Chapter 22
Chris
When I heard someone knocking on my door Saturday morning my first thought was that it was Julia. Maybe she’d changed her mind and reconsidered breaking up with me.
I’d given her space, thinking that she’d reach out after she got over what happened in Gina’s office, but that was a grave miscalculation on my part.
We’d been broken up for over a week, and I hadn’t heard a peep from her.
Apparently this break-up wasn’t just a simple fight or relationship growing pains. She’d meant it.
Every day I’d told myself to reach out to her. Call her. Text her. Stop by her office. Do something. But I didn’t do a damned thing. I was paralyzed waiting for her to make a move, even though I knew very well that I’d hurt her that day when I denied our relationship meant something.
I knew I’d messed up, but something told me that this wasn’t just about denying our relationship to our boss.
Her reaction seemed out of proportion to me downplaying what happened in the closet.
Something else was bothering Julia. Maybe I hadn’t been a good enough girlfriend?
Or maybe she wasn’t as serious about me as I was about her?
We were meant to be together. As much as I’d always thought she wasn’t my type I knew with complete certainty that she was perfect for me. But I had no idea how to fix this, and I was so depressed about the break-up I couldn’t even rouse myself to figure out what to do.
Then help came knocking on my door bright and early Saturday morning. I’d hoped it was Julia, but it was someone a little older.
“Oh. Mom. Hi.”
I opened the front door the rest of the way and headed into the kitchen, knowing that Mom would follow me.
“Do you want some coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”
“Yes.”
My mother sat quietly while I poured us coffee, but I could feel her almost vibrating with the need to talk. She lasted until I sat down across from her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
When I opened my mouth she held up a hand. “Don’t you dare say, ‘tell you what’ Christina. Jeannie texted me last night to say that she’d heard that you and Julia broke up. Over a week ago!”
Her voice raised to a painful pitch on the last sentence.
“Sorry Mom,” I said contritely. “But I’m still processing it myself.”
If Julia had been willing to at least talk to me, we could have planned what we were going to say to our parents. Then again, our relationship had stopped being fake a long time ago, so there really was no need to coordinate our stories.
“Tell me what happened,” she demanded.
“What did Mrs. Montego say happened?” I asked carefully.
Mom’s eyes narrowed. “She said that Julia refused to tell her anything besides the fact that it hadn’t worked out, that you two wanted different things.”
“Well, there you go.”
I stared into my coffee cup while my mother stared at me, and when I couldn’t take it anymore, I met her gaze.
“What. Happened?”
I hadn’t even told Marlee and April what happened yet, but somehow I found myself spilling my guts to my mother. Other than a disapproving frown when I told her about making out in the closet at work, Mom was quiet until I’d finished the entire story.
“So that’s it then?” she asked. “You’re not even going to try to get her back?”
“She’s not trying to get me back either,” I pointed out. “Clearly she’s done. I need to accept her decision.”
“I never took you for a quitter,” Mom grumbled.
That was my mother for you. Instead of offering any comfort or at least asking how I was doing, she went right into her tough love interrogation mode.
“Do you want her back or not?”
“I do.”
“Do you love her?” she pressed.
“Yeah,” I sighed.
“Does she know?”
I shrugged. “Maybe? I’m not sure.”
Mom’s eyes narrowed and I could tell by the look on her face that she was regretting not giving me up for adoption. “For fuck’s sake, did you ever tell her that you love her?”
My eyes widened. Mom never swore, let alone like that.
“Not in so many words.”
My mother’s sigh was so deep it seemed to come from her very soul. “You’re even more helpless than I thought.”
Suddenly I was gaining a little more insight into why Julia had taken my denunciation of our relationship so hard. We hadn’t had ‘the talk’ yet. She was much better at talking about feelings and emotions than I was, so I supposed I was waiting for her to bring it up first.
It hadn’t really occurred to me that she might be doubting my feelings.
I was more of an action person, I liked to show my love through my actions.
But in retrospect, I wondered if she needed to hear from me how I was feeling, especially since I’d been the one to broach the girlfriend conversation first.
She hadn’t shared her own feelings either, but she’d mentioned a few times that I was hard to read.
In retrospect, maybe she’d been trying to get me to open up and share how I was feeling.
Maybe she’d been nervous about being rejected if she started talking about love and happily ever after before I did.
Damn it.
“We’re going to call in reinforcements. We need a plan.”
An hour later we were at the Morning Jolt coffee shop waiting for Mrs. Montego.
I’d never been there before, but I knew that Madison Phoenix owned the place, and that even though Camille was a full-time writer now she sometimes picked up a shift when they were short-handed.
Neither of them appeared to be here today though, which was probably good. I wasn’t really in a schmoozing mood.
