Chapter Seven
They opened the door, the bell humming in the distance as they turned down the sidewalk. Small shops and apartments lined the snow beaten road, reaching just two stories up on all sides. The wind blew wisps of flurries across the yellow lines, shimmering beneath hazy street lights before resting on the bottom of closed doors.
Julia looked at Erin, her eyes gleaming as she continued to talk about an incredible bookstore she fell upon two years ago in a remote part of Maryland. If Julia looked hard enough, she could see snowflakes reflect like tiny moons in her eyes. She could get lost in those eyes, at how she lit up describing a one of a kind edition of one of Ernest Hemmingway’s earliest novels. She spoke of the binding in such detail that Julia could picture it before her, gold scrollwork across green fraying leather.
“So, you’re a book enthusiast?” Julia smiled, burying her cold hands deeper in her coat pockets. The wind picked up around them, sending a shiver down her spine. They walked closer together, their arms occasionally brushing through thick jackets.
“I wouldn’t say that! I have appreciation for the finer things in life.”
“As you should.”
“What about you?” Erin’s pace slowed a little. “What do you do for fun?”
They reached a corner store, the red “closed” sign blinking in the window. It had to be almost eleven, but Julia refused to check her watch. Her cold nose was the only clue that they’ve walked for over an hour already. It felt like just seconds as she sunk deeper into Erin’s voice.
“I read,” Julia thought a little more between breaths, “usually when I can’t sleep.” She took a few more steps, contemplating what else she did in her spare time.
“What do you read?” Erin asked, as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.
“Mostly trashy romances.” Julia grimaced. “Definitely not in the Hemmingway mindset these days. I feel like I have to be so serious at work. My writing is only academic now. I think it’s just a guilty little pleasure.”
“Please! I’m a complete cliche. I only read the classics! What else do you do?”
“I think that might be it. Work keeps me pretty busy. How sad is that?” They both smiled at each other. Why did she never want to stop laughing, to stop smiling, around her?
She used to spend weekends hiking in the Adirondacks, hiding in a cabin off the beaten trail hidden by fallen brush. Her fingers would dance across canvases, creating breathtaking abstract portraits–crisp cerulean melding with amber skies in subtle strokes–until her fingers grew numb from the angle of her paintbrush. She used to run, annoying Marin at 4 a.m. while she searched for a base layer in the dark; she always forgot to take out her clothes the day before. Julia used to do so much, have so much worth doing.
When did she stop? When was the last time she pushed her feet off the ground on a chilly Monday morning? When was the last time she reached for her paintbrush instead of brushing dust off them? When did those things stop having meaning? Julia buried herself so deep within her work, so deep in something she felt had meaning, that she wasn’t sure what the meaning of her own happiness was anymore.
“It’s not sad! Well,” she teased, “just a little.”
“I know, I know!” Julia threw her pink hands up in defeat. “I have to get out more. I swear, the only fun I ever have is when Keegan comes over for our weekly Sunday sports night.”
“Keegan?”
“Keegan Marrow. You met her at Kleinton earlier,” Julia explained. “She was the one who opened our faculty meeting updates.”
“Oh! Do you two often hang out outside of school?”
“All the time. She’s my assistant, but is also a really great friend.”
“She seemed really nice.”
They turned the corner, retracing their steps back to where their cars were parked. Julia refused to count how many times they circled the same four blocks.
“She is! I think you’d definitely like her. She’d be a great resource for you to rely on during your time here.” Julia paused, slowing her stride. “I almost forgot: she’ll probably be reaching out to you this weekend to carve out a time to meet Monday morning to review your schedule.”
“Not a worry at all. I’d be happy to connect with her.”
They both walked a little further, matching each other’s slowing pace. Their arms bumped a few more times than coincidence could account for. Julia looked up from tracing the snow and salt covered lines in the concrete sidewalk and caught Erin looking back at her.
“What did you do for fun?“ she asked, her voice filled with quiet curiosity. It’s like she knew her. It’s like she saw past every blockade Julia built, like she could pull each layer of paper mache apart to find what actually laid beneath it all.
“I used to paint,” Julia said solemnly. “I used to write in college. Not just for academic papers. Kind of like poetry? But not really. Just for fun.”
“Why don’t you anymore?”
“I could lie and say I’m too busy,” Julia sighed, surprised she said that aloud too, “but I don’t really have an answer. I think at some point I stopped having things I wanted to paint or write about.”
A gust of wind blew over them both in an icy swirl. It swept up shimmering snowflakes from the rooftops above, throwing them into the air like a cascade of sparkling raindrops that landed on their hair.
When Erin didn’t say anything immediately, Julia felt like she shared too much. She didn’t know how to stop wanting to tell her everything.
