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She’s seven years old (almost eight). It’s July, and she’s at the kitchen table with a coloring book. It’s so warm that the crayons keep slipping out of her hands. Her mom has all the windows open because the oven’s on, and she can hear her brothers in the backyard, throwing a baseball back and forth.
Her mom has the phone wedged between her shoulder and her ear, stretching it as far as she can from the wall while she chops vegetables. She keeps sighing.
“I already told you,” Mom says. “They don’t want to come.”
She pauses, and sets down the knife before stretching the phone in the other direction to step into the hallway. “The boys don’t want to come, Frank.”
Juliet’s ears prick up at that, but she shouldn’t eavesdrop, so she keeps coloring, filling in the stem of a big flower with a dark green.
Mom’s quiet again for a second, and peeks her head around the doorway at Jules. She doesn’t look up. Keeps coloring.
“You know I’m not comfortable sending him by himself,” Mom whispers. “No, Frank. I already asked Ewan if he’d go with.”
Juliet starts to kick her feet back and forth as she moves on to color in the leaves.
“Listen— no, listen. Why don’t you just come to one of his baseball games next week?” Mom sighs. “There’s only a few left. No, I’ll be working. The boys are taking him.”
Jules tightens her grip on the crayon to counteract how sweaty her hands are, pressing down harder on the paper.
“Yeah, fine. Goodbye,” Mom stomps back into the room, slamming the phone back onto the receiver.
Juliet’s hand slips, and a thick, dark streak of green ends up across half the paper. She stares at it, and at the broken crayon in her hand. She throws the crayon pieces down on the table.
“What’s wrong, honey?” her Mom asks, back to chopping vegetables.
Juliet doesn’t answer, she just stares at the broken crayon pieces and the rest of the box, the brand new set of sixty-four crayons that her brother had brought her that week. Her eyes start to burn like she might cry.
“Oh no, did you break one?” Mom says, walking over to the table. “That’s okay, honey. You’ve got lots more.”
Jules pushes the coloring book away from herself, and shoves away from the table and runs upstairs to her room, ignoring her mom calling after her.
-
She’s eight years old. She’s been playing baseball every summer since she was four, just like all her brother’s did.
She hits a triple for the first time that year, a random night in June. Mom isn’t there, and neither is Dad, who she hasn’t seen in almost six months. All three of her brothers are there, even Eddie, who's twenty now.
“Little man!” he shouts, half hugging her before reaching for a high-five.
“That was freaking amazing ,” Joey says, taking her hat off and flipping it backwards before putting it back on her head. Their mom’s been harping on him and Ewan to stop cursing in front of her lately.
Ewan grabs her hat again and starts giving her a noogie. Juliet shrieks.
“Ewan, stop,” Joey laughs, at the same time Eddie says, “Leave him alone, Ewan.”
“Can we get ice cream?” Ewan asks, still with her in a headlock.
When Eddie answers, sure , Ewan lets go and takes off in a sprint towards the road. Juliet shouts, and jogs to catch up with the three of them.
They buy her a strawberry milkshake from the ice cream stand a few blocks down, and the four of them sit quietly on the curb while Ewan dramatically recaps her hit from earlier.
He does the same thing for their mom when Eddie drops the three of them off at home, and she laughs, and hugs Juliet.
Mom’s never been able to make all the games. Her work schedule changes a lot, and so does Eddie’s. Sometimes when Mom can come, she brings her boyfriend, Lloyd, which is nice. Lloyd is still trying to butter Jules up, so he always buys her the biggest size milkshake when she asks.
Dad hasn’t been to a game since she was six. Joey’s not always there either, he spends the summer she’s eight working, and doing college prep. Ewan’s been at every game, as far back as she can remember. The coaches start calling him an assistant coach some years. He always noogies her, no matter if they win or lose, and he always carries her bag while they walk home.
-
She’s ten years old. It’s the first baseball game of the season. Ewan is a five hour drive away, finishing up his first year of college. She keeps turning around on the bench, looking for him in the rows of parents. She can feel her heart beating, like it’s gonna pop out of her chest.
She’s untied and retied the laces on her cleats four times, but she reaches down and starts to do it again. Five. She sits back up after, trying to catch her breath, pulling at the hair at the bottom of her neck.
She leans down and unties the laces again. Six. While she’s midway through retying the right shoe, one of the coaches comes and kneels down in front of her, asks if she’s okay.
He walks her over to the water fountain by the park bathroom, and walks her home early, after she reties her shoes one more time. Seven.
-
She’s ten years old, and Eddie shows up one Sunday morning, and shakes the three of them out of bed. They pile into his car and go to a diner for breakfast.
Juliet doesn’t even realize until Joey sits back down in the booth with a newspaper that it’s Father’s Day. She sits on this for a little while, playing with the sugar packets and condiment bottles on the table until their food arrives.
“When was the last time you guys saw Dad?” she says quietly, before she can even stop the words coming out of her mouth.
The three of them stare at her quietly for a moment. Ewan swallows what he’d been chewing and says, “Same as you, bro. Like two years ago, I think?”
She looks up at Eddie, across from her.
He shakes his head. “Probably longer than that for me.”
“Me too,” Joey clears his throat.
Eddie reaches out and nudges her fingers. She sets down the sugar packets she’d been lining up. “Do… you wish we saw him more?”
Jules shrugs. “Mom invites him to stuff. He was supposed to come to my birthday last year, and my concerts and stuff.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says quietly. “I’m sorry that he doesn’t come.”
“It’s okay, I guess,” she puts the sugar packets back in their original container, all lined up by type and color.
“Frank isn’t… Dad isn’t a very reliable guy, JJ,” Joey cuts in.
She nods. “Mom says he’s a liar,” she whispers.
Eddie and Joey look at her with matching expressions, both very serious and both just a little bit sad.
“That's why we like Lloyd,” Ewan grins, breaking the silence. “He’s super boring.”
“Yeah,” Eddie smiles too. “And I know Lloyd hasn’t been around that long, but he’s proven that he’s someone we, and Mom can rely on.”
“The dude taught me how to shave,” Ewan says around a mouthful of food. “As far as I’m concerned he’s basically our dad.”
Juliet nods. “We should get him a card,” she says quietly, finally starting to pick at her food.
Eddie smiles, and nudges her feet under the table with his own. “That’s a great idea.”
-
She’s twelve years old when she realizes something is very wrong. (This isn’t true. She’s much younger than that when it starts to dawn on her that something isn’t right. She’s twelve years old when it becomes unbearable.)
-
She’s ten years old. She’s having a weekend sleepover with Ewan, who came home from school to stay with her while Mom and Lloyd go on a weekend getaway.
One of the nights, they pull out sleeping bags and lay them out on the living room floor. They stay up super late, watching the weird TV channels, and making shapes on the ceiling with flashlights.
Ewan asks her at one point if there’s any girls at school she has a crush on. She pauses, then shakes her head. He looks at her a little strange, but doesn’t ask again.
“Lil’ bro,” he says, later in the evening.
“Ewan,” she says back.
“You know,” he starts slowly. “If there’s ever anything you want to talk about… stuff that you don’t really wanna tell Mom, or Lloyd about. You can talk to me about it.”
She frowns at him. “Okay?”
“Just saying,” he shrugs. “Judgment free zone, full of big brotherly advice.”
“Okay,” she shoves a pillow at him. She thinks about what he said all night, when she can’t sleep. She doesn’t stop thinking about it for weeks.
-
She’s twelve years old, and eavesdropping is rude, but it isn’t her fault if she can overhear what’s going on downstairs when she’s supposed to be asleep.
“I just don’t understand,” her mom is saying.
“It’s complicated, Mom,” Joey says. She can hear all three of her brother’s voices, probably the first time all three of them have been home besides for a holiday in years.
“Did we do something wrong?” Mom asks. She had been crying earlier, and it sounds like she might be again.
“No, Mom,” Eddie’s voice, now. “This just… it just happens. Right?”
“I think?” Joey says. “I don’t really know that much about it. I know some people who I can ask, though.”
“Do not ask anyone anything,” Mom cuts in. “Nobody needs to know about this.”
“Mom,” Ewan sounds a little angry.
“Maryanne,” Lloyd’s been quiet for a while. “If Joe knows some people who are more educated on this kind of thing…”
Mom sounds like she’s definitely crying. “Are you sure he’s not just gay ?” She says. “I mean, that’s a thing, right? Cr- crossdressing, or whatever the hell?”
