Next Stop Love, #1 Page 10

  “She’s threatened to punch me at least three times in the last five minutes,” Sasha said. “But she hasn’t followed through yet, so I wouldn’t worry.”

  “I’ll punch you once I’m more awake,” Kinsey said. She blinked and turned back to Beatrice. “Wait, why am I murdering you again?”

  “I may have invited another misfit to Thanksgiving.”

  “I thought Greyson was spending Thanksgiving with his dad and his sister,” Kinsey said.

  “Not Greyson,” Beatrice said, feeling her cheeks warm. “A friend of mine who takes the train with me.”

  “Have I met her?” Kinsey asked, frowning.

  “No, but I think you’d like him.”

  “‘Him?’”

  Beatrice flushed deeper at the sudden curious expressions on both of her friends’ faces. “Shut up. He’s just a friend. Straight girls are allowed to have guy friends they’re not trying to date.”

  “Is he gay?” Sasha asked, cocking her head to one side and hooking her thumbs in the pockets of her bomber jacket.

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so. I can usually tell.”

  “So you, a straight girl, have been secretly hanging out with a presumably straight guy, and neither of you have any interest in getting in each other’s pants.”

  “You two hang out all the time and you’re not going out,” Beatrice said defensively.

  “Not for lack of trying,” Sasha said, tossing Kinsey an exaggerated eyebrow waggle.

  Kinsey threw back a quelling look. “Don’t make me punch you again.”

  Sasha laughed. “‘Again?’ You haven’t even followed through with the first one.”

  “I just want to know,” Beatrice said, trying to get the conversation back on track, “if it’s okay if I bring my new friend to Thanksgiving. Because I kind of already asked him.”

  “Who even is this just-a-friend, and why haven’t I heard of him before?” Kinsey demanded.

  “His name is Julian, and I only met him a few weeks ago. He lives near me and works at an art studio thing in the Village. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go. It sounded like even his sister was going somewhere without him. He’s really nice, and he’s funny, and he’s really good at drawing, and I really think you’d both like him. He offered to bring food,” she added, concerned she was still detecting some resistance. Kinsey was squinting at her suspiciously, though Beatrice couldn’t tell how much of that was her Photoshop hangover. And Sasha’s eyebrows had raised incrementally over the course of Beatrice’s ramble until they were partially obscured by her hair.

  They hadn’t minded when Beatrice looped her brother into the Friendsgiv­ing plans after he came home. They hadn’t even minded when she’d felt obligated to invite Greyson last weekend. And Greyson didn’t tend to fit in well with their group, any more than Beatrice fit in with his friends. She was pretty sure both Kinsey and Sasha had been relieved when it turned out he already had plans. Quite frankly, so was Beatrice.

  But she couldn’t see Julian causing any problems. He was quicker to laugh than Greyson, and easy to connect with. And he didn’t argue every little point. Beatrice was sure Kinsey and Sasha would like him if they just gave him a chance.

  “I don’t know, Bee,” Kinsey said, scratching her nose.

  Beatrice clasped her hands together and pressed them under her chin, adopting one of Nath’s puppy dog looks. “Please? He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Sasha and Kinsey exchanged a glance.

  Sasha shrugged. “I don’t mind. It’s your house, though. Up to you.”

  “Fine,” Kinsey groaned. “Just-a-friend can come to misfit Thanksgiving.”

  “Julian,” Beatrice corrected, her shoulders relaxing. “And please be nice. He can act a little prickly at first, but he’s really great. You’ll like him. I promise.”

  Eleven

  Julian decided he was going to wait outside Beatrice’s building for her and her brother to come out. It was fucking freezing, but he couldn’t get himself to climb the stairs and knock on the door.

  He’d been in a knot of nervous anticipation over this stupid Thanksgiving dinner since he woke up this morning. There was no good reason for it. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen Beatrice nearly every day for the past three weeks. But telling himself how irrational his nerves were didn’t make them go away.

  He’d gone from nervous anticipation to low-key anxiety somewhere around the time Fabiana had left for the train to Manhattan. And as he walked the half-mile trek between his apartment and Beatrice’s, his feelings had warped again into a nagging dread.

