Chapter Ten
“Great news!” Keegan exclaimed, pulling a weekly meeting schedule for Julia to review.
Julia stepped into the office, the early morning sunlight passing a soft glow through the window.
“Our parent-teacher conferences are finally done. Erin’s new office is finally ready!”
Julia looked up from her mailbox, the envelopes she just picked up folding over in her hands. This should be good news. She’d get her own space back. Things could go back to normal, whatever that was. She should be relieved. She should be thrilled, but she wasn’t.
This is great!
“That’s great.” She forced the perfect smile, hoping it didn’t look as plastic as it felt.
“You’ll get your hideaway back.” Keegan smirked.
“That is really great,” Julia repeated, trying desperately to sound sincere.
Keegan looked up from where she sat at her desk. She had a schedule in one hand and a folder in the other. She closed the folder and came around to the front of the L-shaped desk. She leaned on the glossy counter, her hands bracing the edges of the worn surface behind her.
Her eyes narrowed, sight locked directly on Julia. “What is it?”
“What?” Julia feigned confusion, turning around with the mail in her hands. Keegan raised both eyebrows and shot Julia a knowing look. “It is a great thing!”
“You aren’t acting like it’s a great thing.”
“I’m smiling and saying it is a great thing,” Julia defended. “How is that not acting like it’s a great thing?”
“Because you’re saying great too much.“ Keegan leered as she crossed her arms in front of her. “What is it? Really?”
And that’s when it hit her. Not the impact of a bug smacking on a dirty windshield on a cool June night. It ran into her like a building demolition, the debris rising her chest and clogging her judgment deeper with every sinking second.
Julia slumped in her chair, the one usually reserved for misbehaving children awaiting a stern lecture from the principal. She placed the mail on her lap and rubbed her temples, burying her face in her hands. A headache tapped at the back of her neck. The throbbing of her blood pressure echoed in her ears, wrapping around her forehead in a vise.
She couldn’t push down the disappointment anymore. She couldn’t hide that she was feeling something, even though she fought it as hard as she could. She couldn’t continue to deny that there wasn’t something between them.
“Oh, Keegan,” she sighed, frustration seeping into her voice. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Keegan looked around to make sure no one was within earshot. Julia didn’t swear. She didn’t need curse words to express her feelings, especially not at work, but at that moment? The moment when all the words in her brain, decades of degrees and literature piled in her own personal dictionary, and none of them could connect to sentences? That’s all she could get out.
Keegan didn’t say anything as she took a seat next to her, concern plastered over her face like malleable putty. She placed a warm hand on Julia’s arm, rubbing it softly as a mother would her child.
“What is it?” she asked in a hushed tone.
“I, I,” Julia couldn’t get the words out. She couldn’t say them aloud because that would mean there was something. And there couldn’t be something.
“Jesus, get it out!”
“Erin–” Julia blurted.
“Erin?” Keegan confusingly asked. “Erin?”
“Erin,” Julia sighed, hiding her hands back in her face. “I liked having her in my… I like her being… I, I, I think there’s something more between us,” she confessed, utterly embarrassed. “I think I want there to be something more.”
Keegan stood abruptly, emphasizing a noise between a gasp and a sigh. She picked up a piece of mail from Julia’s lap and swatted her with it, not once, but twice.
“Hey!” Julia shouted, pulling the letter from Keegan’s grasp.
“You had me genuinely worried there for a minute!” She threw her hands up in emphasis. “I thought something serious was wrong! I thought someone died.”
“Come on–”
“You’re an idiot,” she interrupted, her arms firmly crossed over her chest.
“What?” Julia incredulously asked.
“An idiot!” Keegan reiterated, her voice even louder and sterner than before.
“How am I an idiot?”
“Because you are telling me that it has taken you this long to realize you like her?” Keegan’s voice was full of frustration as she walked back around to her desk. “You’re not in middle school anymore, Julia. You’re allowed to like, like someone.”