Juliet swallows the lump in her throat and starts to flick the little lamp on her bedside table on and off. On. Off.
“Mom,” Eddie says, using the same gentle voice he uses with her. “Clearly, he’s been struggling for a while, and we all kind of ignored it.” On. Off.
“Yeah,” Ewan says. “I’m not really sure about this whole thing either, but we have to do something. Something is wrong, he needs help.” On. Off.
“What? You want to send him to some kind of—of institution?” Mom shouts.
“He didn’t say that,” Lloyd interrupts again. On. Off.
“What I think Ewan is saying is that he needs help, Mom,” Joey says. “And he’s asking us for help. So, we should at least try.” On. Off.
Mom starts crying again, louder. On. Off.
Juliet wipes the tears off her face. On. Off.
-
She’s thirteen years old, almost fourteen, and her hair’s finally grown so long it reaches the middle of her chest.
Her mom still asks if she wants to cut it every few months, but Juliet always says no.
She started at a new school this year, ninth grade. On the first day she wore a new t-shirt and butterfly clips in her hair, the ones Ewan bought her last Christmas.
Her mom had sighed when she’d seen Juliet that morning, which made Juliet’s stomach twist, but then Mom just reached up, and readjusted one of the hairclips.
“That’s better,” she said, smoothing down the rest of Juliet’s hair.
Two weeks into the year, she’s at her locker. Her new locker number is 252, which makes her uneasy. Her locker at her old school had been 357.
Eavesdropping is rude, but she can overhear two girls a few lockers down.
She can’t hear everything, the hallway is loud and full of students, but she can hear one of them mention her hair clips, and another one her clothes, and how skinny she is, and how flat she is.
Juliet clenches her teeth. She relocks her locker three times, and still has to loop back afterwards to make sure she closed it properly. (After double checking she gets to the end of the hallway before turning around, to check again. By the time she’s checked again, she’s wasted so much time that the idea of walking into class this late makes her stomach churn.)
About a week before her birthday, Juliet’s mom asks her if she’d like to go shopping with her. This isn’t unusual.
What is unusual is when they stop inside a department store, her mom doesn’t try to quickly shuffle them by the Girl’s section without stopping. Mom walks straight in, beckoning for Juliet to follow.
“Look at this,” she says every few minutes, pointing to various shirts and dresses on racks.
After about the fortieth nod or “Nice,” Juliet has given in response, Mom says, “Do you want to try anything on?”
Jules stares at her. “Right now?”
“In the changing room, sweetheart,” she smiles, pointing. “Your grandparents sent money for clothes for your birthday, so I thought you could pick out some stuff. Save us the hassle of returning anything.”
Juliet doubts that her grandparents sent money so her mom could buy her dresses, and girls t-shirts, but she isn’t about to argue.
They grab a few things off racks, in various sizes. Flower print dresses, and colorful jeans, and patterned t-shirts. Her mom picks out a few things, and sits patiently while Juliet tries everything on, helping her zip up a few dresses, and decide what size is right.
“That purple one is nice,” Mom says, when they’re leaving the store. “It looked very pretty on you.”
“Yeah,” Jules says.
“You should wear it with that purple headband you have,” she offers.
Juliet nods. “Thank you,” she says quietly.
Her mom reaches over and grabs her hand. “Of course.”
-
She’s nine years old, and her skin feels so itchy she wishes she could scratch it right off.
“Oh, look at him,” her aunt is saying. “What a doll.”
Her mom kisses her cheek. “You look very handsome, sweetheart.”
She pulls at the collar of her shirt. “It’s itchy.”
“Yeah, Mom, it is itchy,” Ewan says from behind her.
“You’re just being fitted right now,” she says. The four of them have been trying on shirts and ties and being measured for what feels like hours, all for Mom and Lloyd’s wedding.
“The real ones won’t be so itchy. What do you think, honey?” Mom turns Jules around, pushing her toward the mirror across the room where Joey is fixing his tie.
“Nice,” she says quietly, looking herself up and down in the mirror, dressed head to toe in a little gray suit.
“Do you like it?” Mom asks.
She doesn’t like it, not at all. It’s stiff, and itchy, and feels wrong. “Yeah,” she lies.
“Good,” Mom kisses her cheek again. “I’m glad. My handsome boys. You’re gonna look so wonderful.”
Jules frowns at herself in the mirror. She doesn’t like to lie, especially to Mom, but when she weighs that with ruining Mom’s wedding, the lying wins out.
She barely sleeps for weeks, spending all night grinding her teeth and just worrying, worrying, and worrying about the wedding.
After the ceremony, Eddie helps her take her tie and jacket off neatly, and unbuttons a few buttons on her shirt. “Feel better?” he says.
No, she thinks. “Yeah,” she says. She bites down on her tongue.
-
She’s seventeen years old, and she’s a bridesmaid in Eddie’s wedding.
She’s the youngest one, but she’s wearing the same pretty pink dress as all of his fiancee Lillian’s friends and sisters, and they’re all nice to her too.
The wedding photographer takes tons of photos of the seven of them, Eddie and Lillian, Joey, Ewan, Mom, Lloyd, and her.
Months later, when they get all the photos in the mail, her mom picks a nice one of the seven of them.
She puts it in a frame on the mantle, replacing the photo of their family from years ago, at Mom and Lloyd’s wedding, with her and the boys wearing matching tuxes.
“That’s better,” her mom says, smiling.
-
She’s fifteen years old, and she feels like all the air has been knocked out of her lungs.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” her dad says. “Your hair is so long.”
She just stares at him, thinking of a million things she could say, not a single one making it out of her mouth.
“It looks pretty,” he says quickly, like he’s correcting himself. “You look very pretty.”
She clenches her teeth.
“Do… Do you have a different name now?” Frank says quietly.
She shakes her head.
Her mom clears her throat. “Honey, could you grab me a glass of water?”
Juliet practically jumps up.
“I’m sorry,” her dad is whispering to Mom, as if Jules isn’t five feet away, filling a glass.
“It’s okay,” Mom whispers back. “I think she’s just… I don’t know.”
The massive knot in Juliet’s stomach kills the usual inner celebration she has whenever Mom uses the right words unprompted. She rinses the glass and fills it again.
And again.
“Sweetheart,” Mom is saying. “That’s fine. You don’t need to rinse it again.”
“Sorry,” she says quietly, handing her the glass.
-
She’s eleven years old, and she gets a birthday card in the mail a week late from her dad.
She doesn’t even open it, throwing it in the trash as soon as she reads the outside of the envelope.
A few hours later she takes it out of the trash can, and opens it. After reading it, she tears it up into tiny pieces, and throws it out again. She has to wash her hands somewhere between three and nine times before the skin on her fingers stops feeling gross.
-
She’s eighteen years old.
“Your dad and I,” her mom is saying, curled up next to her on the couch. “We were going to name you Juliet. If you had been a girl. Or… you know what I mean.”
She nods. “Juliet,” she says, and it feels like it belongs in her mouth. “Juliet O’Hara.”
Her mom smiles. “Officer Juliet O’Hara,” she laughs.
“Detective Juliet O’Hara,” she corrects. “Hopefully.”
-
She’s eight years old, and her sixteen year old brother is her best friend in the whole world.
She’s twenty-eight years old. She doesn't know if she’ll ever forgive Ewan for what he did, or if he’ll forgive her.
-
She’s twelve years old, and frantically scribbling over pages of the little journal she keeps under her mattress.
“What are you doing?” Ewan asks from the doorway.
“Leave me alone,” she says, not looking up.
Ewan walks into the room, looking down at her on the floor. “What is that?”
“I said leave me alone!” she shouts, shoving at his legs. She’s scratching so hard back and forth that the pen starts to rip the page.
“Jesus, bro, calm down, you’re gonna stab yourself with that or something,” Ewan reaches down to grab her hands.
“Get out!” She shoves him, standing, and continuing to push him towards the door. “Leave me alone!” She slams the door behind him and locks it.
She rips out the scribbled out, ripped pages, and rips them into tiny shredded pieces.
-
She’s eleven years old when she decides she wants to join the army, like her big brother is going to.
She’s thirteen when he says to her quietly, “I don’t think you can join the army then, sis. I don’t think that’s allowed.”
“That’s okay,” she whispers back.
-
She's sixteen years old, and she's staring in the mirror, dragging bits of herself together, sewing every piece into place, like Frankenstein’s monster. Trying to figure out what fits and what doesn't, what's real and what's fake.
