I’ve always been inspired by Lorde’s album Melodrama. The album came out while I was in London on a study abroad I could barely afford and spending the night in my hotel room because I was too poor to go out with the other students. It sticks out in my mind as the context for a story that I only recently considered as maybe being a pseudo-memoir, after showing it to a friend.
The first time he knew he was a bad person was hearing his ex-boyfriend sobbing in his best friend’s open garage on a balmy Texas evening. He knew going to Eleanor’s high school graduation party was risky, that Elijah would most likely be there. He had managed to avoid him for most of the night but in true romcom fashion they ran into each other outside the bathroom. The meme of the little bird flashed through his mind. Julien took a calculated risk and damn was he bad at math.
Shit, sorry, Julien said.
Oh, hey, Elijah said as he moved out of the doorway.
Julien darted into the bathroom and slammed the door. The room was spinning as he braced himself on the countertop. Julien was petrified looking at himself in the mirror, only barely relaxing when he heard Elijah’s footsteps disappearing into the music’s dull bass rumbling through the house. The coolness of the counter grounded him and he realized how much he was sweating. Surely splashing cold water on his face would calm him down. Fuck, he shouldn’t have had this much to drink.
It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, he repeated in the mirror.
Are you done yet? Said a girl from outside the bathroom.
He jumped, and pulled himself together as he cleared his throat. Thank god it wasn’t Elijah.
Just a second, he said. Damn, he forgot to pee. He flushed the toilet anyway and washed his hands. He’ll come back later.
The door was barely unlocked before it was shoved open. A girl he had never met pushed her way into the bathroom while shoving him out of the way with a dexterity that was unreasonable for someone who he had just watched shotgun a beer after two tequila shots.
Get out already, she yelled and slammed the door.
He knew Eleanor had other friends that she would talk about sometimes, but Julien had never met any of them until tonight. It was weird to have his image of her contrasted against this rowdy crowd of partygoers. Julien was never the type to go out on weekends to bonfires, or the house parties of kids whose parents were out of town for the weekend. Living half an hour away on the other side of town had a profound effect on his social life, even after he learned to drive. But to actually be in this environment he had only heard about was both wildly exciting and incredibly overstimulating. The thumping of the music in his chest, the laughing and yelling of strangers across the house, the stench of weed and cigarettes wafting in from the open backdoor mixing with the sweat of too many bodies in too small of a living room, and lights flashing in the darkness, and the taste of the party punch still lingering on his lips.
Scanning the room, he didn’t see Elijah. Really he couldn’t see anyone he recognized in the mass of bodies packed into the cleared out living room. The one rotating party lamp reflected off featureless faces glowing in the soft light of glow sticks and bracelets. Couples danced, strangers made out with each other. The walls felt like they were closing in. No clear path presented itself between him and the kitchen, and the exit into the backyard.
The only way out is through, he thought. Julien took a deep breath and stepped into the crowd.
Elijah entered his life at a crossroads. Julien was still freshly outed by his parents and dealing with his first breakup, an incalculable loss that made him question whether or not any of this was worth it. Not that he had much of a real connection with Brandon, other than both being gay and being friends that were curious for more. But this was his first relationship with a man, one that he wasn’t fully ready for, that then led to his mother sneaking into his room on a Sunday morning in mid-October, prying his phone from underneath the pillow and seeing all his texts with Brandon talking about wanting to suck each other’s dicks.
We’ll talk about this later, his mom had said. He could remember the disappointment in her voice so clearly. He spent the day in a state of total panic. How was he supposed to explain this part of himself that he didn’t fully understand? She wouldn’t be back until later that evening after both his parents had gotten plenty drunk at a football watch party with their friends.
Julien always wondered if they had talked about it with anyone that day. Would they admit to the sneaky way they went about it? Or did they just bottle it all up inside, trying to keep up their well-practiced facade of the perfect little family? He was pretty sure it was the latter, but it’s not something he or they would ever talk about. Especially after things were relatively settled and his mom finally apologized for calling him disgusting to his face and throwing up in the sink at the thought of Julien with another guy.
But at the time, Julien was in the midst of all this inner and outer turmoil. His parents had isolated him from his friends, only allowing him to go to school and promptly picking him up as soon as the bell would ring. He was struggling with his identity, and whether being himself was even worth it. His saint of an older sister was visiting home from her freshman year of college and took him to the Arboretum with some of her friends, to get him out of the house. He could never remember exactly when this was. His recognition of time destabilized after being outed, but he remembered wearing a brown zip-up hoodie with sleeves that were too long.
What he could remember very clearly was Elijah. The way his chestnut brown hair moved in the cool, autumn wind, how soft it looked. The way his blue eyes crinkled at the edges whenever he would smile. How bright and warm his smile was. How it made Julien feel so warm to be the cause of that smiling. None of it would make sense until much later, after another year-long relationship and drifting in a vortex of emotions for several years, when Julien was able to understand what falling in love felt like.
Julien slipped outside into the fresh air and made a beeline for one of the ice chests. The bottled drinks were gone, as were most of the beers, but digging through the mostly melted ice he grabbed a cold soda and immediately placed it on his forehead. A couple was ferociously making out on the outside sofa, another couple was sharing puffs from a joint at the edge of the porch, so Julien dropped himself onto one of the outside loungers. He concentrated on the coldness of the condensation forming on the outside of the can, trying his best to ignore how humid it was out here.
Eleanor stumbled out of the backdoor, laughing loudly and cutting the quiet respite of the outdoors. Though he felt overwhelmed in the moment, he felt relief wash over him at seeing someone he knew. Or at least someone he knew and wanted to see. She set her sights on Julien.
Jules! Whoa, are you okay?
Oh, yeah, he said. I’m doing just perfectly fine.
