The Bachelor

Chapter 24

“Stop following me!” he shouted at the camera guy as he stalked out of the room, frantically looking for the bathroom or something close to it.

The camera guy walked off without argument. Lately, they had been shoved aside by him and today was no exception.

There was a door at the end of the hallway that indicated a washroom of some sort and he stormed right towards it and did not bother knocking. “Jules,” he nearly shouted and he heard a yelp.

A female child ran out of the room, glaring at him. “Can’t you read?” the child asked, pointing at the word, ‘GIRLS’.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, stepping aside.

“Go away, Zach, really, I’m serious,” Julianne’s voice said from inside one of the stalls. “I just need a few moments.”

“You’re depressed,” he stated, closing the door behind him and locked it.

“No, I’m not. I just told you—”

“The reason why you can’t trust me when I say I love you?” he interjected. “You’re trying to make yourself believe that what my father said was true, aren’t you? Well, he’s wrong.”

There was no answer.

“You’re using the excuse that your father left you so you won’t feel obliged to worry about our situation. You take comfort to the thought that you can never trust men because your father left you. Well, news, Jules, I’ll never do that.”

“That’s what he promised me,” she sniffed.

Zach didn’t answer for a moment. Well, maybe her fear of trusting men was that deep after all. “You’ll be sick of my presence, I promise you. I’ll never do what your father did.”

“Don’t promise something you are not certain you can keep, Zach,” her voice rose a notch higher, indicating he was getting into her nerves. “Our life in this show will be completely different once we’re outside,” she said, opening the stall door. Her eyes, the ones still damp with tears from earlier, looked at him, “You can never be certain of what you will feel once everything is over, Zach. That’s why I think your father is right.”

“And you’re crying because?” he asked stupidly.

“Because I’m feeling a lot of emotions today. This place is not helping.”

“Because of your father.”

“Yes, and because I know how those children will feel when we go later.”

“What?” he asked in a whisper.

“They will feel lonely because they’ll be alone once again. Then their hopes will go down because they will think we didn’t like them because we left. That’s not a very pleasant feeling, I tell you,” she said, wiping the last of her tears.

“Hey, come on, calm down,” he walked towards her and pulled her in his embrace.

 *****

Julianne didn’t know how their conversation went from one subject to another. Maybe because she was feeling everything at the moment, and she was weak to guard off the other worries that she had regarding Zach.

It always happened to her every time she was reminded of her father. Everything that she had put off would all come rushing in whenever that great gigantic wall came crashing down.

But as always, she learned how to build it up as quickly as she could. Like that moment, she let Zach hold her for a while as she struggled to put everything back—every single worry—in their own respective boxes.