Beautiful Mistakes

Stifling the urge to sigh, Julie put on her "mom face" and marched right over to her.

When Matt noticed her, he sent a hostile glare in Aaron's direction and said, "Here she is."

"What is going on here?" Julie demanded. "Matt, why are you here?"

"I've been waiting here for damn close to an hour. This asshole doorman wouldn't let me come up!" he said, jabbing a thumb in the kindly doorman's direction.

In his own defense, the doorman blurted like a second grader trying to explain to his teacher why he had pushed the other little boy on the playground, "But Mr. Turner told me not to ever let his brother up when he isn't at home!"

"What?" Julie exclaimed, gaping at Aaron with a mixture of disbelief and… something else she hadn't yet identified.

Grimacing, Aaron rubbed the back of his neck and said to Julie, "It wasn't that I didn't trust you, it's just that I know Matt and I knew he would try to do this, to… to corner you when I'm not here, and I didn't want you to have to deal with that."

"You didn't want me to have to deal with that," she repeated with a nod, not believing him. "Because… clearly I'm not capable of looking out the little peephole, seeing that it's Matt, and not letting him into our locked apartment?"

He seemed to understand how unlikely that sounded when it was repeated back to him, so he grimaced again.

Julie sighed, then she turned her attention back to Matt. "What are you doing here, Matt?"

"I wanted to see you," he said stubbornly.

"Even though I made myself perfectly clear when I told you on the phone that I didn't want to see you?"

"But that's just because of him," Matt said accusingly, as if his argument completely excused his presence there.

"Right. Him. The person that I picked over you. What part of that wasn't crystal-fucking-clear, Matt? I am a hormonal pregnant woman and you are pissing me off—you might get a vase thrown at your head here in a minute if I don't start hearing an actual reason that you're showing up here, causing me turbulence in my life."

"Did he let you have my flowers?" Matt asked.

"They were delivered, and I gave them to the receptionist. I give her all of the flowers that you send me. In fact, if you continue to send them to the apartment I no longer even see them, because I told her not to send them up to me."

"Nice," Matt muttered. "Sending you flowers is a nice thing, you'd think you'd appreciate them."

"If we were dating, sure. At this point they're just big bouquets of vindictiveness that you send me to try to bother a brother that you are completely aware has trust issues that you instilled in him. This sibling rivalry between you two is ridiculous."

"That's not fair," Matt objected. "I don't just send you the flowers to bother Aaron, Julie. I have told you over and over again how sorry I am for how everything went down—”

Cutting him off, she said, "And I have told you over and over again that your time for making amends has passed. I don't give out free passes to fuck me over, Matt. When I was sitting on the bed of your guest room, terrified, confused, hurt—where were you then? You most certainly were not on the bed next to me telling me everything would be okay and somehow we would work it out. No. You kicked my ass out of your house. You sent me away—exiled me to live with a brother that you didn't even get along with, one you knew would be mean to me because of things that you did to him in the past. Please, Matt, tell me again how much you cared about me, how much you wanted me in your life."

"I made a mistake," Matt said, impulsively grabbing Julie's hand. "Julie, I swear to God—”

"Get your hands off of her or you're gonna be meeting Him a whole hell of a lot sooner than you expect to," Aaron stated, his eyes blazing.

"I love you," Matt said.

Silence.

Julie's heart plummeted and Aaron's face lost color. Julie quickly pulled her hand away, but her tongue seemed to be stuck in her throat and she couldn't manage to say anything.

"Get the fuck out of my apartment building," Aaron said lowly.

"Not until I'm damn good and ready," Matt said.

"I'm warning you, Matt. You better leave or I'm going to play every card that I have to bring your whole damn world down around you."

"What are you going to do, Aaron, sleep with my wife again?"

"Fuck you, Matt," Aaron shot back. "And I'm going to tell you something else—you better stop sending my girlfriend flowers, because I have let them be delivered to her up to this point, I thought you'd get this shit out of your system, but you know what, you've crossed the line and I'm not dealing with this shit anymore. The next bouquet of flowers that I catch you trying to send Julie, the receptionist isn't going to be receiving them; Emma will. I'll send every last baby's breath to your wife and see what she thinks of your little love letters."