Crescendo

Chapter 5

*Trigger warning: mentions of depression, anxiety, and intention of suicide towards the end of this chapter.

Soundtrack for this chapter:
Under the Influence—Elle King
Wish I Knew You—The Revivalists
Fix You—Coldplay

5

Jules

When I'm nervous or uncomfortable, I tend to smile. It's been an equally valuable trait in my personal life and in counseling. When one of my clients is telling me all sorts of things and I'm feeling utterly uncomfortable but have to maintain a calming, soothing demeanor, I smile through it.

When Theo approached me after I'd finished my set at the open mic night in the park, I'd wager that about fifty percent of my smile was from the high of performing while the other fifty percent was coming from feeling very awkward. I had sex with this man after knowing him for a few hours, I slept in his clothing, and then I snuck out of his house, assuming I'd never see him again, yet there he was. I could have killed Nora for suggesting we "catch up."

My brain was also trying to comprehend why he was interested in speaking to me again; maybe he wanted another go at it? No, that couldn't be possible. I was positive I had nothing in comparison to his level of experience in such intimate matters.

I'd been able to beat back those vultures crooning at me about the night we spent together to the point where I convinced myself that I was nothing more than a hook up for him. If I was being honest with myself, that's all I'd wanted him to be to me. But a secret part of me had hoped we'd somehow reconnect; I'd have been fooling myself if I said it didn't sting a bit when I finally did come to terms that I was nothing more to him than a fun night. Then again, every time I let him work his way into my brain, Will and my parents pushed him out.

Yet I couldn't deny Theo when he was right in front of me. Those blue eyes of his kept pulling me back in, hindering my judgement like one too many mint juleps on a hot Savannah afternoon.

I followed him away from the crowd and down a gravel pathway. Theo was the one to break our awkward silence.

"So...what've you been up to?"

Were we pretending like the night we spent together never happened? I could do that. I was good at pretending. That meant I could treat this encounter like it was the first time I was meeting him.

"Our academic year just started, so we had a brand new group of freshmen arrive on campus last week."

"How did it go?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "It was fine, I guess. Much less intimidating this time being that I'd been through it before. You remember what it was like to be a freshman; the instant freedom can be overwhelming for some of them."

"Actually, not so much. I went straight into the military, remember?"

My face scrunched up in embarrassment; he was going to think I didn't pay him an ounce of attention when we were at Midtown. "Right, sorry." I shook my head. "I knew that; I wasn't thinking. I—"

"Jules, relax. You might be the most tightly wound person I've ever met." He turned to me and smiled, but I regarded his smile as dangerous; it was charming, yet there was something underneath it. It was one of the things about him that kept me talking to him that night at Midtown, even when I knew I should have turned the other way.

I prided myself on being able to pick people apart, discover things about them, but everything I thought about Theo had been wrong; he was a challenge for me to figure out. I decided that if this night turned into anything other than another proposition for me to go back to his place, I would've been wrong about him again.