Julien's Book

by Casey McMillin

  "Your other left hand," he said.

  She hadn't even heard what he said in the first place since she'd been so lost in thought about that birthmark. She quickly switched her grip, trying to seem like she wasn't flustered.

  Nadine had always been a sucker for a challenge, and his disdain for her was probably a turn on. She bit her lip, partly to remind herself to focus, and partly as punishment for being weird enough to like guys who didn't like her back.

  "You're not going to be able to sink it," Julien said, "unless your hand's over here." He pried her hand off the spot where it was and repositioned it.

  She grabbed her own forearm where he showed her, and the other girl instantly began tapping, signaling for her to release the choke. "I can't believe that," she said. "I just moved my hand like two inches. I didn't even have to squeeze."

  Julien smiled. "That's the thing with Jiu Jitsu. If you're straining, you're probably doing it wrong."

  Nadine nodded, but she hadn't really heard anything he said. It was the first time she'd seen him smile, and it was gorgeous to the point of distraction. Several times during the class, Julien offered help, and every time, she experienced a rush of nerves that nearly took her breath away.

  She'd have to get more information on that book. Something about it had him all worked up, and she wanted to get to the bottom of what it was. That no gi class turned out to be one of the best classes she'd ever done. She had so much fun, and not just because Julien was being nice to her, but also because she just plain liked the stuff they were going over. She worked up a sweat, and felt like she left there a little bit better at Jiu Jitsu than when she came.

  Nadine and the rest of the no gi class had just walked off the mat, and Julien was left standing there contemplating the amazing, unprecedented number of similarities that girl had to the character in the book. She could have been faking some of the likenesses, but others were impossible to fake. Physically, this girl was the exact same Nadine that Shea Miller wrote about in her book.

  She had dark brown, wavy hair that came out of her ponytail in unruly tendrils, with green eyes the color of emeralds. She always wore a warm, wide smile. She was fairly soft-spoken with the voice of an angel, but she loved MMA, and she fought like a tiger.

  Julien knew John David had read the book, so he went to talk to him, thinking it may make more sense if he verbalized it. "I don't know which option is more disturbing," Julien said, "her turning out to be some crazy lunatic bored enough to put on this big charade, or her turning out to be the real fuckin' Nadine."

  "You think she could be the real Nadine?" John David asked.

  "No," Julien lied. "I just know that's what all you dumbasses think."

  John reached out to neck-chop Julien for the insult, but Julien dodged it. "You're right. I do think she's the real one," John David said.

  Julien laughed. "She might really be from France but I just can't imagine that she would have the exact same name and be teaching at the immersion school."

  "That's easy enough to find out," John David said. "Just go by there and asked the front office if a girl named Nadine LaBelle works there."

  "I wouldn't be surprised if she really did work there," Julien said.

  "You mean you think this girl has a fake identity and got a real job under a fake name just to try to score with you? Don't flatter yourself Julien. It's easier to believe your little fairytale's coming true."

  It was thirty seconds past time for the advanced class to start, and they didn't have time to say any more. Julien had an unsettled feeling with the whole situation, and wanted to quit talking about it anyway.

  ****

  Nadine continued to avoid classes Coach Julien taught in spite of him finally being nice to her at the last no gi class. She was attracted to him physically and was perhaps a little tempted to take one of his classes based on that, but she enjoyed having her time at the gym drama free, and that whole scene about the book made her a little reluctant to see him again.

  One of the girls in her kickboxing class mentioned the book to her too, but she just said the same things the coaches told her in the first place. She said there was a book whose main characters were Julien and Nadine.

  Nadine could see the coincidences with the characters names or whatever, but the girl at the kickboxing class and Julien both had a measure of distaste or maybe urgency to their tone when they spoke about it that confused Nadine. It was like they blamed her or distrusted her for being called Nadine, and she thought in the back of her mind that the Nadine in the book must be some sort of villain. She made a mental note to get that book when the term was over and she had time to read. For the time being, she'd just do her best to avoid Julien.

  Then, freakin-A, it happened again. She showed up to a class that she thought Brad was coaching, and when it was time for class to start, Julien walked in.

  "Grab a jump rope ladies. And don't forget to put your cards in the basket." His voice was extremely low, and the way he gave orders had a sing-song quality to it. She couldn’t get over the sound of it. He seemed too young to have a commanding voice like that, and she loved how it sounded. He'd only said a few words, and already, Nadine felt a burning sensation in her gut. Something about Julien just made her extremely nervous, and she contemplated getting out of there before class got going. She could just say she got sick or something.

  "Grab a jump rope, book-ey." He said. He was standing right in front of Nadine, but she didn't comprehend he was talking to her.

  "Me?" she asked, putting a hand to her chest. "What do you mean when you say book-ey?"

  The other girls were all jumping rope and the noise of the ropes hitting the mats was so loud that Julien and Nadine's conversation couldn't be overheard.