Julia didn’t say anything as she stood, nausea creeping into her stomach and landing in her sternum like a ball of fire. As she approached the desk, Keegan just shook her head as she sighed. She looked back up at Julia, brown eyes rolling dramatically.
“You are an idiot,” she repeated.
“Keegs, what the hell am I supposed to do?”
“You’re a grown woman, Julia. You already know what I’m going to tell you.” As Julia stood before her with those puppy dog eyes, she groaned in surrender. “You’re the most stubborn person I know. The most hard-headed too! Unless it comes from your heart, it won’t make a difference if I say it aloud. I’m only going to tell you what I always have: find your happiness.”
Julia tried not to think of it throughout the day. She did like Erin, as a friend, of course. The problem was she liked her even more the harder she tried not to, the harder she tried not to not think about her velvety laugh. She couldn’t spend all that time with her, taking the risk of falling deeper and deeper under her spell, without a little of it rubbing off.
“Hey, Keegan,” Julia called from her desk.
“Yeah,” Keegan answered, obliviously walking in the room while flipping through a pile of papers fresh off the printer.
“Can you please notify Erin of her new office space? I have a meeting to get to shortly.”
“That meeting was pushed to Tuesday.”
“Oh, right,” Julia said while nodding, searching for another convincing excuse. “Can you let her know anyways? I have a lot of work to get done today.”
She raised her attention from the emails before her to see Keegan standing just three feet away, hands on her hips. Those sharp eyebrows could cut through metal.
“Julia,” she warned.
“Keegan,” she mocked.
“You can’t avoid her.”
“I’m not trying to avoid her,” Julia argued, trying to hold back her guilty grin. “I’m trying to get work done.”
“I don’t understand why you can’t just talk to her!”
Julia slowly looked up, mouth slightly open, but without a word to say. She wished it was that easy.
“Because every time I think about saying anything to her, I suddenly forget to breathe.”
She watched Keegan’s dark eyes soften, her shoulders loosening her arms at her sides. She took a deep breath, her purple dress shifting with the puff of escaped air.
“I will talk to her,” Julia promised. “I just can’t right now.”
“Okay,” Keegan sighed. “I’ll let her know.”
***
“So, I hear I finally got my own filing cabinet.”
Erin smiled from the doorway. Uncharacteristically, she wore a knee length dress. It was a muted green. It pulled the color from her eyes and projected it into the light like the sunrise over a tepid lake.
“You’re moving up in the world.” Julia smiled past the open laptop before her.
There was an awkward pause, an unsureness floating through the air like autumn leaves.
“I’ll probably be in and out moving some of my paperwork and what not over,” Erin hesitated, approaching her desk and piling folders on top of each other. “Seems like I got a little too settled in.” She forced a laugh, and it was too obvious.
You can stay.
“Not a problem at all. You know you’re always welcome.” Julia closed her computer to give Erin her attention, but she didn’t respond. Just stay. She waited a few seconds longer, but nothing. “I’ll be out most of the day for bus driver and food service interviews, but I’ll leave the door open.”
Julia stood, picking up her laptop and shuffling papers as she gathered the resumes clipped together on the edge of her desk. Erin’s hand remained on the pile of folders in front of her. She didn’t look up or make any move. There should’ve been something else said–something else to fill the strange emptiness in the air. There always was when it was just the two of them.
“Is there anything I can help you with before I go?” Julia asked, her voice tinged with a hint of desperation. Please say something. Ask to stay, please.
“No.” Erin smiled weakly. “Good luck with your interviews.”
Instead of staying there and asking if something was wrong, asking what was going on in that beautiful mind of hers, Julia left for her meetings. She didn’t stop by to ask about how she was settling in–didn’t pop in on her curriculum development workshop later that afternoon. She didn’t drop off the green scarf Erin left on the hook behind the door.
The rest of the week went by slower than the entire beginning of the school year–dragging like the week before a long vacation when students bounce off the walls with pent up energy. Julia’s office was empty, quiet with the sound of her own typing.
