Chapter Text
Jude was walking down the isle, that infamous day. As he was about to marry the man he’s been with for the past ten years, his whole life started flashing before his eyes just like a broken record, filling his mind with bittersweet memories.
Lena squeezed gently his forearm as to snap him back from that unconscious state of haze as they finally reached the end of the aisle.
Jude smiled as he kissed both of his moms cheeks. He turned around and found the eyes have been starring the most of his sweetest dreams.
“Hey.” He mouthed softly, meeting the most blinding smile in return.
He took his fiancè’s hand and turned to face the priest that was going to perform their ceremony.
As the priest started talking about respect and love and being faithful to each other till death do they apart... well, he started feeling cold sweat running down his forehead.
He couldn't blame himself. He was going to get married to the man he loved. He expected to faint, considering how sensitive he felt about weddings. It was all normal. He felt a light squeeze and smile to the source of that warmth, always capable of dissipating every fear, every doubt with just a touch of his hand.
His fiancè didn’t miss a beat. He pronounced his vows with such ease and calm that left Jude breathless. He was never going to pronounce his own vows with the same calm, or without stuttering, or utter the words out in the first place.
He realized he was gaping at air when he met a quite worried pair of hazel eyes looking back at him.
“J-Jude?”
“Son. You okay?”
Jude turned to look at the priest. He shook his head as to clear it and pronounce a feeble. “Y-yeah. Sorry. I-It’s just.. this moment is important and I don’t want to mess it up.”
“Son.” The priest whispered with a sardonic tone. “There’s only a way you could mess this up.”
Jude’s eyes fluttered close as he breathed out a feeble. “I’m ready.”
“Jude Adams Foster..”
Jude’s eyes were locked with the hazel ones as he listened to those words that clicked something in him as being pronounced. It felt like a door, in the most hidden spot in Jude’s heart, was bursting open. Memories started flooding through his mind that despite being just that, fragments of his past, still hurt like hell.
He saw eyes and smiles that-- Jude hadn’t noticed before-- but looked painfully familiar but still not the same.
He stared into his fiancè’s intense gaze and Jude suddenly felt his sight going blurry for a moment. He blinked and he wasn’t really that surprised to see glimpses of a familiar face just before his eyes.
The boy’s eyes were warm and lighter than he’d ever seen. Jude wondered it had to do something with the particular day, or the light beaming through the colorful mosaic window that stood just before their eyes and that seemed to bring so many colors into their hearts in that moment.
Jude wondered if that was a sign. It probably was. No one was moving after all and it had to be one his daydreams, the kind of ones that was meant to make him reflect on before a big life changing decisions.
He looked around and Everyone was frozen still. Jude’s eyes skipped beats when his eyes met Lena’s pained expression.
She had her hands clasped in her lap as to cling to something, hope maybe?
Hope for what? Jude wondered. Then, His gaze flickered to Stef her eyes were fixed on his fiancè’s direction. She was looking at him with sadness flashing across her features as she was sorry for him. She was biting her lip and one of her hand was resting on top of Lena’s. They both looked like they were waiting for the final judgement.
he found himself looking (Just out of curiosity) at everyone else’s expression and Jude noticed that no one looked happy for him; more like sympathetic, sad, resigned, pitiful.
Something shifted within him, something buzzing in his chest. It was probably his self-consciousness suggesting him to search for his own heart.. so Jude asked himself the dreaded questions he never dared to say out loud.
Did he want to? Yes. Of course, he wanted to. Jude was happy. He wanted to get married. He wanted to have a colorful happy life with his husband.
Was he ready? Yes. Absolutely yes. He was tired of waiting. He was thirty-one and it was time to start a family.
The last one was always the most challenging: Was he the man of his life?
Jude’s eyes flickered to the boy’s, and it only took one look into those eyes deep and clear like melted caramel to find the answer he was looking for.
I can lie to myself but I can't lie to my heart.
“Do you take C—“
Jude’s eyelashes fluttered to his cheeks as he gulped. “No.”
He expected the loud general gasping and gossiping echoing through the church but it still made his stomach ache.
“W-what do you say?”
This time it was the boy’s voice that snapped him back into reality and despite feeling like the world was crumbling behind his feet, Jude had to take the fall.
“I can’t do this.”
He let those tears he’d been fighting back since that morning to finally slide down his cheeks.
No one dared to say a word not even the priest that was gaping at the painful exchange with eyes blown wide. He’d probably seen scenes like those in movies, apparently considering the shock on his face.
“B-but, w-why?” The boy’s voice sounded broken as he kept stuttering. “I..I t-thought we were happy.”
“I was.” Jude didn't know how to do this without breaking anyone's heart. He knew it was impossible and he thought he deserved to feel like utter shit. “I am. Y-you did nothing wrong.” He felt his hand falling down at his sides being dropped by the boy standing across from him. “It’s not your fault and I know this really sound like the classic ‘it’s not you, it’s me.” But I swear, Cameron. It’s true, cause it’s not your fault that my heart is still so impossibly tied to someone else’s.”
“You’re such a—“
A soft cough made him think twice before calling Jude ‘asshole.’ In a church.
