"The bathroom's just over there. Do you. . .?"
"Yeah. Sure."
He gets up and goes to the bathroom. Juli can't help it – she quickly inspects herself in the mirror. She smoothes her hair out with her hands. Then, suddenly he's out, and it's obvious he's washed his face and has tried to sober himself up. She goes in after him to change into her pajamas.
When she comes out, he's already taken up one side of the bed. His shoes are on the floor, and his eyes are closed. She sighs, turning off the light and getting in beside him. As she lies there, staring at the ceiling, she feels her heart moving erratically underneath her chest. She wonders if he can feel it, too.
How could she possibly fall asleep, with the boy she's longed for nearly her entire life just on the other side of her bed?
She listens to his breathing to see if he's already asleep.
"Why were you there?"
His voice is low and calm, and it makes her hair stand up on end.
"I don't know," she says, softly. "I guess I wanted to see how it felt like."
He's quiet for a very long minute. "So how did it feel?"
Juli laughs a little to herself. "Crowded. Loud. Hot. Like something completely out of my realm."
He sighs. She feels how warm he is next to her, and breathes in how he smells. She has never felt this way before – so out of control, and uninhibited. At the same time, she does everything she can not to reach out and touch him or cross the invisible barrier between them on this bed. 'You've been brave enough already, Juli,' she thinks to herself. 'Now be smart.'
"You don't belong there, Juli. You don't belong with any of them. You never did."
She lets his words sink in, and at first she's confused as to what he means. With Bryce Loski, she's always so prepared to believe the worst in his sentiments towards her. She doesn't know why. Maybe it's what she wants to believe, so that she can finally move on. Having him hate her was better than having him not care. Being angry with him was better than longing after him.
"Neither do you."
He chuckles, and she feels her bed shake a little from the movement in his chest. "I do a really good job at it, though, don't I?"
Even though it's dark, the moonlight shines through her old, ratty curtains. Her eyes trace the faint outline of his body next to her. After a thoughtful minute, she licks her lips and takes the plunge.
"Everybody's worried about you, Bryce. Your mom, and Chet." She pauses, and then quietly adds: "I'm worried about you, too."
There's a long, sobering moment of silence between them, and he says nothing. She panics that she's gone and ruined the moment by saying the wrong thing, by being too forward.
"I'm glad they're getting a divorce," he finally says. "I couldn't have left for college knowing that I'd left my mom alone with him."
Juli stares at the back of his head, fighting everything inside of her to reach out and touch him. She relishes the feeling of his nearness, and the fact that they're finally speaking, a real conversation. A meaningful one. Not just empty niceties because they both just happened to be taking out the trash at the same time, but something honest, something real.
"I'm sorry about what Garrett said. It's not true. You're not like your father at all."
"Yeah," he says, a bitter edge to his voice. "Because that would be tragic."
Juli stays silent, not knowing how to respond.
"I know he's an asshole, Juli. I've known it for a long time – everybody has. You don't have to pretend. All of my life I've watched people bend over backwards to kiss my dad's ass, and I'm sick of it. But not you, or your family. I've always. . . envied that. I mean, you were always civil, but you never laid it on thick just to get him to like you."
She wanted to say this was because they had integrity. Maybe Mr. Loski was an all right human being, but he had the tendency of being a dick, and making off-color comments that he thought he could just laugh off in the name of humor, despite the fact that you could tell he actually meant them. Her dad had always told her that being nice to people and liking them were two separate things. You could be nice to someone but you didn't have to like them. You could like someone but that didn't always mean you treated them like it.
"Thanks, I guess." She bites her lip. "But Bryce, Mr. Loski. . . your dad, isn't all bad. Nobody is. He loves you."
For a very long time, Bryce says nothing. Juli begins to suspect that he's fallen asleep, before he turns towards her. Suddenly, they are face to face, their faces so near that it makes her breath hitch in her throat.
"What if I turn out like him, Juli? What if, later on, I become just like him?"
She hears the pain in his voice, the self-depreciation and doubt. She's never found it more painful to stay away from him than at this very moment, right now. Right now, for so many reasons, she wants to hold him and never let go.
She swallows hard.
"That's never going to happen, Bryce. I promise you."
Her heart breaks for him, for his sadness. But she finds it hard to dwell on this when he suddenly reaches out and brushes her hair from her face. The way his fingertips accidentally graze her skin makes every nerve in her body hum.
"I don't deserve you, Juli," he whispers to her, but before she can fully understand what he means, he's closed the small distance between them and has kissed her.