She whimpered, shaking her head. “But they're not true. You're the only one that thinks you're a monster,” she replied.
Julie's lovely monster. She didn't know that though. She wouldn't understand it the way I did. She wouldn't realize it's significance.
“I'm not like I was before, Ava. I'm not trying to hurt myself,” I said, looking at her. When she looked at me, she looked frightened, and worried.
“Good, because you don't deserve that. You deserve to be happy, and love yourself the way I do,” she said to me. I could hear the sincerity in her voice as she said it.
I wouldn't tell her, but I doubted that I would ever love myself.
I wasn't sure if I was happy yet, but Julie was doing a good job at pushing me toward it. She made it seem possible for me to achieve happiness. Nothing else ever had.
♥
I ate a sandwich while Ava got ready. I cleaned up my room too, and straightened up the house for Ava, which she recognized quickly as my nervousness for Julie coming over rather than trying to be nice and help out.
Dr. Marstens came by before Ava was finished. I had tried to tell her to start earlier, but she had called me a guy again and waited.
“Come on in,” I told him, holding the door open. He came in, holding a bouquet of red roses in his hand. He looked strange out of his white doctor coat. Even a button up shirt and dark jeans could make him look like a completely different person.
“Still getting ready?” he asked, and I nodded as I rolled my eyes. He laughed and stayed by the door.
“Ava! Dr. Marstens is here!” I called to her, sitting on the couch again.
I looked to the clock, and felt my pulse beating quicker. I had texted Julie the directions when I had gotten home, but she hadn't texted me back since then. I knew she was suppose to be here at any moment, but I was still nervous.
She could always change her mind.
“You can just call me Jesse. Doctor seems too formal,” he told me.
I nodded slowly. Fat chance, I wanted to tell him. I didn't though.
Ava came down the hall, and we both turned to look at her. She looked like a woman going on a date. At least, that was how they always looked in the movies.
“You're beautiful,” Dr. Marstens replied. She was.
“You should have have seen how she looked before,” I told him.
“Falon!”
Dr. Marstens laughed, and came to her side. “I'm sure she was beautiful then too,” he told her, and they looped their hands together.
“You don't have to lie, doc. She's a bum without all of the make up,” I assured him.
If looks could kill, I would have been dead a long time ago.
“I think the next surgery you need is for your mouth. Sew it up,” she told me, glaring.
I shrugged it off.
Meanwhile, Dr. Marstens was simply smiling at our exchanges. He laughed at us. “You sound like my sister and I. When we get together, we banter like this,” he told us.
I smirked. “He thinks we're bantering, Ava. You can't even spell 'banter',” I said.
“Shut up.”
We laughed, and it felt nice. It felt nice to see my sister hugged up to a guy too, and to see him staring at her like she was perfect. I hadn't seen that much with the guys she usually dated.
“Well, have fun. I'll be here when you get done,” I told them, flipping through the channels.
“You sure you don't need anything before we go?”
I shook my head. “Trust me, I'm fine. Go, get lost,” I told them waving my hand at the to leave.
They laughed, and said goodbye. Dr. Marstens opened the door, and I heard the excitement in my sister's voice as she said, “Oh! Hi, Julie.”
I jumped from the couch, standing to see Julie in the doorway with her hand up as if she had been about to knock. She slowly dropped her hand, smiling at Ava.
“Hi, Ms. Walker. And Dr. Marstens,” she said, smiling. She had sounded amazed as she said his name though.
“Julie? It's been a while,” he said, leaning forward and giving her a hug. She returned it, squeezing him as if he were an old friend. “Has everything been okay?” he asked her.
Julie looked to me, smiled softly, and then looked back to him. “Yeah. So are you two going out?” she asked.
Ava looked like she blushed, and I reveled in that. That meant Ava really liked the good doctor.
“Going out for dinner. What are you doing here?” he asked her.
Julie nodded her head toward me. “The other one. I hope you have fun,” she said, smiling at Ava and Dr. Marstens.
But there was a look that passed between Dr. Marstens and Julie that made me feel aware. What I was aware of, I didn't know. Just that they had a past together, and I knew nothing of it.
“Teach him something. I obviously can't,” Ava told her with a smile as they passed each other.
“I will, Ms. Walker. Have fun,” she said.
We both watched as they walked out of the door, and then Julie came in and closed the door behind her. She looked up at me and smiled softly.
“Hello, Falon,” she said. She was still wearing what she had at the hospital, but the peach smell seemed stronger, and her hair wasn't held back by a barrette anymore. Instead, it cascaded across her forehead and swept to the side.
“Hey,” I said. “You never texted me back.”
She shrugged, walking farther in. Her eyes were looking around. “I didn't figure I needed to unless I got lost. I'm pretty good with directions though,” she replied.
I didn't say anything as she looked at the walls, staring at the pictures. She laid her bag on the table beside our love seat, and crossed her arms.
“Why aren't there any pictures of you?” she asked, turning to look at me.
“I don't like taking pictures,” I told her.
She raised a brow. “Not even before?”