She jerks awake, almost like she’s been shot. She can barely breathe, but she scrambles out of bed and into the bathroom across the hall. She flicks all the lights on, and stares in the mirror, looking for the rips, and scars, and stitches. Her skin is smooth, unblemished, but every time she looks away, she swears she can see them out of the corner of her eye. She stands there until morning, knuckles white on the edge of the sink, knees shaking.
-
She’s seventeen years old, and she buys a plain black pair of heels on her way home from school. She walks in circles around her room for hours, until her heels blister. The next week, when she starts to walk more steadily, she takes them downstairs, and starts putting them on before she gets on the treadmill.
This was something she could perfect, that she could master. If she could do this, it wouldn’t matter if she wasn’t perfect at everything else yet.
-
She’s ten years old, and Ewan walks her to the comic book store every week. The old guy who runs the place is nice. He lets her sit in the store and read the new releases every week, even if she can’t buy them all. Joey and Ewan got her to start reading a bunch of Batman comics a few years ago, so every few weeks now she sits down by the shelves with the new issues of Detective Comics while Ewan rifles through the discount bins.
Right in the first few weeks of summer that year, between fifth and sixth grade, the newest Detective is about a villain called Cluemaster, but also a new vigilante, Spoiler . Stephanie. She flips through the issue as fast as possible, then gets up and starts ripping through the bins from last month, trying to find the previous issue. She flips through that one too, and then begs Ewan to buy them both for her.
“Please,” she begs. “Please, please, please, I’ll owe you.”
Ewan grumbles and shuffles his feet, and puts back one of his own comics to buy her both.
-
She’s eighteen years old, and making a list of names.
Stephanie is in the top three.
-
She’s sixteen years old. Juliet worries —about most things— about dating, more than the rest of her friends, or other girls her age do. Her mom, and even her brothers, start to plant this worry in her young.
“You have to be careful,” Eddie says to her, when he’s visiting for her sixteenth birthday, and she tells him she got asked to the homecoming dance. “You,” he says, “who you are, can be hard for people to understand.”
“I know,” she says quietly.
“We love you,” Eddie says. “But it took a while for us to understand. We all had some learning, and growing up to do.”
She nods.
“Boys your age might not understand,” he tells her. He’s said this before, and he’ll say this exact phrase to her, dozens of times. “And they might not want to understand.”
She nods again.
“Please be careful,” he whispers, putting an arm around her, kissing the top of her head.
“I am,” she whispers back.
-
She’s eighteen years old. Her boyfriend is twenty-three.
Scott’s her first serious boyfriend, the first one she went on more than a few dates with. They met at the beginning of the year, both new students. Her, a college freshman, and him a new graduate student.
They quickly became friends, he was one of the best friend’s she’d ever had.
Five months after he gives her one of the most thoughtful birthday presents she’d ever received, he kisses her in the hallway of her dorm building, and things spiral from there.
Less than a month after that, she’s practically shaking like a leaf, sitting next to him on his couch as she explains.
“So, like… trans-sexual?” he asks. “Or, uh, transgender?”
She nods, almost in tears. “I’m not— I mean, I’m mostly— people mostly think I’m a girl, but I’m not—”
He takes her hands in his, holding them still. “You don’t have to defend yourself, Juliet.”
-
She’s nineteen years old.
“I don’t understand why you don’t like him,” she's saying. “You barely even know him.”
“Jesus, JJ,” Joey says, head in his hands, sleeves of his ugly Christmas sweater pushed up as far as possible.
“He’s a grown man, sis,” Ewan says. “Where does he get off dating a kid?”
“I’m an adult!” Juliet’s practically shouting.
“Nineteen is barely an adult,” he pushes back.
“I’m barely a kid!” She pushes hair out of her face. “I’ve barely been a kid since I was eleven!”
“Juliet,” Joey groans.
“Boys my age are dumb,” she says. “They don’t understand anything.”
No one argues with her on that.
Lloyd opens the door to the garage, poking his head in. “There you all are. Your mother was just starting to wonder.”
Juliet rolls her eyes at the face Ewan’s giving her, and pushes her way past Lloyd, back inside.
“Sorry,” she says quietly, sitting down next to Scott on the couch, and taking his beer out of his hand, and sipping from it.
“Everything okay?” He says, putting his arm around her.
Juliet shrugs. “They think you’re too old for me,” she whispers.
“I sort of am,” he whispers back.
She shakes her head.
“Don’t worry,” he smiles, and rubs her shoulder. “You’re wise beyond your years, O’Hara.”
-
She’s fourteen years old, and at her brother’s apartment. It’s Eddie’s new place, he and his girlfriend Lillian moved into a few weeks ago.
“It’ll be fine, I promise,” Lillian assures her, over and over until Juliet agrees.
Which is how Eddie arrives home, and finds them in the bathroom, Lillian piercing Juliet’s ears with a sewing needle and an apple.
“Mom is gonna kill me,” he says, watching Juliet make faces at herself in a little makeup mirror.
“They look so pretty,” Lillian says. “Doesn’t she look pretty, Ed?”
Juliet looks at the little jewel studs in her earlobes. She can’t stop smiling.
-
She’s twenty years old.
“Would you please stop apologizing?” Her roommate, Kate, is saying. “I said it was fine.”
“Sorry,” Juliet says on instinct.
Kate gives her a look. “Girl.”
She swallows another apology.
-
She’s fourteen years old.
“It all seems really scary,” her mom says. “It’s expensive, honey. And this doctor is so far away, and it seems like there are a lot of risks, and things that you can’t change your mind about.”
Juliet just stares.
“I mean…” her mom trails off, looking over at Lloyd, who nods. “Can’t you just wait a little while longer?”
Juliet looks down at her lap, her hands clenched together, and swallows hard. She doesn’t know how exactly to explain that no, she can’t.
The three of them sit there for what feels like years, in silence, before she manages to say, “I don’t think so.”
-
She’s fifteen years old, and she can’t sleep. It’s almost three in the morning, and she’s lying flat on her back, staring at the dark ceiling, grinding her teeth.
About twelve hours earlier, she had told a flat-out lie to one of her best friends, Madison. Subsequently, she had realized she’s been lying to Madison every day since they met.
She just hadn’t realized Madison thought she was a girl. A real girl.
After almost another hour of grinding her teeth, she gets up and turns on the shower. She scrubs her body more than a dozen times over, scrubs until her skin is red and raw. It makes her feel a little bit better.
-
She’s twenty-nine years old.
“Gus knows everything,” Shawn says. “He was the first person I told, actually.”
“I figured,” Juliet says.
“He understood when we were kids. And he’s always been there for me.”
She nods. “I’ve never had a friendship like you guys,”
Shawn laughs a little. “It’s something special, apparently.”
“Honestly, I wish I’d had someone like that. Back then,” she says quietly. “I was kind of a lonely kid, I think.”
He frowns at her a little. “With all those brothers?”
Juliet nods again. “Yeah. I don’t know.”
Shawn looks at her for a moment, with a strange face, then he kisses her cheek and wraps an arm around her.
-
She’s thirteen years old, and wearing a starchy, brand new button up shirt and sweater her mom asked her to wear to Thanksgiving dinner.
“I don’t know why you let him wear his hair like that,” her grandmother is saying in the kitchen.
“It’s fine, Mom,” she can hear her mother sigh.
“He looks like a hippie. Or one of those— those transvestites ,” her grandmother says, voiced more hushed than before.
“I don’t like that word,” her mother says, voice stiff.
Ewan, who’s sitting next to her at the dining room table, looks over, then reaches over under the table. He squeezes her hand briefly.
Juliet reaches up with her other hand, and lines her silverware up on the napkin, perfectly parallel.
-
She’s twenty years old.
“Come on,” Kate says. “You’re allowed to bail on her.”
“I promised I’d help,” Juliet says.
“Brooke is such a bitch,” she groans. “And she bails on you , and me, all the time.”
“I promised I’d help her study,” Juliet sighs.
“You can’t just do something for yourself? For once, Juliet?”
“I don’t want her to think I’m selfish,” Juliet starts to bite at her nail. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” Kate rolls her eyes.
-
She’s thirteen years old.
“This is-” her mom is saying to some friend from college. “This is, um, my youngest.”
-
She’s sixteen years old.
“This is my daughter,” her mom says, gesturing towards Juliet.
