Prologue
Looking back, the moment I saw Julian was the moment everything ended.
Not in that harmless, first-crush way adults promise you’ll forget.
This ending was more permanent.
Irreversible.
In the same way where something precious to you breaks and never quite fits back together again.
Our story began at a party I didn’t want to be at.
My older brother Andy was turning fourteen and deep in his Pac-Man era, which apparently meant inviting his entire ninth-grade class to The Cobra, the town-famous arcade and pizza joint.
I didn’t care for arcades. I definitely didn’t care for ninth graders who mostly ignored me.
Thankfully, I’d managed to rope my best friend, Zeina, into coming with me. We were tucked away in a booth near the back, wearing our best ‘fancy’ sundresses and sandals, eating lukewarm slices and debating the merits of Tuxedo Mask in the latest Sailor Moon episode we’d watched that week.
The music was loud. The air smelled like grease, sugar, and something faintly metallic from the machines.
It was nothing important.
Nothing I should have remembered.
But memory doesn’t care about should.
One second I was laughing at Zeina’s terrible Donald Duck impression, and the next, I saw him.
Dark hair, cut short and neat, with almond-shaped eyes so black they looked painted on but was his dimpled smile that drew me in. Warm and friendly at first, until you notice how little of it reached his eyes.
He stood beside my brother like he had always belonged there, a sudden pocket of stillness in the middle of the neon chaos.
“Who is that?” I whispered.
Zeina followed my gaze, still chewing. “Your brother, Andy?”
“Very funny. I mean the perfect specimen of a boy next to him. And no, not that ape Cal.”
Callum Yates had been Andy’s best friend since kindergarten and my personal enemy for nearly as long.
“Don’t know,” she said around a mouthful of pizza, “but maybe he’s the new kid my mom mentioned. Starting at DG High this week.”
Zeina’s mother, Dean Nazeeha and beloved academic dictator of Dale Gracefall College, knew every piece of town gossip before it technically existed. Of course she would be in the know about a new family moving into our small college town.
“I think she said his name was… Julian.” Zeina mused.
Julian.
That name was fit for a face like that. As I stared at him, something inside me settled with terrifying certainty.
I needed to hear his voice.
Even more pressing, I needed him to know who I was and that I existed.
“Let’s go say hi,” I said, flattening the top of my frizzy mop of toffee colored hair. I knew I should’ve taken the extra time to style it better.
“Ew, why? Andy’s just going to tell us to fuck off.”
She wasn’t wrong. My brother, older by only one year mind you, would absolutely ruin my first interaction with my future boyfriend by saying something humiliating.
But I had to look at the bigger picture.
“Zey,” I said quietly, still watching him while I tucked a strand behind my ear, “that’s my future boyfriend.”
She froze mid-bite. “You cannot be serious.”
“I know it sounds crazy,” I said. “And I know I tend to be dramatic. But Julian?” I paused for effect as I clutched at my chest. “He’s my Tuxedo Mask.”
It must have been the most serious I’d ever looked, because she actually set her slice down.
“For the record, I really hate that look in your eye. It’s that same look that convinced me to shave my eyebrows so we can ‘draw’ it back on.”
“I saw it on TV, we just need to perfect our arch.”
She ignored me, “But, I guess no matter what I say, you’re going to do this anyway, aren’t you?”
I gave her a beaming smile in response.
I know she must have decided she hated me right then and there, but like a true best friend, she still followed.
As we approached, I heard his voice for the first time.
Well, it was technically a laugh.
It was majestic. Low in timber and honey-warm. Mature and sophisticated, not at all like the other bumbling freshmen my brother had invited to this snoozefest.
Mustering up all the courage I had, I interrupted.
“Hi. You must be new. I’m Maya,” I said, pointedly ignoring my brother and Cal.
Andy gave me one of his trademark eye rolls but thankfully, he still had enough manners to introduce us.
“This is my little pain-in-the-ass sister and her sidekick Zeina. They’re basically nosy old ladies.” Before I had any time to protest, he continued, “Losers, meet Julian. He’s new in town.”
And for some reason, I held out my hand to shake his.
In the moment, it felt mature.
Important.
Like if I acted older, he might see me that way too. Looking back, it was probably because I wanted to touch him and check he wasn’t something I made up during my carb-induced haze.
A grating laugh rang out.
“You really need to touch grass, Maya. You know you’re thirteen, right?” Cal snorted.
Heat flooded my face. “I’m being polite, you turd.”
“Don’t pretend to be something you’re not.” He taunted back. I was about to go at him, as per our usual back and forth, but Andy cut in.
“Can you two not start for once? Today is supposed to be a happy occasion but I'm not above getting our mothers involved.”
But I barely heard him.
All I saw was Julian.
With anyone else, I probably would’ve seemed a little eager, a stranger butting in to shake his hand while holding his gaze a little too long for it to seem like an accident.
But he didn’t seem to mind.
He just stood there, taking me in, the way I’d taken him in. Maybe a touch more clinical. Still, I preened under the attention, like he was trying to solve me.
He tilted his head slightly and to my pleasant surprise, took my hand.
His fingers were warm, I noted. His grip, gentle. Then, just for a second, almost like I imagined it, he squeezed.
It was a small, deliberate pressure.
Intentional.
Magical.
Not too long or hard, but just enough for something sharp and electric to travel up my arm and settle behind my ribs.
“I’m Julian,” he answered.
His voice was deep and soft and oh, how I wanted to hear it forever.
Then he let go, and turned back to Andy. “It’s our turn at pinball. Remember the stakes.”
I was dismissed.
“Don’t cry when I destroy you,” Andy said, shoving his shoulder, already moving away.
Cal lingered long enough to flash me a mean smile. “See you around, weeb.”
It didn’t register.
“I think that went…” Zeina looked at me carefully, afraid I was disappointed. “Better than you are probably thinking. Look at this way, he knows who you are now.”
I fully wasn’t listening. My hand was still tingling where he’d last touched me.
“I need a notebook,” I whispered, still staring at the back of his head.
“What? Why?”
“I need to write it down. Exactly how he said my name. I don't want to lose the sound of it.”
Zeina sighed.
Even then, before the obsession, before the years of wanting. Before I learned how completely a person could disappear inside someone else, some part of me already knew.
Julian was going to ruin me.
And the worst part?
I was going to call it love.
