Chapter Twenty
Julia used to take life by the balls–no instruction manual needed. She didn’t like things to sit, didn’t like the uncertainty of what could happen. She was the person who went out of her way to find what was wrong, just so she could fix it before it got any worse. But lately? Lately she avoided problems, avoided life, as if it was her last purpose on Earth.
Week after week passed, her going through the motions and rolling with whatever came her way. She pushed everyone within her inner circle so far out that it was only her left, standing in the middle of the ocean on a stowaway paddle boat; no life in sight.
Maybe she liked it that way. Maybe that was the way she was supposed to be–that was the way she always felt safest–tucked away to a place where there was no Marin, no Erin.
She didn’t go out of her way to avoid Erin again, but she didn’t seek her out either. They touched base once every week or so, signing whatever documents necessary and then moving on with their day. Julia never asked her why she left so quickly, and they never spoke about anything that happened the day of the field trip.
Julia postponed two weeks of Sunday football with Keegan. She lied and said the board gave her last-minute reports to review as they approached the tail end of the evaluation. Keegan acted like she believed it, acted like she didn’t see the shades of brown beneath her eyes, like she didn’t notice she locked herself in her office all day.
Each day Julia sat at her desk, dozens of papers scattered around her and an open laptop to her left. And yet as the sun set behind her and the school emptied, the same papers surrounded her.
Overwhelmed wasn’t the right word. That was only half of it. It was like sitting in the driver’s seat, your foot planted firmly on the gas. There’s no emergency brake, no airbags. Colors of muted, dilapidated houses flash by in hues of yellow and blue. Trees look like brushstrokes, so purposefully placed. The speedometer ticks up, but you’re not really in control. You’re not really driving. There’s no choice as you pass through every yellow light, no choice as you drive deeper into the lost.
She sat with her face buried in her hands. For what? Minutes? Hours? Her cheeks and forehead turned pink under the pressure. She closed the sleeping screen to her computer and turned towards the window. Rain pitter pattered on the windowsill, almost drowning out the unexpected knock at the door.
“Yeah?” she responded suddenly, dramatically pulled out of her trance.
Erin opened the door and unsurely stood there, a slight glow on her face from the light through the window. The lights in the office were turned off. A migraine beat on the walls inside Julia’s head–the throbbing of a little drummer boy without rhythm–pulsating behind her eyelids.
“Hey,” she said with a smile. “I didn’t see you get lunch. Can I get you anything?”
Julia looked at the clock on the wall. It was 2:05, well after lunchtime. Wasn’t she the one who was supposed to remind Erin to eat?
“I’m actually not hungry today.”
Julia looked back at her. Her eyes were so small, her shoulders slumped. She looked so unlike the Erin she came to know. She continued standing there, nodding slowly, as if weighing her options.
“Can I work here with you,” Erin asked, her voice full of uncertainty, “just for the rest of the day? I could use your help on some of my evaluations.”
Julia froze at the unexpected question. It’d been so long since they shared the same space, so long since they were a breath span apart, so long since she had the luxury of being distracted by those hazelnut waves.
She wanted to say yes; she wanted to blurt it out right there. But her body felt numb, heavy with regret. She couldn’t keep doing this back and forth. She couldn’t keep allowing her in just to push her away. It was too hard, too much work to tiptoe along the thin line they drew in the sand.
“I’m sorry, Erin,” Julia sighed. “I have a lot of things I need to get caught up on.” She patted the piles of papers on her desk and looked up. Erin’s eyes dimmed with the storm brewing outside. “Today just wouldn’t be a good day.”
“Oh, okay,” she said and forced a weary smile. “No worries. We can get caught up later. Have a good rest of your day, Julia.”
And then she was gone, and Julia was left again with her own thoughts, or lack thereof. She sat there–the sound of the rain echoing like a foghorn behind her–the silence wrapping her in binding ribbons.
What am I doing? What did she continually do to herself, to her life? She could visually see that Erin needed her, needed her professional support and the comfort of that office. Maybe needing something more?
No.
She couldn’t, couldn’t be there for her like that when all she could think of was Marin and her being in the same room and not knowing what was up and what was down.
If her life was messy before, nothing made sense now. She sunk deeper into the possibility that nothing would ever make sense again. There’s no bliss in ignorance, no prize for the winner. It turns out you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
But what she could do was check on Erin, because she was continually there for her. Even with the ridiculousness of their whole situation, she still showed up, still helped out, and still did her job.
Julia walked to Erin’s office, her hand hovering over the door just like before. She might not even be inside. She could’ve been out and about, and her nervousness for nothing. Erin could be fine, and she didn’t even need to be standing there at all.
She knocked anyway.
“Come in,” sounded Erin’s voice, muffled through layers of wood and concrete.