I ordered an iced coffee and a cinnamon roll the size of my head, then settled at a table with my mother to wait. Mrs. Montego bustled in a few minutes later, waving at us from the counter before coming over with coffee in hand.
She gave us each a quick hug, then launched into a long speech about how Julia and I were perfect for each other and when they had dinner last night she could tell that Julia was devastated by our break-up.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I interrupted, “So do you guys have any ideas what I should do? The last time we texted I got the distinct impression that she didn’t want to hear from me again.”
“You need a grand gesture,” Mom said.
“Yes, like maybe we go to a ball game and you put something on the board to publicly declare your love,” Mrs. Montego suggested. “Wait, no, she hates public declarations. What if we go over there when she’s not home and fill the entire house with balloons and rose petals?”
After listening to them both come up with increasingly improbable ideas I realized how ridiculous this all was. What grown woman needed her mother to apologize for a stupid fight, or whatever this was?
“You know what, I just need to woman up and go over there and talk to her. We don’t need a grand gesture. We need a conversation. It’s way overdue.”
When they both tried to argue I held up my hand. “I really appreciate that y’all are trying to help, but I’ve let this go on long enough. I’m going to see if we can work things out with conversation like adults.”
“Okay Christina, but if your way doesn’t work Jeannie and I are going to need to take matters into our own hands,” Mom said, giving me a hug and wishing me luck.
Before I could change my mind I headed over to Julia’s house.
She was in the front yard when I got there, down on hands and knees pulling weeds from the flower beds that ran along the front of the house.
I took a second to appreciate her heart-shaped ass that was sticking up in the air before I got her attention.
“Hey Julia.”
She looked over her shoulder, then somehow managed to fall over onto her side in the grass. I noticed we were dressed almost exactly alike in white tank tops and faded jeans. That was a weird coincidence.
“Are you okay?” I asked as she righted herself and pushed to her feet.
“Yeah, I’m just demonstrating my usual grace and coordination,” she said wryly. “What are you doing here?”
“I was hoping we could talk for a few minutes.”
Her eyes searched mine and she must have been okay with whatever she saw there because she nodded towards the chairs on the front porch.
“Do you want to sit?”
We made our way to the porch, and I scooted my chair around to face Julia.
“I just came from having coffee with both of our moms.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh crap, what kind of bad karma are you paying off right now?”
“Right?” I laughed. “They decided that they needed to get us back together, so they were planning these elaborate grand gestures for me to prove my love to you, but I was like, how about if I just try talking to Julia like an adult instead of recreating whatever over the top romance books y’all are reading? ”
“Prove your love?” she asked.
I nodded. “I wondered if you caught that.”
I took a deep breath and decided to be brave.
“I love you, Julia. I realize that I should have told you earlier, but when we first changed from fake dating to a real relationship you seemed… I don’t know, weirded out maybe when I talked about my feelings.
So I figured I should wait to see where you were, in case you needed to catch up or something.
I decided to see if you said something first so I didn’t make it awkward. ”
“I guess I could understand that.”
“I feel like we have good communication overall, but I’ve just been hesitant to be overly mushy with you, even if I’ve wanted to,” I confessed. “But really, I should have just followed my instincts.”
“You know, it’s funny. I’ve always hated that kind of thing -- mushy stuff and talking about feelings.
Yet with you, I was hoping for it. Not at first. It took me a little bit to get used to us dating, and even longer for me to realize I was having feelings for you too.
Then I was kind of waiting for you to bring it up again.
It never entered my mind that you might be waiting for me. ”
“Let me be clear now,” I said firmly. “I love you Julia. I want you to be my girlfriend again, and eventually I want to move in with you and get married and maybe have a family or get a cat or something. But if that’s not what you want, or you don’t want that with me, you need to let me know and I won’t bug you again. ”
“I don’t really like cats that much,” she said softly.
“Do you like babies? Dogs? Bearded dragons? Stuffies?”
She laughed. “I’m not a stuffie lover. Not to kink shame, but I feel like we’re a little too old for that. We can do other kinky stuff though, you know I like that.”
“It’s interesting that’s where you mind went,” I teased.
“You’re the one who brought up stuffies.”
We shared a smile, then I asked, “So what is this then? Where do you see us going?”
One corner of her mouth quirked up in a smile, and I knew she was holding back on whatever smartass comment was floating around in her mind.
“Well first I see us going inside and having some fantastic make-up sex. Assuming we’re back together again?”
“We’re back together,” I said firmly. “The last week was just a pause.”
“Then let’s get on with the make-up sex and then let’s order some food and talk about the future. The future we’ll share together.”
“Sounds great.”