Delicate

Delicate (Taylor Swift)

Juliet's POV

I wished that I could go back in time and meet high school Juliet always dressed in sweats with her hair in a ponytail. I wished that I could have shown her a naked picture of Kelly and just see the expression on her face as I told her that she was my girlfriend, or at least someone who I banged many, many times a week.

Those were the thoughts that were running through my mind as I was sticking my fingers up her vagina, making her orgasm in my childhood bedroom. This was the bedroom that I swore was haunted when I was six. It was the bedroom that my friends slept over at, whispering in the night about our juiciest secrets. It was bedroom that I had lost my virginity in — to a pretty boy on the basketball team. It was the bedroom that I discovered my sexuality in, masturbating to pictures of topless models in the Playboy magazines I had found in my brothers' rooms and getting to third base with some of my female friends because that's just what friends did. And now here I was, on top of the most beautiful woman in the entire world, sending her to levels of euphoria that not many people ever reached.

I woke up at 6 AM; it was one of those things that I couldn't really help. Kelly was still sound asleep, snoring slightly out her nose. She looked so cute, but I could tell that she wouldn't get up for at least another couple of hours. Putting on Kelly's warmest, fleece sweater over a black t-shirt and gray boxers, I tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen.

Unsurprisingly, Brooke was already there, perched on the barstool while squinting at her laptop screen. She was wearing a plaid shirt that was unbuttoned at the top, matching plaid pajama pants, and Adidas slippers over her bare feet. There was a mug of coffee in front of her and an unopened banana next to it. She looked up as I walked in. "Good morning, Jules."

"Morning." I poured some coffee from the coffeemaker into a mug and grabbed a yogurt cup from the fridge along with a short, metal spoon. Sliding onto the seat next to her, I kissed her on the cheek. "I missed you."

She wiped my saliva off of her cheek, sticking her tongue out. "Yuck, Jules. You're still that clingy little sister, aren't you?" She was joking; she actually found me quite endearing, believe it or not. Her face quickly morphed into a smile as she kissed me on my cheek. "I missed you, too."

"We should really get together more often. I mean we literally live in the city."

"Okay, but I'm a surgeon and you're a lawyer. And usually, we want to sleep those few hours we're not working." Brooke laughed a little nervously, like she wasn't really joking.

I nodded, acknowledging that she was right about our busy schedules. "So tell me, how is everything?"

"Not bad. Work's fine. It's tiring, but fine."

"What about Harry? How are you guys?"

"It's okay," she leaned her head on my shoulder. "To be honest, he's 100% husband material. Like Mom will actually be so overjoyed when she meets him. He's smart, successful, charming, handsome, and nice. But I don't know. Whenever we talk, it always leaves me thinking that's it? I guess, he's just really boring. I don't think I feel the way that I should feel for him at this point."

"Don't worry, Brookie," I patted the top of her head, rubbing her back comfortingly. "You still have so much time. There's no need to find 'the one' now. No matter how hard Mother's pressuring you."

"Did you see Dad and Mom yesterday?" She asked, changing the subject.

"Yeah, it was so weird. Like, are they together or what?"

Brooke shrugged her shoulder, making a who knows face. "All I know is that they still sleep in the same bed. And I saw Dad's hand on her ass yesterday morning, before you got here."

I made a gagging face. Yeah, it was nice that my parents were reconnecting and possibly falling back in love after their divorce, but the thought of them and their physical displays of affection were enough to make me want to vomit.

"Actually though, you're so lucky," Brooke changed the subject back to what it was, after what it seemed was ample time to think about it. "Mom's not pressuring you about marriage and kids."

"Yeah, but that's because she doesn't even approve of me dating Kelly in the first place. So I wouldn't say that that's a real positive."

Brooke shrugged. "I'd rather be in a forbidden romance where we're both just madly in love with each other than get married to this boring guy who dresses like Homer Simpson."

"I wouldn't say that Kelly and I are madly in love with each other."

"Oh right, because of when you broke up? Well, let me tell you, Jules. I think that it's very easy to tell that Kelly loves you just by the way she looks at you. Maybe she won't admit it, but she loves you. And you love her. Hence the madly in love."

"How do I even love her when I know next to nothing about her?" I asked, mostly to myself.

"I heard you guys last night," Brooke raised her eyebrows. "It seems like you two are very intimate."

I shoved her arm playfully. "Oh, shut up. We aren't all about sex, even though we have it a lot."

Brooke laughed, covering her mouth with her hand.

"Like sure, having sex with her is like one of the best things in the world. Her body is literally one of the seven wonders. But my favorite times are going to be the ones where we don't have sex: when we hold each other all night instead, when we cuddle while watching a movie, when we lie awake talking about our lives."

"That was quite poetic," she said, the sarcasm dripping from her tongue.

"I hate you."

"Look," she said, looking me in the eye. Suddenly, she got serious. Brooke was always really good at switching moods at the snap of a finger. "If you feel this way, you should tell her."

"Tell her? Like I haven't tried. She'd leave. She'd throw a fit and break up with me."

"Do you want me to tell her?"

"No, that won't do either." I sighed, taking in a deep breath. "With Kelly, everything is so weird. Our relationship is honestly like walking on a tightrope. I have to be so careful about everything I say or do. Can't ask her to move in with me, or she'll get all cold. I can't tell her that I love her, or she'll break up with me. It's like she's a rhino. Sure, she's all majestic and peaceful from afar, but as soon as you mess with her or look at her the wrong way, she'll charge at you, ripping out your heart from your chest with her horn."

"Are you insinuating that she's the devil?"

"No, it's just that I'm so on edge all the time, praying that I don't say the wrong thing. I'm always handling her with kid gloves, terrified of scaring her off with the truth."

I slumped back, my bottom lip exposed in a pout. Leaning on Brooke, I whispered so softly that I wasn't sure that she heard. "It's all just terribly delicate."

"You two are up early," Kian's voice commented. I turned my head to see him walking into the kitchen, holding Charlotte in one arm and holding an empty bottle in the other. He plopped Charlotte down on one of the high chairs that Mother had set up and walked over to the pantry where Robin had put the baby formula.

"My body has already adapted to waking up before the sun," Brooke explained. I was constantly astonished at how she could turn the plainest explanations into something relating to science.

Kian shrugged, making his daughter her milk. "Charlotte's my alarm clock. She wakes up with the sun. You'll understand once you guys have kids of your own." He winked at Brooke, referring to Mother's constant pestering over when she should be expecting grandchildren from her.

I raised my eyebrow and glanced over a Brooke who looked like she wanted to punch Kian. He would never understand what it was like for us, because he had a wife who Mother adored, and he had a herd of cute little kids. He was her perfect son. Her daughters, on the other hand, seemed to be quite lacking.