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“Oh, right,” Julia said while nodding, searching for another convincing excuse. “Can you let her know anyways? I have a lot of work to get done today.”
She raised her attention from the emails before her to see Keegan standing just three feet away, hands on her hips. Those sharp eyebrows could cut through metal.
“Julia,” she warned.
“Keegan,” she mocked.
“You can’t avoid her.”
“I’m not trying to avoid her,” Julia argued, trying to hold back her guilty grin. “I’m trying to get work done.”
“I don’t understand why you can’t just talk to her!”
Julia slowly looked up, mouth slightly open, but without a word to say. She wished it was that easy.
“Because every time I think about saying anything to her, I suddenly forget to breathe.”
She watched Keegan’s dark eyes soften, her shoulders loosening her arms at her sides. She took a deep breath, her purple dress shifting with the puff of escaped air.
“I will talk to her,” Julia promised. “I just can’t right now.”
“Okay,” Keegan sighed. “I’ll let her know.”
***
“So, I hear I finally got my own filing cabinet.”
Erin smiled from the doorway. Uncharacteristically, she wore a knee length dress. It was a muted green. It pulled the color from her eyes and projected it into the light like the sunrise over a tepid lake.
“You’re moving up in the world.” Julia smiled past the open laptop before her.
There was an awkward pause, an unsureness floating through the air like autumn leaves.
“I’ll probably be in and out moving some of my paperwork and what not over,” Erin hesitated, approaching her desk and piling folders on top of each other. “Seems like I got a little too settled in.” She forced a laugh, and it was too obvious.
You can stay.
“Not a problem at all. You know you’re always welcome.” Julia closed her computer to give Erin her attention, but she didn’t respond. Just stay. She waited a few seconds longer, but nothing. “I’ll be out most of the day for bus driver and food service interviews, but I’ll leave the door open.”
Julia stood, picking up her laptop and shuffling papers as she gathered the resumes clipped together on the edge of her desk. Erin’s hand remained on the pile of folders in front of her. She didn’t look up or make any move. There should’ve been something else said–something else to fill the strange emptiness in the air. There always was when it was just the two of them.
“Is there anything I can help you with before I go?” Julia asked, her voice tinged with a hint of desperation. Please say something. Ask to stay, please.
“No.” Erin smiled weakly. “Good luck with your interviews.”
Instead of staying there and asking if something was wrong, asking what was going on in that beautiful mind of hers, Julia left for her meetings. She didn’t stop by to ask about how she was settling in–didn’t pop in on her curriculum development workshop later that afternoon. She didn’t drop off the green scarf Erin left on the hook behind the door.
The rest of the week went by slower than the entire beginning of the school year–dragging like the week before a long vacation when students bounce off the walls with pent up energy. Julia’s office was empty, quiet with the sound of her own typing.
She only saw Erin in glimpses between appointments and classrooms, both hesitant of what it would mean if they were the one that reached out first. She didn’t want to intrude and visit her office.
Julia wanted distance, and now she had it. Perhaps it was for the best. That was the space they needed from the very beginning, right? Yet, as she sat alone in her office–her back turned to the door, lost in a daydream out the window–she wondered if the distance could ever be closed. It felt as though it had stretched beyond its original limits, like an overused rubber band that would never regain its elasticity.
Could she undo the friendship they had built over the past month? Or was it like trying to mend a broken glass plate, only to realize that the shattered pieces would never fit together perfectly? Now that she felt the comfort of Erin just existing, it would never go away. The stillness would never be the same.
***
Julia spent the entire day Saturday finishing whatever was left from the week, desperate for her reprieve with Keegan the next day. She wanted nothing in the way of a mindless day; a day without worry, or work, or any ridiculous excuse lurking from the shadows. She longed for silly conversation with Keegan, football, and wine. Nothing else.
