Chapter Twenty-Five
Julia
A buzzing sound startles me awake. It takes me a moment to pry my eyes open and pat around my nightstand for my phone. The brightness of the screen makes me squint, and it takes another second to realize it’s a text from Alex.
My stomach flips, and instantly, I’m awake. It’s the first time she’s reached out to me since the funeral. Losing Mason has been painful, but losing Alex has been slowly killing me.
I eagerly open the message. It’s a link to a song. A quick glance at the time and a little mental math and I figure it’s half past three where she is. Two weeks of barely any responses and rejected phone calls, and the first message I get from her is a song sent in the wee hours of the morning?
Brian stirs beside me. Careful not wake him, I slip out of bed and tiptoe to the main room.
The apartment is chilly, so I pull the blanket draped across my favorite chair over my shoulders and make sure the volume is down low before pressing the link.
The album cover pops up first, a white T-shirt against a red and white striped backdrop, with a red cap dangling from a denim-clad back pocket.
Bruce.
“I’m On Fire” begins to softly play.
It’s a song that we listened to on repeat when we were sixteen and caught up in teenage angst. Pining for people who weren’t interested. Now, the lyrics hit a little harder. They hold a deeper meaning. One that strikes straight through my chest and right to my core.
Because I think I know what Alex is trying to say.
My eyes start to water, and I stare at the moon. It isn’t fair, I want to tell her. To do this to me now. Not after pushing me away for so long and when I’m planning my wedding to someone else.
A part of me wants to throw my phone out the window, to silence this song because she’s too late. The other part of me wants to fly to London right this very moment and make her say it. Make her tell me exactly how she feels so we can deal with it together.
I pause the song and call her.
“Hey,” she says after the first ring. “Did I wake you?”
Having not expected her to answer, I freeze, my momentary burst of determination melting at the shock of hearing her voice. “Hi. No, it’s okay.”
“How are you?” she asks when I don’t say anything else.
“I should be asking you that.”
She groans. “Everyone asks me that. I want to hear about you.”
What about me? It feels like an eternity since we truly talked about me, and I’m practically overflowing.
I want to tell her about the wedding and how stressful it’s been.
Or that even though I’ve enjoyed grad school, I’m ready for it to be over.
I want to tell her I still cry over Mason and that I think about him every day.
That I think about her every day and that despite how deeply she’s hurt me, I miss her.
But mainly, “I want to know why you sent me that song in the middle of the night.”
“Ah,” she says, drawing out the word, as if she was waiting for me to ask. “I was sitting on my fire escape thinking. About Mason and about you. Bruce came on, and I just…I don’t know. He always seemed to say it better.”
“I’d rather hear it from you,” I press.
She’s quiet for a beat and then, “I wanted to apologize. For all the horrible things I said to you. And for taking so long to do it in the first place. You’re the most important person in my life. I should never have pushed you away.”
I fight back the urge to cry. Despite everything, despite the hurt, I really do miss her. “I get why you did. Grief is a funny thing.”
She hesitates. “I’m not just talking about these past few weeks.”
“I know,” I whisper.
She takes a deep breath, and I can visualize her rubbing her hand along her thigh like she does when she’s nervous. “I’ve been a total asshole. I haven’t been the friend you deserve. But I want to try to do it right if you’ll let me.”
“You want to be my friend,” I repeat slowly, trying desperately to follow her conversation. She sends a song about heartache and love, then tells me she wants to be my friend?
I stand and look at the streetlight underneath the apartment window. Everything looks so still, so peaceful. She doesn’t know how to both love me and be only my friend. She’s still running.
I glance at the ring on my finger. It shimmers in the moonlight. “Is that all?” I ask, tired of the push and pull. The hot and cold. She’s telling me what she thinks I want to hear when I all really want is for her to be honest with me.
“Look, Jules,” she continues, “you deserve the best of everything. I can deal with these feelings if it means keeping you in my life. But I don’t want you to—”
“Alex.” She stops talking, and I press my forehead against the cool windowpane and smile, a memory rushing to the forefront of my mind. “Remember when we were eight, and we had our first fight?”