  Julien moved in closer to her just in case. "You work at the French immersion school," he said. He was close to her ear, and the sight, smell, and feel of him made her nearly miss what he was saying.

  "Oui," she said, smiling that wide, warm smile Shea wrote about.

  Shit, he thought. Why'd she have to be so freaking crazy? She was the most beautiful girl he'd ever laid eyes on, and she was either a made up story or a crazy stalker. The thing he couldn't understand was why in the world she'd been avoiding him. She'd been coming to several classes a week for the last couple of weeks, and she always avoided the ones Julien coached.

  "Is it bad that I work there?" She asked, able to read his agitation. "I technically don't work there, if that makes you feel better. I don’t get a paycheck or anything. I'm student teaching."

  He stared at her—his striking blue eyes burning, begging her to tell the truth. "Tell me you read the book and you made all this happen to try to get close to me."

  Her head cocked back and she looked at him like he'd just spoken Chinese. "You're really starting to freak me out with all this book stuff."

  He took her by the shoulders and gave her an intensified version of that same pleading expression, as if her honesty was the most important thing in the world. "Did you read a book called Julien's Book?" he asked.

  "No," she said simply.

  "Coach, we're dying!" a girl named Summer yelled. "You forgot to set the damn timer."

  "Jump ropes up," Julien yelled. The slapping sound of jump ropes hitting the mats stopped instantly, and the girls went to stand in line to hang their jump ropes on the wall.

  Nadine didn't want their conversation to come to an end, and she could tell Julien didn't either. Halfway through the class, Julien told the girls they had two minutes to get some water. He got some cones and began lining them up on the side of the mat, and Nadine walked over there to talk to him.

  "I'm getting the book on the way home," she said. She didn't know why she hadn't just downloaded it in the first place. It was probably because she'd never read a romance novel, and thought it'd be cheesy and she might be bored by it.

  He turned to face her. "You promise you've never read it?"

  She stared back at him with an equal am
ount of sincerity. "I promise I've never read the book," she said. "That's all gonna change tonight though. I'm downloading it to my phone when I get home."

  "Don't do it," he said.

  "What?" She laughed at him, incredulous.

  "Please," he begged. "Don't read it. Not yet."

  "I hope you know that forbidding me to do something just makes me want to do it that much sooner," she said.

  "Just to put it out there, I don't necessarily believe you when you say you haven't read it, but on the off chance you're telling me the truth, please promise me not to read the book. Not yet."

  "You're really freaking me out."

  "Just hang out after class. I'm done after this and I'll explain."

  The water break went longer than he said, and the girls started to get restless. He wasn't usually distracted, and apparently they didn't appreciate it when he was.

  He and Nadine didn't say another word to each other until after class was over. "Can you hang out for a little bit?" he asked. She had lingered behind when all the other girls made their way to the door and they were mostly alone.

  "I thought we already established that," she said nervously.

  "What I mean is can you come with me somewhere."

  "You mean like leave with you?"

  Julien shrugged. "Why not?"

  "Because I don't know you, and you can easily overpower me."

  "Ah, but that's one of the things you like about me, isn't it?"

  She rolled her eyes, hoping to seem nonchalant. "Where are you supposed to be taking me?" she asked.

  "Just for a drive. Maybe out by my house. It doesn't really matter. There's just always someone listening around here, and I wanted a few minutes to talk to you alone."

  She looked deep into his eyes, and found that she liked what she saw. She almost felt like she could see his secret-most intentions, and understood they were innocent and pure. She knew it was probably dumb to get in the car and head to some mystery location in the dark with someone like him, but she didn't care. She had major trust issues as a result of a crazy ex-boyfriend, but somehow Julien was able to break through her defenses with nothing but a pleading look.

  Nadine climbed into Julien's Jeep, thinking about how much she loved the feel of an old car. It was old enough to be considered classic, but he kept it up really well. She'd seen it in the parking lot several times, and wondered who it belonged to.

  "I like your Jeep," she said.

  He just smiled as if he knew she was going to say that as he started the engine.

  Chapter 8

  Julien took Nadine to a park on the college campus. It was dark out, and he knew it'd be a good place to hang out for a few minutes. They sat on a park bench, looking out at the fenced-in swamp in front of them. He shifted and turned to regard her.

  "There's a woman named Shea Miller. She wrote a romance novel about a guy named Julien who had a birthmark like mine. She used my name and my birthmark, but made up a bunch of other crazy shit about me to make the character Julien's story worth telling." Julien paused, but Nadine just stayed silent, waiting for him to continue. "The girl character in the book is named Nadine, and when you came in the gym, I assumed you were just saying your name was Nadine just because you'd read the book and you thought that would make me like you."

  "Why's that such a big deal?"

