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This chapter’s a little different. It’s also a bit short, but I felt like the timing was right.
— Leon xx
*****
Matty
On December 16th, 1994, one year, eight months, and nine days after the birth of Julian Sami Osman, Laurent Zaki Osman was born. He was two weeks premature, weighing exactly six pounds, and, like most younger siblings, despised by the first child in their family unit. How dare this squirming, pumpkin-faced little alien take up the love and attention that Julian had rightfully earned? It was simply unjust.
Of course, after about, eh, 14 years, Julian learned that his brother wasn’t all that bad, and the two became close. Their tumultuous secondary school experience formed a strong bond between them, and, in 2010, when Julian left 16-year-old Laurent for the bright lights and rock-and-roll legacy of Cleveland, Ohio, Laurent felt betrayed.
He ignored Julian’s calls and texts for four whole months, until Julian came home for Christmas break. It was that December, on his 17th birthday, that Laurent forgave Julian and begrudgingly admitted to understanding his brother’s decision.
One year and one month later, 18-year-old Laurent Zaki Osman, was diagnosed with late-onset multiple sclerosis. He dropped out of university and moved back home
to adjust to the lifestyle changes that this discovery would necessitate. Julian debated taking a hiatus as well, but his parents convinced him to finish the semester.
In September of 2013, three weeks into his third year of college, Julian Sami Osman’s brother lost his ability to walk. Julian moved back home, and, for about four months,
tried to convince his brother that everything would be alright.
On January 29th, almost exactly one year after his diagnosis, Laurent Zaki Osman committed suicide.
The two years that followed in Julian’s life consisted of freefall. Bad decisions, bad reunions, violent fights, reckless behavior. Mrs. Simone Osman was the only reason that he made it out in one piece. In March of 2016, Julian returned to Cleveland and got a job bartending. He resumed his studies that fall, and finally began to get his life back on track.
Then, in the fall of 2017, he met me.
******
“Alright. I’m off to bed.”
Mrs. Osman rose from her seat and retired to the bedroom, where her husband was already sleeping. It had only been a day and a half since the bonfire, but Julian had asked me to come over and eat with his parents, so I did.
I had tried to leave right after dinner, but Julian asked me to stay just a little longer, for his parents, so I did.
I was sitting in one armchair, opposite Julian. He was watching me closely.
“Well, I guess I’m gonna go, then.” I grabbed my phone and my book and was halfway to the door before he caught me.
“Please, Matty.”
I sighed. “Julian…”
“It was so hard. The longer I went without telling you the harder it got. It had been too long, I didn’t—”
“Julian!” He released my forearm and took a step back, startled. “You told Adam. I get why you did it, but you still revealed to him and your parents that you had been lying to me about your brother. Do you understand how humiliating that is?”
He crossed his arms. Was he really going to have an attitude with me about this? “So you’re not upset because I kept this secret? You’re just mad because of what other people think?”
I scowled. “I’m upset that you kept this secret. I’m mad that you humiliated me.” He started to interrupt me, but I cut him off. “It may not have been intentional, but it still happened. It happened because you didn’t care enough to protect me from it.”
His nostrils flared briefly. His eyes darted away. “That’s what you think?”
I grabbed the doorknob. “That’s what I learned.”
******
I think I knew.
Or, at least, I was choosing not to know.
I mean, he literally told me that first night.
It’s just… I can see now that I was ignoring some fairly glaring signs. Okay, like, for example, one of the things I had prepared myself for when we started dating was seeing his family photos. Family photos made me terribly sad. I’d reconciled most of my losses, but I’d never been able to get over the fact that I didn’t have even a single photo of me and my parents. And I guess I never saw enough photos of happy families to become desensitized to them. So I awaited these photos with anxiety, but they never came. He would show me photos of his mother that his father texted to him on occasion—Saïd loved to take photos of his wife—but when it came to childhood photos, I only ever saw, maybe, like, three.
And when he told stories from, like, elementary or high school, he would sometimes pause in the middle of them and seem to struggle with how he wanted to phrase something, which I recognize now as him circumventing any mention of his brother.
Maybe I’m too eager to remove blame from Julian. I don’t know. All I’m saying is there were signs.
****** acıbadem escort
We chased each other up the stairs to my apartment, touching and teasing and running out of breath. We stumbled our way through the doorway and into my bedroom. Julian pushed me back onto the mattress and began to undo my jeans.