-
She’s twenty-four years old, and has been offered her dream job.
The job she’s been working for since she was a kid. The catch is that it’s almost three thousand miles from home.
But she might never get this chance again.
-
She’s twenty-eight years old, and she can’t stop thinking, I don’t think I’m ready to die .
She stares out over the dark, silent city, tears dripping down onto the gag around her mouth, and the other part of her brain whispers, I don’t think I get a choice .
-
She’s fourteen years old, and feels like she’s going crazy.
She hasn’t been able to think straight in days, and all she can write in her journal, over and over again is I think I’m going to die .
-
She’s twenty-nine years old.
“I’m transgender,” she says.
Gus freezes for a second, then sets down his coffee. He thinks for a moment, nods, and says, “Okay. Thank you for telling me.”
Juliet smiles. “Of course. You’re my friend.”
He smiles back. “I figure this came up because of Shawn?”
She nods. “Yeah. I told him he could tell you, and he said I should tell you myself,” she says, fidgeting with the plastic lid of her cup. “It’s not a huge deal, I’m pretty much completely transitioned.”
“It’s a big deal to tell someone,” he points out.
“I guess. Obviously, not many people know,” she says. “You, Shawn, my family.”
“Lassiter?” Gus asks. She shakes her head.
“The chief might, but she’s never said anything to me about it. All that being said,” Juliet starts.
Gus mimes zipping his lips, and she smiles.
“Thanks.”
“Thank you for telling me. Anything else I need to know?”
Juliet thinks. “When I was a teenager I considered naming myself after Stephanie Brown?”
Gus laughs. “Juliet, you are Spoiler’s number one fan.”
“Excuse you!” Jules acts offended. “She’s Batgirl, now.”
“Right, right, I’m sorry, Batgirl ,” he laughs harder. “Sorry. You know I’m more of a Barbara Gordon fan.”
“Uh huh,” she rolls her eyes.
-
She’s seventeen years old, and silently watching her mother comb through stacks of pamphlets and papers. The more she reads, the more her eyebrows scrunch together, in a sort of confused frown.
She looks up. “You really want all this?”
Juliet nods.
“Therapy, and plastic surgery, and changing your name, all of this?” She gestures at the papers.
Juliet nods again. “I have to,” she says. “I need to, Mom.”
“You’re probably never going to be able to have kids,” her mom says. When Juliet just shrugs, she says quietly, “You don’t want to have kids?”
“I do,” she replies. “I don’t know. I’m never going to be able to get married either.”
Her mom sets down the papers she’d been holding, and leans over, taking Juliet into her arms. Juliet hugs back. “If this is what you want,” her mom whispers, “we’ll figure it out.”
-
She’s twenty-two years old, and by twenty-two years of chance occurrences alone, graduates from the police academy.
“I always knew you would do it,” her mom says, later that evening.
Juliet hugs her, and says, “Thank you for helping me get this far.”
-
She’s twenty-nine years old, and feels a little stupid.
“I can’t believe I didn’t realize,” she says quietly.
Shawn laughs a little, and she’s so close she can feel his ribs move.
“I made it incredibly clear,” he jokes. “I can’t believe you thought I was kidding about getting a double mastectomy .”
“Shut up,” she whispers, pushing him a little. He continues to laugh at her.
-
She’s twenty-eight years old, and sobbing into her partner's chest.
Their hugs are usually brief, initiated by her and ended by him, but she’s lost track of how long they’ve been standing there, on top of the clock tower.
She’s shaking, and crying, and it feels like she might never stop.
He keeps his arms wrapped around her, tight, and says quietly, “It’s okay.”
He keeps his arms around her as they walk slowly down every flight of stairs, and though he lets go to drive her home, he puts an arm back around her as they climb the steps to her front door.
He takes her keys from her shaking hands, and unlocks it, helping her in.
-
She’s twenty-nine years old.
“I’m not a woman in 1940 , sweetheart,” Shawn says, after she stops them, and moves to walk on his other side. “I don’t need you to protect me from oncoming traffic.”
“I know,” she says. “I’m not.”
He smiles at her.
“I’m not!” She repeats, punching his arm a little before taking his hand.
(After it happens a third time, Shawn, ever the observer, stops commenting on it. After it happens a fourth time, he stops trying to walk on her left at all.)
-
She’s twenty-nine years old. “I’m transgender,” she’s saying.
Her partner stares at her. “So, you’re switching to being a man?” He says.
“What? No,” she shakes her head.
Carlton nods slowly as she explains a little more, but doesn’t stop making the vaguely uncomfortable face he makes whenever she talks about her personal life.
“Thank you again,” he says when he drops her off, not too much later. “For telling me… that.”
She smiles. “Of course.”
“I know it can be… it’s kind of a big deal. So, thank you, O’Hara.” He says, staring out the windshield the entire time.
“You’re a good friend, partner,” she says. He looks over at her, and smiles.
-
She’s thirty years old.
Even though Shawn had given her permission, she still feels uneasy when she says, “Shawn is transgender.”
“Oh,” her mom says softly, setting down the mug of coffee she’d been drinking from. “Like you?”
“Sort of,” Juliet says. “The opposite, actually.” She lowers her voice a little, even though the two of them are the only ones on this cafe patio. “I'm what people call male-to-female,” she says.
“I know,” her mom nods.
“And he’s what people call female-to-male,” Juliet says.
“I understand,” Maryanne nods. “Have you ever dated someone like him before?”
Juliet shakes her head. “No. Neither has he, though.”
“Is it nice?” her mom asks, which hadn’t been what Juliet was expecting.
“Yeah,” she says after a moment. “It is nice. We understand things about each other that most people don’t.”
“That’s nice,” Maryanne smiles. “I liked meeting him. He’s funny.”
“He’ll be thrilled to hear that you thought so,” Juliet smiles to herself.
After a moment of silence, her mother asks “Are you happy?”
Jules looks at her for a second, and is surprised to see that she sort of seems like she might cry. “I am, Mom,” she says. “I really am.”
Her mom sniffs a little, and wipes at one eye, then reaches over and takes Juliet’s hand. “Good.”
-
She’s thirty-six years old.
“I love these hands,” Shawn is saying. “Especially the right one, because that's the one I generally hold.”
She shrugs. “I like to walk on the left.”
-
She’s thirty years old, and getting into the driver’s seat of her car.
“Okay,” she says, buckling her seatbelt. “Ready?”
“Yep,” Shawn says brightly.
Right as Juliet’s about to turn on the car, hand on her keys in the ignition and all, she freezes. “Hold on,” she says, unbuckling her seatbelt and opening the door.
“What?” Shawn says.
She doesn’t answer, just heads back inside her place, does a quick sweep of the bathroom, the kitchen. Curling iron unplugged, stove burners off, sinks all turned off. She double checks the lock on the big back window, and then heads back out.
Shawn’s moved into the driver’s seat of her car now, so she moves to the other side. Just before she slams the passenger door, she hesitates, and gets back out.
Shawn sighs.
She does another sweep of her place, making sure all the lights are off too.
“Okay, we’re good,” she says, getting back in the car.
“Awesome,” Shawn smiles. “Let’s go.”
Juliet smiles back, and buckles her seatbelt. They make it out of the driveway, and a few houses down before she realizes she can’t completely remember if she locked the front door.
“Wait,” she says.
Shawn sighs again, and turns the car around.
-
She’s thirty-two years old.
“Wait,” she says. “Stop.”
Shawn pulls her car over to the side of the road, and puts it in park. “The stove is turned off, the back door is locked, all of the windows are locked, and I checked the lights before we left,” he rattles off, counting on his fingers.
“What about—”
“I watched you unplug your curling iron.”
“Okay,” Juliet starts biting at a fingernail.
“ And, I watched you lock the front door.”
“Are you sure?” She says quietly.
He gives her a look, and holds two fingers up to his head.
“Ha ha,” she says sarcastically, shoving his shoulder.
-
She’s twenty-nine years old, and she’s looking at herself in the mirror.
“It looks good,” Shawn says, sitting on her bed behind her.
“Yeah,” she says, not completely convinced about the new dress she’s trying on.
“Beautiful, even,” he smiles. “You look really good, Jules. Stop overthinking it.”
She turns and smiles back at him, before backing up to have him unzip the dress.
“You know,” she says while she’s changing out of it. Her voice is light-hearted, and she’s smiling. “You’re probably the only boyfriend I’ve ever had who wasn't even a little weird about my body.”