  "It's not, which is why I'm trying to get you to trust me when I tell you I don't think you should read it. I'm asking you to do that as a favor to me because I think I'd like to get to know you and I'm afraid that you reading the book would change things between us."

  The only words Nadine focused on were "I'd like to get to know you." The thought of getting to know this gorgeous, mysterious guy made her weak in the knees. And what exactly had he meant by that anyway?

  She was lost in thought about getting to know him before she remembered the unsettled feeling she was having as a result of the whole book thing. "I'm feeling like there's something you're not telling me about the book," she said.

  He looked at her with a smile, but she could see the underlying intensity in the way his jaw was set. He sighed before he spoke. "The book's just got a few coincidences that are impossible to ignore. The main characters are Julien and Nadine, and they look a lot like you and I."

  He could tell by the way she listened that it was the first time she'd ever heard any of it. There was no way to describe how he knew she wasn't lying, he just did. He felt as if he connected with her in a way he didn't even understand, and could trust she was telling the truth.

  Once realization dawned on him, scenes from the book began flashing through his mind. He tried to sort out what was real and what was fiction. He felt better knowing that most of the details in the book about his life has been made up. But, Christ, if her name and her job and her mother fucking face were the same, then where was the line going to be drawn?

  "Are you okay?"

  Julien coughed a few times to buy himself a second to think. He needed to get more information from her, but knew she'd get suspicious if he started asking too many questions. "I'm good," he said. "Just went down the wrong pipe." He took a sip of the bottled water that had been sitting on the bench between them.

  "I won't read the book if you think it'll give me nightmares," she said. She was only joking, but Julien flinched a little.

  "No, no, no, it's nothing like that. Like I said, it's no big deal. It's just a romance novel. It's just that I like you, and I don't want the story in the book to affect whatever's maybe happening between us."

  She was like putty in his hands. She was blindsided by how much she wanted this guy, and if he was asking her to not read a little book because he wanted to see how things would play out between them, then consider her a no-reading fool.

  "I won't read it," she said.

  "Thank you," he said. He touched her thigh for a split second when he said it, and her gut clinched at the contact.

  "Julien?"

  "Yeah?" His voice was still so deep, even though he was basically whispering.

  "I like how you look."

  He smiled, and the sight of it made her feel like she wanted to tear up for some reason. She had to look away to keep it from happening.

  "I like how you look too," he said.

  The way he looked in the light of the streetlamps was almost too much. There was an element of danger in his appearance, and sitting next to him in the dark, quiet park made her feel safe and vulnerable at the same time. The voice was another thing. Based on the simple laws of attraction, this guy Julien appealed to her in every way—even the sound of his voice. She couldn't think of a single thing she'd change about him.

  They sat on that park bench for an hour before deciding to head back to the gym to pick up her car. He asked her a lot of questions and she did the same, and their conversation never slowed down, even in the Jeep on the way back to the gym. Her car was the only one left in the parking lot when they arrived, and he pulled up next to it and put the Jeep in park.

  They talked for another hour, just sitting there in the front seat of his Jeep. There was never a quiet moment, and it wasn't because either of them felt like they had to make conversation. At one point, she plugged in her phone to show him one of her favorite rap songs, telling him he should use it as his next walk out song.

  He laughed and told her he'd consider it. She turned down the volume of the stereo but, left it playing for the last twenty minutes or so of their conversation. The song Mirrors by Justin Timberlake had come on and was playing when she said she needed to be going. Julien ran a frustrated hand over the side of his head as if he was sorry for what he was about to do. Then, out of nowhere, he leaned over the empty space between the bucket seats, reached out and wrapped a hand around the back of her head and brought her toward him for a kiss. She willingly closed the distance between them, leaning in faster than his hand was pulling. Their lips met in what might as well been a flash of lightning. The chemistry she felt was overwhelming
, and she pulled back, after their lips had only been touching a few seconds.

  "Goodnight Julien," she said. She was smiling and trying to act aloof since she was almost certain there was no way he was feeling the same intensity she was. He sat back and put his head on the headrest with a sigh.

  He recovered quickly looking at her with a sweet smile. "I guess I'll see you at the gym, if you decide to take any of my classes."

  Nadine gave him a coy shrug. "I might just decide to look you up on the schedule."

  Shit-fire, what was she thinking looking at him like that? He wanted to rip her clothes off. He wanted to get his skin on her skin, and he didn't really even care if it happened right there in the Jeep. Somehow, he harnessed the animal instinct, and reminded himself that he had much bigger fish to fry at that moment.

  He left the gym, headed straight for Shea Miller's house. It was 10PM on a random Tuesday night, and Julien drove to Shea's with no concern whatsoever for the speed limit. He had the windows down with no music playing and his hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. His palms were wet with sweat and his heart was racing. He thought about calling the author a few times on his way to her house, but he couldn't get his thoughts together enough to work his phone.