She only saw Erin in glimpses between appointments and classrooms, both hesitant of what it would mean if they were the one that reached out first. She didn’t want to intrude and visit her office.
Julia wanted distance, and now she had it. Perhaps it was for the best. That was the space they needed from the very beginning, right? Yet, as she sat alone in her office–her back turned to the door, lost in a daydream out the window–she wondered if the distance could ever be closed. It felt as though it had stretched beyond its original limits, like an overused rubber band that would never regain its elasticity.
Could she undo the friendship they had built over the past month? Or was it like trying to mend a broken glass plate, only to realize that the shattered pieces would never fit together perfectly? Now that she felt the comfort of Erin just existing, it would never go away. The stillness would never be the same.
***
Julia spent the entire day Saturday finishing whatever was left from the week, desperate for her reprieve with Keegan the next day. She wanted nothing in the way of a mindless day; a day without worry, or work, or any ridiculous excuse lurking from the shadows. She longed for silly conversation with Keegan, football, and wine. Nothing else.
Surprisingly, she got up and out of bed with time to spare. She didn’t lay there as the cold sheets wrapped around her and stared at the ceiling, wishing the heaviness of sleep would overtake her. She didn’t count the hours she stayed awake throughout the night, wondering how much was too little to have a functioning mind.
When she got out of the shower, she wiped the steam from the mirror with a wet hand. A white towel wrapped around her, tucked across her reddening chest. Her long blond hair looked dark as water dripped from the edges onto the white tile floor.
She did something she hadn’t in a while; she looked at her reflection. Not a passing glance to make sure she still had two eyes and a nose. No, she really looked at herself. She traced where fine lines pulled at the corners of her eyes, examining the brown bags cupping beneath them. She chuckled as she thought about the scar that was now barely noticeable just above her lip from when she fell off the top of the jungle gym as a child, too convinced that she would fly if she hoped hard enough.
She’d been too hard on herself. She’d always been too hard on herself.
She begged herself to smile. Ah, there she is. Even if it was just a glimmer, the Julia she knew and loved was still there. The Julia that cried as stupid romantic movies, that screamed the loudest at every sporting event even though none of the little ones were hers, that used to paint. The Julia she liked. She wasn’t lost forever. Maybe, just maybe, Marin didn’t take everything.
She threw on her usual t-shirt, jeans, and cardigan. She twisted her hair into a bun and continued on with her routine.
One final vacuum.
One final wash.
One final scrub.
Making her way back to the kitchen, she grabbed a duster, determined to give her surfaces one final pass before Keegan’s arrival. Her mother’s voice swam in her head. Your surfaces can never be too clean, Julia. Her fingers grazed the feathers when the door opened.
“Wow!” Julia exclaimed. “I didn’t think I’d ever see the day you walk through that door on time.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” Keegan scoffed.
“That’s why we tell you events start at eleven when everyone else is arriving at noon,” Julia joked. “Did Ben kick you out?”
“He actually decided to do that stupid poker night thing.” She gave a childish face while unzipping her jacket.
“So, he did kick you out!” Julia burst into laughter. “I thought I’d never see the day!”
Keegan smirked. “No,” she teased, sticking out her tongue playfully. “I just figured I could drop the kids off at granny’s a little early.”
Julia took the rest of the trays over to the coffee table. In the background, she heard the satisfying pop of a cork being released from a bottle, followed by the gentle sound of cold liquid being poured into sparkling glasses. Both of them settled onto the couch and Julia went to reach for the remote, their routine in full swing.
There was something about Keegan’s posture that stopped her. Usually she’d come in, throw off her shoes and plop on the couch like she owned the place. She’d launch into a tirade about her husband’s habit of leaving his clothes next to the hamper instead of inside it, or how he still hadn’t fixed the stubborn bolt on the front door despite being asked for the hundredth time.
