Page 67 of Without You

Closing the door, my eyes snag on an important looking letter, being held up with a magnet. “When did you get this?” I ask without a second thought, my fingers tugging at the edge, and pulling it off the fridge.

I feel him behind me, his chest brushing up against my back. “Friday?” he questions. “The day I saw you at the cemetery,” he clarifies.

I count the days in my head, and turn to face him.Has it really only been three days?

Leaning on the fridge, I offer us some space and jut the piece of paper between us. “You didn’t say anything.”

Snatching the letter from me, he leans over and hangs it back up. “When would you have liked me to slip it in? Before or after you used all your energy to ignore me?”

Dropping my chin to my chest, I try to hide the shame I feel at how I’ve treated him. Peering up to look at him, I catch his expectant gaze.

“I was jealous,” I say under my breath, unsure of whether I really want to admit to this with him.

“Of me?” he asks incredulously.

“It’s complicated,” I sigh.

Long lean fingers grip my chin, tilting my head up. “Everythingabout this is complicated. Tell me,” he urges.

Like a cliched scene in a movie, the sound of someone knocking interrupts us, but Julian doesn’t rush to open it. “This isn’t finished,” he warns. “I want to hear what you have to say.”

I nod as his hand drops from my chin. When he walks away, I grab two bottles of beer, like we agreed upon, and trudge through his house. Placing the bottles down, I shrug out of my jacket, the house warm enough to be wearing a t-shirt. Once I throw it over the nearest piece of furniture, I drop down to sit around the square shaped coffee table in the middle of his modest living room.

When he returns, he’s got his hands full with plates and food filled containers. “You ordered that much Thai food for one person?” I ask, stretching my arms up to take some of the load.

“I knew you’d get here eventually.”

“Confident much?”

He lowers himself down to the floor, sitting with his legs crossed and neatly tucked underneath the table. “More like hopeful,” he says honestly.

We sit in relaxed silence as we both plate up our food. I open up both our beers and place his closer to him.

I’ve almost cleaned my plate when he interrupts the lull. “Tell me why you were jealous?”

“This is going to make me sound ridiculous,” I admit.

He nudges my leg with his, but keeps his eyes on mine. “Probably.”

Focusing on my plate, I move my food around in circles with my fork. Making piles and shapes with the leftovers, I give my mind something to absentmindedly concentrate on, instead of fixating on the awkward words that are about to leave my mouth.

“You just fit in,” I blurt out. “It wasn’t like you tried too hard, or you were excessive and over the top, wanting everyone’s attention.” I chance a sneak peek at his face, and he’s watching me thoughtfully. “Maybe it was just a case of middle child syndrome. Victoria was the only girl, so I never felt the comparison with her. And with Rhett, he was just effortlessly better. At everything and anything.”

“And me?” He hesitates.

“You got their attention, in ways I never did,” I confess quietly. “Their pride. Their smiles. Their laughter. They couldn’t get enough of fussing over you, and as an adult, I know how stupid and pathetic it sounds, but it bugged me for a really long time. And then it just felt like too much time had passed to change the way I felt.”

“Deacon.” I flick my gaze up to his and catch his empathetic smile. “Surely you know why they were like that toward me?”

I look at him confused.

“They felt sorry for me,” he states. “My parents were dead, my grandmother died, and the Andersons were just placeholder parents. Your mom and dad are too good to not be nice.”

It’s logical and makes perfect sense because Bill and Elaine Suttonaregood people, but none of that matters in my brain. Because it still doesn’t change that my mother’s good nature and need for perfection constantly made me feel like I wasn’t enough.

“I know that,” I tell him. “But it doesn’t change anything up here.” I tap two fingers to my temples. “You were the icing on the cake, and I resented you simply because I could,” I say truthfully. He gives me an encouraging nod, so I find myself wanting to tell him more. “Growing up, it was like Rhett could do no wrong, I was his older brother, but mom wanted me to learn from him. But, no matter what I did, I always got a reprimand, a side comment of how I could do better or do more. After Rhett got diagnosed with cancer, I gave up on trying. It became easier to stay away, because Mom—rightfully so—became a wreck.”

“I was alive and her perfect son wasn’t,” I exclaim, my voice cracking a little at the end. I pick up my beer and draw back as much of the cold liquid down my throat as I can. My heart is hammering in my chest, disbelief swimming in my stomach at how I can’t stop talking.

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