“Eager, aren’t you?” I laughed, but I was just as quick to pull off his shirt. He kissed me, hard, and I tugged my pants and boxers down to my knees. I quickly kicked them off as he stripped and climbed over me.
I enveloped him into me, wrapping my legs around his waist and my arms around his shoulders. He grabbed the lube and quickly covered his fingers and began to fuck me with them. He was rushing.
“Julian, are you alright?”
He looked up at me and nodded. I frowned, and he removed his fingers and crawled up to kiss me. I lost myself in the kiss, and, suddenly, his dick was inside me. My eyes shot open, not out of pain, just out of surprise, but Julian continued to kiss me, and one of his hands crept down to grab my ass, tightly. I squeaked, and he spread my ass to ram me at the perfect angle. After a few strokes, I was fucking him back wildly, grinding on his cock, and, for some reason, almost in tears. I didn’t palm my dick because normally Julian would do that when he got close, but when I saw the beginning of his orgasm he hadn’t touched me.
I took control and stroked myself rapidly. The pleasure was so intense, so rough and careless, so good but coming from something so bad; it felt as though, at any moment, this intense amount of concentrated pleasure could switch over to concentrated pain, like, stab-wound, makes-you-woozy pain. The sensation was shards of glass on satin, a razor blade hidden in an apple.
I came up onto my chest as Julian finished inside me. He pulled out too quickly, and I winced. Without saying a word he turned away, got up from the bed, and went straight to the bathroom. I turned to face the wall and felt myself begin to cry.
******
“I didn’t tell you before they came because I didn’t want to be fighting while they were here!”
“Well, look how that fucking turned out!”
“Can you not scream swears across my apartment, please? My parents are sleeping.”
“I promise you, Julian, they are not sleeping through this.” My voice was shaking, and, for fuck’s sake, the only thing that could’ve stabilized me was Julian’s arms, wrapped around my body.
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
I could’ve screamed. “Of course it bothers me! I feel like a complete asshole all the time for fighting with you while they’re here! I feel like a complete asshole all the time for fighting with you at all! But this is where we are, Julian, this is where we are as a couple, and we need to work through it.”
Julian turned away from me. The dog was scratching at the door. Yeah, me too, Ruby. Let’s switch places. “I don’t think you really want to.”
My attention quickly returned as blood ran hot, scorching hot, boiling molten lava. “Excuse me?”
“You’re the one who won’t let it go. You just want to yell at me.”
“You are so fucking self-absorbed!”
He turned to me, and his expression frightened me a bit, though I refused to back down.
“I’m self-absorbed? I’m self-absorbed?!” He stepped closer to me. “Since you found out about my brother, have you asked me about him? About losing him? Sure, I told the story that night, but you didn’t ask a thing.”
“Julian,” I said, my voice softened. “You hid this from me for months. I didn’t want to push you.”
“But you thought it was okay to demonize me for being quiet about it?”
“Julian!” I was seeing red. “Being angry with you is not demonizing you! You are not a victim! It—”
“Oh, I’m not a victim! My brother killed himself and I’m not a victim! You have no idea what it’s like—and don’t bring up your damn kids, your damn job like it’s the same thing! Just because you didn’t have a real family doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to love mine!”
I was gutted. Completely, absolutely gutted. I felt like my ribs were broken, like my lungs were filled with barbed wire.
“Julian,” I said, my voice straining to deliver all the emotions inside me, “I love you, but you can go fuck yourself.”
******
Julian
Wow. I was the most incredible arse I’d ever known.
And I let him leave. I didn’t even say sorry.
But oh, God, the thought of going after him made me nauseous. I needed a drink.
I stepped out of my bedroom. Standing outside my door were my parents, the two people whose opinions meant the most to me, looking at me with horror.
“Julian Sami Osman.”
“Don’t, mum. I’m a grown man.” Why was I doing this? Why was I being such an arse?
“But you act like a child!”
My father spoke to me in French, apparently too worked up for his third language. His voice boomed against the walls of my apartment, and I suppose I should’ve been worried about waking atalar escort the neighbors, but I was too overwhelmed. “You hurt other people because you are hurt!”
I opened my mouth and stood there gaping like a fish. Ruby skittered off, scared by the noise.
