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Erin studied Julia for a moment. She didn’t do that head tilting thing when she was deep in thought. Instead, her jaw slacked, eyebrows furrowed, as pain clouded her expression and her chest heaved visibly.
Julia still leaned against the building, now with her hands crossed above her head as she still fought for air that just wouldn’t come.
“Okay, okay, okay.” Erin rushed to her side, hands outstretched and desperate to help. “What can I do?”
“I,” Julia huffed, but it was hard to get just a syllable out.
Her chest felt like fire. No, not fire. It was lava–an erupting volcano burning through her body and leaving nothing but rock in its place after the destruction.
Her body rose in sudden motions, more than it ever had before. Her heart thumped so quickly that she was sure she was having a heart attack, the very muscles keeping her body whole pulling apart at the seams. Erin stood there and just stared at her for a moment, those emerald eyes widely agitated.
“Julia, you’re having a panic attack.”
Erin pulled Julia’s hands from above her head and placed them on her chest. The words didn’t sink in. Touch didn’t sink in. Everything felt like tapping on glass, invisible to the eye even though your senses are telling you something is there.
“Jules, do you feel my breathing?”
Julia nodded to her question, her hands held firmly against Erin’s breasts. Erin’s chest rose and fell, still too fast for a normal heartbeat, but significantly slower than hers.
“Good,” Erin said with a soothing nod, and Julia tried to look away. “No, no, no.” Erin’s warm hand pulled her face back up to eye level. “Look at me. Don’t look at the ground or the sky or anything else. Look at me,” she begged, her voice shaking under the pressure.
Erin breathed in deeply through her nose and out through her mouth, never letting Julia’s hand go from her chest, but it burned.
At first, she couldn’t. Julia’s brain couldn’t make the connection that she didn’t need her mouth agape and gasping to be able to exchange oxygen. Yet, she couldn’t take her eyes off of the woman that stood before her, the woman who dropped everything to attempt a futile rescue, the woman who jumped into an already sinking boat just to try to pull her out.
“I know you feel like you can’t breathe. I know everything seems like it is crashing down over you,” Erin kept her hand firmly over Julia’s, her pulse felt through fingertips, “but you can do this.”
She pressed Julia’s hand harder into her chest as it swelled and dipped with every breath. Erin did it again and again as minutes passed. She did it again and again until Julia could close her lips, breathe without having her mouth wide open. Until Julia didn’t visibly shake before her.
She didn’t even realize when it happened; all she knew was that at some point, she wasn’t sure where the heave of Erin’s chest started and hers ended. She let her hand drop to her side, her arm and body exhausted from the battle it had just won.
Erin took another step towards Julia; she surrendered, resting her head on her shoulder. Erin wrapped her arms around her, grazing her knuckles on the concrete walls behind them as she sunk her face into Julia’s damp blonde hair.
Julia still didn’t cry. It was like she had a certain number of tickets, like she had a certain amount of times she was allowed to submit to the sorrow–a ration given all at once to carefully hold–but she already spent her allowance. Instead, she kept her head knelt on Erin’s shoulder as she breathed deeply, matching every rise and fall of the chest she was pressed against.
“Marin,” Julia gasped, her voice alien to her plugged ears.
She’s not here. She can’t be here.
“I know,” Erin’s voice broke, overfull with sympathy and… and?
“Here?” Julia asked herself, her voice still a panic gasp she fought to push down. “Of all the places? Here? She had to be here, seeing this very show? Today? Why? Why? Why!”
Erin pulled away and looked as if she was admiring her for a moment. Julia was still whole–Erin pieced her together–no matter how broken she felt. Erin watched as a tear escaped the fortress Julia built, trickling silently down her face and clinging to her chin for dear life. Erin wiped it off her flushed skin, leaving a river shaped line in its wake.
Maybe she hadn’t spent all her tickets yet.
Julia rested her head back on Erin’s shoulder again–the warmth radiating from her body as soothing as the weightlessness of floating in the ocean–barely able to tell her knees to not collapse beneath her weight. Erin just sighed into her hair, at a complete loss for words.
What do you tell someone who is crumbling in front of you? What can you say that will fill the cracks forming before your very eyes? Is there enough duct tape in the entire world to put together such a shattered form?
“It doesn’t matter where she is,” Erin whispered, her breath a single ray of sunshine on even the darkest nights. “Whether it is here or thousands of miles away, because you are still you. You are okay, even if you don’t think so right now. You are strong. You can walk back in there and watch the show. You can do this. You are so much stronger than you think, Jules.”
“I never thought I’d see her again,” she confessed, her breath still ragged and tangled within the weight of her chest. “She walked out of the door and I never saw her again.”
“You never talked after that?” Erin asked, stepping just slightly away. She leaned against the building to break the wind that beat Julia’s face.
There was so much she didn’t know, didn’t understand. It wasn’t her fault. She could only reach so far with the yardstick forced between them. She could only fill in so many of the pieces that Julia hid in her pocket.
