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And that’s when it hit her. Not the impact of a bug smacking on a dirty windshield on a cool June night. It ran into her like a building demolition, the debris rising her chest and clogging her judgment deeper with every sinking second.
Julia slumped in her chair, the one usually reserved for misbehaving children awaiting a stern lecture from the principal. She placed the mail on her lap and rubbed her temples, burying her face in her hands. A headache tapped at the back of her neck. The throbbing of her blood pressure echoed in her ears, wrapping around her forehead in a vise.
She couldn’t push down the disappointment anymore. She couldn’t hide that she was feeling something, even though she fought it as hard as she could. She couldn’t continue to deny that there wasn’t something between them.
“Oh, Keegan,” she sighed, frustration seeping into her voice. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Keegan looked around to make sure no one was within earshot. Julia didn’t swear. She didn’t need curse words to express her feelings, especially not at work, but at that moment? The moment when all the words in her brain, decades of degrees and literature piled in her own personal dictionary, and none of them could connect to sentences? That’s all she could get out.
Keegan didn’t say anything as she took a seat next to her, concern plastered over her face like malleable putty. She placed a warm hand on Julia’s arm, rubbing it softly as a mother would her child.
“What is it?” she asked in a hushed tone.
“I, I,” Julia couldn’t get the words out. She couldn’t say them aloud because that would mean there was something. And there couldn’t be something.
“Jesus, get it out!”
“Erin–” Julia blurted.
“Erin?” Keegan confusingly asked. “Erin?”
“Erin,” Julia sighed, hiding her hands back in her face. “I liked having her in my… I like her being… I, I, I think there’s something more between us,” she confessed, utterly embarrassed. “I think I want there to be something more.”
Keegan stood abruptly, emphasizing a noise between a gasp and a sigh. She picked up a piece of mail from Julia’s lap and swatted her with it, not once, but twice.
“Hey!” Julia shouted, pulling the letter from Keegan’s grasp.
“You had me genuinely worried there for a minute!” She threw her hands up in emphasis. “I thought something serious was wrong! I thought someone died.”
“Come on–”
“You’re an idiot,” she interrupted, her arms firmly crossed over her chest.
“What?” Julia incredulously asked.
“An idiot!” Keegan reiterated, her voice even louder and sterner than before.
“How am I an idiot?”
“Because you are telling me that it has taken you this long to realize you like her?” Keegan’s voice was full of frustration as she walked back around to her desk. “You’re not in middle school anymore, Julia. You’re allowed to like, like someone.”
Julia didn’t say anything as she stood, nausea creeping into her stomach and landing in her sternum like a ball of fire. As she approached the desk, Keegan just shook her head as she sighed. She looked back up at Julia, brown eyes rolling dramatically.
“You are an idiot,” she repeated.
“Keegs, what the hell am I supposed to do?”
“You’re a grown woman, Julia. You already know what I’m going to tell you.” As Julia stood before her with those puppy dog eyes, she groaned in surrender. “You’re the most stubborn person I know. The most hard-headed too! Unless it comes from your heart, it won’t make a difference if I say it aloud. I’m only going to tell you what I always have: find your happiness.”
Julia tried not to think of it throughout the day. She did like Erin, as a friend, of course. The problem was she liked her even more the harder she tried not to, the harder she tried not to not think about her velvety laugh. She couldn’t spend all that time with her, taking the risk of falling deeper and deeper under her spell, without a little of it rubbing off.
“Hey, Keegan,” Julia called from her desk.
“Yeah,” Keegan answered, obliviously walking in the room while flipping through a pile of papers fresh off the printer.
“Can you please notify Erin of her new office space? I have a meeting to get to shortly.”
“That meeting was pushed to Tuesday.”