I sat down on the couch. “There's no point in keeping those up. They're just reminders of what I use to be,” I told her.
Julie came to me, sitting down beside me on the couch. “What? Did you change when you got burned?” she asked.
I looked to her. I wondered how she could ask a question that had a lot of meaning without the slight flinch. As if she never really understood how that felt to the person she was asking.
“Yeah. Now I'm a lovely monster,” I told her, trying to remain easy about it, but the look that crossed her face assured me that she was being serious about it.
“Everyone changes. I'm not the same person that I was a few years ago, but I didn't make my parents take down my pictures,” she said.
“I'm not you.”
Immediately after I said it, I wanted to take it back, but pride kept me from doing so. Julie didn't say anything else about it, which only added to the guilt.
Instead, I saw her force a smile. “So, are we going to work in here?” she asked, masking whatever it was that she was feeling behind those beautiful green eyes.
“Yeah. That sounds good,” I told her.
I pulled out my books, and we got started from where I had stopped. I listened to her, and we talked back and forth about what we were studying, but not much else.
I kept think about how bad I felt about snapping at her. I thought about the look that had passed between her and Dr. Marstens, and I thought about how much I didn't know about her.
“Liam was kind of mad that you didn't invite him to ever come over and study,” Julie said, looking at me.
I laughed slightly. “Well, it's not like I could text him the directions,” I told her.
“He never gave you his number?” she asked.
I shook my head.
She stood up and walked over to her bag. She took out her phone and turned around. She handed it to me. “His number should be in my contacts. I'm going to get a glass of water. Want one?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, I'm fine,” I told her.
She rolled her eyes. “And now he's stuck o
n himself,” she teased. “I'll be right back,” she said, and disappeared into the kitchen.
I smiled long after she left, and took my phone out too. I searched through her contacts, coming up to Liam's name. I typed in the number and saved it.
But the name under Liam's caught my attention, and I scrolled down. She had a contact named 'My Love' and beneath that was 'My Lovely Monster'.
I thought about what Liam had said about her relationship. I felt my chest tighten at the words.
My love. He was her love. He was hers.
I was just her monster.
I felt how foolish I was. How foolish I was to believe that she could ever see me as anything more than a freak. She could never look at me and call me her love, because it would always be pity she felt when she was around me.
That's all anyone could ever feel around me. That, or disgust. Never love, and I was stupid to believe different.
“What's wrong?”
I heard her voice before I saw her. It scared me as I turned around and saw her eyes on me fearfully. She was holding a glass of water in her hand, and looking at her phone.
Slowly, she came around the couch and sat down. She rested the glass on the coffee table and folded her hands in her lap. “This is about Thad, isn't it?” she asked.
I assumed that was her love, and found myself biting back hurtful remarks as I laid her phone between us.
“No. Let's just get back to work,” I said, my voice low as I leaned forward and flipped the page to our next chapter.
She was quiet for a while, and she didn't move. I could feel her shrinking beside me, going into wherever it was that she hid herself, deep within her mind.
Then, she spoke up. “I don't mind talking about him. I know you want to know,” she replied.
“It's none of my business.”
She reached over and placed her hand over mine. I looked up quickly, and saw that she looked scared. She looked afraid, and I wasn't sure if I had seen that emotion on her face before.
“If you don't want to talk about it, could you just listen?”
I realized the hidden meaning in her words. She needed to talk about it, and she needed me to listen.
I didn't give her the satisfaction of a nod. It hurt that she didn't care about how I felt about her talking about her ex-boyfriend, her love. It bothered me that it didn't seem to faze her that maybe I didn't want to listen to her talking about her ex.
She waited a moment to see if I would refuse, and when I didn't, she stopped looking at me. “I met Thad when I was sixteen. We dated for about seven months. He was bright, and charming, and he wrote music. He was always writing music, and playing it to me on his guitar. I always told him that he could be a great musician but he never believed me. He would always say that I was only saying that because I loved him.
“I did love him, but I was being honest. I was always honest with him, but his disease kept him from seeing that,” she said.
I looked up at her at the mention of disease.
She didn't look at me. I could see the pain etched in her face. “He had been battling with depression long before he met me. A part of me childishly thought that I could cure it. Maybe if he loved me enough, he wouldn't be depressed,” she said, looking to me with a sad smile.
It hurt to see that on her face. She didn't look right without a smile. I wanted to wipe it away.
“I never could love him the right way. He would be okay for a few days, and we would be happy, and then for the next week he would yell and scream. He'd swear that I didn't love him. There were times when I could swear I didn't too,” she replied. She met my eyes.
“I know you look at me as if I would settle for anything. You look at me as if I'm a naïve child, and I can be. But there were times when I would be standing on the other side of his bedroom door while he was threatening to slash his wrists that I told myself that I didn't love him, and he wasn't worth all of this pain. It killed me that he needed a pill to be happy, that I couldn't do that for him.
“Honestly, I don't know how long we would have stayed together if he hadn't died. I can still remember the phone call. His mom found him in his bedroom. He had overdosed on his sleeping pills. I don't know if he killed himself or not, but I’ve prayed to God every night that he didn't. The thought of him being in Hell hurts me,” she said.