“What do you do for fun?” Julia asked.
“Now that,” she grinned, “you’ll definitely pick on me for!”
“Keegan and I have a saying: listen now, laugh later.”
“Deal.” Erin smiled to herself and then looked back up at Julia. “I scrapbook.”
“Scrapbook?” Julia asked, just to be sure she heard her right. “Like little old ladies sitting around a table on a Wednesday morning, picking out pictures of their grandbabies to glue next to felt flowers?”
“Hey!” Erin chuckled, “you said you would listen first and laugh later! Not the other way around!”
“I’m sorry.” Julia couldn’t stop the chuckle in the back of her throat as she held up her hands in surrender.
“But yes, kind of. Except I scrapbook by myself with a glass of white wine.”
“That actually sounds nice.”
“It is.”
“Do you do it often?”
“Not as often as I used to,” Erin confessed, longing obvious in her eyes.
“Why not?” asked Julia.
Erin sighed and collected her thoughts for a moment, turning her head towards the ill-lit street. “This might be oversharing,” Erin murmured, her gaze dropping to the sidewalk.
“I think I’ve given more than my fair share.” Julia gently nudged Erin’s shoulder, the contact sending a tingle through her numb fingertips.
“At one point I had something I wanted to preserve: pictures of my sister, beach days with my twin niece and nephew, family get-togethers. Then I focused on myself: solo trips, hiking the Appalachian trail, surfing in the Atlantic, foreign places this job takes me to.” She paused, sighing deeply as her breath formed a misty smoke in front of them both.
“That sounds like an incredibly full life.”
“One day I was sitting in my kitchen, ready to start the next page, and I realized I didn’t know what or who I was preserving all those memories for.”
Julia stopped walking, too shocked by how raw and honest the conversation quickly became. How often do strangers talk about things like this? How often do two people who barely know anything about the other fall so closely in step that everything aligns?
She placed one hand on Erin’s arm and she stopped walking, too. “You didn’t share too much,” was all that she could come up with to say, but it was filled with so much more. She knew; it was the too-muchness that they both admitted to that night at the bar. Erin gave a half smile. She knew.
They walked a little further, both going back to casually brushing arms as if the other didn’t notice. More shops before them started to turn their lights off; the tenants rolling up the sidewalks as they locked doors and abruptly pulled blinds.
“What made you want to be a superintendent?” Erin asked. She acted as if she sensed their time together was dwindling and was grasping for any topic to prolong it. Then she added, “Oh, I’m sorry! I meant management.”
“Really funny!” Julia teased. “You have no idea how much of a microscope I am under! It’s bad enough to be the token lesbian of the community, let alone having it get back to a parent or board member that I was drinking in public, on a weekday.”
“It can’t be that bad! Token lesbian has a nice ring to it.”
“But it can.” Julia’s eyebrows arched. “Kleinton is like a mini-Harvard, and they never let you forget it.”
“It sounds like that puts a lot of pressure on you.” Erin’s eyes moved towards their cars, now just feet away. She stopped walking and stood facing Julia.
“Sometimes.” Julia shrugged, pulling her jacket closer to her neck to ward off the breeze. “That’s why you’re here: to push us to strive for even more perfection.”
There was a hint of mockery in her voice, but Erin chose to ignore it. Julia walked a little further and leaned against her dusty, salt-covered car, pausing for a moment.
“That’s why I stretched the truth.”
“I get it,” Erin said with a nod. “I really do.”
It didn’t matter what light Julia looked at her in. It could have been the decade-old dim overhead lighting in that meeting room, the natural light spewing in through her office window, or that streetlight. She was captivating. Gosh, that smile made her smile in a way that she thought was lost a long time ago.
“So, how long?” Erin asked.
“How long?”
“How long have you been at Kleinton?”
Reluctantly, Julia admitted, “this is my twentieth year.” She didn’t want to reveal her age–didn’t want to give Erin the opportunity to focus too much on the tiny wrinkles on her forehead. “How long have you been working for McSellen?”
“Not long, actually. This is only my fifth year with them. They poached me from an internship I had at a non-profit due to some research I published on reform.”
The math rolled through Julia’s head like a shaken gumball machine. If she got her bachelors by 22, and then finished her masters by the age of 24, with her experience, she at least has to be in her early to mid-thirties. Phew.
“That’s pretty impressive,” Julia clicked her tongue.
“Lucky is pretty much it,” Erin argued, a playful undertone swirling between them.
There was a long silence that stretched as they stood there. Neither one wanted to make the move to leave, but what else could they say?
“Do you know that when you get nervous,” Erin spoke quietly, “you rub your ring finger?”
