Page 79 of Walk the Line

“Because you asked so nicely…” I begin, and end my sentence by reaching for his mouth with my own, my body reacting to him the moment his lips are on me, both our tongues sliding against each other, matching our needs for each other with searing kisses that have us rolling over to the ground. I laugh as we try to find our balance, and he joins me while finding my lips again like he’ll starve without my taste in his mouth. I get it. It’s that feeling of fulfilment that’s growing with every second of our tongues dancing against each other, that contentment from knowing we’re both as hungry for each other as we could possibly be. It’s a moment I don’t want to end, and we stay there on the ground for what might be years, might be hours, our mouths in perfect harmony with each other.

The next morning, I wake to safely laid out on Julius’s bed, the blanket he must have put over me at some point explaining the warmth I feel. But it doesn’t take long for me to realise he’s not beside me, and an even quicker discovery is him being back on the floor again, leaning against the bed just like last night. I can only see his back but I can immediately tell his shoulders aren’t relaxed.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, leaping off the bed to sit beside him.

I immediately unclench once he takes my fingers in his, but my confusion remains as I take in the thoughtful expression on his face.

“Remember when I said we’ve done everything backwards?” I nod, thinking back to the much needed conversation we had last night, a resolution of so many things. “I should have told you the truth before I asked you to be my girlfriend,” he continues.

“What’s the truth?” When he lets out a sigh, I say, “Okay, now I’m really getting worried.”

Squeezing my hand gently, he says, “There’s nothing to worry about, I promise. But I just want to make sure I explain this properly.”

“Take your time, babe. I’m staying right here.”

I welcome a few seconds of silence, and then, “So, when I chose to put Wildern University as my first choice, there were a number of reasons why. My Statistics course, location, hockey opportunities, just a lot of things. But one of them reasons was our Hockey coach.”

“Coach Campbell? Is he like, a genius or something? I haven’t heard anything crazy about him.”

“He’s not a genius…but he is my dad.” Julius sends a nervous look my way.

I’m wondering if I just let my brain fill in the blanks instead of hearing what Julius just said. So I manage the best response I can.

“Wait, huh?”

“Coach Campbell is my dad.”

Okay, so he did say that.

“Um…could you maybe use more words please? Because I don’t know what the hell is going on right now,” I say.

“Understandable,” he says with a wry smile. “So obviously, you’ve met my mum, and then there’s my stepdad. I call him dad so people probably wouldn’t be able to pick up on the difference. I’ve known him all my life. My biological dad left when I was young and Demetrius was even younger.” I shake my head in annoyance. “I didn’t care to go looking for him or anything, but when I was a teenager my mum told me that he was a Hockey player, but she hadn’t kept up to date with him so she didn’t know what he went on to do. I looked him up and that’s when I found that he’s a coach at this university.”

I process every word one by one, and then think of a response. “So did you decide to come here to get to know him?”

Without taking a second, Julius says, “No. I don’t actually want to know him is the thing. He left without turning back and I actually have a dad who cares about me, so it never really was a sore point in my life. As soon as I found out that he’s a Coach, that was all I needed to know. I didn’t care to look up anything else about him or who his current family might be.” I detect a hint of bitterness in his tone, but without concluding that it refutes his words. It’s fair enough for him to feel the way he does. “But I did think I could learn some things about myself through him,” he continues, “and I also thought that if he was similar enough to me, he might be able to understand me in a way that would help me on the right path to success in Hockey. Coaches in the past have hated my personality while respecting my talent, which sometimes makes them give up on me. I wanted to see what would happen here, but he’s pretty much the same.”

“He did make you Captain, though,” I say, a realisation hitting me. “Oh, shit, is that what the texts I was getting were about? When they were mentioning your dad to me. I just automatically thought it was referring to your stepdad, who I thought was your biological dad at the time. But if it’s Coach, then…what if they’re talking about him making you Captain?” I ask, and now the overthinking begins.

“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know, though,” Julius responds.

“Know what?”

“About me.”

With no other words in my arsenal, I once again go for, “Wait, huh?”

“He left when I was little,” Julius explains. “My mum said he never contacted her again after that. He knew my name, but Julius isn’t the rarest name in the world so I wouldn’t expect him to get suspicious just from that. I took my stepdad’s surname. I don’t think he knows my mum and stepdad are together because I don’t think he thinks about them at all. They’re regular people, so there’s nothing to find out about them online, anyway. Then there’s me,” he continues. “I’m reserved as fuck. Coach doesn’t know anything about me. He definitely doesn’t know I have a brother named Demetrius. That might make things a little more questionable if you put our two names together, but for all the ways he tries to make it seem like I’m just incapable of being sociable, he’s the exact same way. He doesn’t know anything about the people on his team, the only thing he thinks he needs to know is that we’re “aligned.” The thing is, though, I’m not telling him the truth because that’s fucking awkward, but I’m also not hiding it from him if he were to find out. He told me he made me Captain because I show signs of leadership and it’s a way for me to integrate with the team, because without it, I wouldn’t. He’s right about that. But even with that, I’m not guaranteed the position of Captain. Coach literally told me that if the team is shit this season he’ll stop me from being co-captain and pass the full title on to you.”

“What the fuck? That’s a threat that’s fucking strong,” I say.

“The guy does not like me, I’m telling you. So yeah, everything points to him not knowing. My parents and brother don’t think so, either.”

“Wait, they know about all this?” I’m beginning to wonder whether I’m in a simulation.

“Yeah, but none of them agree with it.” The emotion in his voice as he speaks about them makes a palpable difference to how he explained things about Coach Campbell. “They think I’m just setting myself up for heartbreak by staying in this close of proximity to my biological dad. I don’t feel like that, though. It just really isn’t that deep to me. You can’t lose something you never had. If I wanted a relationship with him, I would have tried to make that happen. He’s literally right there.” I lightly brush my fingers against his palm. “But I don’t,” he continues. “He’s a good Coach and that’s what I care about when it comes to him. My parents don’t like him. Demetrius hates him, but he’s still a little curious, I guess. But he took our step dad’s surname too and we’d choose him anytime. It’s kind of a… weird situation, I know that. I’ll be the first to admit it. Especially because he’s got a daughter who I’ve now met.”

I nod. “Oh, yeah, Mimi.”