Lena reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “It’s definitely not your fault. He’ll come around.”
“We don’t really talk anymore. It’s even worse than it was before,” Julian said. “I’m worried there’s a distance growing between us that’s soon going to be insurmountable. He just makes it so difficult to talk.”
“It’ll be okay,” Lena assured him, even though she wasn’t quite sure that it would be.
That dinner easily gave way to her spending the night in his hotel room. The next morning, Julian held her tightly on the busy sidewalk outside the hotel.
“Don’t go,” he pleaded.
“I have to graduate,” Lena insisted. “But then I promise I’ll come join you on tour.”
He kissed her forehead. “Maybe I should just stay here.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I don’t want to let you go again.”
“It’s different this time,” she said.
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“You promise?” he repeated.
And she laughed as he smothered her with kisses.
Lena finished up school and, as promised, joined Julian for the summer leg of his tour. She was working on finishing a collection of human-sized clay figurines and was thrilled when she discovered a gallery—not the most elite, but a prominent one nonetheless—was interested in displaying them. She was sure that Julian, or someone he knew now, had been responsible for the gallery’s interest, but she tried not to think about that too much.
Be proud, she implored herself. Your dreams are coming true.
She was so focused on making her own dreams come true that it was beginning to cause friction between her and Julian. It wasn’t something that happened overnight, but slowly their relationship began to erode. Julian was always inviting her to go out with him after the show to various parties where he was expected to make an appearance.
Lena hated those parties.
Sure, one reason was that she didn’t like being treated like she was only interesting because she was Julian Oliver’s girlfriend. She was a person with thoughts and dreams and interests completely separate from him. Also, she simply preferred to stay at home so she could work on her own art.
Julian’s newfound fame hadn’t made her lazy. In fact it was the opposite—it had made her even wilder with ambition. She was determined to catch up with him. The way she saw it, they had stood on the same starting line, and he had somehow managed to get many strides ahead, and so now it was her job to close the gap.
Julian did not see it this way.
“Why are you so worried, babe?” he would ask, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her close. He would shower her neck with kisses and beg her to come relax with him instead of repainting the face on one of the clay figurines for the umpteenth time. “You shouldn’t worry so much. Everything’s going to fall into place for us. Hell, it’s fallen into place for us.”
“You mean,” Lena corrected, “it’s fallen into place for you.”
Julian did not understand this distinction that Lena drew between the Us—their relationship—and their singular artistic pursuits. He saw them as one unit. As a team. He couldn’t process why Lena wanted to untangle herself from that unit.
But Lena deeply believed that something wasn’t yours unless you, and only you, earned it. Only you owned it. Sharing Julian’s success did not interest her. She wanted her own success. Something that had her own name on it. She was unapologetic in this desire, and it began to drive Julian crazy.
He stayed out later and later at the parties she refused to attend with him. She knew those parties were full of girls. Girls that fawned all over him, girls that she desperately wanted to believe he wasn’t sleeping with. He came home smelling of smoke and alcohol. His words blurred and his hands clumsy. When she would question him, he would fire back at her.
“Why isn’t this enough for you?” he asked her one night, his voice hoarse, his eyes far away. “I wrote the album, I left home, I did all of this for you.”
“Because it’s not mine,” she said quietly. She wished there was some way she could explain to him that she hadn’t put a whole ocean between herself and her home to be a rock star’s sidekick. It wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t ever be enough.
“But I’m yours,” he said sadly.
“I know,” she whispered. “But that’s not enough.”
“I wish it was,” he said, and she knew he wasn’t only thinking of her. He was thinking of his father.
Things continued to deteriorate between them. More fights. More late nights where Julian didn’t show up until three a.m., and when he did show up he was drunk and reeking of cigarette smoke.
It was on one of those nights when she was holed up in another random hotel room, sitting on the floor with her sketch pad, doodling ideas for her next project, when the phone rang. She picked it up, bracing herself for Mikey’s voice covering for Julian, who had inevitably gotten too wasted at one of the after-show parties.
It was her cousin.
“Lena?” her cousin said, her voice shaky.
“Yes?” Lena said brusquely, irritated to have been interrupted from her work.
“It’s your mother.”
Lena’s heart stalled. She squeezed the phone and let out a tiny whimper of a prayer.
“She’s gone,” her cousin said softly.
Lena fell to her knees.
Her cousin continued to talk. Whispering words of comfort. Filling in the details. Explaining that she and her husband didn’t know if they would be able to go home for the funeral. But Lena surely would, wouldn’t she? And then the cousin asked whether Julian would go with Lena.
A shivering dread snaked its way into her cloud of grief. Would Julian come with her? Did she even want him to? Would she even be able to go herself? Her student visa was about to expire. She didn’t know if she’d be able to get back into the country. Plus, the money. She couldn’t afford a ticket home without Julian’s help.
She hung up the phone and sat for what seemed like hours paralyzed on the bed. She stared out at the nondescript room that could’ve been anywhere in the world and whispered to herself, “My mother is dead.
“My mother is dead,” she repeated over and over again.
But no matter how many times she said it, it never clicked. It never seemed fully true. She kept waiting for the enormity of it to hit her, but it didn’t. She kept feeling sharp pieces of sadness, but she was waiting for the final stab to come down.
She didn’t understand how something so momentous could happen so quickly. She had always childishly believed that you would be prepared for the death of your parent. At least it had been that way with her father. He had been sick. They had all waited and watched him die. It hadn’t made it easier, but she had known it was coming.