⇾ 𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓 𝐋𝐄𝐓 𝐌𝐄 𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐍 | 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐋𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐧 𝐈𝐈

𝙸

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙾𝚗𝚎 → 𝙼𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚍 𝙻𝚒𝚏𝚎

⊹ 𝟿-𝟻-𝟷𝟿𝟼𝟽 ⊹

"Christ...Julian!" The four-year-old boy escaped the house through the back door, bound for the pool even though it was mostly cold outside. I jumped up from the table where I was sketching into a sketchbook and ran after him.

He squealed when he realized that he was being followed, but just before he could throw himself into the water defiantly (like he had done so many times before, might I add), my arms hooked under his shoulders and I scooped him up into my arms.

Just before he decided he wanted to go for a swim, he had been napping. I hadn't even heard him get up. He never called out for me. I guess he just decided that making a beeline for the pool would be his best bet.

"No!" he cried as I carried him back towards our ridiculously large house, Kenwood. "Put me down! I hate you!"

I almost chuckled because that sounded exactly like something I would say, but then I realized that laughing would only encourage this type of behavior, and I was trying to abolish this type of behavior. I was tired of running after him. I did it every single day.

I took him over to the little chair situated in the corner of the room we were in, the sunroom. I spent a lot of my time here, looking out over the backyard for drawing inspiration.

"No, no, no!" Julian continued to defy me as I set him down in the chair, and he knew exactly what it meant, so promptly, he began to cry.

"You're not getting up if you keep acting like this," I told him, crouching down beside him. His hands balled into fists and he rubbed furiously at his eyes as his tears kept on flowing. "Just calm down," I added, practically begging him to listen to me.

"You're mean," he told me, giving a quick glance in my direction, only long enough for me to see how distraught he looked.

"Julian—."

"No!"

My hand flew up to my forehead. I felt like I was going fucking insane. It's not like John was a huge help either. More often than not, he was in the studio. Even when he wasn't, he was either high as a kite or getting high. Sometimes, when he was out late at the club, I'd wake up to a dozen hungover strangers in our living room, spread out on the couches with John in the middle of them all, snoring like a damned elephant.

Between all of that, he definitely was little to no help with Julian. It was clear that Julian was already craving attention from his father even though he was still so little. When John was upstairs in the attic, writing or playing music, Julian would sit at the foot of the steps, begging me to take him up there.