Page 25 of Forever is Now

The thing about Julia is that she’s always had this viciousness within her. She and Hana were friends from nursery. Best friends. It had been the two of them for so long, but then in year 7, I joined them. I thought that we could be an equal trio. Best friends, the three of us.

Julia didn’t like me, then. She felt threatened, I can see that now. I was trying to take her best friend away, in her eyes. She didn’t like that at all. But she wasn’t mean to me or anything then. No, she was clever about it. She started a few rumors about me, among the other girls, and then when I’d been upset, she’d be my shoulder to cry on.

She was pretty manipulative, all things considered. Kind of like you, Adelaide.

But as we got older, we kind of came to an understanding. We became friends, more solidly, started hanging out just the two of us. It took us longer, because she was threatened by me. And because I knew she had this streak within her.

I was always nervous around her—I can see that now, looking back. Even when I thought we were close, I was guarded. I had to be.

“You’re writing romance and you’reasexual?” Julia had looked at me with contempt then. “This whole series of books is lies?”

“The series is about love,” I said.

“But your love story is a lie.”

“My love story is not a lie. Love and sex are different,” I countered. “I’ve been writing about love.”

She looked at me with such disgust that it made her nostrils flare. Her nose ring glinted with the movement. “Doesn’t it make you feel like a fraud?”

Hana spoke up then, backing me, but I stopped listening.

I remember how sick I felt, how I couldn’t wait for Julia to leave.

She did, eventually. And the next time I saw her, she acted as if nothing had happened, but I knew that she held this disgust of me.

And then a month later, you found out about me being ace. You wrote a huge article about it, calling me a fraud, didn’t you?

I was convinced Julia must’ve leaked it. It wasn’t her place, or yours, to tell the world! And I didn’t want everyone knowing! I didn’t want that to be used as yet another attack on me.

I was scathing, going through Julia’s social media profiles, looking for anything she might’ve said. I couldn’t see anything, and I rang her. I was so angry.

She just snapped at me, “Of course I wouldn’t out you.”

But someone had.

And I knew it wouldn’t have been Hana.

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