Julia was taken aback. She most certainly did not. To her horror, she looked down at her left hand hung at her side and found her ring finger folded in towards her palm, her thumb firmly on the place where a gold band used to lay.
Fuck.
“I,” she stuttered, utterly embarrassed. She was caught red-handed. She couldn’t even deny it. “I did not know that.”
She never did get used to how naked her finger felt after taking off that ring. It still felt naked, like the one morning she happened to forget the ring in the jewelry dish on the windowsill above the sink. When you wear the same band, sparkling diamonds crowning at the top in the most perfect halo, for so many years, it becomes a part of you. Your finger shape and skin changes to fit its surroundings. Nothing ever quite fits the same ever again.
“Does everyone at your work know?” Erin’s eyes were full of compassion.
“No,” she answered quietly, her head unconsciously shaking. Erin looked like she was going to say something next, but Julia had to get something off her chest. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I didn’t know we’d be working together, or that…” she trailed off, remembering that without words, they agreed to leave the past behind them.
“That.”
“Yes, that. That which we will no longer speak,” joked Julia.
“For the record, I’m sorry about that night, too. It was so unlike me and it definitely put us in an odd situation,” Erin said, taking a step closer and shielding them from the rustling wind.
Julia wasn’t sure if she believed her. The way she waited for her in that bathroom, the touch of her hand on her back. Erin held all the confidence that she had to muster up each day. The way she kissed her. Oh, the way she worked her tongue, those vagabond fingers. There was no way that Julia could have been an exception for her.
“At least it’s behind us,” breathed Julia, desperately trying to sound relieved and not disappointed. She doubted it was convincing. “You know,” she said with a smirk, “given your position and what you’re at Kleinton to do, I shouldn’t like you.”
“Is that so?”
“It is.” Julia stood there, subtly nodding. “But you’re making that really hard.”
“I guess some things are out of your control,” she responded, her voice lower than usual, and Julia hated how much she liked that statement out of Erin’s mouth.
Another moment passed, only the sound of the wind howling over the snow-covered hills in the distance. Erin’s glistening eyes were still locked on hers, and Julia couldn’t bring herself to break the spell.
“Why doesn’t anyone know?” Erin questioned, gesturing to the ringless finger Julia still rubbed. Dammit. How does she break a habit she didn’t know she had?
“Because I am still married.”
“With no wife,” Erin’s voice was excruciatingly comforting even in the sting of the statement, “no ring?”
Julia couldn’t respond, and she couldn’t meet her eyes either. She didn’t understand why it mattered to her. This was the kind of conversation had amongst close family. It’s a topic only appropriate to discuss on the living room floor with a best friend, wine glasses in hand, cursing the name of someone who never deserved them in the first place.
It wasn’t a conversation to have on a sidewalk with someone she barely knew. It wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have at all, but that’s what it became. It didn’t matter that she had only met Erin a day ago; it felt like she knew her deeply, as if years melted into that first touch aligning their off-kilter worlds.
“Because I’m not ready,” she finally answered, it spewing from her lips as if it escaped a locked door.
“Not ready to let go of a woman who never deserved you in the first place?” Erin was even closer now, her voice full of a desperation to understand.
“How do you know what I deserve?” Julia felt a surge of anger. Erin had no right to just waltz into her life and act like she really knew her.
“Because in the short amount of time I’ve known you,” she spoke softly, sharing their hazy breaths, leaning towards Julia even more, “I want to prove to Greg that I’m worthy.”
Julia felt goosebumps rise on her skin again. It was probably from the cold breeze. It was definitely not from having that beautiful woman with rosy cheeks looking at her, hinting at promises they knew they couldn’t keep.
“We can’t,” Julia’s voice was a breathy sigh.
“If you’re afraid of the connotation of your seperat–”
“Fifteen years married is a long time.” Julia couldn’t let her finish her sentence. It rolled off her tongue, and she found herself feeling relieved of the burden. “Twenty years together is even longer.”
“Oh,” Erin breathed deeply, “oh, Julia.” Her voice was cashmere in her ears, holding such desperate calmness that she broke. She finally broke.
Julia didn’t see it coming when her walls shattered like hundred-year-old glass. She didn’t see it coming as tears filled her eyes, clouding her vision in a veil of fog. Still leaning against the car, her knees buckled. She leaned forward as she tried to stifle the chest-clenching cries that arose from a place within her that she didn’t know still lived.
Erin didn’t hesitate. She reached out and grabbed Julia before she could sink any further. She held her up, squeezing Julia’s waist with warm hands. Julia sunk her face into the neck of Erin’s jacket and everything she held in for the past year escaped every fortress she built up. Sobs tangled her stomach and clenched her hands as she crumbled.