Sweet, I’m so glad to hear that, she said. I’m having a great time, but I keep losing my girlfriend. Have you seen her?
Julien sucked in air through his teeth. Of course he had seen Areli, and she had been up against a wall making out with Joel near the bathroom. By the look in Eleanor’s eyes, she had seen it too and was choosing not to think about the fact that Areli was cheating on her again. They had that kind of relationship. Julien had never understood why they stayed together, but who was he to judge?
No, haven’t seen her, he said over the hiss of the soda opening.
Eleanor looked down at her feet and kicked away a June bug. Damn, Eleanor said, I need to make sure she drinks water. I don’t want to have to deal with her hungover ass in the morning.
And that’s going well, huh?
Oh, yeah! Everything’s great, Eleanor sighed, I really love her.
Julien looked at Eleanor. So much about her had changed just in the last year. Eleanor’s dark hair was shorter and curlier, her skin was darker and glowing from all the time spent in the sun, and she looked great. But he recognized the bags under her eyes all too well, the way her smile never quite reached up to them. Julien knew her well enough to recognize that Areli was rotting Eleanor from the inside out, and if he pushed the subject too hard she’d implode on herself. He thought maybe it made him a bad friend to not call this out, but he knew it wouldn’t help. Eleanor was going to do whatever she wanted, at whatever cost to herself. They had this in common.
That’s so great to hear, he said instead. I hope yall have fun this summer before we all scatter around.
I hope so too, she said breathlessly. I don’t know what’ll happen after the summer ends, but we talked and we’re going to try the whole long-distance thing. We already have a FaceTime schedule going and everything.
That’s great, Eleanor, he said.
I talked to Eli, Eleanor said quietly.
Julien felt his body tense up involuntarily. He prayed she didn’t notice it, but of course she did. They knew each other too well at this point. Julien stayed quiet.
It wasn’t about you, Eleanor said. Well, it kinda was. But like nothing bad. He just said he was looking for you and wanted to talk.
Why is he here, Eleanor? I don’t want to talk to him.
Because he’s also my friend? You have to talk at some point, I think you know that. Look he’s sorry about everything that went down while he was gone, and I’m sure he just wants to apologize to you.
Julien abruptly stood up. Here she goes again, he thought, thinking that she knows better than everyone else. His head was swimming, but he wasn’t sure if it was just the alcohol at this point. The humidity made it feel like he was choking on water. Even out here in the open air he could feel the pressure closing in on him.
I don’t actually have to do anything, Julien snapped. I don’t have to give someone who cheated on me the time of day, much less a conversation.
You don’t know for sure that Eli cheated on you, Eleanor pleaded. We just think that maybe he might have, but maybe that’s something you can ask him?
You’ve got to be kidding.
I don’t know! I’m just spitballing here! I want this to be easy again. I just want you two to make up and go back to how we all used to be just hanging out here together and driving around wherever we wanted instead of avoiding each other like the plague.
Well some of us don’t let our significant others shit on us all the time, Eleanor.
Julien knew that he went too far, but it was out of his mouth before he realized what he had said. She, of course, knew exactly what he had meant. At this point the other people outside were trying their best to act like they weren’t paying attention to the host of this party fighting with her best friend while both were clearly drunk. Eleanor sat quietly for a moment, considering.
Well, Julien, she finally said, Some of us actually give a shit about other people.
He didn’t stay to find out whether or not she meant it, whether or not she had that tell on her face when she instantly regretted something she said. Another thing they had in common. They tried not to have a filter with each other, to be brutally honest, but that was a part of their friendship that had long since degraded. Eleanor was usually an easy book to read for him, but Julien hadn’t realized he’d been reading the same page over and over for some time now. He remembered his sister saying that friendships usually don’t make it past high school, unless they’re really special and everyone makes an effort to keep up the friendship. It was hard to tell if Eleanor was one of those friends now, if all the years of care and support and anguish and drama they’d spent together would end up meaning anything.
Julien?
In his anger, Julien hadn’t noticed that Elijah was standing inches away from him while he was searching for his keys from the designated key table in the garage. Maybe he wasn’t sober enough to drive, but Julien knew he had to get out of there. It was fight or flight, and as soon as he locked eyes with Elijah he knew it had to be flight. Julien stood there, frozen and staring at Elijah, not saying anything. Elijah looked confused, like Julien was some kind of foreign entity to him. Like they hadn’t been inseparable, hadn’t shared intimate knowledge with the other, like they hadn’t been inside each other.
Can we talk?
But Julien was already walking past Elijah, who made no effort to stop him. They had both known for a long time, even while they were together, that this wasn’t going to work. They couldn’t work. For all the love they shared, and the deepest parts of themselves upturned and presented to each other as an offering of love and acceptance, it had meant nothing in the end. Julien figured that was the inevitable outcome of all things, that in the end it didn’t matter what anybody did or if anything they felt was real. When it comes down to it, Julien only had himself in the end. People would come into his life, and sometimes they would stay long enough to convince him that maybe life wasn’t so bad after all. But they would all leave him behind in the end.
Please, Julien. I miss you.
This time, Julien made sure that he wasn’t the one left behind. He steeled himself and walked through the abundance of cars packed into the driveway, through the cloud of mosquitos in the grass, through the outskirts of the party until he could feel its influence on him peel off and slink back through the darkness towards the house. He could hear the music softly as he got to his car, the keys in his shaky hands. He heard the echoes of Elijah sobbing to someone in the garage.
And then it all stopped. Julien was in his car, alone, in the quiet. The car rumbled to life, and he took a deep breath. He could feel his eyes stinging. Elijah can’t have this kind of power over him anymore. It was over. It had to be over.
It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, Julien repeated to himself. And then he drove away.