His eyebrows scrunch together.
“And about the whole trans thing in general,” she clarifies, putting pajamas on.
“Oh,” Shawn says. When she looks up, he’s matching her smile, but it’s a face of his that she’s slowly getting used to. The one that says, I’m smiling, but not because it’s funny, because I’m upset and/or uncomfortable .
“That’s good,” she clarifies again, sitting down next to him. “It’s refreshing.”
“Yeah,” he says quietly.
-
She’s twenty-eight years old. It’s the third day of her desk job at City Hall, and she’s been staring into her computer screen for several minutes when someone sets two coffee cups on her desk.
She startles, and when she looks up, Shawn is dragging a chair over, and plopping himself down in it.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” Juliet replies.
He pushes one of the coffees towards her, and starts drinking from the other cup.
“You didn’t have to,” she says, before taking a sip. It’s her usual order, and she really has to stop asking herself how does he do that?
“What are you working on?” Shawn says.
“Boring stuff,” she says. “Forms and permits. Things like that.”
She hasn’t seen Shawn in almost a month. They’d talked on the phone once or twice, but not about anything of substance. She hadn’t even told him about the desk job.
He sits with her quietly for another hour, until he gets a phone call from someone—Gus, probably, and mouths, “I have to go,” at her.
He shows up again three days later.
“No coffee this time?” She tries to give him a smile.
He shakes his head. “Lunch?”
Juliet hesitates. “I was going to do sort of a working lunch today,” she says. “Sorry.”
It’s not completely a lie. She was planning on getting some work done while she ate one of the granola bars from her purse.
She’s also not completely sure she would be able to spend time with Shawn without a distraction.
Even before, at the station, he’d sit with her sometimes, content to sit (mostly) quietly while she did the dull parts of police work. She was used to that. But lunch, out somewhere, would require more talking than they’d done the other day.
She doesn’t want to talk about it. Not with Shawn. Trying to talk about it to her therapist was already like pulling her own teeth.
He tells her that’s okay, and disappears a few moments later, when she’s not looking.
Shawn reappears about eighteen minutes later, with a bag of Chinese take-out.
He pulls a chair up to the other side of her desk again, and sits with her, making arbitrary comments every few minutes while they eat. They talk about Gus’ opinions on the new America’s Next Top Model, and their own, and the latest episode of Lost, and Shawn sympathizes with her complaints about the intricacies of stupid, redundant paperwork.
“I should get going,” he says, a while after they’ve finished the food.
“Do I owe you?” she says, reaching for her wallet.
He shakes his head, making a face.
Sometimes she wonders, when they find themselves in situations like this, because it isn’t the first time. Wonders, how many sort-of dates can you go on with a sort-of coworker before he sort-of becomes your boyfriend?
“Thank you, then,” Juliet smiles.
“Of course,” he says, scratching at the back of his head. “Jules,” Shawn says, incredibly quiet, voice almost a little shaky. “I’m really sorry.”
She freezes a little. “Please, don’t—” she tries to say.
“No,” he cuts her off. “I don’t want to talk about it, or re-hash anything, but, I’m sorry. About everything that happened. About everything that’s happened the past few months. The past year.”
Juliet stares at him.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Shawn says, making eye contact with her. His face is so serious, and so controlled that it’s a little scary.
She doesn’t know what to say, so she nods.
“I miss you,” he says, looking away from her again. “Lassie does too. He’s been very grouchy lately.”
She smiles a little at that. “He’s always grouchy when you’re around,” she offers.
Shawn smiles. “Yeah, I guess,” he stands. “Talk to you soon, okay?”
“Okay,” Jules says. She watches him leave the office, and sits motionless for another five minutes after he’s gone.
-
She’s thirty-six years old, and her husband is holding her hand.
She’s sitting up on one of the exam tables at the closest urgent care, and he’s leaning against it.
“Hey,” he whispers. “It’s okay,” he says when she looks down at him.
Juliet nods.
“Everyone’s okay,” Shawn says quietly. “We did it. You did it. Iris is okay.”
She starts to bite at her lip, where she busted it a few hours ago. “Sam is dead because of me,” Juliet whispers back.
“No,” Shawn shakes his head. “He’s… he’s gone because some lunatics decided to kill him. There was nothing you could’ve done.”
“It was because of me,” she says. She hasn’t done much crying, the last few days, but she’s starting to now.
“They tried to kill you too,” Shawn says. “And me, and Iris, and everyone else.”
“Because of me,” she says again. “It was all my fault, and I didn’t figure it out until it was too late. I let Sam die. McGoldrick was right, I— I don’t— I’m not a good person,” she says, voice breaking a little.
“Hey,” Shawn frowns at her. “I’m gonna need you to back off,” he says, his tone very serious.
Juliet frowns back. “What?”
“That’s my wife you’re talking about,” he says, and he’s trying not to smile, she can tell, but he can’t keep a straight face either.
She snorts. “Shawn—”
“Nobody’s allowed to talk about my wife like that,” he says, voice still serious, but he’s starting to smile.
“Okay,” Juliet nods, starting to laugh a little. “Sorry, Mr. O’Hara.”
He laughs out loud at that. “That’s Mr. Juliet O’Hara, to you.”
“Oh, of course, of course,” she laughs, squeezing his hand.
-
She’s twenty-five years old.
She’s been making trips to the comic store alone since she was fourteen, since her brothers were too grown-up, and busy to come along.
Juliet hasn’t been to a store in almost six months now, since she moved. She’s been too busy, practically drowning in work delegated by her new partner.
About a week and a half after the Chief has her baby, after they wrap up the missing persons case regarding the Santa Barbara comic convention, Gus shows up at the station a little after five o’clock.
It’s a little weird, she realizes when she sees him. She’s never seen Gus around the station without Shawn making a scene several feet ahead of him.
“Hey,” he says, coming right up to her desk.
“Hi,” she smiles back, closing up the files she’d been finishing up.
“I, uh,” Gus starts. “I just got out of work, and I was wondering,” he says, unsure. “If you aren’t busy—”
“I’m just about to leave, actually,” she cuts him off.
He smiles. “It’s Wednesday,” Gus explains.
Juliet nods, but her forehead scrunches together, a little confused.
“I was about to head to my comic store,” he says. “And I was wondering if you wanted to come.”
“I would love to!” She smiles, and stands, grabbing her jacket off the back of her chair. “You know, I haven’t found a place since I moved, so it’s been a while.”
“Perfect,” Gus smiles. “I really like this one, I go every week. I figured I’d ask, now that I know you’re a comic fan,” he says, falling into step with her once she collects her things.
“Shawn doesn’t go with you?” she asks.
Gus snorts. “Ha. Yeah, right,” he shakes his head.
Juliet had always liked Shawn and Gus, despite Carlton’s feelings about them. While sometimes an annoyance, they were friendly, and usually funny, too.
But talking with Gus was nice, without the looming stress of a case, or the distraction of Shawn in some sort of flailing episode nearby.
She does really like the store he takes her to. They stay longer than Juliet normally would, mostly so she could dig through bins of old issues, but he does the same, and they talk.
From what she’s picked up, Juliet and Gus are similar people, and conversation with him, especially about comics, is easy.
“I assume you’re reading Batgirl, then?” Gus says, pulling out an issue and handing it to her without looking up.
“I am,” she grins. “Thanks.” It’s an issue from a while ago, one she missed. “I don’t have this one. I know it ended a while back but I’m behind on a bunch,” she frowns.
“I won’t spoil it then,” Gus says. “But, it was really good. I haven’t bought them all but I kept up with the story. They did a Birds of Prey thing towards the end.”
“Ooh,” Juliet says quietly, going back to flipping through another bin. “I love Birds of Prey— I own a bunch of the current run.”
“Me too,” Gus smiles at her.
-
She’s thirty years old, and she’s moving in with her boyfriend.
Shawn had started to bring more of his stuff over to her place after he decided he was no longer staying at his dad’s. When he usually stayed over he showed up with a change of clothes or two, and a toothbrush, but after that week’s debacles, he showed up with a backpack. Three days later he’d dragged over a duffel bag.
“You don’t have to move in here ,” she says one night.
Shawn turns and sort of cocks his head, and frowns at her, as best he can while brushing his teeth. He mumbles something, then spits into the sink. “Do you not… want me to? I thought—”
“That’s not what I mean,” Juliet laughs a little, reaching over to put a hand on his arm. “I mean, I’d… my lease is up soon, too. I thought maybe, instead of me renewing it, we could look at a new place.”
