Chapter Nineteen
Julia didn’t sleep well, only having a short couple of hours to doze off into unconsciousness. She tossed and turned, taking a trip to the bathroom twice between bouts of frustration.
At times she thought she heard the click of a door opening or the shuffling of feet carried through the hallway, but the harder she listened, she only heard the sound of her own breath.
By four in the morning, she couldn’t lay in bed any longer. The easel in the corner called to her–a siren’s song in the hazy dawn covered fog. She took a deep breath. She still wasn’t sure what it would be yet. The lines were still indiscernible as she closed one eye and tilted her head.
She sat down on the stool anyway, her lower back aching from the angle already. In one swift movement she picked up a paintbrush and held it in her mouth as she plopped more paint onto her pallet.
In small strokes she blended salmon into maroon, and marigolds into vast olive colored arches. She folded winding brown rivers down the linen surface–peaks crashing into subtle horizons. Slowly, as the time ticked down on the clock in the corner, it was becoming something. Something… but what?
With a deep sigh, she rested her brush into the cup of water to her right. She squinted her eyes and tilted her head, but she still couldn’t see the big picture. It wasn’t right yet–the depth was all wrong, focus pulled in too many directions–its story wasn’t finished.
She opened the door to her bedroom quietly, releasing the latch with surgeon precision. Surprise covered her body in a weighted cloak as she approached the guest room, the door wide open, the space empty. The bed was made and a folded pair of sweats laid on the edge of the gold comforter. There was no note left, no goodbye spoken.
Way to go. Screw up another thing.
The sun hadn’t even begun to crawl over the horizon, but she decided to get to work early, even earlier than usual. What’s a healthier way to deal with the thoughts scrambling through your head than to bury them in work?
She hoped to avoid the very conversation she knew would come from Keegan’s mouth. She wanted to get to her office, close the door, and pretend to have meetings all day. It worked, sometimes. Well, not really, but hey! Today could be the day!
“So, we’re not going to talk about this?” Keegan asked, standing in the doorway of Julia’s office. She leaned on the doorframe, her long patterned skirt draping over her body.
“Talk about what?” Julia asked nonchalantly.
She took another sip of her coffee and opened her planner. Keegan just gave her that mom stare, her eyebrows raising much higher than they should be able to, her lips a narrow straight line. When it didn’t elicit an instant response as it did for her kids, she sighed and took a seat next to the desk. She allowed her shoulders to slump as she soaked up the defiance.
“I know you don’t want to,” she sighed again, “but I think you should talk about it.”
Julia leaned back into her plush chair, trying to see if she could sink through it and out the window.
“Which part?”
“Really?” Keegan groaned, her patience wearing thin. “Marin? Or do you finally want to talk about Erin?”
“I’m not sure what there is to talk about either,” she grunted. “Marin was there, and that was it. Erin is Erin.”
“What did she say?” Keegan asked, leaning closer as she shifted her weight to the desk. “And what the hell does ‘Erin is Erin’ even mean?”
“Marin or Erin?” Julia smirked. Keegan rolled her eyes so far back she was sure she got a decent picture of the back of her skull.
“You drive me to drink.”
“You do enough of that on your own,” Julia quipped.
“What did Marin say?” Keegan clarified.
“Nothing,” Julia shrugged.
“What do you mean, nothing?” she shouted. “She put you through a year of hell. She blindsided you. She said nothing when she followed you out?” She shook her head vigorously as she talked, her black hair moving with the air.
“She asked me how I was.” Julia’s voice was so quiet, so soft, so sad.
“And what did you say?”
“I didn’t.”
Keegan took in her words and then nodded. “That’s fair.” Her face then wrinkled with anger. “I should have walked back out and handled it myself when I saw her.”
“No,” Julia groaned, the word exasperatedly dragged out.
“I should have told her where to stick her attitude and then I would have–”
“Keegan,” Julia sighed.
Keegan stopped talking with a huff. Julia was well aware of all the awful things she would have done and said to her. They planned half out while drunk, Mariah Carey screaming on her early 2000s boombox, on the floor of her living room one night.
“I’m happy you didn’t,” Julia added.
“I know you wouldn’t have appreciated it.” She rolled her eyes. “Was that it? Or did she spew any other bullshit? Because I’ve been waiting for the day you finally decide to let me go after her.”