  It wasn’t just about Thanksgiving, either. He was already aware that agreeing to come meant he was ignoring the point of all his made-up rules regarding Beatrice. Going to this dinner—seeing Beatrice in her element—could only make it harder to remember that he should keep his distance. Sure, he was being stupid, but he didn’t really care. All it took was a little bit of rationalization and he could get his reason to shut up for hours at a time.

  No, the dread he was feeling now didn’t seem to have a cause. Things had been going too smoothly lately. That had to mean another disaster was imminent. The foreboding gnawed at his stomach and sent two words through his head on a loop: Don’t go.

  Julian pulled his coat closer around him, releasing a white puff of air. He tried to imagine all his dread had gone out of his lungs with it, dissipating until it didn’t matter anymore. Nothing but superstitious bullshit.

  But the dread wasn’t in his lungs. It was in his gut, and in the bones of his hands, and in his blood. It couldn’t be dismissed so easily.

  He pressed his back against the wall, watching heavy clouds drift by overhead, willing his heart to slow its rapid pace.

  He hated feeling this way. The sick, hovering foreboding. It was exactly how he felt when he was seven years old, clinging to his dad with all his strength. Begging him not to leave for his tour of duty in Iraq. He’d known, somehow, that it was the last time he’d ever see his dad. He’d been too afraid that saying the words would make them come true. Not that it had made any difference in the end.

  It was exactly how he felt that day in the tenth grade when he was so anxious to go home, he made himself sick. Not for any clear reason, that time. Just this awful, tight feeling that something was wrong. He’d been sitting in the nurse’s office when the principal came in and told him his mom had been in a car accident and she was in the hospital. She’d died a few hours later.

  Julian yanked off his gloves, shoved them in his pocket, and took out his phone. The grocery bag on his arm slid to his elbow as he typed out a quick text to Fabiana, telling her to text him when she got to Walter’s safely. She’d probably think he was crazy, but he was too wound up not to say something.

  Why, she replied, seconds later.

  He frowned at the screen. Humor me.

  She sent him a rude emoji. Followed by several more emojis that Julian guessed were meant to show Fabiana dying in a horrible train derailment. Complete with far more fire and skulls than necessary.

  Not funny, he wrote.

  omg chill

  A few seconds later, a photo came through of Fabiana, looking pissed, standing on a street he recognized as being just a couple blocks from Walter’s penthouse in Manhattan.

  Proof of life, Fabiana wrote underneath the photo. Happy?

  Not really. The dread in his gut didn’t ease, but at least it didn’t seem connected to his sister.

  That just left him. He’d felt like this just a few days before he dropped out of high school, too. It had started in the morning, and by the end of the day, he was in the hospital with a broken hand, three broken ribs, and some serious internal bleeding. More than one stressed-looking doctor had informed him afterward that he was very very lucky to be alive.

  Julian pushed off the rough stucco of Beatrice’s building, rubbing the palm of his left hand with his right thumb to rid himself of the remembered pain. Maybe he should call this whole Thanksgiv
ing thing off. It would give him a chance to work on an illustration he’d been struggling with. Get ahead of schedule on his portfolio. It wasn’t like he hadn’t spent the last three Thanksgivings on his own. It was depressing, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

  And it would shut up the words chasing themselves around his head.

  Don’t go.

  Julian pulled up Beatrice’s number on his phone. He’d just tell her he had the flu or something. She’d probably only asked him to come to dinner because she felt sorry for him. She wouldn’t mind if he canceled.

  “Julian!”

  He looked up. Beatrice was coming down the sidewalk, her silly Java Mama hat clutched in one hand. Her hair was wilder than usual, and a big grin lit up her face. She waved her hat at him, and he found himself smiling back, some of the tension going out of his shoulders.

  He didn’t know what it was about her that made him believe everything could work out for the better. Nothing about his life so far had proved he wasn’t destined to forever fall from one shitty disaster to the next.

