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They don’t kiss at their wedding.
It’s not even a real one, anyway, just a small group of their loved ones at the courthouse so they can avoid all the weird, heavy pressure that comes with weddings, the pointed jokes of drunken men and the bright, white expanse of wedding dresses like that’s what makes someone clean. Julie’s dad still cries as he signs one of the witness lines on the marriage license, happy for his little girl though she hasn’t been little in a long time. Mrs. Patterson signs the other line and then the county clerk pronounces them husband and wife.
They don’t kiss, but Luke does pull Julie into his arms, warm and full of love. Their bodies are pressed together from head to toe, excitement zinging over Julie’s skin every time she gets to be this close to him. It’s a privilege to be allowed in like this, to be trusted with this part of his progress. She’ll never tire of being held by him.
It had taken months to get to this level of intimacy, Luke shying away from anything more than their hands linked together. At first she thought it was out of fear that she’d hurt him, lingering nerves from the man that Julie would like to throttle with her bare hands. But then Luke had choked out a breathless “god, I’m so sorry,” when he’d accidentally stumbled into the back of her, catching himself with hands on her hips, and she’d realized he wasn’t scared of her but of himself. Scared to fall into old habits, scared to drag her down with him. Scared to contaminate her.
It wasn’t possible, but she knew he’d never believe that. Not fully.
“You don’t have to do that,” Julie had finally said about half a year into their relationship – the new one, the second one, the good one – when he’d sunk down onto the couch next to her and promptly flinched away, like the press of their sides together was something to do penance for. “You’re not going to hurt me, Luke.”
Luke had hung his head, skin going pink. “That’s what I said last time, too.”
“You were alone last time,” she’d pointed out, patting him on the back of his hand, the safe zone. “You’re not alone anymore and you’ve come such a long way. I’m not saying you have to do anything you don’t want to, but you don’t have to be afraid, either. I trust you.”
The entire time Julie has known him, Luke has always been easily brought to tears and that night was no exception, swiping at the wetness on his cheeks as he whimpered, “You shouldn’t. What if I—what if something happens and I mess up again?”
Julie had been careful about her words, wanting to toe the line between validating his self-loathing and being understanding of his very real fears, saying slowly, “I think you’re stronger than you believe you are. But if you do ever mess up – which I don’t think you will, by the way – I want you to tell me so that we can get you more help.”
He had stared at her like he couldn’t believe his ears. “And you’d stay with me?”
“You can’t help what happened to you any more than you can help the way it affected you, so…” Julie had taken a deep, cleansing breath and smiled up at him. “So, yeah. I love you, okay? You and me, we don’t leave each other. Not anymore.”
Luke had been nearly inconsolable, shuddering sobs tearing from his chest, but he’d still managed to tell her, “I love you, too, Julie. You’re the best person I’ve ever known.”
“So, tell me what you want, Luke. Anything.”
“I want to hold you,” he’d said, hands trembling as he’d reached out for her, and as she’d curled up in his lap, tears had fallen into her hair. It had broken through the darkness, let a spot of light shine through, and Luke hasn’t pulled away from her since. He hasn’t messed up either, the more jagged parts of himself staying smoothed over with the help of therapy, medication, and sheer stubborn bravery. Julie is so fucking proud of him.
So they don’t kiss at their wedding, haven’t reached that point even after several years, but Luke does hold her and it’s the happiest day of Julie’s life.
They have a small party at the Pattersons’ house with cake and presents and loved ones who know better than to tease them about their honeymoon. Bobby and Reggie mix drinks while Flynn blares her wedding playlist off her laptop and Alex and Willie rope Luke into a three-way arm wrestle that doesn’t end until they’re giggling on the floor, Julie watching fondly from the couch and shaking her head. Dad slings an arm over her shoulders, pulling her in to lean against him, murmuring his congrats into the top of her head. They’ve discussed her impending marriage a lot in previous months, about how it’ll be difficult and that addictions are hard to conquer, but she knows that he supports her with everything he has.
“Love makes the hard times worth it,” he’d said when she’d sworn she was serious about taking the next step with Luke. Then he’d smiled. “And dads are always here to talk.”
They don’t talk about it now, just sit together and watch Julie’s new husband laugh and mess around and let himself be loved. Every so often he’ll beam up at her and it’ll take Julie’s breath away, this beautiful boy she fell in love with when she was sixteen years old and never stopped loving, even when everything fell apart.
“Come dance with me, Julie!” he calls when a slow song comes on, leaping to his feet and reaching out to her, waiting for her to come to him like he always does. And come to him she does, slipping one hand into his and the other onto his shoulder, shivering at the feeling of his hand on her waist. They spin in a circle and sway gently, their hearts beating in tandem where they’re pressed together.