“You can say it.” Jude said. “It’s not a bad word if used in this contest. I think God knows it, too.”
He threw a quick look at his moms and they both still looked worried, but more relaxed as a huge weight had been lifted off their shoulders. Jude kind of felt the same, well except for the waves of guilt flooding through his whole body. In particular when Cameron said, voice broken and thick with tears. “All I’ve ever done was love you.”
Jude's heart broke a little more in his chest if that was even possible for someone to break any further.
“I loved you too.. even if you may not believe me, right now.”
“I don’t!” Cameron grunted with gritted teeth. “The most selfish part of me really wishes you to experience this kind of pain, you know? Y-You don't know what it feels like to be this close to spending the rest of your life with the one you love and being ripped it off your hands like that, literally in the blink of an eye."
Jude’s breath hitched at the sharp edge in Cameron’s voice. His hazel eyes bitter and full of resentment but Jude couldn’t really blame him. Not in the slightest. “But.. this is the hurt talking because I loved you, Jude. I-I fuck. I still love you and you’ve ruined me. Y-you’re taking a part of me with yourself and I.. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.”
“You will.” Jude cried out reaching for his hands once again. He couldn’t allow Cameron to think that was just it. That his life was over. He couldn’t let go Connor without pulling down all the walls he’d built around himself, without fighting one last time for him. He had at least to try, just one more time. "I get that you're upset and angry, right now but please.. Cameron. Just because I've done this to you, don't close yourself off to love. Believe me when I say that I've not spent all these years thinking about him when I was with you."
Cameron gave a snort as to call bullshit, but that didn't discourage Jude so he went on his speaking. "I just realized that I can't lie to myself but not to my feelings and I found myself realizing that it was just it. I would have married you and I would have spent the rest of my life without him and.. I will probably, but I want to at least try. “
"Okay." Cameron sighed, turning to look at his mother. She was devastated, crying and sniffing and sobbing some more. "I guess I'll drown my problems with the champagne I've bought in occasion of our first wedding night."
He was trying to sound playful and calm but his voice was trembling, probably on the verge of bursting out in tears right in front of him. "I'll go. Bye, Jude. Have a nice life and as future bits of advice. Don't break up with someone two minutes before marrying them, because I can promise you.. there's a circle in hell for people like you."
The priest coughed once again as to correct that assertion but Cameron just quickly strode out of the church.
"That's not entirely true." the priest whispered in Jude's ear two minutes later.
Jude gladly appreciated the silence filling the car ride to his house that until Mariana decided to break the silence. "Are you going to run into Connor's arms, right now?"
"Mariana!" Lena chastised with severe tone. The girl just rolled his eyes, ignoring her mama's murdering glare and leaning to whisper into Jude's ear.
"Keep your tuxedo on, just like in the most romantic love movies."
"Mariana stop pressing your brother to--"
"Stop the car."
"What?!"
"Stop the car!" Stef pulled the car over.. surprise, surprise! Connor's father house.
"You're not seriously going in there." Mariana gasped with eyes blown wide, a look of absolute shock flashing across her features.
"Oh, I'm so going to."
"Jude.. you can't just show up after what? Eleven years?"
"One." Jude corrected with a sad smile quirking on his lips. A soft, regretful sigh escaping his lips.
"Say what? One? Have you seen him, last year? When? How?!"
"Mariana.."
"Tell me, you heathen!"
"Mariana!" Stef and Lena both groaned in frustration. Their daughter was a menace for the human kind.
"Nothing happened," Jude promised with a firm voice that started to break as he was met by Lena, Stef, and Mariana's quizzical looks, so his voice broke a little as he revealed. "Nothing that shouldn't have happened. We just talked."
"About what, exactly?" Mariana asked with a confused expression written all over her face. Jude just blushed, unable to reveal anything about that night that he'd kept into the darkest corner of his heart, erased it from his memory until that moment. "Oh my God. You slept with him!"
Jude's mouth fell open as he uttered a loud 'No!' that startled the three women sitting in the car with him. "W-We didn't. I would have never done that to Cameron." Jude admitted through a loud sigh, a pink blush creeping over his cheeks. "B-But w-we had a moment and I.. I thought, Just for a minute t-that was it. B-But nothing happened, I swear. I would have never cheated on Cameron. I-I'm not that person."
"We know, honey," Lena says sweetly. "We know you."
Jude smiled weakly before unbuckling his belt, a look of determination and fear flashing across his eyes. "Now or never."
"Good luck, hon."
Mariana gave him a soft squeeze on his arm which Jud returned with a smile. "Thanks."
He watched the car strode away and then he turned around, frozen for a moment just a few feets away from his biggest dream and nightmare.
He walked to the door with heart pounding hard in his chest, both because of the anticipation of the moment and also because of the white lie he told his moms and sister in the car.
He couldn't admit what truly happened, besides.. it was more like an omission than a lie.
They asked the wrong question after all.
Lost in his thoughts, he didn't realize that someone had opened the door.
"Jude?"
Jude was on the verge of a stroke as he gave a nod of his head, feeling bile rising up in his throat at the sight of his young, unforgettable first love.
"Hi, Connor."