“The loss of your brother was devastating,” my mother started, joining my father’s French, and I was desperately worried that she was going to cry. “I never thought I’d recover. In some ways, I still have not. But he was not the first loved one that I had lost. The loss of my parents was just as real. That grief was just as personal.”
“And you dare to talk down to Matty because of that grief! Is this how you think of us? That we cannot understand love because we were rejected?”
My mother laid a light hand on my agitated father’s arm, but he shook his head firmly. “No, Simone, I will not calm down. I have never—” and at this point he turned to me— “never been more disappointed in you. I am disgusted.”
It was almost comical to see him stomp away, only to enter the home office that was serving as their shitty makeshift bedroom. I looked to my mother, feeling numb.
“I know he loves me, Mum, I do.”
She met my eyes. “His love is not enough. His love cannot change you. Only—”
“My love for him, I know.”
She gave me a sharp look. You’d think I’d have grown out of the terror that look inspired. “No. Your love for him is what caused this.” She shook her head. “I don’t think you’re ready for this, Julian.”
She turned and retired to my office. I expected to hear arguing or muttering from behind the door, but what met me was silence.
******
Matty
I was piss-drunk by the time I showed up at Phoebe’s. I had walked to the nearest liquor store, bought a handle, and drank it in the Lyft on the way there. I was lucky that Phoebe wasn’t a particularly social person or else I’d have to worry about having an audience for all my drunken housecalls.
“Matty? Oh, my God, you’re, like, super wasted.”
I waved my half-empty gin at her. “Duh. Got any mixers?”
I stumbled into her kitchen. “Mix-ers,” I sang, rummaging through her fridge. “Diet cran-mango? Ew,” I muttered, as I retrieved the juice and placed it on the counter. It was then that I realized I was no longer holding any alcohol. “Phoebe! Where’s my gin? I lost my gin, Phoebe, I lost it.” Then I began to sob.
“Oh, Matty.” Her tone made me cry harder, and we were moving to the couch, but I wanted to lie on the floor. I didn’t deserve cushions or pillows.
“I’m sorry I’m so bad,” I moaned. I dropped my head into her lap. “I want to be smart but I’m just bad. Juli said it, he said I’m bad because I don’t know love ’cause I don’t know family and he made me mad, he said you all don’t count, his brother counts, I know that, but—”
“He said that to you?” Tali was standing above me. When did she get here?
“Hi Ta,” I mumbled, reaching out to her. She sat on the other side of me, lifting up my legs and placing them over hers. “You’re little,” I told her. Was there a cat on me? Meow.
“Matty, did he really say those things?” I was pretty sure it was Phoebe asking. Either way.
“Like, kind of, in different words, but he yelled them and it made me scared. I told him to go fuck himself, but I didn’t yell, and I told him I love him because I wish he had said that to me. And I wish he didn’t yell. I wish he could understand why I’m bad.”
Phoebe grabbed my head firmly and turned it up so I was facing her. She was crying, big, fat tears. “No, best friend,” I murmured. “Don’t cry.” A teardrop fell onto my nose.
“You are not bad,” Tali said. I looked at her. She wasn’t crying, but her face was all red. I’d seen that before. She had a righteous temper.
“He is bad, Matty!” Phoebe was mad too. Rawr. “What he said is bad! What he said is cruel and immature a-and—and false! It’s not true! You know love, and I know that you know love. You love me. You love Tali, you love the kids, you love—you love Julian.”
“I do,” I sighed. “But he hurts my feelings too much.”
I don’t remember anything after that.
******
Adam
I was surprised when Julian showed up for his Friday-night shift.
I had spent the weekend in torment, lying face down on Indu’s bed and probably weirding the fuck out of her roommates. She wasn’t necessarily… supportive, I mean, she didn’t offer any sage wisdom or consolation, but she made sure I ate, and she did her painting in her room so I wasn’t alone. It helped, but I knew the only thing that would really make me feel better was seeing Julian at work, happy and healthy and still in love.
Good God, I was not expecting to see what was standing motionless behind the bar when I arrived.
Julian may have been a t-shirt and skinny-jeans kind of guy, but he liked to look good, and he knew how to. He clearly did not care to that night. He was pale and greasy and, well, depressed.
I slunk in silently, aydınlı escort hoping to go unnoticed and feeling guiltier than ever. I dropped my shit off in the break room and resigned myself to the conversation that awaited me.
“Hey, Julian.”
He jumped. “Shit. Hey, Adam. When did you get here?”