Today was different. Instead of any sense of normalcy, she poured them each a glass of wine, carefully setting them on the marble coasters without a word. She adjusted herself in the chair to the side instead of on the couch. Her feet were placed firmly on the floor, not tucked beneath her or slung over the arm. She avoided eye contact while she picked at the dip with a carrot, as if she had something to say but didn’t want to.
“What’s wrong?”
“Huh?” She jumped, almost choking on the vegetable she just stuck in her mouth.
“Keegs.”
“Julia.”
“Spill it!”
“Spill what? This wine is too good of a year to drop any!”
“What did Ben do this time?” Julia groaned, turning her attention back to the television as she fidgeted with the remote.
“Ben?” Keegan shook her head sincerely as she picked up her wine. “Oh nothing. He’s still the big lug he usually is. He’s been super lazy this week, but that’s the usual.”
“Is it the kids? Did Brianne not get past the waiting list at the elementary? Because I can make a call–”
Keegan let out a sigh. “No, it’s not that.”
“Is it serious?” Now Julia was concerned. She set the remote down and turned her full attention towards her best friend.
“Oh,” she exhaled, “not serious at all, but I’m still not sure you won’t kill me.”
“Keegan,” Julia’s voice was a warning as she narrowed her eyes.
Keegan opened her mouth, eyes wide with part anxiety and part amusement. Before she could get out a syllable, the doorbell rang. Julia looked surprised by the foreign sound. It echoed through the vaulted ceilings and left a humming in her ears. No one ever came to her house and used the formality of that doorbell.
As she contemplated the last time she actually heard that ring reverberate off the wall, she found herself getting lost in the memory. It was the day a stout man with a five o’clock shadow in a cheap suit knocked on her door. He gripped a manilla envelope in his sweaty palms. In a gravelly voice, he asked for Mrs. Julia Jenner.
It was three months after Marin left, and she hadn’t heard anything from her. She never came back for anything. Not her scrunchies in the coffee table drawer. Not her favorite yellow dress hanging on the door in the closet. Not her hairbrush that clung to shining strands of fire. Not her dented travel tea cup she used every morning.
Nothing. She wanted nothing. Not even Julia.
She remembered knowing what it was. She remembered the feeling of a thousand rocks sinking through her chest as forcefully as hail beating on concrete. The calm before the storm. The way the sky turns such beautiful shades of pink and purple just before the destruction. She remembered nodding and taking that envelope as the man turned and left without another word.
She thought Marin would’ve reached out; never in a million years did Julia think the last time she saw her would truly be the last time. But no one ever thinks the last time will be.
If we knew there would be no second chance to fix everything or take back what was said or done, would we still risk it all? Would it make a difference if Julia knew what she did now? Would the finality of it all sink in fast enough for her to bar the door and drop to her knees begging?
Somehow, no matter what she could or should have done, Julia knew she’d still end up right where she was. She’d still be the last one standing, the last one with enough will left to still try.
She looked back at her guilty friend. Keegan’s brown eyes doubled in size, her lips pulled into a thin line. That was the look of a toddler with chocolate around her mouth as she claimed she wasn’t the one who ate all the frosting off the cake.
“Who’s at my door, Keegan?”
She didn’t say a word as Julia stood and began inching towards the entryway. Keegan turned her attention back to her wine and the shrimp on the table, murmuring mmm as she chewed. Incorrigible.
She didn’t know who she expected to be on the other side of that stained-glass door. With Keegan and her spontaneity, it could have been anyone short of a rainbow clown in a string bikini holding heart shaped balloons. One time she got one of those mail-order strippers to entertain three of their other friends. He sang Tom Petty and danced around in a sparkling pink leotard. It wasn’t pretty.
As she opened the door and cold air wrapped around her, she found Erin standing before her with a bottle of red wine gripped in her hand. A black jacket was loosely tied around her pale pink sweatshirt, the wind tugging at the corners. With one hand, she brushed a curl escaping her tightly pulled ponytail. It was the first time Julia saw her without brown curls bouncing in her face and she was speechless.