Julian stayed with me for the rest of the day. He filled me in on all things Heather and I filled him in on my relationship with Brandon. I needed him to know that I had no intentions of exorcising him from my life. If he was not accepting of our relationship then there was no future for us. Thankfully he understood that Brandon and I shared a past so great that made it difficult to let go of.
“As long as you have no intentions of going down that road again for anything other than friendship I don’t have a problem with it sweetheart. I could have been in your life as well but I chose not to be. I took the coward’s way out.”
“I don’t understand? It wasn’t your fault you had to move away Julian.”
“Well, I went back to Montgomery a few times. Gran and I had to set up the sale of mom and pops house. She tried to get me to pay you all a visit but I was scared. I figured your mom and dad would hate me.”
I simply stared at him in confusion. How could anyone have hated him for something so far out of his control? The funny thing is that for years I had thought the same thing about my own mom and dad. That they hated me for being the one that lived. They rarely ever showed me anything resembling parental love after Nicolai was killed, sometimes they wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence no matter what I did to deserve a second look.
Julian frantically wiped at his upper legs with both hands, I could tell he was trying to keep them from their chaotic journey through his mane something I noticed he did every time he got nervous. I put my hands on top of his and glanced up at him from under my eye lids, my eyes pleading with him to calm down and tell me what was on his mind.
“Alright, since we are laying our cards out on the table.” he sighed nervously. “The day everything went down, he shot my mom and pop first. There was no life left in them, they died the second the bullets hit. They had begged and pleaded for my and Nicks lives but it only seemed to make the son of a bitch hungry for more blood. When he aimed his gun at me, Nick lunged out from under my dad’s body and threw himself out in front of me. The guy shot him twice trying to get to me. The injuries I sustained, they were secondary hits from the bullets that killed him Jemma.”
He moved his hand to the top of mine. He was shaking, tears had filled his eyes and I was completely paralyzed. Everything I had heard about that day was from third party accounts from kids at school. My parents never spoke a word about it and nobody dared say anything to me directly.
“He saved me, in the end he was the better man.”
“He saved you?”
After everything those were the only words I could wrap my head around. Nick, the boy who tore the heads of my Barbie dolls, who would steal my chicken nuggets when nobody was looking, had died saving the only person I could see myself sharing my life with. My brother, who was only twelve years old, had died a hero.
I felt Julian lightly squeeze my hand before he reached up to touch my face. He ran his thumb over my cheek holding my head up with the rest of his fingers.
“Tell me what you are thinking sweetheart?”
I couldn’t tell him what I was thinking right then and there because I was completely dry of words. I had done so much talking that I had no speech left in me to react to the bombshell he had just laid out in front of me. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t hate him, there was no way in hell that I could, but the words lay lifeless at the back of my throat.
I put a finger up in front of him and did the only thing I could think to do. I ran into my room and slid a small plastic chest out from under my bed. Inside lay all of the memories of my life before, memories of a life that Julian was such a large part of. I pulled out my old drawing journal and carried myself back to my seat placing the book into his hands.
Without saying a word he opened it and began to flip through the pages. I watched as he flipped through page after page of drawings, my mouth smiling brighter and brighter every time he smiled. Some of the paintings were normal little girl stuff, rainbows and butterflies, but others well they were all Julian. Some were as simple as his name being written over and over again in bubble letters, some were drawings of the two of us, some little hearts with both of our names scribbled inside, each one a perfect documentation of the childhood crush I had managed to hold onto all through Jr. High.
Julian stopped at one of my self-portraits. It was a drawing of me as a little girl dancing around my parent’s back yard garden with fairy wings. He ran his fingers over the swirls around my body that indicated I was spinning in circles.
“Always wearing those wings, you were such a happy little girl. I loved playing with you, sometimes more than Nick, you were just so carefree. I would get so fucking mad at Nick for being so damned mean to you. He could be such a jerk sometimes.” He looked up at me from the page. “But I loved him like a brother.”