“What do you think?” Luke whispers, for her ears only. “You think we can do it?”
“I know we can,” Julie promises, laying her head on his shoulder.
There’s a single breathless moment when the song ends and they pull back where Luke’s eyes drop to Julie’s mouth and his breath hitches and Julie thinks he might kiss her. She goes deathly still, waiting to see what he’ll do, then he quickly looks away, his cheeks going pink. Julie’s not disappointed, she’s not, but she finds her face going warm, too, and they both laugh nervously as they step away from each other. Luckily, the music has changed to something loud and raucous, drowning out the strange energy building between them.
It still feels strange when they go back to Julie’s apartment after the party, Luke with an overnight bag hooked over his shoulder. Tomorrow they’ll go by his parents’ house to gather the rest of his things, move him into Julie’s space until it’s their space, but for now they face their very first night together as a married couple.
It’s not at all the wedding night she dreamed and blushed about as a teenager, but it’s still good. Julie wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Any dream without Luke in it isn’t one worth having.
They get dressed on opposite sides of the bedroom, keeping their eyes to themselves because Julie understands it now. It took a while but she finally understands why Luke is so afraid, why it took him so much longer to touch her than it did to touch his friends: because he wants her in the exact way that ruined his life.
He wants her.
But they can’t do that, not yet, probably not for a very long time, so they get dressed and they don’t peek and they lie down side by side in Julie’s full-sized bed, the space between them seeming to grow and grow until Julie thinks she’ll lose her mind.
“We’re still us,” she whispers, soft into the night. “Now we’re just…us sharing a bed.”
Luke laughs a little, turning over until he’s facing her. “You always know how to cut through the bullshit, huh?”
“I try.”
Luke tries, too, opening his arms to her and letting her come forward, snuggling into his chest and thrilling at the feeling. They’ve never fallen asleep together before, but Julie knows she’s going to get used to it quickly. It’s wonderful.
They move Luke in over the next few days, getting used to existing in the same space and growing more and more comfortable with their nightly routine until they’re falling together in the middle of the bed without hesitation. Luke’s arms are warm around her when she sleeps and even warmer when she wakes, feeling like safety and commitment and love.
The first time she opens her eyes to find Luke pressing insistently against her backside, she’s overcome with a wave of heat that quickly dissipates when Luke scrambles out of bed and locks himself in the bathroom in humiliation. She tries to talk to him, tries to tell him that it’s no big deal, but she can tell he’d rather do anything but discuss his body, so she drops it. Even so, he’s calmer the next time it happens, doesn’t stammer apologies or race away like he’s done something wrong, so Julie thinks it must’ve helped. They just ease apart and lie together until he’s settled down, slipping an arm back around her waist once he’s ready.
Then a ghost from his past visits Luke in the middle of the night and sends everything to hell.
Luke had told her about the dreams, about that voice in his head that had him latching onto anyone that could distract him, but he’d spoken of them as if they were mostly in the past. And maybe they were. Maybe that night a few weeks into their marriage is a fluke, a holdover from dark times that chooses then to make itself known.
Either way, Julie wakes to find Luke whimpering and thrashing about on the bed, his eyes staying squeezed shut even when she clicks on the bedside lamp. She can read the terror in the coiled set of his body, like he wants to run away but can’t get his feet to move, so she reaches over and grabs him by the wrist, shushing him soothingly as she tries to shake him awake.
It’s the exact wrong thing to do, Luke coming to consciousness with a yelp and wrenching away from her grip, eyes wild with fear and hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. It takes him a second to figure out where he is, gaze darting around their bedroom and landing on Julie before he breaks into tears and races for the bathroom down the hall.
She can hear him heave loudly, vomiting into the toilet while she stands in the doorway with her heart in her throat. When Luke starts sobbing into the bowl, Julie can’t take it anymore and she goes to him, always goes to him. “Luke, you…” she starts, gently rubbing a hand over his back.
Her mouth clicks shut when Luke practically throws himself across the bathroom in his haste to get away from her, shouting, “Don’t touch me!” Then, even shaking with fear and nearly out of his mind, her wonderful husband finds it in himself to add, “I love you, alright? I love you so much, but don’t—you can’t touch me!”
Julie shows him her palms, backing away from him and trying not to cry and crying anyway. “Okay,” she says, quiet and broken and scared even though she has no right to be. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I won’t, Luke.”
