Chapter 7
JULIA
I didn’t think that my entire life could fit into three small suitcases. I always thought that, when the time came, I would need one of those big trucks designed for hauling heavy freight.
Yet, here I am, standing on the sidewalk and watching my boyfriend lower three small suitcases into the trunk of the car that he’s been living out of for the past month.
My mom watches from the living room window as Tripp opens the passenger side door for me and I climb inside, casting one final glance back at the life that I knew.
Tripp shoots a hateful glare in her direction, the same one that he offered his own parents as his life was packed away, and he settles into the seat next to mine before starting the engine.
“You don’t need them,” he tells me.
“They called me a slut, Tripp,” I sniff, wiping the back of my hand against my nose. “What are we supposed to do, now?”
“We can just drive. B gave me some cash. We can just go and see where we land,” he says. Dropping a hand onto my inner thigh, he gives me a squeeze. “You’re not a slut; and even if you were, it wouldn’t be anyone’s fucking business but your own.”
My hand skims the length of his arm and I lean across the center console to rest my head on his shoulder as my eyes drift closed.
Sometimes, I think Tripp is the only person who really sees me.
He knows when I’m upset, even when I don’t say it. He can feel when I’m stressed about something. He has all of my food orders memorized at all of our favorite restaurants and he always brings me a stockpile of my favorite candies the day before my period starts.
He didn’t accept Edie or Brody’s offers to stay with them because it would have kept him too far away from me.
He knew something was wrong when I called him tonight just because of the way that I breathed.
I’ve never thought before that someone would go to the ends of the Earth for me, but I think he would.
“They’ll tell everyone that we ran away,” I tell him.
Moving his hand from my thigh, he places it on my cheek, and I melt into his touch.
“Fuck it,” he says. “Let them.”
My fingers wrap around his bicep, and as we come to a stop in front of a red light, he pulls my face in his direction.
“I’m gonna marry you one day, Jules,” he promises, “and I’ll never let anyone hurt you again. No one, okay?”
One day, I’ll tell him about the future that I see for us.
The horde of kids running around in the back yard of our light pink house – not too big, not like the ones that we grew up in.
Cozy. With nightly family dinners that I’ll have to learn how to cook, but I won’t mind.
It will make me happy to take care of my family.
Tripp will fight me on the color for a while – an hour, maybe. He’ll want to keep it neutral; a nice beige or even a crisp, clean white – but he’ll give in to the pink eventually.
No one in our house will ever wonder if they’re loved. If it matters who or how they love. They won’t be shamed for who they are or the way that they think.
Our home will be a safe place.
We’ll be happy there.
Present Day
“You doing alright back there?” Tripp calls through the speakers inside my helmet with a few pats to my thigh. “Need a pit stop?”
Adjusting my body to tighten my arms around his waist and my knees around his hips, I shake my head.
“I just zoned out for a sec, sorry,” I tell him. “I’m good.”
Truthfully, this back seat – if it can even truly be called a seat – is one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever had the displeasure of sitting on.
I’m ninety percent sure that it has either been completely lost somewhere between my buttcheeks or that my buttcheeks have actually just fallen off of my body entirely, left behind on the road somewhere, miles away from here.
I won’t tell Tripp that, though. He’s trying to cheer me up; it isn’t the first time he’s done this. In fact, almost every ride he’s taken me on – or dragged me on – has been for the same reason.
I really wanted to like riding with him, to feel the air whip against my skin and watch the world fly past us at incredible speeds.
I’ve always been a little bit envious of how refreshed he always seems when he gets home from a meet with his friends or an hours-long ride that lasts from sun down to sun up.
While it may not be the same terror running through my veins tonight that I usually feel, I worry that this feeling is so much worse.
This time, all I can do is cling to the man that I don’t know if I deserve anymore and hope that I don’t fall apart.
When we finally make it home after another hour on the road and a stop at the nearest gas station for a fill-up, Tripp helps me out of my suit and helmet before I trek up the stairs to start the shower.
Standing at the counter as the water runs behind me, my eyes fix themselves to the screen of my cell phone, waiting on the counter like it’s calling to me and to the pit forming in both my heart and my stomach.
I shouldn’t pick it up. I shouldn’t make the call. Tripp would be so angry if he knew that I was even thinking about it. I can’t count the number of times he’s begged me not to.
Against every instinct screaming otherwise, my fingers fly across the keypad as if on muscle memory alone and I pull the phone to my ear as the line trills.
