Chapter Thirty-Four
Present Day
It had been two months since I’d last seen Luke. Two months since he’d closed the door behind me the day after Ben and Kate’s wedding. Two months of holding everything inside.
“I have to tell you something,” I said to Quinn, placing my plastic container of fruit and cottage cheese on the park bench beside me, gently brushing Marty’s nose away when he poked it inside. We were now eating our lunches in Victoria Park in an effort to get the most out of the warm weather. In typical Saskatchewanian fashion, we didn’t want to waste any part of our short but sweet summer.
“Oh, wow, this is a food-down conversation,” she said, wrapping her hot dog in a napkin and placing it deliberately on her lap. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“You have to promise not to judge me.” I looked down.
“Of course, I promise.” She dipped her head, trying to meet my eyes.
“Because you couldn’t possibly judge me more harshly than I’m judging myself.”
“Julie, what’s going on?” She nudged me with her elbow. “Are you finally going to tell me you slept with Luke?”
My head snapped up. I was, for once, at a loss for words.
“Of course I knew,” she said. “Don’t you think I know you well enough by now?”
I opened my mouth to speak but closed it again. I honestly couldn’t think of what to say.
“You’ve been a different person these last two months. Since Luke’s been gone,” she said. “That’s how I knew.”
I nodded. I guess I hadn’t been as stealthy as I’d thought.
“Do you love him?” she asked, not mincing words, as usual.
“I don’t know,” I barely whispered.
“What do you know?” she asked.
I took a deep, shaky breath, pressing my palms into the wooden bench as if to prop myself up. “I miss him. I know I miss him. Like more than I’ve ever missed anyone. At the time, I thought I’d messed up. I thought sleeping with him had been a mistake. When I realized he wanted more, when he said he was falling in love with me, I got scared. And I ran. And I broke his heart. I will never forgive myself for that.”
I paused, trying desperately not to cry in the centre of downtown Regina. “Honestly, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, I kind of thought we’d eventually get past it, just like we did with the kiss. Sex had never been a big deal to me; it had always been more transactional than anything.”
“Did you feel that way with Luke?”
“No,” I said, ashamed that it had taken me this long to admit it. “It meant so much more to me. And the worst thing is I knew it meant that much to Luke all along. I knew what I was doing. I just got so scared. I thought I would eventually ruin things.”
Quinn shook her head. “Oh, Julie,” she said, sadness softening her words. “You are your own worst critic. Have you talked to him about it?”
“I’ve tried, but he won’t answer my texts or my emails. I don’t know what else I can say.” I hung my head. It was so heavy. I was so tired.
“Julie.” Quinn nudged me in the thigh with her knee.
I didn’t say anything.
“Julie, look at me.”
I did.
“So.” Quinn ripped a piece of her hotdog bun, popped it in her mouth, chewed, swallowed and then continued. “I know you don’t like feeling things.”
“That’s not true,” I protested. She raised her eyebrow and I smiled. “Fine, it’s true, I really don’t. Honestly, after this past year of feeling all of my feelings, all I want to do is crawl into bed and never come out.” I picked up my lunch, took a bite and fed a piece of melon to Marty.
Every day felt like I was waking up after the benders of my past, a rock of regret in my stomach, my chest tight with grief. For a brief second, I’d feel the bliss of not remembering, but as soon as I woke up fully, I tumbled down into a depression I just couldn’t shake.
“If this is what being in love feels like, I don’t want it.”
I gasped, realizing what I had just said, and almost choked on a piece of pineapple. I looked at Quinn, who was beaming ear to ear.
“I knew it!” Her fists clenched excitedly at her sides. “I knew you loved him.”
“How did you know?” I was still stunned at my own admission. “I didn’t even know. I still don’t know. How do I know? I don’t think I’ve ever truly been in love before.” My voice was getting more panicky as I spoke.
Quinn placed her hand on my knee in what I was sure was an effort to prevent me from losing my shit in a park full of corporate employees. “Calm down, take a breath,” she soothed. “Let me tell you how I knew first, and then we can figure out you. I knew because your eyes would light up every time you talked about him, and after seeing him, you couldn’t stop smiling. You planned an entire wedding with him. Willingly. What do you think that says?”
I nodded, knowing she was right.
“Remember how jealous you got when you thought he was with Marnie?”
“I wasn’t jealous,” I scoffed. “I just thought he deserved better.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Fine. I was jealous.” I crossed my arms.
“What else?” she said.
“What else, what?”
She shook her head. “You are seriously the most stubborn person I know. Don’t pretend to be ignorant. Stop pretending for once, Julie. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
I did know. There was more that drew me to Luke than having fun with him planning a wedding. So much more. It was the way he looked at me, making me feel like I was the most important woman in the world. The way my chest tightened and my stomach fluttered and my heart beat faster whenever he was around. The warmth and the kindness and the strength he gave me, even when I didn’t deserve it. It was his sparkly green eyes, and how his face lit up when he smiled. It was his humour and, surprisingly, his positive outlook on life. It was the way he parented Hannah. The love he had for her, and the patience he displayed, was more attractive to me than any pair of dancing pecs could ever be. I had even started to think plaid was sexy.
