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“No.” She smiled, realizing once again her mind drifted off. “The company is nice.”
She was surprised she actually meant those words. She always thought at some point after her workday, her brain stopped functioning. It was like an off switch activated as soon as she locked her office for the night. Some days, it took her every last ounce of will to make it through the day, let alone be willing to spend energy on entertaining someone else.
Burn out wasn’t the right phrase to describe it. She wasn’t on the verge of a complete mental breakdown; it was more like she teetered on the edge–an OSHA certified safety strap wrapped snugly around her as she tried to lean more and more over an abyss, desperate to catch a glimpse of what rested at the bottom–but consistently pulled back to where she didn’t want to be. Deep down, she so desperately wanted to fall.
The end of her work week was always the hardest. She spent so much time around people, diffusing situations, finding solutions where there were none, and managing what seemed like a zoo most days. Well, let’s be honest, it was a zoo most days. She needed an escape, which is why every so often she’d end up at The Tipsy Hatter, staring out that same double-paned window as Greg’s presence floated up and down the bar calming her with each stride.
Sometimes it was snowflakes that swirled in her eyes. Sometimes it was those walking down the sidewalk–Julia imagining what conversations they were having, what lives they lived. Sometimes she listened to the phone conversations of men five bourbon’s deep, their wives’ voices coming to life as they complained about the hour and his slur of speech. Sometimes she stared at her drink and wondered what she could’ve done differently, what else she could’ve said.
Checking her watch for the time, Julia became increasingly aware she had to be up in just six hours for work. She squeezed her temples, the thought of all the paperwork cluttering her dining room table pushing to the front of her mind. With the long drive ahead, there was no way she could function on such little sleep. She wasn’t a twenty-something anymore.
Glancing up at Erin, who was now smiling at another stranger at the other end of the room, Julia wondered if she was that friendly with everyone. Maybe she was the type of woman who had the confidence to walk up to strangers and spark conversations all the time. Even with that thought hovering in the back of her mind–tugging at her strings like a puppeteer–there was something about her that Julia wanted to wrap herself in, something she wanted to surrender to.
Get it together, Jules.
“I really like your blouse,” Erin whispered towards her ear. A smile illuminated her face, brightening the entire room–a single beam of moonlight on a cloudy night. Her lips formed a cupid’s bow, pursing softly after she spoke as if there was something still to say.
Julia looked down, forgetting what she even wore. A faint rouge tinted her cheeks as she realized it’d fallen a lot lower than it had when a suit jacket was covering it earlier.
“Oh.” Julia fought the blush rising to her cheeks as she hastily adjusted the shoulders of her shirt. “Thank you.” She paused, searching for something to say without sounding like a recluse void of adult interaction. “Are you here with someone?” Real smooth, Julia. Real smooth.
Julia scanned the room to see what person would best fit beside her. It could’ve been the dark-haired man leaning at the end of the bar, his square chiseled chin dimpling as he smiled. It could have been the group of girls squeezed into one booth, clinking glasses raised high in the air as they giggled past fake eyelashes and far too tall heels.
“No.” She smiled softly. “Just me.” There was a long silence that followed as Julia looked back out the window. “So, what were you thinking of before I rudely interrupted you?”
Julia froze for a moment, her eyebrows raising just slightly. She couldn’t remember the last time someone asked her what she was thinking, couldn’t remember the last time she tried to focus on the thoughts that crept in during the quietness instead of working so desperately to shut them out. When was the last time someone cared enough to notice she was lost in the void?
At work she was the person: the fixer of all problems, an arm to lean on, someone to think outside of the box when no one else could. She played that role well, as if the center of it all was where she belonged. But when alone? When the curtains closed and just her heavy breathing carried through the air? That was an entirely different story. She wasn’t good at being alone. Humans aren’t meant to be alone. It was too easy for her to just succumb to the emptiness, to allow the heaviness of her body to sink too deep.
Julia looked down at her drink, her left hand resting on its side. The chill of the condensation trickled onto her ivory skin, providing a brief sense of tranquility from the outside in. A woman just about to be forty years of age shouldn’t hide away in bars by herself, without any real reason at all to be there other than she didn’t want to be home.
Home. What a novel thought.
Raising her eyes, she met Erin’s gaze locked onto her with an unwavering smile. She picked up her wine again, not breaking eye contact. The corners of her eyes pulled, creating the most beautiful road map to her freckles.
Julia hated people looking at her. Maybe if she dug far enough back in her mind with one of those yellow Little Tikes shovels, she’d find the moment that broke something inside her. Maybe she could pinpoint the exact moment, the exact second, when the last layer of belief in her worth shed away like a caterpillar’s chrysalis in the night.
But there was something about how Erin’s eyes wrapped around her. They were soft, genuinely curious, and for some reason she felt honored that those sagey eyes were focused on her. It was a pull of attention that Julia could tell she didn’t even know she had, beauty she didn’t know she possessed.
“Life, I suppose,” Julia answered at last. She grimaced at her own response. How cliché? She turned back to the window where snow still twirled in strands and landed like powder on top of thin layers of ice.
“Do you ever catch yourself looking at something and realize how inconsequential everything else is? Not in a bad way, but a way calms the mind. Like there’s something good, something sweet in the nothingness.” She couldn’t believe she said that out loud. She most definitely had one too many drinks.
She pulled her gaze from the window and it fell on Erin’s face. She held an involuntary breath, not knowing why she cared what this stranger thought. But she did.
Julia allowed her narrowed eyes to relax as she studied how young Erin appeared. She couldn’t place a specific number. Erin held herself with more confidence than Julia ever felt she possessed. Just being near her made Julia feel youthful, like she wanted to dance on the sidewalk in the rain, like Alison and Noah.
“That must sound incredibly stupid.” Julia managed to choke out a laugh to suppress her embarrassment, but it didn’t work. Her cheeks betrayed her, heat rising from her chest and crawling up her neck.
Erin reached out and placed her warm hand on her wrist and it seemed like the whole world slowed a little. Julia looked up into her eyes–completely pulled into her gravitational vortex–like something, somewhere, had put her in that very place at that very moment.
It was only a couple of seconds of stillness before she looked down and realized Erin still had her hand on her arm. Julia swore she felt her thumb swirl on her skin beneath. Erin looked down at her hand too, as if she wasn’t sure when it appeared in that very location, how her fingers happened to caress the smoothness of Julia’s skin.
“I completely understand.” Erin’s soft voice hummed in her ears as she pulled her hand away, the place where it was now tingling. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to invade your space.”
Julia wanted to say that it was completely fine, that she could keep her hand there. She wanted to say that for once it felt good to have someone close to her who didn’t have to be there, that to have someone even platonically touch her skin sent warm goosebumps up her arm, and that she liked the feeling. But then the usual thoughts took hold. That sounds crazy. Don’t be the crazy lady sitting alone.
It’d been far too long since she interacted with someone outside of work. It’d been far too long since she had one too many drinks, the warmth of the tequila taking over her too strict conscious mind. Maybe her friend, Keegan, was right: she was too busy burying herself in piles of paperwork over finding a way out, a way up.
