When he shows up at Tom Grady's party, he shows up with the conscious goal of letting himself go. He's never been much of a drinker, but tonight he tells himself that he needs it. He needs to forget. His mother, his father, Juli – everything. He wants to disconnect himself from everything that is weighing him down, or else he knows he'll drown.
He doesn't socialize much at the party. He finds it all too hectic. He pushes through the gyrating crowd and feels the loud music pulsating in his ears, and he concentrates on chugging the cold beer down his throat, minding his own business. The faces are all a blur. He feels a cool, fleeting breeze on his face. He just wants to feel nothing.
He knows that he should have seen all of this coming. For a real long time he had been hoping for the explosion of tension and truth at his house, for the delicate house of cards his parents had built to finally come tumbling down. But even though he had counted down the months and the years until his mother had finally had enough of his father's bullshit, it didn't mean he was any more ready when it did eventually happen. Life was just funny that way. You spend half of your life waiting for something, and when it finally happens, it still knocks you off of your feet, leaving you in the dust, trying to catch your breath.
"Well, if it isn't Bryce Loski."
He slowly looks up to see Garrett. They used to be friends, but he can only vaguely remember why they had ever been friends in the first place.
He nods at him in acknowledgement but doesn't say a word. He keeps on drinking.
"So. I heard about your mom and dad. That's too bad," Garrett says, shaking his head and clicking his tongue. Bryce can tell he's just as drunk as he himself is, if not worse. "I guess you are your father's son, huh? Loski men just don't know how to keep their women satisfied."
His somber train of thought shatters, and he feels himself tense up, but he tries to play it cool as he takes another sip from his cup. In the back of his mind, he thinks about how many seconds it would take to pummel Garrett straight into the ground.
"Shut up, Garrett."
Garrett laughs and raises his voice, calling attention to them. "Oh, come on, man! Where is Juli Baker, anyway? Was she too good for you? Except – you know what," he says, "Juli was smart. She broke it off with you even before anything got started." He laughs some more.
Bryce is only mildly aware that everyone around him has stopped moving and is now watching them. His hand has clenched beside him. Garrett is smirking, looking him straight in the eyes, challenging him.
"But I mean, Juli Baker out of anyone should know damaged goods when she sees them, right?"
He's lunged at Garrett before he even knows it, but Garrett dodges him just in time.
"Whoa, big boy. Still got a thing for her, do you?"
"Why don't you just shut your fucking mouth, Garrett?" he spits. "You have no idea what you're talking about. Not a clue."
Faintly, he sees Garrett's eyes flash. Like an ancient grudge finally washing up to the surface.
"Don't kid yourself, Bryce. You think people don't have eyes? You're even stupider now than you were before."
Bryce tells himself to walk away. Walk away. He isn't going to do this. Not with Garrett, not here, not anywhere. Not over this.
But just as he's turning away, to leave the party and head out to his car, Garrett speaks up again.
"I don't blame your dad, you know," he taunts, yelling over the music. "The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree. You both have terrible taste in women."
He doesn't know what happens then. All he knows that he is no longer in control of himself, and that he is utterly overcome with the violent urge to punch Garrett's face in until he doesn't recognize it anymore. His body turns and lunges forward again, and Garrett is cornered in by the crowd, but he's suddenly stopped by something that hadn't been there before. Something warm. Juli.
He feels something wet splash between the two of them, but he doesn't notice. She's so close he can feel her cool breath against his face. She whispers something to him, and it's moments before her words reach his ears. "Bryce. Stop it."
He wants to shove her out of the way. What was she doing here, anyway?
"Get out of my way, Juli," he tells her. He wants it to be a warning. He wants her to take him seriously, just this once, in the way that he means. He wants her to get out and not look back. He doesn't want her to see what he's about to do.
But as he's looking into her eyes, big with worry and concern, he sees a hint of fear. He recognizes this look. He used to see it on his mother's face whenever his parents fought. As a boy, he used to go to sleep at night with this look burned into his memory, swearing to himself that he would never turn out like his father.
"No," she says to him. Her voice is shaky. "Let it go, Bryce. Please."
In that moment, he wants the world wants to turn inside-out. The heavy amalgam in his chest is making it incredibly hard to swallow down the thick clot lodged in his throat. His hands are still tightly clenched into fists and the blood in his veins is hot, and pounding. Everybody is whispering. He looks into her eyes, and he feels his anger slowly sinking inside him like a lead anchor. He hears a white noise in his ears.
He can only vaguely hear Garrett cuss him out.
He closes his eyes. His mouth is painfully dry. God, please let this be a dream.
But then he feels Juli's hand on his chest. She feels so warm, and real. This has to be a dream. It has to be.
"Juli," he hoarsely says.
He needs so badly for this to be a dream but for her to be real.
"Come with me," she suddenly says to him, and he hesitantly follows her out of the crowd, and out of the party. They walk in silence, side by side, with the crowd of eyes following them off of the beach. They cross the parking lot to her car, where they wordlessly get in.
He wants to say something – anything. But his head feels like it's floating yet at the same time tied to the earth; like he can't touch her, even if he wanted to. He wants to ask her what she's doing here. He wants to ask her if she thinks less of him. He wants to ask her why she didn't just let him beat the shit out of Garrett. He would have stuck up for her this time around, he was braver – wasn't that something that she wanted?
He has this unrealistic expectation that she'll say something, but she stays quiet as she drives. She even turns up the radio, like she doesn't want to get into a conversation at all.