“She followed me out as we were waiting for the last group to leave,” Julia paused, heat rushing to her cheeks. “But I kept walking.”
“Didn’t you want to know what she was going to say?”
Astonishment was plastered on Keegan’s face like cheap wallpaper. There were times when she held Julia on the floor of her living room while she fell apart, sobs wrenching her heart from her body.
After it first happened, Keegan drove to her house every weekend and waited until she ate something. She forced her into the shower and washed her dishes when they piled too high. She was there for every stumble along the way–a force to be reckoned with–the best kind of friend she could ever have hoped for.
Julia thought about that question. She thought she wanted to know. She used to think about it so much that it played on repeat in her head for months at a time. She wanted to know why. No, she needed to know why.
One September night Marin and she laid curled into each other on a hammock, swinging in the fall breeze. They were floating in the air, giddy with laughter. The stars were so bright–constellations glowing on all sides, emphasized in yellow highlighter–almost too luminous. And even though something so incredible, so scintillating, was right above them, their eyes were locked on each other.
Julia’s mind was quiet. Everything else faded away. Everything made sense. But now every past memory halts at one question: why wasn’t she enough? Why hadn’t that moment engrained itself so deeply in Marin’s mind? Why did it mean something different to her? And that, that question, she knew she didn’t want the answer to.
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “Would it make a difference?”
“I don’t know,” Keegan whispered, sympathetic pain in her voice. There was a long break filled only with their rattled breathing. “It wasn’t your fault,” Keegan said at last.
“What?”
“What happened,” she continued, “I don’t think I ever told you that it wasn’t your fault. I’ve told you she’s garbage. I’ve reminded you that you weren’t the problem in your relationship, but I’ve never said ‘it wasn’t your fault.’”
Involuntary tears welled in Julia’s eyes. Those were the words she couldn’t bring herself to believe. She had to have done something, said something, to push Marin that far over the edge. It was all the ways she didn’t measure up that snapped something just a little bit more in Marin each day.
“But what if it was,” she spoke, unaware of where the quiet sobs came from. “What if it was me the whole time?” Keegan pushed a tissue box towards her, five tight fingers clenched over her fist across the table as she let it all out. “I, I, I, I thought it was over.”
Keegan squeezed her hand, letting her know she was still there, letting her know she wasn’t alone. Julia held the tissue to her eyes, catching the tears before they dropped and anything else spilled out of her.
“And then there she was,” Keegan whispered.
“And then there she was,” Julia repeated, her voice barely an audible murmur.
“Does that change anything for you?” she asked.
Julia paused, her tears holding on her eyelids for dear life. “Should it?”
“That’s not the question,” sighed Keegan. “Does it?”
Julia let go of Keegan’s hand, pushing herself a little away from her desk. She dried her eyes and took a deep breath, pushing whatever was left deep down to a place where it wouldn’t escape again–at least not right now.
“If it did, I think I wouldn’t have been able to walk away from her.”
Keegan smiled weakly, her hand still available on the desk. She knew how much courage it took to say that–how much Julia didn’t want to admit it to herself. She mourned Marin for so long under the impression that at some point it would just stop hurting–at some point the scar tissue would become too thick, and she would learn to love her a little less.
What would it be like to just forget Marin like she did her? If she had found that reset button, how much of her life would be different?
“So, maybe it can be time for closure?” she asked cautiously. “Seeing her doesn’t change anything. You can’t go back, but you can move forward. Maybe she can help you understand, so you can do that.”
“Maybe.” Julia tried to smile back, but the thought pained her. “But what if she doesn’t have anything to say?”
“I think you’re more worried about what she will say,” Keegan paused. “I think you’re more afraid she’ll ask to come back.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she huffed.
Keegan just smiled at her for a moment, her eyes brimming with kindness, but Julia couldn’t stop thinking about that possibility. Is that what she was really afraid of? Would that be the worst thing that would spew from those ruby lips?
“You can’t let her back in,” Keegan begged. “You can’t take her back.” Julia didn’t respond, her eyes glued to the lacquer on her desk. “I’m always here,” she reminded her.
“I know,” she replied, smiling back. And with the closing latch of the door, at last she had quiet.