“Hello?” Quinn finally said. “Are you in there, Julie? You drifted away somewhere.”
I blinked. “I am in love with him,” I said, astonished. “Is this what love is? Wanting to be with someone every second? Wanting to take care of them and make them happy and make sure they’re safe? Never wanting them to hurt as much as I hurt right now?”
“How do you feel when you think of never seeing him again?”
“Broken,” I said, my eyes again filling up with tears. “I feel broken.”
“So?” she said, the expression on her face urging me to come to my own conclusion.
“What if he’s found someone else? What if that’s why he’s been gone for so long? What if that’s where he is right now? With her?” My stomach churned at the thought.
“How would you feel about that?”
I knew the answer, but I didn’t want to admit it out loud. “I would be gutted. But I want him to be happy more than anything else. If he has found someone, and that person is who he wants to be with, I would be happy for him. The last thing I want is for him to feel like this.”
“Yes!” Quinn pumped her fist in the air. “Go get him, girl!”
I jumped off the bench, knocking the empty container that had once held my fruit salad to the ground, paused, and then sat down again. “But what about Hannah?” I said, letting Marty lick the empty box as an apology for scaring the crap out of him.
Quinn sighed. “What about Hannah?”
“What if I can’t be the role model she deserves?”
“Julie.” Quinn turned to face me. “The things you just said in the past twenty minutes were the most selfless things I’ve heard you say in the past year. I think you’re ready. I think you’re more than ready.”
I sat up, a look of determination on my face. Quinn was right. I was ready.
And I finally knew what I had to do to make things right.
The heat was oppressive as I slid out of my air-conditioned car, feet firmly planted on the pavement. I instantly started to sweat and peeled off my sky-blue blazer in the lobby of my apartment building before I went up the stairs, Marty following close behind. Despite the fact that I had closed all the windows and curtains in preparation for another record-setting day of heat, I knew it would be almost unbearable in my apartment. I was glad I had plenty of fans.
I trudged up the carpeted stairs that desperately needed a steam clean and ran my hand along the wall, paint chips falling between my fingers. I needed to find a new place. Now that I was in my apartment more, and wasn’t passed out for most of it, I’d been realizing what a dump it was. And seeing as I’d recently found out that my role at the agency was going to become permanent, maybe I could actually start looking for somewhere new to live. Somewhere nice and cozy that felt like home. Somewhere like Luke’s.
I sighed as tears welled up in my eyes. I missed him so much. I missed him and Hannah and being with them together in that house. I felt more at home there than I did where I grew up. And now I might have lost them both forever.
I opened the door to my apartment and walked through the heat like I was walking through sand, turning on a fan in the kitchen and then one in the living room, refilling Marty’s dish with cool water. The last stop was my bedroom where I stripped off my soaking wet T-shirt and skirt and replaced them with a thin grey tank top and a pair of pink-striped boxer shorts.
I ran a hand through the short, feathered wisps of my hair. Two months after cutting it and I still loved it. It was much easier to get ready in the morning when I didn’t have to style something that I would inevitably just hide behind. And I sure didn’t miss the oppressive weight on my neck in weather like this. I looked in the mirror and smoothed down some wayward strands. I certainly didn’t have plans to grow it out anytime soon, no matter how many people thought I’d made a mistake. Besides, Luke had said he loved it.
Luke.
What was I going to do about Luke? Despite my constant emails, he had yet to respond. I knew this because I checked my phone every thirty minutes. I knew from Ben that he was okay; that he had taken Hannah on an extended summer vacation, but that’s all Ben would tell me and I didn’t want to put him in the middle of something he had no desire to be a part of.
I had never felt like this. I had always loved being alone. Being alone was easy. I didn’t have to compromise. I didn’t have to change my ways.
But now? Now that I’d felt something real; now that I knew what it was like to care for someone as much, if not more, than I cared about myself; now that I knew what it was like to ache for someone when they weren’t around, I didn’t think I could go back.
If this was what love really felt like—not dependence, not fear, not what I’d felt in the past—then maybe it was time to actually feel it. I was so tired of all the pretending. I had been pretending to feel things and not feel things my whole life. Maybe it was finally time to stop.
I went into the kitchen and poured myself some ice water, holding the glass against my forehead to cool down the flush that had reddened my face. What if it was too late? What if I had ruined everything? I sipped the water, trying to wash down the lump that had formed in my throat, and sat down at my kitchen table.
There was only one way to find out. I took a deep breath, opened my laptop and wrote the hardest, most important email I’d ever written.