God, he wants to know what she's thinking. As he sits there, watching the scenery blur past his window, he's as anxious as hell. And just as he's about to ask her as she rolls to a stop in front of a red light, she takes out her cell phone and begins to dial in a number. When she speaks, he freezes in his seat.
"Hi, Mrs. Loski. This is Juli."
He can hear his mother's worried murmur on the other line and he closes his eyes tight, swallowing the shame and self-hatred in his throat. As if his mother needed to know that her only son had gone out to almost drunkenly beat up his former best friend. But what Juli says surprises him, and leaves him almost stunned as she ends the call and puts her phone down. He doesn't know why it surprises him, either – Juli was too good, too conscientious of other people's feelings to out him like that. She had lied on his behalf to protect his mother, and him, too.
He recognizes their street as Juli turns a nearby corner. The houses are quiet and asleep, perfectly calm and tranquil.
"Thanks," he heavily tells her. He wants to tell her more, but he can't find the words, so he settles for the uneasy silence that comes after.
"Don't mention it," she says. She doesn't look at him once.
ooo
In the bathroom, he washes his face and tries to sober up. He looks at himself in the mirror, his eyes glassy and his cheeks flushed from intoxication, and he wishes he were sober. His first time inside Juli Baker's room, and he's drunk. Not so drunk that he should be worried about throwing up on her bed, but drunk enough that he worries what he might do if she's near enough. He's never practiced being near her and controlling himself. All he's ever done is stay away, for precisely that reason. Whenever he was around her, it was hard to be sure of anything except that he just couldn't believe how much he wanted her.
When he gets out, he settles on one side of her bed as she takes her turn in the bathroom. Her bed is comfortable, and it smells just like her. He feels at ease and nervous, all at the same time. The minute she turns off the light and slips in beside him, he feels as if his heart has taken up the whole room.
They lay there for a few minutes in silence. He wonders if she's already fallen asleep.
"Why were you there?" he asks her. He makes sure his voice is low and quiet, so he doesn't wake up her parents.
Her voice is soft, in a whisper. "I don't know. I guess I wanted to see how it felt like."
He thinks about what she said. He had never seen Juli as someone who belonged in the superficial cliques in high school, and he liked that. She was so much more than that – transcendental, even. So damn above it all.
He forgets sometimes that she's just a teenager, just like him.
"So how did it feel?"
She laughs quietly. God, he loves her laugh. "Crowded. Loud. Hot. Like something completely out of my realm."
He lets out a breath of air, relieved. He tries to sort out the tangled jumble of thoughts inside his head – to convert them into what he's always wanted to say to her. Something meaningful. The truth.
He thinks about that night the Bakers had dinner with them, the night he'd watched her from across the room talking about perpetual motion with her dad and Chet. He thinks about her up in the sycamore, alone but free, untouchable. Nothing about Juli had ever jived with what he knew about the world. Nothing.
"You don't belong there, Juli," he says. He just wants to say, 'You're better. You're too good for them.' "You don't belong with any of them. You never did."
When she responds, she's serious – and what she says surprises him.
"Neither do you."
He lets out an empty laugh. "I do a really good job at it, though, don't I?"
"Everybody's worried about you, Bryce. Your mom, and Chet." She takes a slight pause, then, as if hesitating. "I'm worried about you, too."
He closes his eyes. So she knows. Of course, he should have known – Chet must have said something, and he knows for a fact that his mom found a confidant in Mrs. Baker. He almost wants to ask her how long she's known – if that was why she was suddenly coming around. Bryce Loski needed help, his parents' marriage was falling apart. Was that the only reason Juli was speaking to him again? As a general good deed? Because she pitied him?
"I'm glad they're getting a divorce," he says instead, after a long pause. "I couldn't have left for college knowing that I'd left my mom alone with him."
Juli then apologizes for what Garrett had said about him, comparing him to his father. "It's not true," she reassures him, softly. "You're not like your father at all."
If only Juli knew the years Bryce had spent looking up to him – hanging on his every word, needing his approval. When he was younger, there was nothing better than growing up to be exactly like his father. Now he hates himself for how long he turned a blind eye to how he treated people, and how he'd just accepted it as something that came with age and experience. He knows better now.
He tells Juli about how he knows his father is an asshole, and she responds by saying that his father isn't all bad, that nobody is. Typical Juli. His father had been such a jackass to their family, and yet here she was, telling him that his father wasn't all bad.
"He loves you," she softly reminds him.
He sees both fear and comfort in that statement, all at the same time. He doesn't know if he believes it, but he wants to. He just doesn't know if he can.
Suddenly, Bryce turns around, so that he's facing her, lying side by side. Her face is so close he can hear her breath hitch against his face from surprise.
"What if I turn out like him, Juli?" he asks her, searching her eyes through the darkness. "What if, later on, I become just like him?"
"That's never going to happen, Bryce," Juli whispers. He can see her looking right into his eyes from the moonlight seeping in through her flimsy curtains. "I promise you."
Suddenly, he reaches out and brushes her hair from her face. He feels lightheaded, like his head has disconnected from his body and is now floating somewhere above them. His fingers skim her face, and he sees her eyes flicker, staring into his. The moment he touches her, he feels warmth, and electricity. Does she feel it too?
"I don't deserve you, Juli," he hears himself say, before he leaning in to kiss her.
And as soon as he does, he can't remember why he'd ever stopped himself from kissing her in the first place.