ANY ATTEMPTS AT LOGIC MADE BY JULIEN FLEW DIRECTLY OVER IVY’S HEAD AS SHE SETTLED INTO HER ANGER. “you did lie to me!” she insisted, her words overlapping his own. “you said it meant something but how could it mean something when you like… love rory?” her own voice betrayed her as it’s shrillness gave way to a crack. why that specifically had upset her so much, she couldn’t say, but she did know whatever she was feeling was far from good. it was like there had been a volcano bubbling in the pit of her stomach for weeks since dayton, and maybe it had always been sitting there,dormant, but between everything that had gone down with leo and feeling lead on like this by julien for a second time, it was now erupting and spewing venom from her mouth. sure, her and julien had done their fair share of bickering, but never had ivy come at him from a place this emotionally shattered. “i like told you that before you kissed me again!” ivy said, pointing at julien and then herself in an enraged emphasis, “and that was after we promised it didn’t mean anything and that it would like never ever happen again, but it did, so don’t act like you’re so totally innocent.” she near shouted all in one quick breath. her furious rantings came to a halt at julien’s question, ‘and what was i to you? just like…some rebound or something because you were sad?‘ no longer was she spewing words at him, but rather ivy scoffed, and stared up at him. for a moment, anger flickered off her face and she met julien’s gaze with an expression that could only be described as agony. julien wasn’t a rebound, ivy could say that much. her feelings for leo felt just as real as whatever she had started to develop for the performing arts sensation by spring, summer, and fall turned hockey star by winter. just sitting on that conflict for long enough was plenty to give her a headache. but no, this wasn’t a rebound. rebounds were supposed to make you feel better and help you move on and as seen by the mistrust and rage and fear behind ivy’s once doting baby blues, it was clear julien was doing nothing of the sort for her. “how could you say that?” she finally spluttered, a genuine shock in her voice. “it has never been like that with you, like ever!” and once again her volcano erupted, the sadness has disappeared from her expression, and once again she was painted in resentment. as julien referred to their ‘thing’ ivy cut in, “there is like no thing, julien, not anymore.” more than anything else, a built up aggravation was driving this interaction for her, but julien’s less than comforting responses didn’t ease this flare up. “and i have no reason to believe you’re not that kind of guy because i’m like sitting here trying to figure out how the hell we can mean something, but you love rory? and how you just couldn’t break up with emory? that’s like total bullshit.” and again, ivy paused, her voice falling suddenly quiet, “you have to make it up to her?” she repeated, a dangerous edge in her town. “god, julien, what about me?” her hands came to rest desperately on her chest as her volume once again increased, “have you like ever sat and thought about how i’m like not here for you to have fun with when you need to get away from your girlfriends? this is the second time you’ve made me believe we were something more than we are! do you know like… how messed up that is?” she asked rhetorically, an obvious strain coming to her voice. her parents would totally be on her case if she botched her solos in the next act. quieting down, ivy crossed her arms and looked at julien with a simultaneously cold and fiery gaze, as if it switched each time she blinked. “i have my own life outside of when you to suddenly decide you’re like interested in me again, then just waiting for you to get out of whatever totally stupid, grab at attention, attempt to feel good about yourself stunt of a relationship you’re in, to choose me and consider me, for like once!”
The louder and angrier Ivy got, the more desperate and frantic Julien did. “I didn’t lie!” he insisted, staring at her in complete disbelief. She was getting hung up on what he’d said to Rory, but didn’t that kind of make her a hypocrite or something? “Well if that’s how that works, then you also lied to me,” Julien said, though his confidence faltered, “don’t you still love Leo? You guys just broke up. Does that mean that what you said was a lie too?” When she called out the fact that his account of what had transpired between them was not up to date, he felt his cheeks get hot with shame and embarrassment. He knew she was right and that in an effort to temper his guilt, he was oversimplifying their situation. “I’m not saying I’m innocent and stuff,” he clarified, itching to pull his phone out of his pocket to read the texts she’d sent him verbatim while they were in LA, “but you said that telling Rory a week before show wasn’t the smartest or something like that. You texted me that after I drunkenly kissed you in the stairwell or whatever.” Slipping in the fact that he was drunk was a low blow and a tactic that actually did nothing to absolve him of his guilt. Crap. He knew this whole situation was on him. Even if Ivy had instigated at first, he was the one with a girlfriend. Not her. He was the one who should’ve put a stop to this whole mess that shouldn’t have even started in the first place. But the thought of not having Ivy—why didn’t that feel like an option? Why was it that even as he stood there on the receiving end of her fury that he still wanted to kiss her? Whenever a thought like that entered his brain, a thought about Rory was quick to follow. His heart was being torn in half and one side was telling him to close the distance between him and Ivy and the other side was telling him that the only person he needed to make things up to was Rory. As his brain played a vicious game of tug of war with the two pieces of his heart, he found himself getting agitated with the way Ivy was firing statements at him faster than he could process them. “It hasn’t been like that?” he snapped back, waving his arms around frustratedly, “then how’s it been, Ivy? Because that’s kind of how it—” but he got cut off before he could finish. there is like no thing, julien, not anymore. He stood there, staring blankly at her as his ears started to ring and blood rushed to his cheeks. At the mention of Rory and then Emory, Julien dropped his gaze to the ground and clenched his jaws repeatedly. After a moment, he finally spoke. “Why are you trying to make me feel worse about all of this, Ivy?” he asked rhetorically before exclaiming, “fuck.” Her question about Rory seemed like a no brainer. Of course he had to make it up to her. “I literally cheated on her. With you. So, yeah, I do. What do you even mean by that?” he asked in disbelief and with a clear and genuine lack of understanding. god, Julien, what about me? Julien scoffed at the question at first, wanting to fire the same on back at her. What about him? He was caught in the middle of this. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Couldn’t anyone see that he was struggling in the midst of this too? As Ivy shouted at him, Julien wanted to just tell her to relax, that this would work out the way things always did with them. This had been their pattern since childhood. They fought with each other and then things blew over, right? But as she continued to talk, it dawned on him that maybe he’d been going about this all wrong. Maybe what was happening now was just a tad different than all the fights they’d had before. “I don’t see you that way and it’s not like that,” he pleaded, his face dropping as he was suddenly overcome with a sense of despair. Why did he feel like he was being dumped? Ivy’s words were sharp and they cut through all of his excuses and defenses, but his pride and ego refused to allow him to let up. “I do consider you,” he said, but it was feeble. There was no conviction behind his words. “I don’t know what you want me to say right now,” he admitted as he finally met her gaze again, brows furrowed and face contorted in stress, “I know this is all messed up but you just have to give me a second to talk to Rory and to fix things and explain and then everything is going to be fine. I just need some time so whatever you’re doing right now just, please, don’t do it.” It wasn’t lost on Julien that he had barely addressed half of the things she’d said, but in his guilt-induced panic, he didn’t even know where to start. It was all too much and he just wanted Ivy to be on his side again.