“Hey,” she said, smiling weakly, her hands holding open the door.
Erin sat up straighter, her eyebrows arched and eyes wide. There was almost an imperceptible redness around her eyes, like she’d been crying.
Inside sat a desk facing the door, only enough space for one round wooden table in the middle. On the walls were motivational posters spewing cliché quotes about determination and perseverance, pictures of mountains to climb or calming oceans to subdue to.
“Would you mind if I closed the door?” Julia asked, three fingers still holding the edge in anticipation.
“Not at all.” She finished writing something down and then set a paper to her left.
The window faced the woods behind the school, no children in sight. Overgrown, snow covered shrubs rustled against the glass, accosted by the wind in the distance. The pressure of wind-beaten drifts tapped on the brick outside between the aggressive pounding of rain.
Erin was in her complete element. Around her sat piles of papers; she was old-fashioned like that. It would’ve been so much easier for her to store all those on a laptop–easily accessible at any time and light as a feather. Instead, she opted for the pen and paper route, just like Julia preferred. It’s more confidential, Erin explained. I like to feel the words as I write them.
“Are you okay?” Julia asked, taking one more step into the room.
She didn’t want to sit down. She wasn’t going to get sucked in. She was going to make sure she was okay and then go back to her hideaway.
Erin looked up from her desk and set her pen down.
“Earlier,” Julia said softly, “you seemed like something was wrong.”
Erin opened her mouth to say something, but closed it with a sigh. Her eyes didn’t glimmer in this room; the green melded with yellow and created gray shadows around her retinas.
She stood, walking around her desk and leaning on the edge. She wore short black boots, her jeans cuffed at the hems. Her stance looked as if she was adjusting the power within the room, as if there was a physical scale she tipped in her favor.
Her pale shirt pulled at the front buttons as she bent her elbows and pressed her palms against the desk behind her. She gave Julia a slight smile, the fake kind that pulls at the cheeks but doesn’t lift the eyes.
How did they go from words flowing like a beautiful, sickly sweet caramel river, to not knowing what to say? Where did the familiar comfort disappear to, and was it gone forever between the cracks or just safely packed away in the back of a closet like a cherished family heirloom?
“Do you want to dance around the situation with small talk and white lies?” Erin asked with soft eyes and a kind, quiet voice. It didn’t match the sting of the words. “Or do you want to have an honest conversation?”
Her words hit Julia in the chest–air lost instantly on contact. How can someone with so many fewer years lived, fewer lessons learned, have more foresight to stop wasting another minute and just be true? Why had it taken Julia so long to learn that truth?
Julia was never like that, not like Erin. She’d walk into a coffee shop and order a simple latte, no sugar. Not that price was of consequence, but she would see it was only $4.95 on the black chalkboard above her. When the barista would state that her total was $6.95, Julia was the type of person to smile and give her card, anyway. She would even go the extra mile to say, I really appreciate it and have a great day before leaving.
She knew the price was wrong–knew what she was charged for certainly wasn’t what she ordered. It could have been a simple mistake, one easily able to fix. But no, she’d pay that extra two dollars over the confrontation of having to ask about it.
She was never as strong, as confident, as Erin. Sure, she held herself that way. No one would know that when she started teaching, she practiced her lessons in front of the mirror in her apartment–taking hours to replay what would only be a twenty-minute activity. She’d play through the entire dialogue, every waking moment, until it felt just right.
Because that was the type of person Julia was. Nothing came easy, but she damn well made sure no one knew. Her mother taught her that from day one. Never let them see you cry, she’d say, picking her up on the playground as blood seeped through her skinned knees. They’ll see it as weakness. Never let them see you struggle.
Today she was the picture of calm and collected, which was why she was the emergency kit that everyone kept in their back pocket. She liked it that way. She liked knowing she was needed, that she was relied on. If she didn’t have that, what would she have?
“Honesty, please,” Julia’s voice was more of a beg. She felt small against Erin’s composure.
Erin sighed, letting her shoulders drop as she sunk more onto her desk. Julia walked around the wooden table in the middle and perched on the edge of it, just three feet away. Slouched, they were eye level. No distractions. No interruptions. No more excuses.
“We talked, and we agreed we could do this,” Erin began. “We agreed the job was more important.”
“Yes,” Julia said and softly nodded. Was it more important? How had the conversation turned back to this? But was any conversation ever more than one step away from it?
“It’s hard to do that job when the person I need to help me avoids me.” Her voice was full of frustration but soft at the same time, almost like the squish of a burnt marshmallow.
Julia took a deep breath–somewhere in between a breath and a silent sigh–her chest slowly heaving up and then deflating.
“You’re right,” she confessed, the noise escaping from her mouth like a gust of wind through gutters.