Luke has one hand over his mouth and one down between his legs, hiding his shame from her as she turns on her heel and runs from the room. She doesn’t see Luke again until he stumbles home from his shift at the music store, dead on his feet. Then, with a tight-lipped smile and a sheepish duck of his head, Luke takes his pillow into the spare bedroom and doesn’t come back out.
Julie sleeps alone in their bed that night and cries herself to sleep.
She sleeps alone for many nights after that, fitfully tossing and turning and aching to be held. Every time Luke disappears into the other bedroom, it chips away at Julie’s heart just a little bit more until she feels like she’s nothing. She holds out for almost two weeks before she just can’t stand it a second longer, running to Flynn’s house and sharing a bed with her best friend instead. Flynn lets her cry and shake and vent her worries, stroking her hair and promising that everything will be okay in time.
“You guys have been through much worse than this,” Flynn soothes her, putting a hand to the small of Julie’s back to draw her closer. “And you survived that. You can survive this, too.”
“It took almost two years to fix that!” Julie reminds her, eyes squeezed shut but tears still dripping from the corners. “And that wasn’t because of something I’d done. I—I deserve it this time, Flynn…I scared him so, so badly!”
Every time Julie remembers the unbridled terror, the wrenching away, the don’t touch me! she wants to curl up into a little ball and never come out. She knows how hard things are for Luke and she was still reckless, still careless and self-centered and stupid. Luke could stay in the spare bedroom for the rest of their lives and she’d deserve it.
She’s on her third night at Flynn’s when the cordless phone rings on the nightstand, lighting up the dim bedroom. When she sees that it’s Luke, her heart nearly comes tumbling out of her mouth, snatching it up and racing for the living room as quietly as she can.
She doesn’t even get a chance to say hello before Luke is begging down the line, voice full of misery, “Please, come home.”
Julie blinks, surprised. “What?”
“Julie,” he says and, oh god, he’s definitely crying. He’s alone in their apartment and it’s the middle of the night and he’s crying. “Julie, I need—will you please come home? I know I messed up but I’m scared and I don’t want to lose you.”
Nausea rises at his admission and it’s all Julie can do not to cry, too. Fuck, he’d been doing so well until she ruined everything and now—
“Yeah, give me a minute,” she says, defeated and bone-weary. “Just stay put, okay? Don’t go anywhere.”
Luke sniffles. “I won’t.”
Julie leaves Flynn with a kiss to her sleeping forehead and then takes the twenty-minute drive across town, cursing herself and wondering what the fuck she’s going to do with the shattered remains of her marriage. She’d promised not to leave and she has no plans to, especially not after she’s the one that sent him spiraling, but it’s hard not to feel like she’s sixteen again and finding out that her perfect, gorgeous sweetheart of a boyfriend cheated on her with three girls at once and didn’t even remember their names. She’d screamed then and she wants to scream now, but she forces herself to stay calm, fingers only shaking a little bit as she turns the key in the lock on their front door.
Luke is sitting at the kitchen table, his face buried in his hands. Julie is so fucking tired.
“I don’t want details,” she says, forcing her voice not to waver. This is the kind of strong she never wanted to have to be. “But you need to tell me what we’re facing here. Like, is this a therapy appointment situation or a hospital situation? Do we need to get you tested? Or buy Plan B for anyone? I think the pharmacist downtown carries it.”
Luke’s chin slips off his hands, staring at her in shock. He’s quiet for a few seconds, stunned into silence, before he finally says, “Julie, I didn’t fuck anyone.”
Julie freezes halfway through fumbling her car keys into her purse. “What?”
“I didn’t fuck anyone!” Luke says again, voice edging into panic. “Why do you think I fucked someone?”
“You said you messed up!” Julie cries, throwing her hands in the air. She’s panicking, too. “What was I supposed to think?”
“I meant I messed up with you!” Luke’s face crumbles, desperately hurt. “When I yelled at you and—and—and chased you away and wouldn’t sleep in our room anymore! I didn’t—god, Julie, did you really think I did that to you? Just because of one dream?”
For the second time in as many weeks Julie makes her husband cry and feels so rotten about it, she wants to disappear into nothingness. She’d been warned time and time again about Luke’s potential to hurt her, but no one had ever said anything about her potential to hurt Luke.
“Fuck,” she whispers under her breath, dropping to the floor in front of Luke’s chair to kneel in the spread of his legs, pressing a knuckle beneath his chin in a frantic plea for him to look up at her. He doesn’t but she crashes on anyway, needing to fix this, needing to fix them. “Listen, baby…just listen, okay? It isn’t like that. I meant it when I said that I trust you, that I think you’re so much stronger than you’ll ever know. You didn’t mess up that night in the bathroom, I did. I’m the one that scared you and touched you and chased you away.” She swallows hard, her throat going tight with tears. “None of that was your fault, which is why I had no idea that’s what you were talking about when you said you messed up. Do you understand?”