“Oh,” he says, smiling. “Yeah, okay.”
A little over a month later, she’s moving into a brand new place with her boyfriend.
It takes them the bulk of a whole day, due to Shawn’s tendency to waste time, and distract her, and due to the few breaks he convinced her to take where the two of them just laid on the floor, surrounded by all of their collective stuff.
Juliet kept smiling to herself. It was nice to think about her and Shawn’s stuff as a collective stuff. It was the little things, like the little letter magnets he arranged into random words on the fridge when she wasn’t looking, and the insanely large CD collection, and the sheer amount of stupid little things Shawn owned that were shaped like pineapples.
“Why do you have so many?” Juliet laughs, holding up pineapple shaped salt and pepper shakers.
Shawn shrugs. “People buy them for me,” he’s laughing too. “Mostly my mom. And Gus. And sometimes my dad.”
“Oh my God, there’s more,” she gasps, pulling a set of pens out of another box, each with little pineapples on the ends.
Juliet has to work a long shift the next day, leaving Shawn to finish up most of the unpacking and organizing, and when she comes home that nice, he’s finished almost everything. He admits in about fifteen minutes that Gus came over and helped.
In the moment, she’s mostly incredibly grateful that the two of them managed to set up her desk and computer, so she can finish the last bit of work from the day that’ll bother her until she does it.
Shawn’s completely set up her desk, drawers filled, and most of her office supplies are organized the way she likes it. She rearranges a few things, and when she goes to put a few of her favorite pens in the pencil cup on top of the desk, she notices something new.
Shawn’s stuck a little handheld size flag, striped with the transgender pride colors in her pencil cup. It’s not something that was packed in any of her stuff, so it must be his, but she smiles.
-
She’s twenty-eight years old.
“Actually,” her therapist is saying. “A lot of what you’ve described in the past aligns with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Do you know anything about it?”
“That’s not…” Juliet says. “I’m not OCD. I mean, I know everyone says they’re a little OCD because they’re neat freaks but it’s more complicated than that, right?”
Her therapist nods.
“I don’t think I’m OCD,” she says. “I am a neat freak, and I know I’m an anxious person, but I’m not OCD.”
“Okay,” her therapist says. “What I’m noticing could also be things that you’ve been struggling with recently, because of post-traumatic stress. We’ve talked a little bit about things that could be considered compulsions, or rituals.”
Juliet nods.
“Do you remember anything like that happening in your childhood?” she asks.
Juliet bites the inside of her lip.
-
She’s thirty-one years old.
“How can you live with a lie like that?” She asks quietly. “Such a big lie, for so many years?”
Shawn doesn’t answer.
She didn’t need to ask, though. She knows how. They both know how.
-
She’s thirty years old, and Shawn is meeting her family for the first time.
Not exactly. He met Frank a few months ago, and Ewan a few years ago. But her mother had insisted she invite him over for O’Hara Family Christmas this year, considering the rest of them were traveling to Santa Barbara in the first place.
When she’d asked, Shawn had gaped at her like a fish for a moment, then smiled, and agreed, making the same “is it too soon?” joke he’d made a long time ago, when she’d invited him and Gus to a similar dinner.
He shows up on time—which is irregular for Shawn, with a pineapple in hand—very regular for Shawn. He looks nice too, and she makes a quiet, “Dressed to impress?” joke as he kisses her on the cheek when he comes in.
“You know it,” he smiles.
Her mom is a little confused as to why he hands her a pineapple before introducing himself, but Juliet can admit that when he wants to be, Shawn is a very likable, and charming person. Her mom gets over the pineapple quickly.
She introduces him to everyone else, quickly giving him everyone's names.
Joey and Eddie—at their grown-up ages of forty, and forty-two, respectively, have been practically giddy since they found out he was coming. It’s been a few years since Juliet brought anyone she was dating to Christmas, she’ll admit, but they’ve loved to tease and torment her about it since she was a teenager.
“Behave,” she’d said to them earlier, voice stern. “You are grown men. Be nice to my boyfriend.”
Eddie nodded, and Joey said, “We’ll see, we’ll see.” She smacked him on the back of the head.
At some point, after having to break up an argument between her nephews, she pops her head back into her living room, where her brothers have cornered Shawn.
Her mother and one of her sister-in-laws are just watching it happen, and she gives them a betrayed look.
“What do you do for a living?” Joey’s saying.
Shawn looks up then, when she moves to sit next to him on the couch. “I work with Jules, actually,” he says, pointing to her.
“Oh,” Joey nods. “So, you’re a cop too. That’s cool.”
Shawn shakes his head. “Oh, no, definitely not,” he laughs a little before clarifying. “I’m a private investigator,” he says, glancing at her. She’d asked him earlier for a little less psychic nonsense than usual tonight, and he’d agreed. “I work with the police sometimes.”
“Oh,” Eddie says. “That’s cool. Do they hire you a lot or is it mostly private stuff?”
Shawn shrugs. “Both. Mostly police stuff though,” he laughs a little. “They tend to pay me more.”
Juliet gets up for a second, just to go around the corner into the kitchen to grab the glass she’d been drinking out of, but she misses what Joey asks Shawn next.
When she’s coming back inside, Shawn is replying, “Well,” he hesitates. “I’m actually a psychic.”
Joey looks up at Juliet over Shawn’s shoulder, a huge grin on his face. She stares back and feels a little like a deer in headlights.
“Oh my God!” Eddie says, half shouting, half laughing. “You’re the psychic guy !”
Shawn laughs a little. “Uh, yeah. I am.”
Joey is laughing, and sounds a little like a hyena.
“We’ve heard a lot about you,” Eddie says, smiling.
“A lot,” Joey wheezes.
Sara, his wife makes a face at him and pats him on the back. “So, you’re the guy from the, uh, what was it, the dinosaur story?”
Shawn’s face lights up. “Yes! That was me.”
“And the other million stories Juliet’s told us,” Eddie says. “Holy shit, man.” He looks up at Jules. “You’re dating the psychic guy? You couldn’t have mentioned that?”
“Yeah, way to bury the lede, JJ,” Joey says. He turns to address Shawn. “She had a big fat crush on you.”
Shawn laughs out loud at that. Juliet reaches over and smacks her brother's arm.
A little while later, she’s alone in the kitchen, getting a glass of water for her mom, when Shawn comes in. “Hey,” he says quietly, moving to stand next to her.
“Hey.”
They stand quietly for a moment, before Shawn says, “So, what’s the verdict? Anything I should be worried about?”
She smiles. “Don’t worry. They like you,” Juliet whispers, leaning so their shoulders bump briefly.
He smiles and whispers, “Nice,” to himself. “So,” he says, after he kisses the top of her head.
“So,” she parrots.
“You had a ‘big fat crush on me?’” Shawn grins.
She pushes him away from her, rolling her eyes.
“Hey,” he teases. “Come on, you can admit it. I’m irresistible.”
“You’re something,” she says, but she’s smiling at him.
“If it helps,” he whispers, taking the cup out of her hands and setting it down. “I kind of had a big fat crush on you too.” He pulls her close to him by her hands, and she can’t wipe the smile off her face, no matter how hard she tries.
-
She’s thirty years old.
“I love you,” Shawn says quietly.
Juliet freezes. It’s been more than six months since he’d accidentally announced that he loved her while attached to Lassiter’s stupid polygraph machine, and neither of them has brought the event up since.
Now, they’re lying quietly in her bed, wrapped around each other, trying to fall asleep. Her head is on Shawn’s chest, and she can feel him holding his breath.
Juliet opens and closes her mouth a few times, trying to force herself to say something. Say something , she’s screaming at herself. Say something, say something, say something .
She can feel Shawn’s heartbeat pick up, and he loosens the grip one of his arms has around her abdomen.
“I- I’m sorry,” she finally chokes out.
“It’s okay,” he says, like it’s an instinct, even though she can still feel his pulse, which is practically screaming, It’s not okay .
She props herself up on her arms a little, so she’s leaning over him. “I’m sorry, I-I can’t- It’s not that I don’t-” Shawn lets her stutter for a moment before pushing himself up a little too.
“It’s okay,” he says, taking her face in his hands. “I get it, sweetheart, believe me. I understand.”
“I…” Juliet starts again. “You mean the world to me,” she says quietly.
