Page 47 of Lies Like Love

“I’ll be in my room.” He storms off.

Pushing my own chair back, I stand up.

“Felicity,” Mom snaps.

“I’m just going to check on him.”

Her gaze narrows.

“Let her,” Steve says, once more going back to his food. The irritation is still there, but he’s burying it now that Jude has left the room.

They both like to pretend the tension in our house doesn’t exist. Which I’m fine with right now if it lets me escape this nauseatingly fake family dinner.

Stopping at Jude’s door, I knock once. “Jude.”

Trying the handle, it isn’t locked, so I make my way in.

At first, I think maybe he bailed out the back door, but there’s water running in his bathroom, so I follow the sound. The air is already muggy from the hot water running in the shower, but Jude is propped on the counter fully dressed, leaning against the foggy mirror.

“You can’t talk to them like that.” I hop up beside him on the counter, and only then does he turn to face me.

“Fuck them.”

I shake my head. “What happened at your aunt’s house?”

I’ve asked him a hundred times. He never tells me. A merry-go-round of lies he spins me on.

“Nothing,” he says, but his teeth clench and he breaks my stare.

“Really? Because you’ve been non-stop fighting with your dad ever since you got back.”

Jude leans his head against the mirror and closes his eyes. His chest rises and falls with every deep breath, and I wish for once he’d let me in.

“Don’t you ever get tired of it?” Jude asks, ignoring my question entirely. “We’re walking on eggshells when it’s all bullshit.”

My heart pounds against my ribs, and I grip the counter. But I can’t admit it, even here just to him. Saying out loud that the life my mom provided eats me away, feels like I’m betraying her.

“You do.” He answers for me. “None of this is real. They don’t even love each other.”

“What makes you think that?”

“It’s obvious.”

I wouldn’t know. Mom’s never seemed capable of love to me. It’s not Steve’s fault. And on top of that, I’m not sure what love even is.

A lie people tell themselves to justify their actions? Something to explain how another person can make them completely irrational?

If so, what do I feel for Jude?

“What do you know about love?” I ask.

Jude tips his head and his green stare finds me once more. So deep and endless the branches of darkness weave through the pits inside me.

He lets out a dark half-chuckle of a breath. “Nothing, apparently.”

I stand inside the hot shower and wait for it to wash me clean. The sixteen-year-old girl and my current self blur as rivers run over my skin. I wait for the water to wash my tears away. I wait for it to wash the blood away.

I wish it could washmeaway, but it can’t.

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