Chapter Fifteen
Julia
There’s a reason I don’t have one-night stands.
Not that Emily is a one-night stand per se, but I’m fairly certain we won’t be doing that again. Not that it wasn’t good or fun. Because it was both. But because it never should’ve happened in the first place.
Seriously, what was I thinking?
Last night wasn’t me. I knew going into it that I didn’t want anything serious with Emily, but I slept with her anyway.
And for what? To hurt Alex like she hurt me?
Because I knew Emily liked me, and I just wanted to feel something?
Well, I sure do feel something all right. I feel like complete shit.
Chloe puts her chin in her hand and stares at me.
She didn’t ask any questions when I called her crying and proceeded to spill my guts about how I slept with Emily and then promptly panicked.
By the time I finished telling her how much I hated myself for it, she was already in her car and making the drive from Blacksburg.
She drove through the night and got here right before sunrise. After a long hug and quick nap, the only thing she asked for in return was a ton of coffee and a stack of pancakes. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks after the server refills our mugs.
“There really isn’t much else to tell.” Except that’s a lie. There’s a lot to tell. Oceans’ worth, even. And I’m fairly certain she knows it.
“What happened in New York?”
There it is. The question I know she’s been dying to ask but hasn’t because she knew I needed space to figure things out. The same space I asked Alex for.
The only problem? I still don’t want to talk about it. “Nothing happened in New York.”
She rolls her eyes and takes a sip of coffee. “Yeah, that’s why we left a day early and why you cried on the train ride home, went back to Penn a hot mess, then slept with the first girl who showed interest. Sure sounds like nothing.”
Okay, now that’s insulting. Even if it is true. “That’s not what happened.”
“That’s exactly what happened,” Chloe says. “Look, I don’t mind driving six hours to see your gorgeous face. Especially if you’re sad. But don’t lie to me about it.”
The server places a stack of pancakes and a side of bacon in front of Chloe and a bowl of fruit and some questionable-looking oatmeal in front of me.
Chloe pushes her food to the side and leans forward. “Jules. What happened in New York?”
I slowly stir my oatmeal, not at all hungry, but it gives me something to do. A momentary pause in conversation while I try to steady the nauseating feeling nestled in the pit of my stomach. “Alex and I had a fight.”
“No shit,” she says but not unkindly.
“I think I might have feelings for her.”
“Again. No shit.” Chloe pulls the pancakes closer and begins to lather them with butter and syrup. “Six hours, babe. Tell me something I don’t already know.”
I’m not sure if I find her lack of surprise unsettling or comforting. “She doesn’t have feelings for me.” The words feel tight in my throat, and it hurts to admit them out loud. Like it somehow makes it even more true.
I expect Chloe to say something witty or dismiss my worry with a sarcastic comment. Instead, “Did she tell you that?”
“No,” I admit. “Not directly but also, kind of?”
She watches me carefully. “Did you tell her how you felt?”
“Obviously not. She’s dating Trinity.”
“So?” she says around a mouthful of pancakes.
“So? I’m just supposed to tell her I think I have feelings for her when she’s dating someone else? That’s crappy.”
Chloe shrugs, clearly disagreeing.
I think I’ve hit my quota on doing crappy and selfish things this week.
But also, what if I’m just fucking confused, and I’m blowing all of this way out of proportion?
What if I tell Alex I have feelings for her, but in reality, it’s just me figuring my shit out, and I somehow managed to make a horrible situation worse because the sex was really, really good?
What if I’m bi or pan, and Alex just happened to be my maybe gay awakening, and I’m confusing safety and friendship for something else?
“Okay, but what if I don’t have feelings for her? What if she got hot right at the same time that I’m figuring out I’m attracted to girls? What if I’m mistaking that for actual feelings? Like, the sex was good, I’m just confused, I need to move on.”
“With Emily.”
“No. Not with Emily.”
“Why? Did the sex suck?”
I sigh. This is getting exasperating. “The sex did not suck. But I don’t have the type of feelings for her that she does for me. Last night shouldn’t have happened.”
The night with Alex shouldn’t have happened. None of it should’ve happened.
“Apparently, every decision I’ve made so far when it comes to maybe figuring out my sexuality has just been one mistake after another.”