“Just a minute ago. I, uh… you looked busy, so I didn’t, uh, announce myself.”
Well, dammit, we both knew that was a big fat lie.
“Listen—”
“Adam,” he interrupted, “you don’t have to say anything. It’s my fault.”
“Julian—”
“Adam!” Julian snapped. I took a step back, startled and, to be honest, a bit scared. “You’re not a part of our relationship. You didn’t know. It’s my fault.”
I stared at him for a second before nodding and retreating to the stockroom.
I was about fifteen minutes into inventory, when I heard yelling from outside the door. I quickly set down my laptop and hustled outside.
Matty’s best friend was storming towards the bar, behind which Julian stood, paralyzed.
Fuck!
I rushed towards her. “Hey, Phoebe, we’re not—”
“Blow it out your ass!” Well, then. “How dare you, Julian?”
He showed no emotion as she stormed right past me and behind the bar.
“How dare you do that to him? What kind of… what kind of asshole treats someone like that?”
“Hey, now,” I interjected, starting to get pissed. “You don’t get to—”
To my surprise, it was Julian who interrupted me. “Adam. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I frowned. What a stubborn man.
“You are so—I just—ugh! You know, Matty’s had a lot of men hurt him in his life, but he didn’t love one of them the way he loves you! The way that you know he loves you! You know he loves you because you ‘just get him,'” she said, imitating Matty, I guess. “You ‘just get him,’ and you use it to say the most cruel things possible, the things you know will hurt the most.”
I was lost at this point. Julian matched her gaze at her blankly.
“Yeah. I do.”
She looked at him as though he was out of his damn gourd. When she spoke, her voice was shaking with an extreme, powerful anger. “Never come near him again. He’ll forgive you, and you are dangerous to him.”
All three of us knew she was itching to hit him, but she withheld and turned on her heel to stomp out of the building.
Julian stared at the wood grain of the counter.
“Oh, Julian,” I said softly, “what did you do?”
******
Matty
“Good morning.”
I could tell Phoebe was pissed ’cause I was late. Again. Whatever.
“‘Morning.” I tried not to sound snippy with her, but I was still mad, and I knew she could hear it in my voice.
We shuffled around the office in thick, tight silence. I set some things on her desk without comment before settling in my chair and opening my computer.
Eleven days.
Eleven days since I had seen him.
Eleven days since he had said a word to me. Not a call, not a voicemail, not a text. Eleven days.
“So, Dr. Wilson called and asked if she could switch at least—” I heard her look for that stupid notepad she uses, can’t just use her phone like a fucking modern adult— “three of her Thursday sessions to Wednesday. Can you send me the Wednesday class schedules for her patients?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.”
The sound of her typing was fucking irritating.
“What’s the date?”
“You have your computer in front of you, do you not?”
I bored holes into my screen with my eyes before sighing and rubbing my temple.
“The seventeenth. It’s the seventeenth.”
I could feel her looking at me.
“Matty,” she sighed, as though I was the problem, “can you at least be not-mad-at-me when we’re at work?”
I took a deep breath. “Trust me, Phoebs, I am trying my hardest.”
She scowled. “If you have something new you’d like to say to me, Matty, feel free.”
I stood up and pushed desk away in anger, ready to fight, only to break down and collapse into my chair. My forehead was against my desk. I felt Phoebe’s hand on my shoulder blade. “He hasn’t called.”
“You know that’s ’cause of me.”
“You talk shit all the time,” I grumbled. “It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. He hasn’t called in eleven days.”
I sat back in my chair and pushed the hair out of my eyes. “I feel like I’m being punished for his actions.” I looked at her in the eyes. “I really wish you hadn’t done that, Phoebe.” She turned her eyes at the floor.
******
Julian
Was I always this stupid?
Maybe, but I wasn’t always this mean.
I wished Lolo was there to smack me.
I was sixteen when I sat down at the dinner table and told my family that I was dating a boy. Technically, he was a man, but I was going to have to build up to that degree of honesty. It was a less-than-elegant coming-out, blurted out in response to a request to pass the couscous. I didn’t even say that I was gay. I just said, with unnecessary volume, that I had a boyfriend.
“Oh,” said my mother.
“Well,” said my father. “Is he handsome?”
I blinked. “Er, yeah.”
“Oh, Saïd,” my mother sighed. “Lili, give your brother the couscous. What’s his name?”
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