JOSH
The doorbell rangwhen I almost wrestled my suitcase closed. The unexpected sound startled me into loosening my hold on the shell, which popped open again with a smug thud.
“Fuck.”
I leave for New Zealand in four days. I’ve refused to check my luggage ever since an airline lost the suitcase containing my signed baseball trading cards when I was twelve, so I’d spent the past hour shoehorning a week’s worth of hiking gear into a tiny carry-on.
All that work, down the drain.
“This better be fucking good.” Irritation shot through my veins as I marched out of my room and to the front door.
I flung open the door, ready to rip whoever it was a new one, but my foul mood crumbled when I saw who stood on the front step.
“Hey.” Jules wrapped her arms around her waist, her skin pale and her eyes suspiciously bright. “I’m sorry for dropping by unannounced, but I…I didn’t know where…” Her wobbly smile crumpled. “I didn’t want to be alone.”
Her voice caught on the last word, and a blade of worry sliced through my insides.
“Fuck being sorry.” I opened the door wider and scanned her for injuries as she stepped inside. No bleeding, no bruises, just that lost look on her face. Worry stabbed deeper in my gut. “What happened?”
“It’s my mom.” Jules swallowed hard. “The hospital called and said she was in a car accident. She—she’s…” A small sob slipped out.
She didn’t need to finish the sentence for me to guess what happened. But while I’d expected sympathy or even commiserating pain, nothing could’ve prepared me for the explosion in my chest.
One tiny sob from her, and every hidden explosive detonated, one by one, until pain burned through my lungs and rushed through my blood. It echoed in my head and squeezed my heart so tight I had to force myself to breathe through the ache.
“Come here, Red.” The rough crack in my voice sounded foreign to my ears.
I opened my arms. Jules stepped into them, burying her face in my chest to muffle her cries, and it took all my willpower to hold back a visible reaction. I didn’t want to heighten the wild emotion rampaging through the air, but fuck, seeing her hurting, hurt. More than I thought possible.
“Shhh.” I rested my chin on top of her head and rubbed gentle circles on her back, wishing I weren’t so damn helpless. I would’ve done anything, bargained with anyone, to erase her pain, but of all the skills I’d mastered over the years, bringing back the dead wasn’t one of them. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
“I’m sorry.” Jules hiccupped. “I know this—this i-isn’t part of our arrangement, b-but A-Ava’s a-at a photoshoot and S-Stella isn’t home y-yet and I…”
“Stop saying sorry.” I tightened my hold on her. “You have nothing to be sorry about. You can stay here as long as you’d like.”
“But w-what about our—”
“Jules.” My hand paused on her back for a second. ”Shut up and let me hold you.”
Her watery laugh lasted for a second before it dissolved into tears again. But fuck it, I’d take a second of her feeling better. I’d take half a second. Anything I could get.
Eventually, her sobs subsided into sniffles, and I guided her to the couch. “I’ll be right back.”
I didn’t have time to grocery shop this week, so I placed a quick delivery order on my phone and fixed a cup of tea in the kitchen. My mom had firmly believed a good cup of tea could solve any problem, and though I rarely drank it myself these days, I always kept some on hand.
Tea and a hot water dispenser—two essentials in a Chinese household.
A pang pierced my chest at the thought of my mom. She’d died when I was a kid, but no one truly gets over the death of a parent.
Jules never talked about her family, so I assumed she had a fraught relationship with her mother, but her mom was still her mom.
I returned to the living room and handed her the drink.
“You didn’t poison this, did you?” Her scratchy voice contained a hint of her usual sass.
Relief bloomed behind my ribs, and my lips curved at the callback to one of our earlier conversations.
“Just drink the damn tea, Red.”
A shadow of a smile crossed Jules’s mouth. She took a small sip while I sank next to her on the couch.
“They called when I was in the clinic,” she said, staring into her mug. “The other car ran a red light and crashed into hers. Everyone died on impact. The hospital went through her belongings and found my number…I was the only family she had left.”
She lifted her eyes to meet mine, her expression tortured. “I was the only family she had left,” she repeated. “And I haven’t talked to her in seven years. I had her number. I could’ve called her, but…” A visible swallow. “I kept telling myself, next year. Next year will be the year I call her and make amends. I never did. And now, I never will.”
Jules’s voice thickened with a fresh bout of unshed tears.
The ache in my chest hardened into stone.
“You couldn’t have known,” I said gently. “It was a freak accident.”
“But if I hadn’t put it off…” Jules shook her head. “The worst part is, I didn’t think I would feel like...this.” She gestured at herself. “My mom and I didn’t part on good terms, to say the least. For years, I was so angry at her for what she did. I thought I would be relieved when she died, but I…” She sucked in a sharp inhale. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel. Sad. Angry. Ashamed. Regretful. And yes, a little relieved.” Her knuckles whitened around her mug. “Is that terrible of me?”
“It sounds like you had a complicated relationship with your mother, and it’s normal to feel all those things. Even relief.”