Luke’s voice is small when he says, “You think it’s your fault?”
Julie wipes a tear off her face in annoyance. “Of course it is. Because it’s definitely not yours! No wonder you wanted to hide from me.”
Finally, finally Luke looks up at her, placing his hands over hers where she’s still clutching at his face. “Julie, I wasn’t hiding.” He makes a face, then amends, “Well, I was, but not because I was scared of you. I thought you were afraid of me! I never should have yelled at you like that, I was just—with the dream and everything—I was all fucked up and—I thought you hated me.”
Julie groans, two weeks of pain and hurt all coming together to make a sloppy painting of misunderstandings. She lists forward, burying her face in his chest. To her relief, he curls his arms around her in a tight embrace. “So we both spent all these nights being miserable for no reason, is what we’re saying,” she says, twining her arms around his waist. “Neither one of us did anything wrong but we punished ourselves anyway.”
Luke leans his cheek on top of her head. “That about sums it up.”
“God.” Then Julie winces. “I really am sorry about jumping to conclusions, though. That was definitely wrong and I won’t do it again.”
Kind and as lovely as always, Luke just keeps his arms around her. It’s her favorite place to be in the whole entire world.
They get better at communicating after that, laying it all out in the open. Luke explains that he needs space after flashbacks and dreams and that being grabbed by the wrists still fills him with unspeakable fear, taking him back to his childhood bedroom and the man that hurt him so badly. Julie, for her part, respects his need for solitude, but explains that she can’t be left to wonder because she will always, always assume that she’s done something wrong. They agree to talk about these difficult nights whenever they happen and never sleep in separate rooms without discussing it first. They’re nearly melted into each other once they’ve worked through it all, but they’re happy.
Maybe they’ll figure this marriage thing out yet.
They don’t have to deal with another dream for nearly a month, Luke’s sleep peaceful and wrapped around Julie like a warm blanket, but when they do it’s a bad one, Luke staying in the bathroom for well over an hour. It puts Julie on edge, makes her worry that he might be hurting himself, but when he comes back to bed, he’s whole and intact despite the harsh tears wracking at his body. He lets Julie hold him close, crying into her neck when he admits what the dreams do to him, how they wake his body up in the worst way and won’t give him relief until he touches himself.
“I’m so disgusting,” he weeps, the early hour and lack of sleep making him even more vulnerable than usual. “That’s so fucked up…who does that?”
“You’re not,” she hushes him immediately, fingers tangled into his hair and fiercely pressing the words to his forehead. “That never should have happened to you and none of it is your fault. I mean that, okay? And I love you, Luke…I love you. No matter what.”
They don’t bother trying to go back to sleep, only have about an hour before they have to be up anyway, just put on a pot of coffee and watch the sun rise through the kitchen window, blue curtain fluttering in the slight breeze. It’s as the first rays break over the city’s horizon, streaming across their table and filling the room with warm light, that Luke puts down his coffee mug and whispers, “Can I kiss you, Julie?”
Julie goes still in surprise, her heart pounding. “You…want to kiss me?” she squeaks, hardly believing her ears. “Right now?”
Luke smiles, small and sad. “I’ve always wanted to kiss you, ever since the day I met you.” He chews on his bottom lip thoughtfully. “I think it’s important that I’ve waited all these years to make sure that it won’t break me, but I—I think I’m done waiting? I’ve lived through so much and you’ve been with me through a hell of a lot of it and I’d really like to kiss you now, if that’s okay.”
Julie, God help her, tears up at the very thought, laughing through it and reaching out to Luke like she’s wanted to do for years. “Yes!” she cries, happy and featherlight and so in love it hurts. “I’m okay with that! Like, so embarrassingly okay—”
And then Luke’s lips are on hers, a hand curling around the back of her neck to pull her closer. It’s everything she’s ever dreamed of, gentle and soft yet persistent, Luke not shying away as he kisses her. She waits to open her mouth until he asks for it, letting him come to her this time, shivering at the brush of his tongue. They have to come up for air eventually, panting against each other’s lips and eyes shining with affection as they gaze at each other.
“Good?” she whispers, though she’s positive she knows the answer.
“Perfect,” Luke sighs and then he’s leaning in to kiss her again, eager and unwilling to waste a second. Julie can’t help but giggle against his lips, though she’s not making fun. Now that she knows what it’s like to kiss her husband, she never wants to stop.