There was no light coming through the window anymore, and she just realized how dim that box really was. The rain turned to a winter mixture and slush began to fall behind Erin. It tapped on the ice-covered grass outside, thumping on the window as the wind pushed it around.
Erin was covered in a hazy glow from the last bit of sunlight not covered by gloomy clouds. The noise swirled around her like a constant whisper, there and not.
“Why?” Erin asked, her voice almost a whimper in comparison to the pounding rain.
Julia didn’t know how to answer, so she just stood there. How had she spent so much time with Erin, but still lose her voice when face to face?
“I get it,” Erin continued. “You’re not interested in anything that doesn’t include our professional obligations. I pushed it. I continued to do so, and I shouldn’t have,” she sighed, the sound of a broken voice vibrating in Julia’s ears. She broke eye contact, squeezing them closed as she rubbed her forehead. “It won’t happen again,” she added, her voice still quiet but now crossed between frustration and composure. “You have Marin. I get it now.”
Julia found herself wishing she could go back to that very first night she met her. The way the light shone off her hair and the way her voice filled her head; if she knew what she did at that very moment, she would’ve done it all differently. She lost months of time, afraid of the fact that she couldn’t see the future, and that meant walking on eggshells until it came into sight.
Honesty. They agreed on honesty.
Julia slowly stepped closer to Erin, one foot hesitating behind the other. Before she even realized what she was doing, she brought one hand up and placed it on Erin’s warm cheek. Instead of pulling away like Erin had every right to do, like she should want to do, she rested her face in Julia’s hand and closed her eyes. The way she melted into Julia’s touch sent warm shivers up her arm.
It looked as if this was something they did, as if that very moment was a routine for both of them. The way Erin softened into Julia was as natural as the sun rising, as natural as the way the moon reflects off murky ponds. The world tugged at their fabric.
It wasn’t like they didn’t have a choice. It wasn’t the feeling that you would end up in that spot, regardless of what you really wanted. It wasn’t that the world chose it for them. It was that no matter what they would have done, they would make any choice that led them back there.
“You have it all wrong,” Julia whispered with an exhale of air she couldn’t hold back.
Erin opened her eyes and looked just slightly up to meet Julia’s. Those crystal-clear green galaxies made Julia shake her head in disbelief. She reached her other hand up and cupped the other side of Erin’s face, her thumb just gently grazing her freckles. She slowly pulled her close, giving Erin every chance to stop her if she wanted. Please, don’t stop me.
But she didn’t. Her lips sunk into Erin’s and everything dissolved around her and melted through outstretched fingers. The kiss wasn’t fast and sloppy like in the bar; it was deep and slow, as if they only had this moment, as if this was their first and last wrapped into one.
We all have the potential to experience moments that can alter reality–moments when everything that came before is a jumbled mess compared to the serenity–a moment that feels like time stands still and your breathing slows instead of quickens. A moment that sends your insides into such a flutter that you realize they were never in the right spot until that very second. That was this moment. This was their moment.
Rain beat harder against the window, casting droplet sized shadows across the room. The noise filled every available space–everything else fading behind the scenes and disappearing within layers of rubble. Julia couldn’t let another second pass her by.
At first, Erin’s hands stayed pressed against the desk, fingers gripped along the edge for dear life, and then they fell to her sides in sweet surrender. Once reality came into focus, she picked them up and carefully raised them to Julia’s hips.
Julia slid her hands from Erin’s face to her neck, goosebumps forming on the softness of skin behind her ears. That was what Julia wanted to do from the very moment she met Erin; that was what their bodies had been hurtling towards each other for. The moment. The electricity. The rawness of their trembling fingers.
This is everything.
Julia slowly lifted Erin onto the edge of her desk. Erin reached out her legs and wrapped them tightly around her. Erin had to look up at her to kiss her, pulling her face down towards her own. Her hands slowly trailed up Julia and down as she mapped out her route again.
Julia held her close, one hand firmly planted on the small of her back as fingers twirled in silky hair. Erin slid closer to her, their lips never parting as their bodies pressed closer together.
She pulled away slightly, just holding Erin as she gazed into the depth of her eyes. Erin smiled, the corners of her mouth turning upwards and kissing a freckle just above. She pressed her cheek against Julia’s chest, closing her eyes as a content sigh released any tension she had left.
They swayed with the melody of the rain behind them, just holding each other. As the butterflies in her stomach settled, Julia realized how much she almost lost–that feeling of peace, that comfort.
They didn’t have to discuss it–didn’t have to pick it apart at the seams until it unraveled before them. It didn’t matter that it would end in a few weeks. It didn’t matter that they both knew whatever it was could never be more than what it was right at that moment. It just was, and they just were. And that was all either of them needed.