Chloe shakes her head and reaches for my untouched coffee and swaps it for her empty mug. “I’m sure that can be confusing and all that, but I don’t think that’s what this is.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think you both have feelings for each other, and you’ve been friends your whole life so you don’t know what to do with that.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Okay, well.” She lets her sentence linger, and I wait for her to take another bite of her breakfast and wash it down before continuing. “Have you talked to Alex about any of this?”
Oh yeah. Back to that. I sink lower in my seat. “I haven’t talked to her all week.”
“You haven’t talked to her all week? Jules.” She sounds disappointed, and I don’t blame her. Whereas Chloe gave me room to process, we still talked. I didn’t completely shut her out or ignore her.
Not like I did with Alex.
“I know. I asked her for space so I could figure all this out.”
“How’s that working for you? Because from here, you just seem miserable.”
That’s because I am miserable. So very miserable. I run my hands across my face. I don’t ever remember feeling this tired. “I should call her, shouldn’t I?”
“Yes. You should. Now please order more coffee. It’s a six-hour drive back.”
Monday morning, after pacing my room nervously for the better part of twenty minutes, I stop fiddling with my necklace and chewing on my thumbnail and finally hit the call button.
I’ve practiced my speech for her voice mail a hundred times.
Timed it twice and triple-checked that she should be in class.
And, yeah, sure, maybe leaving a voice mail is the coward’s way out, but I’m not—
“Jules?”
She answers on the third ring.
A nervous kaleidoscope of butterflies stirs in the pit of my stomach. “Hi.”
“Hi, how are you, hi.” There’s a bunch of rustling, and she sounds slightly out of breath.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” I ask, wondering if she saw my call and raced out of the room. Or if she’s busy doing something else.
“I’m skipping it,” she admits sheepishly. She clears her throat. “Are you…is everything okay?”
She sounds hesitant and worried, and I hate myself just a little more for pulling away like I did. “I’m sorry. About ignoring your messages,” I blurt, unable to take it anymore.
“No, I’m sorry,” she counters just as quickly. “You asked for space. I should’ve respected that.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, focusing on the message I was planning on leaving and the urge to make things right between us.
“Look, Alex, I’m sorry. About New York. About after.
I was confused and hurt, and I lashed out.
I should’ve just told you what was bothering me. It wasn’t fair to you, and I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about London and for breaking my promise to you.
And downplaying my relationship and for keeping you in the dark.
” Her words come out rushed, like she’s been holding on to them and maybe practicing them as well.
There’s a stretch of silence, and part of me wishes we were on a video call so I could see her face.
“Can you tell me now? What was bothering you?”
There’s another nervous swarm in my stomach. Communicating these feelings is hard no matter how prepared I thought I was. I’m still scared I’m going to say it all wrong.
“It’s kind of hard to explain.” She waits, and I wonder if she can sense my discomfort. “Do you think we made a mistake? Sleeping together?”
“You said you didn’t regret it,” she reminds me quietly.
And, yeah, I did say that. But I’ve been sitting with it for months. Watching how our relationship has seemed to slowly erode since then. I didn’t regret it then. I don’t even regret it now. What I do regret is how I’ve handled it.
“Jules?”
I take a deep, steadying breath. I need to tell her the truth.
To just rip it off like a bandage. “I think I might have feelings. For you. I mean, I thought I did. And after we, you know, I got confused because it was my first time with a girl, and I was curious, and it was really good. Then in New York, I saw you happy with Trinity, and it hurt because I thought maybe you were regretting it because you moved on from it so fast. You moved on from me. From us.”
I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t.
“It hurt,” I continue, deciding to power through the rest, “that you were happy with someone else, like our night didn’t matter.
I got jealous. But I’m starting to figure out that our night together was good because we already had a connection.
I felt safe. And I think that I mistook that connection for something deeper, and I handled it poorly.
“You came out when you were fourteen, and I’m not saying that was easy. Or that your journey wasn’t full of mistakes or mistrials. But you just really seemed to know what you wanted. I’m still trying to figure that out. And I’m sorry. For pulling you into it all.”
Another long, painful stretch of silence. I press my thumb into the point of the archer pendant around my neck and wonder if we somehow got disconnected. The seconds tick by, each one carrying more weight than the next.
“Please, say something?”