Twenty years. Twenty years of laughter and tears. Twenty years of a promised future ahead. All gone. Everything she ever knew and loved was gone. And saying it aloud finally allowed the realization to settle into her skin, to fully shatter the little piece of herself she was still holding together.
She didn’t know how long she cried. Erin didn’t budge an inch, only moving to slightly rub her back, letting her know she was still there. She wasn’t aware when she actually stopped, only realizing after feeling her tear soaked cheeks burn red from the relentless wind.
She stood there, face buried into Erin’s skin as they swayed with each gust. Even on that foreign street–her back pressed against a dirty car and her front smooshed into another’s body–it was the most comfort she felt in a long time.
“I am so sorry.” Julia finally pulled away, only as far as the space between the car and Erin’s body would allow her. Erin’s scent was deliciously overwhelming from the heat they held between them. She wiped her eyes with a tissue from her pocket. “I’ve never–”
“Don’t you dare,” she interrupted, forcing Julia to avert her embarrassed eyes away.
Their bodies were now just inches apart; not as close as they were, but even more intimate as they looked each other in the face. Erin lifted her cold hand and placed it gently on Julia’s warm cheek, holding it there.
“Don’t you ever apologize for crying,” Erin’s shaking voice demanded. “Don’t you ever apologize for how you cope with the remains that someone else left you.”
Julia just looked at her, completely stunned. How was she so spectacular, knowing just what to say and how to touch her? How did she look at her like that and make her think that before her, before that very moment she hadn’t truly been seen until those springtime eyes locked onto her for the first time? Julia leaned her head on Erin’s shoulder again, breathing in that vanilla scent.
“How do you do that?” she whispered.
“Do what?” Erin asked, her hand gently running through Julia’s long blond hair, tucking it behind her ear.
“Hold me and make everything okay.” The words slipped past Julia’s icy lips, and then she froze, realizing the weight of what she just said.
Erin didn’t say anything. She wrapped her arms tighter around Julia as they leaned against that car. Julia allowed her shoulders to slump into Erin as she closed her eyes with a glimmer of peace she lost years ago.
Peace was funny like that. Sometimes it was steady, a constant that welcomed one home. Sometimes it was a flash of hope passing like time within the night. It was the first sip of coffee in the early morning,the sunshine on her face as she stepped outside on a Tuesday afternoon in August. It was throwing out a chipped mug even though Marin’s hands were the last to warm its ceramic handle. It was sitting in the living room reading a book and getting lost in its pages rather than the expanding emptiness around her.
They stood there, arms entangled around the other, with noses sunk deep into the scents of their necks for what seemed like seconds but could’ve been minutes. The ‘open’ light of the shop behind them flickered briefly and then went dark. They both stood a little straighter, afraid to pull away as the streetlight reflected off the car’s red paint.
“You should get home,” Erin breathed into Julia’s neck almost as if she was taking in her natural, earthy scent, “and get some rest.”
“Right, rest.”
She didn’t mean to ruin the moment. It just was that she didn’t know what rest was anymore. Was it when she would finally allow her body to sink into sleep, only to be woken in sweat-soaked sheets an hour later? Was it lying in bed for twelve hours on a Saturday because no matter how much sleep she did get, her bones ached with a longing of the nothingness that only sleep could bring? Was it sitting down with a book and feeling guilty because there was something else she should be doing?
Julia finally leaned back more towards the car, pulling just slightly away from Erin. Erin took the hint. She stepped back onto the sidewalk, straightening her coat as she brushed the dried white dirt off.
“Thank you for dinner.” Erin’s soft, watery filled eyes lifted.
“Thank you for,” Julia trailed off, unsure of what part to thank her for. “Thank you.”
“I guess I’ll see you Monday?”
“Yeah,” Julia said with a nod. “Get home safe.”
She wanted to reach for that familiar hug again, but what did strangers do when they said goodbye? It’s most definitely not a cuddly embrace, but a handshake felt inappropriate for the moment they just shared. Instead, Julia smiled at her just a little too long. Erin did the same.
She got into her car, prepared to drive away, but Julia couldn’t help but steal one last glance at Erin standing on the sidewalk. The world seemed a little less daunting, a little more hopeful as she started the engine and drove off into the night.
When she got home, for the first time in more days than she could keep track, she walked into that house and didn’t think of Marin. She didn’t see her in the office, picture her in the kitchen fixing her tea, or feel her in the cold sheets when she crawled in. For once, she didn’t feel sorry for what was or was no longer. She just was. Everything just was, and at the very back of it, she saw Erin’s smile as she drifted away to the hum of the fan twirling above her.