He leans forward, and pulls her a little, and kisses her softly. “You mean the world to me, too,” he says, so close that she can feel him smiling.
-
She’s thirty-one years old.
Carlton asks her quietly, about five days before his wedding that’s so close to being an elopement it's almost comical, if she would mind being a bridesmaid.
She doesn’t know Marlowe very well, but Carlton is by far one of the best friends she’s ever had, and the two of them make each other very happy.
Besides, she’s never had many female friends.
-
She’s twenty-nine years old, and she can’t breathe when she wakes up.
It’s been a common occurrence for about the last year, since Yin. She pushes herself into a sitting position, holding onto her bedsheets for dear life, trying to calm down, but she can’t stop choking on air.
She thinks she can hear voices, and then something grabs onto her arm, and she shoves it away, thinking, maybe I’m still asleep .
Suddenly, she’s squinting because the lamp on her bedside table has been turned on, and when she peeks out from under her hair, Shawn’s across the room, flipping the switch for the ceiling light.
It’s just Shawn. It’s just Shawn , she repeats over and over in her head, still breathing too fast. It’s just Shawn.
She feels the bed shift next to her and looks up again, and Shawn is sitting a solid foot away from her, a scared look on his face, hands hovering like he wants to touch her. “Hey,” he’s saying.
Juliet tries to open her mouth and make something come out, but she starts to sob instead.
“It’s okay,” Shawn says.
She’s still hyperventilating, and now she’s crying too. She lets go of the sheets and covers her mouth with her hands.
“It’s okay,” Shawn’s still saying, softly repeating himself. “Jules,” he says. “You’re okay.”
She feels like she might vomit. She focuses on a spot on the wall across the room instead.
“Can you hear me?” Shawn says, a little louder than before. She gives a shaky nod.
“Is it okay if I touch you?” he asks, putting his hand down on the bed a few inches from her.
Jules reaches over, grabbing his hand with one of hers, and squeezing so hard that after a moment she starts to worry she might break it.
Shawn reaches his other arm around her shoulders and holds her in a strange half-hug. “It’s okay,” he goes back to whispering.
They sit like that for a while, until Juliet’s lungs return to her chest, and the only reason she’s shaking is from crying too much. She peeks up over Shawn’s shoulder at the digital clock on the bedside table. “Sorry,” she whispers, voice cracking.
Shawn jumps a little, like she scared him, and pulls back a little. “Don’t be sorry,” he says. “What happened?”
“Just a bad dream,” she starts to wipe her eyes with one hand. “It doesn’t usually take that long for me to…” she gestures. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he says, pushing hair out of her face.
They sit quietly for a few moments before she pulls away completely, getting out of bed. “I’ll be right back,” she says.
She heads out to her front door, where she locks and unlocks both the lock and the two deadbolts three times each, then heads to the bathroom, counting her footsteps down the hall.
“What are you doing?” Shawn says, startling her. She jumps a little, and turns to see him in the doorway of her bedroom, frowning at her.
“Just trying to relax,” she says, backing up to the other end of the hallway again. “So I can get back to sleep.” She makes her way down the hall again, one hand against the wall, counting each step. One, two, three, four, five .
She stops in front of the bathroom door, about three feet from where Shawn is still watching her. Eight. Juliet reaches for the bathroom door handle, then frowns, and backs up to the other end of the hallway again.
Shawn is still staring at her, but she starts again, counting each step, this time lightly tapping her right hand against the wall with each step. One, two, three …
“Jules,” Shawn says, and when she looks up he’s frowning at her, she stops midstep, and stumbles a little.
She backs up again.
“Juliet,” Shawn says.
“You can go back to sleep,” she says. “I'll be right there.”
“Sweetheart,” he says, voice sounding a little pained. She starts to count under her breath as she taps against the wall.
She stops in front of the bathroom door. Seven . She opens it, and Shawn follows her, standing in the bathroom doorway.
She washes her face, like she’d done before bed, her eyes more red and puffy than they’d been earlier that evening. Shawn stands there quietly, leaning against the doorframe in pajamas, his hair sticking up in twenty different directions.
He watches her reopen and close the cabinet above the sink nine times, until it feels right, but doesnt say anything. When she takes a deep breath and says, “Okay,” he takes her hands and leads her back to bed.
-
She’s thirty-one years old.
She’s never been huge on the idea of marriage, not since her parents divorced, not since she transitioned, not since she’d experienced the insanity of just being a bridesmaid, not since she was really, really young.
But as she sits and watches Carlton say his frankly insane vows to Marlowe, she looks over at Shawn, who’s still holding her hand, and thinks, I could see myself marrying this guy .
-
She’s thirty-two years old.
Shawn sits up in bed next to her after she accidentally wakes them both up. Her nightmares tend to be few and far between these days, but they still come around once and a while.
Shawn says he doesn’t mind, when she accidentally wakes him, and to be fair, he occasionally wakes her in a similar fashion, too.
He sits there, groggy, and squinting at the lamp she turned on, and he watches her climb in and out of bed three times, each time to open, check, and re-lock the small safe in her closet, where she keeps her weapons.
Each time, he waits for her to get back into bed, and everytime she climbs back out of his arms, saying “Sorry,” softly, he mumbles something she’s sure translates to, “It’s okay.”
-
She’s thirty-one years old, and she hasn’t slept in three days.
When she got home three nights ago, after Irish-exiting Carlton's wedding, she’d tried.
She wasn’t sure if Shawn would come home. He didn’t, she sees him at the hospital the next morning, but she’d spent the whole night awake anyway.
The next night she doesn’t even try to get into bed.
The third day, the lack of sleep starts to catch up with her. Carlton tries to send her home when she spills a cup of coffee over the entirety of her desk, but she doesn’t go, and he doesn’t argue.
That night she tries again, feeling genuinely exhausted, and thinks, Maybe I’ll be able to sleep tonight . But the second she lies down, she feels wide awake, almost restless.
Juliet stares at the ceiling for a while before she gets up and brushes her teeth again. The mirror’s dirty, and it’s bugging her, so she cleans it, and then the countertop. When she’s done sits down for a moment, but her leg starts to bounce, so she gets up, and heads into the kitchen, where she does the same.
She hardly realizes how focused she is until she hears the back door open, but almost on instinct she reaches for her gun, which isn’t far.
It must be Shawn. What is he doing here?
Someone comes through the doorway, and before she even knows she’s doing it, she’s on her feet, gun pointed at whoever it is.
“O’Hara?”
Juliet frowns, and lowers her gun. “Carlton?”
He steps further into the room, looking down at the rows and piles of things on the floor between them.
“How did you get in?” she asks.
He looks back up at her. “I picked the lock,” Lassiter admits. He’d had a key to her old place. She’d given him one after he stayed with her for a while after Yin, mostly because he was prone to stop by, claiming he was ‘arresting someone in the neighborhood.’ “I called you a little while ago, you didn’t pick up.”
Shit . “Sorry,” she says. “I was probably asleep.”
He raises an eyebrow. He steps carefully over a pile of boxes of food, neatly lined up, almost knocking a few over. She takes a step back into the cabinets, both hands still on her gun.
“Why don’t you put your weapon down,” he says quietly, hands out.
Juliet nods, feeling a little shaky, and sits back down on the floor, where she’d been earlier, setting her gun down next to her.
Carlton steps over another pile of food items, knocking a can off the top of a stack.
“Careful,” she hisses, reaching over to pick it up.
He finally reaches her, and shifts a pile of boxes over a little before sitting on the ground next to her. She starts to unstack and restack a pile of boxes.
“What are you doing?” Carlton asks her.
“Cleaning,” she says.
“It’s almost two in the morning,” he says.
“I know,” Juliet nods. She hadn’t known.
He looks at her for a second, then out at the little piles of sorted food and various things from her cabinets, covering the entirety of her kitchen floor. He looks back at her. She looks away.
“Are you okay?” Carlton asks, voice softer than it usually is, even when he’s trying to be delicate.
She nods again.
He takes a can of tomato sauce off a small stack, and studies it. Juliet can’t stop herself from reaching out and taking it from his hand, putting it back carefully.
They sit quietly for a few minutes, not looking each other in the eyes.
“I broke up with Shawn,” she finally whispers, feeling like the silence is a weight on her chest.
He looks up at her, and she’s honestly expecting him to be thrilled, but he sort of looks shocked, and maybe even a little upset. “Is that what was going on yesterday?”