She wasn't crying, but I could see the hurt she was talking about. I could feel it.
Julie picked up her phone, and weighed it in her hand. “I do love him. I think I always will, but we were far from being soul mates. Our love was more like a project that we both decided to start on together. We never could get the right results to make it work,” she replied.
She stopped talking, and we were quiet for a while. The silence was okay, because we were both okay in the quiet.
We didn't need to say anything, because it said it for us.
“I'm sorry,” I whispered.
She smiled sadly at me. She looked to her phone again. “The only reason I kept his number was because for a while after the funeral, I would call his phone, and listen to his voice mail. A part of me hoped that he would answer, and I'd know he was okay. I think his mom finally turned off his phone,” she said.
I saw her go to her contacts, and scroll through until she came to 'My Love'. She pressed the trash bin beside it.
I touched her hand. “Don't. You don't have to do that,” I told her, meeting her eyes.
She smiled. “I need to. For me,” she said. I kept my hand over hers as she pressed the button that said it was okay, and the name disappeared, moving mine beneath Liam's.
There was something significant in the motion. I felt something break inside her as she turned to me and buried herself against my chest. She didn't wrap her arms around me, but I could feel her molding into me.
I wrapped my arms around her, and held her tightly. She was small in my grasp, but perfect. I could feel her pain, as if it had became a part of me too when she touched me. I wanted to make it go away, but didn't know how. I would have given anything to know how.
“I'm making myself look like a fool,” she finally said, laughing as she moved away. She wiped under her eyes, and I saw the wet against her hand.
“You look fine,” I assured her, smiling.
“Really?” she asked.
I nodded.
I watched as she smiled, and pushed her hair behind her ears. “You're a great guy, and a horrible liar,” she told me, closing the book.
“I'm not lying,” I said with a laugh, but she looked to me with a brow raised, as if she didn't believe me. I know she didn't.
Julie stood up, rolling her shoulders as she walked around the table. “I kind of lied to you before, about the hospital,” she told me.
“What about?”
“I don't really work there at night,” she said, turning around. She looked at me with a slight smile. “I am taking online classes to become a nurse, but the truth is, I only hang out up there to keep my mom company while she works,” she told me.
I raised a brow. “So, they're not training you?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I'm just an insomniac. I can't sleep much at night, so I hang out there and do my work at night,” she replied.
“Then why were you in my room?” I asked her, closing my notebooks, as I stared at her.
Julie turned around. “I met Ava as she was leaving, and she was talking to me. We had talked a while, and she asked me if I could check on you for her because you had nightmares sometimes, and she wanted to be sure that you were safe,” she said. “After I checked on you, I realized you were the guy that left me with my mess, and I wanted to know you better.”
“So, you lied so you wouldn't seem crazy?”
She smiled. “Kind of. I didn't want you to think I was just being forced to talk to you. I honestly wanted to know you,” she replied.
I found myself smiling, despite wanting to. Maybe I should have been more angry about her lying, but I couldn't fin
d it in myself to be angry about that after she had just poured her heart and soul out to me.
“Why does Liam call you Sketch?” I asked her.
Julie grinned, walking to her bag. She reached inside of it, pulling out a sketchbook, and then came to my side on the couch. She sat down next to me, not leaving much room between us.
“My first love is drawing. I love sketching people, and Liam started calling me that. After that, I think it made everyone feel like they were really my friend when they called me Sketch too,” she said, opening her book.
I stared in amazement at her art as she handed me the book. I recognized instantly the pictures of Liam, and some of the children that came to the playroom. They were accurate, and real, filled with so much life, I thought they might leap from the page.
“I wish I could pursue art full time. I've looked at art classes, but there's not much success in what I want to do. My parents told me I should use nursing as a safety net, but that isn't really daring if you have something to fall back on. It feels like cheating for when I fail,” she replied.
She didn't know how much I understood. I wanted to drive around the US. I wanted to be broke, and find my way back to the road. I wanted to not know what was going to happen next.
I stopped at a page, and looked down at her sketch. I ran my fingers over the page, my hand feeling numb.
“That was just what I thought you might have looked like before. I wasn't trying to make fun of you or anything,” Julie said quickly.
I saw my own reflection staring back at me, half of my face scarred and burned, and the other half the guy I was before. My flesh smooth and flawless, my dark hair, and normal face.
It hurt.
I closed the book, and handed it back to her as I stood up. It hurt bad, and I didn't know how to stop it from hurting. I didn't know how to heal that pain I felt inside.
“I'm sorry,” she said, standing up behind me. “I didn't want you to feel bad about that. It was just a drawing.”
I lied. “I'm fine. Just shocked me, I guess,” I told her, turning around to smile.
Julie stared at me, and I saw her other half come out. There were two sides to Julie, I was beginning to realize. One was fiery, and determined. She refused to be walked on, and wouldn't take anyone's bull. She wasn't afraid to speak up and let her opinion be heard whether you liked it or not.
Lovely Monster Page 7