“Cargill residence, this is Michelle speaking,” a woman’s voice says through the phone. There’s more of a rasp to it than I remember; she sounds so much older. I stand, frozen in time until she finally says, “Hello? I know someone’s there.”
“Mommy, it’s me,” I quietly choke. My voice cracks and breaks on jagged edges, and I feel as though I’ve been launched out of this timeline and into another, back to when I was ten years old, sitting at my mother’s feet while she puts on her face for the day.
“Julia.”
Does she sound angry? Surprised? There’s an edge to the way that she speaks that I can’t quite make out. It’s been so long since I last heard her voice, it’s almost impossible for me to decipher her different tones anymore.
“I made a mistake,” I tell her with a quivering voice, battling against the painful sting of tears that prick at my eyes.
The line is quiet, followed by a heavy sigh that spills through the receiver before she finally speaks again.
“You do that, don’t you,” she muses. “What have you done, this time? I assume you expect us to bail you out of it, despite the fact that you couldn’t be bothered to pick up the telephone in how many years?”
My free hand clamps over my mouth as small, sharp breaths force their way from my nostrils, my eyes and throat burning as the first tear drops from the corner of my eye.
It’s been fourteen years since I was kicked out of my house. Fourteen years since I was punished for having the audacity to have myself put on birth control. For trying to make the responsible choice – one that, in my parents’ eyes, made me a slut.
It didn’t matter that I was in a committed relationship. It didn’t matter that I’d only been with one boy or that we were in love with each other. As far as they saw it, I was disgusting.
Used.
Damaged.
It was the worst thing I could have ever done to them.
The worst thing that they could have done to me was pack up my belongings and throw my bags onto the street, not knowing or caring if I had anywhere else to go – all because I’d tried to make a responsible decision and protect myself.
The worst thing they could have done to me was to not be available when a day came that all I needed was for my mommy to come to me and hold me while I cried.
Tripp had begged me not to call her; he knew that this would happen if I ever spoke to them again, and he knew that if I called them then, that it would break me beyond repair.
He knew. I should have.
Maybe a small part of me did know; maybe that part of me was just smothered by the other parts that still, after all of this time, want so desperately for the parents that I knew to love me just as much now as they did when I was twelve years old and didn’t have a drop of sin anywhere near me.
Before I’d finally gotten the courage to ask the questions I’d been too scared to ask, and before I made choices that they felt went against what God would approve of – even if I felt otherwise.
On my knees with steam filling the room around me, I choke back a sob that begs to claw its way from my throat.
“Well?” My mom urges. “Tell me exactly what it is that you expect me to do for you, Julia.”
I’m two inches tall.
Shrunk down to the size of her opinion of me.
Maybe shrunk down to the fraction of love that I hope she still carries for me.
I can’t speak. I’m not entirely sure that I can breathe.
“God is the only one who can fix anything for you, anymore. I suggest you get right with Him,” she tells me.
And the line goes dead.
“Mommy, please,” I quietly plead into the now-silent phone clamped too tightly in my hand.
I spend the next ten minutes telling her about my mistakes, asking where to go from here, how I can fix it; and instead of hearing the lecture that she would have given me had she stayed on the line, I imagine her telling me what I might say if it was my child on the phone, seeking comfort and not judgment.
I pretend for a while that she cares.
And I pretend for a while that I can fix what my husband doesn’t know that I’ve broken.
When those ten minutes are over, I pick myself up off of the floor and wash my face, throwing my hair into a claw clip before I slip into a fresh set of pajamas and turn off the flow of the shower.
Tripp is standing at our dresser, pulling a pair of sleep pants from a drawer as I step toward our bed to pull back the covers. Tossing the pants onto the top of the dresser before pulling his t-shirt over his head, he studies me for a moment.
“Your hair’s dry,” he comments, his brow pinched. “It’s Sunday.”
My hand moves on instinct to brush any stray pieces into the clip secured at the back of my head, and I offer him a soft smile.
“I was too tired to deal with it tonight.” Gesturing toward my waiting e-reader, I say, “I don’t think I’ll even make it through three chapters.”
Closing the seemingly infinite distance between us, he wraps his arms around me, squeezing my body against his. I melt into his embrace, breathing in the rich wood and faint florals of the cologne that still clings to his soft, warm skin.
“G’night,” he tells me. “I love you.”
Please don’t sleep downstairs tonight, I beg him wordlessly as his lips meet the top of my head. Please let me fix this.
“I love you, too,” I tell him instead, tracing a thumb across the smooth skin of his jaw.
As he leaves for the makeshift bed waiting for him on our couch and I climb into our bed, I shiver.
Cold.
Alone.
Empty.