She nods.
“I’m sorry,” he says, reaching over to put a hand on one of her shoulders. “We can talk about it if you’d like, but I think you should get to bed.”
“I can’t,” Juliet gestures at the floor in front of her.
“I can clean this up,” Carlton says, taking her gun off the floor and standing, holding out his other hand for her to take.
“You don’t know where everything goes,” she says, not taking his hand yet.
“Then tell me, O’Hara,” he says, like she should’ve already realized that. He steps over a stack of boxes of pasta and picks up a package of frozen vegetables off another stack. “I’m assuming all of these go in the freezer?”
She nods.
She sits there, on the floor, back against the kitchen cupboards for what must be another hour, while Carlton makes his way around the maze of food and junk on the floors, while she directs him to a cabinet or shelf for every item he picks up. He’s mostly patient, only huffing a few times when she changes her mind back and forth. He doesn’t say anything when she starts to cry a little out of frustration when he knocks over two or three piles completely with his legs.
When everything’s finally off the floor, he offers his hand again, and she takes it.
He locks her gun in the safe in her bedroom, same as she does every night, and watches while she checks the lock a few times.
When she finally sits down on the edge of the bed he says, “Do you want me to stay?”
Juliet shakes her head. “No, no, go home to Marlowe. I’ve kept you long enough.”
“Are you sure?”
She nods, and he nods in response, but he stays for a while anyway, sitting silently in her living room with the TV on. He’s still there when she finally falls asleep.
The next day, he asks her how she’s doing. They talk a little, she gives the bare minimum of details about her and Shawn, talks him out of shooting Shawn, and that’s that.
She’s optimistic, going home the fourth night. She slept as well as she could the night before, finally, and is hoping to get at least a few hours tonight.
She does her normal, multi-step bedtime routine, something that’s been brushed to the side the past few days, and climbs into bed before eleven o’clock.
She lies there, in the dark, for about half an hour, before getting up and going into the bathroom.
Juliet opens the medicine cabinet, looking for the one bottle of melatonin she knows she has, somewhere, and starts pulling everything out.
By the time she realizes, it’s almost one in the morning, and she’s on the bathroom floor, surrounded by the contents of her medicine and sink cabinets, which she’s neatly reorganized into piles.
-
She’s twelve years old.
She’s curled in on herself on her bedroom floor, into a ball, knees pulled to her chest, and crying into her arms.
“I just don’t understand what’s wrong,” Ewan is saying quietly.
“Kiddo, we want to help,” Eddie says, rubbing her back. “But you have to tell us what’s going on, okay?”
She tries to open her mouth, but she can barely breathe, so all they get is a few shaky sobs.
“Take a deep breath, okay?” he says.
“Do the counting thing,” Ewan says.
Eddie keeps rubbing her back, but coaches her through a few deep breaths, counting, one, two, three, four. They’d started doing that a few years ago, at a doctor’s recommendation, after the third time she’d worked herself into such a state she could barely breathe.
“Sorry,” she says quietly, after a few rounds of deep breaths. Her throat feels scratchy, and she still hasn’t stopped crying.
“It’s okay.”
“What’s going on?” Ewan says.
“Yeah,” Joey, who’s been sitting there mostly silently says. “What’s up little man?”
She puts her face back in her hands. “Everything is wrong,” she cries.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t- I don’t think I’m supposed to be me,” she says, breath still shaky. She feels a little like she’s going to choke. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be a boy, I think there was a mistake.” She tries to wipe her eyes, but it’s useless.
She looks up, and all three of them look confused, but Joey’s making a weird face at Eddie.
“What do you mean?” Eddie says.
“I don’t know!” She says, voice cracking slightly. “Everything is wrong, everything. It’s all wrong,” She puts her face back in her arms and starts to sob again.
“It’s okay,” Ewan says, scooting over and putting his arms around her. The other two follow.
“We’re gonna figure it out,” Eddie says, but he sounds a little unsure.
“We’re gonna fix everything,” Ewan says, messing up her hair. “I promise.”
-
She’s thirty years old.
Ever since she was in high school, Juliet has routinely set her morning alarm anywhere between five and forty-five minutes before she actually needed to get up. That way, if she ever overslept, or there was bad traffic, or anything, she would have some leeway room to still get where she needed to be in a punctual manner.
In the past few months, Shawn seems to have figured this out, and proceeded to monopolize this time. Her alarm goes off at 6:05 a.m., and she prefers to be up and moving by in the next ten minutes.
Since they moved in together, it’s the same every morning, her alarm goes off at 6:05 a.m., and Shawn, who’s still mostly asleep, groans, and complains until she snoozes it on instinct. He then reaches over, and pulls her over to him, in a sort of hug, arms so tight that when the alarm goes off again at 6:15, she has to push him off to get up and turn it off.
He usually groans at that too, to which she responds with, “Shawn, I have to get up.”
From there, her routine is the same as it used to be. Three times a week she goes for a short run, then showers, and on the other four days, she just showers.
By the time she’s out of the bathroom, Shawn’s usually back in a deep sleep, which isn’t surprising.
What was surprising, upon moving in together, is that she’d leave the bathroom to find a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen, almost every morning. Juliet confronted Shawn about it once, and he’d confirmed that usually when she got up , he got up too, going into the kitchen to put coffee on, before climbing back into bed for the next few hours.
It was something so stupid, that he hadn’t even been thinking about with any significance, but so sweet that it makes her stomach twist a little.
She gets used to it.
-
She’s thirty-one years old.
Every morning, her alarm goes off at 6:05 a.m., and she’s worried for a moment, because Shawn isn’t complaining about it, and then she’s worried, when she realizes she’s alone in bed, and then—
Then, she fully wakes up, and remembers that it’s been a little over two months since she kicked Shawn out.
Every day, when she realizes, she always feels like she’s just been hit by a truck. It’s not the memory of what happened that upsets her, it’s the fact that she forgets, again and again.
Every morning, after she wakes up, she sits upright in bed, thinking, until the alarm goes off again at 6:15. She’s managed to go about the rest of her routine as normally as possible, the last few months.
But just like the alarm, every morning, on her way out the door, she goes to fill her usual mug with coffee, like usual. As part of her routine. And every morning, the coffee pot is empty.
She’d gotten too used to it.
-
She’s forty-one years old.
Every morning, her alarm goes off at 5:55 a.m., and she snoozes it on instinct, while her husband groans into his pillow, reaching over to shove her. The alarm wakes up the dog, too, who proceeds to get up and lick at both of them until Juliet climbs out of bed.
She puts on running clothes, and grabs Starfish’s leash, and takes him down to the park. The two of them do a short jog, and Starfish gets too excited and scares some ducks.
If he hadn’t been excitable before her jog, he was now, and Juliet feels a little bad that as soon as she takes him off the leash he bolts right for their bedroom, where she hears Shawn a moment later say, “Fishy, no! No! Get off of me!”
She smiles a little when she sees them, a blanket or two has been torn off the bed, and Starfish, who is quite a large dog, is on top of Shawn’s chest, licking his face.
Juliet laughs, grabbing clothes out of the closest for her day, and Shawn yells, “Jules! He’s trying to eat me!”
“You’re fine,” she teases, before heading into the bathroom.
When she’s finished almost every step of her routine, and heads into the kitchen, Shawn’s standing over the stove, while Starfish demolishes a rubber ball on the floor beside him.
“Hey,” he says, leaning down to kiss her cheek.
“Coffee?” she asks, even though she doesn’t have to. Shawn points, and scoops scrambled eggs out of a pan and onto a plate, before setting it down in front of her usual chair by the counter.
“Thanks,” she says, filling her favorite mug.
“Mhm,” Shawn replies, leaning over again, to actually kiss her. “I’m gonna go back to bed, I think,” he yawns.
“Okay,” Juliet smiles, sipping her coffee.
“Have a good day,” he says over his shoulder. “Love you.”
“Love you too,” she says.
She finishes out the rest of her morning routine— dishes in the sink, wipe the countertop, check she unplugged everything in the bathroom, turn all the lights off behind her, say goodbye to Shawn.
He’s usually fast asleep again by then, but she still cracks the bedroom door before she goes, sometimes leaning over to kiss him and Starfish each on the head.
Every morning, her alarm goes off at 5:55 a.m.. Her routine goes smoothly every morning, and she makes it to work five minutes early, every morning, and things feel good. They feel right.