  But somehow, when Beatrice was around, it seemed like his shitty luck didn’t have to define his life. When she looked at him, she didn’t see some screwup with no chance of making something of himself. She saw someone who deserved to hope for something better. She’d told him once that all he needed was a plan and some hard work and he could do almost anything. And when she was around, Julian actually believed it.

  “Hey,” he called back, locking his phone and shoving it in his coat pocket. It was too late to cancel plans now, even if he had still wanted to. “I thought you said your shift was supposed to end twenty minutes ago.”

  “It was. We had this crazy rush and I got stuck.”

  “A rush?” Julian repeated. “At Java Mama?”

  “I know. Something must’ve exploded at the Starbucks down the street, because why else would a whole flock of desperately under-caffeinated people descend on Java Mama screaming for coffee?” Beatrice stopped when she reached him and frowned, puffing out a cloud of air. “What are you doing down here? Didn’t Nath let you in?”

  “I thought I’d just wait out here,” Julian said, trying to sound casual. The cold had flushed her cheeks an enticing shade of pink. His chest ached suddenly, with something he couldn’t name. He wanted to tuck her against his chest and hold on tight. To keep her safe. Or to absorb some of that comforting, stubborn optimism. He didn’t know which.

  Her eyes flicked over his face, a tentative smile pulling up one side of her mouth. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Julian said, pretending to check the contents of the grocery bag he was carrying. “I—Yeah. Fine.”

  “Okay.” Beatrice sucked in a brisk breath and clapped her mittens together. “In that case, you better just come upstairs with me.” She pulled at the collar of her polo shirt under her coat. “I have to change still, and Sasha won’t be here for at least another ten minutes. If you stay down here, you’ll freeze your butt off. Come on.”

  Don’t, said the dread still lingering in his gut. But its voice wasn’t so strong anymore, and Julian was able to squash it back down.

  Beatrice led him upstairs, launching into a story about a particularly cheerful, chatty customer who’d attempted to steal the tip jar, not realizing it was nailed down. By the time they reached her front door, on the third floor, Julian was too busy laughing at her recounting of the incident to feel much dread at all.

  Beatrice switched into checklist mode as soon as they were inside. She’d barely apologized for the ‘mess’ and introduced Julian to her younger brother before she disappeared into her room to change.

  Nath, who’d muted the show he was watching when they came in, narrowed his eyes at Julian from the couch. “She didn’t say you had ink.”

  Julian couldn’t tell from his expression whether this was a good or a bad thing. “Uh . . . yeah.”

  “Huh,” Nath said. Then his expression cleared and he shrugged. “Well, if Bee likes you, you’re probably cool. Put your stuff on the table there and sit down.”

  Julian left the grocery bag on an empty space on the kitchen table and sat down on one of the two sofas crammed into the living room. Nath had turned up the volume on the TV again, but Julian’s attention wandered around the apartment. Despite Beatrice’s apology, it wasn’t all that messy. There was some clutter, and there was maybe more furniture in the front rooms than they’d been designed to hold, but it mostly made the space feel lived-in. Homey.

  His heart ached. The last few years, he’d been in survival mode. Not trying to make a home, just trying to keep his head above water. He’d almost forgotten what homey felt like.

  Beatrice whirled out of her room in a plumb-colored sweater and black skinny jeans, with neon pink socks bunched above her usual floral hiking boots. “Are you gonna get ready to go, Nath?” she asked, not glancing at either of them as she made her way to the kitchen.

  “You’re telling me sweatpants aren’t acceptable Friendsgiving attire now?”

  Beatrice swung around at the kitchen archway to shoot her brother a glare. “Seriously?”

  “A joke, Bee. It was a joke.” Nath dragged himself off the couch. “I’ll get ready right now.”

  Beatrice muttered something to herself and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Sensing that Beatrice might need another pair of hands—or at least a sounding board—Julian followed her to the kitchen, hesitating in the archway. “Can I help?”

  “Um . . .” Beatrice paused her frenetic sweep around the small kitchen, her eyes darting every which way. Probably re-sorting her checklist to see which points she could delegate. “Can you grab me a couple of bags from that cabinet there?” she asked, pointing, while opening the fridge with the other hand. “Help me load up the food?”

