Lyrical Love Letter

Juliette was staring out the window of her room, rain was pelting the glass, and dark clouds concealed the blue sky. Distantly she thought how aptly the weather reflected her mood.

Today was the first day she had not spent around Alex and a part of her hated for being a tiny bit relieved. It was exhausting trying to look after her boyfriend, his mood switched from mournful to anger in a flash, most often he drank too much and when he didn’t he stayed within the confines of his dark room alone with his thoughts which almost worst than the drinking.

Jonnie was sitting cross-legged upon the twin size bed silently, her own eyes watching the rain outside.

Logan’s death had been hard on everyone but combined with the ever-looming cloud of their uncertain near future made life suffocating for Jonnie, Juliette, and her brother Declan.

“How’s Zack?” Her voice was quiet and exhausted. If she were being honest Juliette didn’t care much for talking these days but she also did not care much for the silence that coaxed at her thoughts; she did not like being alone with her thoughts anymore than she liked the idea of Alex alone with his.

She saw Jonnie’s reflection shrug in the glass of the window. “Its hard,” She murmured. “All of this is hard. None of us know how to feel or what to do. It’s all just so…”

“Hard.” Juliette murmured softly.

“Yeah.”

A silence fell between the two then. It was not like the silence that had once fallen between the friends. It was not the easy comfortable silence who could just enjoy each others company. It was a silence between friends who did not know what to say but only knew that they both felt the same. They seemed to seek each others presence a lot lately for that reason. It was harder around their boyfriends; with Alex, Juliette felt more like a parent than a girlfriend and with Jonnie, Zack always leaned toward talking about what was bothering her—but now no one could quite say what they felt.

“Remember when life was easy?” Jonnie questioned dryly.

“No,” Juliette snorted turning away from the window and Jonnie nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, me neither.”

Juliette swallowed. “But this is the first place where I have found it okay for life not to be easy.” She glanced around the room. “This place, this town, made it okay for life not to be easy. It was different here.”

“It was,” Jonnie echoed, noting the past tense of her words. “But now, with this? It would not matter where we went nothing anywhere could make this any easier.”

Juliette nodded in agreement and moved to sit beside her friend. Jonnie wrapped her arms around her friend and placed her head on Juliette’s shoulder. “We’ll always have each other.”

Juliette nodded distantly, her hand touching Jonnie’s arms wrapped around her shoulders.

The silence was there again and an obstruction began to swell in Juliette’s throat, threatening her with a sob. But she would not do it, she cried a lot through out her life though it seemed she had cried more within the past few weeks than she had all her life. There was one thing she had learned from that—crying got you nowhere.

A soft knock resounded against the bedroom door before the knob turned and Uncle Ben slowly peeked his head in. Almost reluctantly, the two friends pulled away from each other to stare at the adult with questioning uneasy eyes. Uncle Ben was a quieter person who kept more to himself, whenever he had something to say it was always something of importance. For Juliette it nearly always related to her mother.

“Good,” He mumbled more to himself than to them. “I can talk to you both at once.”

Juliette’s stomach flopped and she could sense Jonnie tense beside her. Uncle Ben was wasting his breath, the two could already sense what he had meant to say.

“Renee, your mother…” he trailed off looking uncomfortable suddenly. “perhaps I should wait until Declan returns home, this affects him a great deal as well and would not be right for him not to—“

“Renee is coming for us, isn’t she?” Juliette felt sick.

Uncle Ben’s eyes were sympathetic as he nodded. “I convinced her to hold off her arrival for another two weeks—I told her about Logan and she sends her regards.”

Juliette looked away, her jaw locked, she hated being at the mercy of others. “I want to stay with you Uncle Ben,” She whispered feeling very small.

“I know dear,” Uncle Ben murmured. “but its more complicated than it seems.”

Juliette knew of the custody battle. She knew that Uncle Ben wanted she and Declan to stay as much as they did. But it was more complicated then mere wants—it always was.

“Complicated because my mother, my step-father Collin, and biological father David, and you, all want custody of us.”

His lips were pressed into a thin line, “yes,” he said grimly.

Juliette nodded quietly and looked away. “so tell me, who has the best chance of winning?”

“Renee is your mother,”

“…and a piss poor one at that,” Jonnie piped up and Uncle Ben did not argue.

“David has never been in your lives but he has the money to afford the attorney…although seeing as he is in a touring band the courts may not see him as someone who could provide a stable home.”

“May not see him fit, but they also could?”

“Anything, unfortunately, is possible.”

“I fucking hate my life,” Juliette grumbled miserably as she rose to her feet.

“Where are you going?”

“Drinking with boyfriend,” she announced as she moved toward the door where Uncle Ben stood. She paused before him though, her hand momentarily reaching for his arm. “I want you to know, this is the best home Declan and I have ever had and that if we had a choice we would choose you.”

Uncle Ben nodded quietly, his oaken eyes sad. “thank you,” he murmured.

Then she disappeared around the corner from view.