Bluebirds Without Wings | Julie and the Phantoms

Just Julie

"You saw that?" he said, looking down at the table and tracing a few of the etched couple names. "I didn't get to see it before they took it down. I heard we looked good, though." Julie particularly knew that Luke looked great.

"Yeah," Julie agreed. "You guys are really talented. I think you guys could really be something some day."

"I hear you're quite the talent yourself, Princess Julie," Alex said to her. Julie raised an eyebrow. She never performed in public.

"Has your mom seen me play?" she asked.

"No," Alex said. He pointed his nose to Luke who was pumping his fist in the air, screaming chug, chug, chug with everyone. There was a roar of cheers after a few seconds. Then, people screaming in disgust. Julie heard Luke telling people to get Reggie water. He was a natural leader. "Luke did."

Julie felt her heart stammer, and she looked at Luke in curiosity as he took a pile of napkins from a table. He caught her eye for a second, but he rushed back to Reggie. He talked about her? "Really?"

"Oh yeah," Alex said. "He speaks highly of you."

"Did he also tell you I tried to get him fired?"

"He doesn't linger on negative things. He has enough going on inside his head. I think." Julie looked at Alex who shrugged. "I don't know. He doesn't really open up to us. I can tell you everything about Reggie's life before he got to the academy, but we don't know anything about Luke's. He gets sad when he talks about it, so we don't push it further."

Julie didn't know what to tell him. She knew Luke had this lingering aura similar to hers, but she couldn't quite describe it still. Him being around always made something in her tug east, away from him. It made her want to keep the door between them closed but the more she opened it, the more she wanted to rip the door off permanently.

Alex cleared his throat, feeling the silence. "Willie has also told me about you. Said you guys were good friends in your childhood." Julie smiled and noticed a different smile on Alex's face. Like he knew an inside joke of theirs that was supposed to be a secret.

"Did he tell you?"

Alex chuckled. "Yes."

"I mean it's only common courtesy you tell the person you're dating that you're engaged to someone else," Julie said, making Alex laugh and sit back in his seat. Alex was the new bird she was meant to find. "No, I'm kidding." Julie shook her head. "They just said that. But obviously, it was annoying enough for us to joke about it."

Alex paused for a second and rested his jaw on his hand, looking at her with his eyes squinting. "Weren't you like, twelve?"

"Welcome to being a monarch. They're always trying to marry you off, especially when you're close to someone of higher class. Or a prince in general." Willie had three older siblings which meant his job was to marry someone of importance and that someone to his parent's preference, was Julie. Her parents didn't explicitly say it, either, but they always implied she'd have to get married young. She ignored it as hard as she could, but it would be like ignoring that she woke up in a castle every day.

"Do they still do that? Try to marry you off to foreign princes?" Julie shook her head, looking down at her hands. She folded them neatly.

"Not since my mom got sick." She took a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling. "I know it'll start again soon. I have a feeling."

"Even with everything going on?" She assumed his mom didn't hide things from him and neither did the boys. Alex probably knew more than everyone else their age, considering the high spirits in the club. A stark contrast to the gloom in the castle. Maybe that was just how teenagers prepared for war.

"Yeah." Julie told him. "They're scared of being left without a monarch. If my dad gets," Julie said, knocking on the wood of the table, "killed during this, my mom isn't here to step up to be queen. It'd be me. But I mean, I'm sixteen. Almost seventeen. I can't get married until I'm eighteen at least." Even if she had until age eighteen, Julie wasn't convinced she'd find the love of her life so fast and under so much pressure. She wasn't convinced she'd want to be a mother by nineteen.

"Have they been training you like crazy to take over?"

"Since I was little. My dad still needs a lot of help from people like your mom because he got his training so late. I'm practically prepared enough to take over tomorrow if I have to. They changed the law so I can be queen as young as fourteen, and I'd get an expediated ceremony like Luke and Reggie in times of crisis. My entire life can get flipped upside down, and I can't control it."

"I'm sorry," Alex told her, putting his hands over hers on the table. Julie gave him a soft smile. Nobody had ever felt sorry for her being born into royalty. His empathy made it feel like she wasn't Princess Julie. Just Julie. And she wanted to be her forever.

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A/N: Alex + Willie + established relationship all at once :) They're cute. I hope you guys liked this chapter despite me getting sad at the end. Remember to vote if you liked it! I'm so grateful that this finally hit 1K reads ;-; <3 It makes me so excited to update. Have a great day!