  Julian shook out two of the bags, stacking the casserole dishes inside as Beatrice passed them over. Four in total, including what Beatrice called the ‘emergency backup lasagna.’ Apparently, her friend, Kinsey, was afraid she was going to burn the turkey and ruin everything.

  “When did you have time to make an emergency backup lasagna?” Julian asked once the casserole dishes were all neatly stacked in their bags. He crouched to scratch the ears of the vocal gray cat who had appeared to wind around his ankles. Probably in the hopes that Julian would drop the casserole dishes and create a feline buffet. Though from the loud, instant purring, it didn’t mind the head-scratching alternative. “When did you have time to make any of this?”

  “My mom helped,” Beatrice said, frowning around the kitchen distractedly.

  “Your friends are providing some of the food too, aren’t they?”

  “Kinsey’s on turkey, gravy, and dessert. Sasha doesn’t have a kitchen to speak of, so she went over early to help with the baking. I took most of the side dishes because I could do them ahead of time. Oh!” She pulled open a cabinet in the far corner of the kitchen and retrieved a bag of mini marshmallows. “Almost forgot.”

  Julian caught the bag out of the air when she tossed it to him. “You didn’t have to do all of this. I could have taken care of the lasagna, at least. And the marshmallows,” he added, reaching up to deposit the bag on top of the casserole dishes.

  “Yeah, but I guess—I guess I wasn’t sure you’d really want to come,” she said, a blush creeping over her cheeks as she plucked at the cuff of her sweater. “You don’t know anyone else, and . . . I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d realize you’d rather spend the holiday with your sister after all.”

  Julian couldn’t figure out how to react. He’d assumed she’d only asked him because she was collecting misfits. Not because it mattered if he actually showed up. His heart clenched in his chest again, heavy with something that felt a lot like homesickness. Only he wasn’t longing for the past, he was longing for . . . for this. For a house that felt like home. For someone wanting him around. For caring about people and knowing they cared about him too. It took all his reason to stop him from crossing the
small kitchen to where Beatrice stood and kissing her, boyfriend or no boyfriend.

  The cat threw its whole body at Julian’s knee, nearly knocking him on his ass. Julian, thankful for the excuse to break eye contact, scratched the cat’s chin with one hand. “Trust me. Your friends could try to recruit me into their satanic cult and I’d still rather be there than at my step-dad’s.”

  Beatrice wrinkled her nose at him, but she seemed to relax for the first time since she stepped into the apartment. She pointed at the cat. “I see you’ve made friends with Sunny.”

  “As in sunshine?” Julian guessed, laughing. The cat looked more like a gray, little raincloud than anything.

  “Obviously,” Beatrice said, grinning.

  Her phone chimed as she spoke, and she took it from her pocket. “It’s Sasha. She’s downstairs. Gnat!” she shouted down the hall to her brother. “Ride’s here! You have thirty seconds, and then we’re leaving without you!”

  “I’m coming,” Nath shouted back, his voice muffled through the door.

  “Lasagna, green beans, potatoes,” Beatrice recited under her breath, ticking off her fingers as she listed them. “Where’d I put my bag? Oh, there.” She shifted a mountain of hats and gloves to the edge of the kitchen table and retrieved her school bag.

  “You’re not planning on doing homework on Thanksgiving,” Julian said, yielding to the cat’s increasing demands for affection by scruffing his back with both hands. “Thanksgiving is all about going into a food coma. Not doing school work.”

  “I’ve got a paper due on Monday that I’m only half finished with, and two midterms on Tuesday I’m way underprepared for,” Beatrice said, thumbing through the contents of her bag. “Proper lazy Thanksgivings are for after graduation. Crap. Where’d my laptop get off to?”

  “Okay, I’m ready,” Nath announced, coming back out into the living room, now wearing jeans in place of his sweatpants, and a cardigan over a teeshirt with a superhero on it. He held his arms up. “Good enough?”