“Over who got to walk your neighbor’s dog while they were at a concert,” she says, and I can hear the smile in her voice. It was a stupid fight, one that ended with me walking Husker down the street and Alex walking him back.
It’s not the actual fight that holds significance, though. “Remember afterward? On the swing set? We made friendship rings out of grass and swore that we’d always be friends no matter what. Even after stupid fights.”
“This isn’t a stupid fight, Jules.”
“No, it’s not.” Nothing about this is stupid. Still, all I can picture are the twisted blades of grass with the white clover wrapped around my finger. A ring that held promise and acceptance.
A ring that’s making me wonder if I’m settling when I should be flying.
The first week of April brings the first real warm day of spring.
The sun shines in through the open windows, and I can hear the birds chirping outside the apartment.
Flowers line Brian’s kitchen, spilling over into the living space, with a rather large bouquet at the center of the dining table.
All sample centerpiece arrangements that Mrs. Prescott has sent over for my feedback.
For a wedding happening maybe sometime in the near future. Date still to be determined.
My late-night conversation with Alex a little over a week ago seems to have shifted something. It feels as if I’m slowly waking from a deep and hazy sleep. Like I’m finally beginning to see the bigger picture a bit more clearly.
A picture that involves bursts of happiness that lately have felt completely out of reach.
Brian walks down the hall, fastening the cuff of his favorite dress shirt and looking slightly concerned. “Have you seen my watch?”
“Is it not on the dresser?” I ask, turning back to the papers scattered along the coffee table.
“If it was, I wouldn’t be asking.”
I pull my laptop closer, making sure the series of numbers I’m looking at from my notes matches the ones on the spreadsheet. “I’m not the keeper of your things, Brian.”
He doesn’t stop moving, going straight to the side table near the door. “I never said you were. I was just asking.” He steps beside the couch and slips on his gold watch.
I clench my jaw to keep myself from saying something unnecessary, like he’d be able to find his things more quickly if he’d put them where he was supposed to.
“Are you okay? You’ve been really quiet lately.”
Can’t imagine why. One of my childhood friends, who I thought of as a brother, just died, grad school is kicking my ass, and my part-time job just trusted me with a huge client.
Not to mention the biggest thing of all: my best friend all but admitting she is in love with me but is going to watch me marry someone else rather than just fucking admit it.
All this while I’m supposed to be planning the happiest day of my life, which leads me to the current issue that is my future mother-in-law. “Just trying to wrap up this paperwork,” I mumble and stick my pen between my teeth.
He watches for a beat and shakes his head.
“I don’t know how you do it. Going over other people’s business mistakes would drive me crazy.
” He grabs his jacket that he laid out across the back of the sofa early this morning and shrugs it on.
“You’d make more money if you used that sexy brain of yours to invest in your own start-up. ”
“It’s not about the money,” I remind him. “I like my job and the company I work for. I like helping people succeed.”
“It was just a suggestion.” When does it stop becoming a suggestion and start to become an insistence? He straightens his clothes and holds out his arms. “How do I look?”
I make sure I look at him when I say, “Very handsome.”
He smiles and does a spin so I can really get a look at his new suit jacket. “Do I look smart?”
“How does someone look smart?”
He sighs. “I don’t know, Julia, I was just trying to get a reaction from you. Something other than indifference.”
I bite my tongue and go back to my computer. I’m not in the mood to spar with him.
He drops a kiss on the top of my head. “I should be back in a couple of hours. Don’t forget we’re having dinner with my mother. She wants to go over the guest list, and she’s eager for your opinion on the centerpieces.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I say dryly. How could I when I’m surrounded by a dozen vases of flowers I would never choose and when he reminds me every chance he gets? Not that he has an opinion one way or another.
These past few weeks have been rough, to say the least. Brian, who I don’t think has ever dealt with this level of grief, tried to help me through mine.
He sat with me when I cried and gave me space when I shut myself away in the guest bedroom.
He listened when I talked about Mason and held me when Alex ignored my calls.