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“Come on.” Julia motioned towards where the students were. “I promise I won’t leave your side.” Never. She wanted to say if she could, if she had the chance, she’d never leave her.
They didn’t say anything else while they walked closer to the group, arms silently touching, even in their haste. She didn’t ask Erin if she was okay; she knew she wasn’t. Her green eyes weren’t shining jade pearls anymore. They were an empty landscape, void of everything other than the absent-minded wind rustling the grass blades.
They were mute while they loaded the students on, counting each bus one last time. In utter silence, the doors closed, and the lights turned off overhead, casting them in dusk covered darkness. They didn’t say anything when they stopped for dinner, or when they boarded the buses again.
When they arrived at the school and the last of the students were picked up by exhausted, eager parents, they only smiled weakly before walking towards their own cars. As Julia approached her car, she stopped and leaned her head against the roof.
She wanted to go after Erin. She wanted to hold her until everything was okay again. She wanted to keep her promise, that if she just stood by her side, nothing would go wrong. She wanted to apologize again. Not just for leaving her towards the back as they walked, but for everything else. For pushing her away. For running away. For making her feel like she was the only one with wavering thoughts.
For Marin.
For what Marin did to her. For how broken she was. For not realizing sooner that only the electricity felt through her fingertips can ground her, that nothing else came closer to that feeling of home. For everything. She wished sorry could seep through her skin and crash onto concrete like a hailstorm.
Chapter Eighteen
Julia wrapped her jacket tighter around her waist as she fought the midnight wind. It was a losing battle, like picking up dominos as a child plows through them with a little toy Tonka truck. It pushed her closer towards her car, blocking the street light as she fumbled through her purse for her keys.
“On second thought,” Erin’s quivering voice called between the expansive distance. She wrapped her long black jacket tighter around her thin frame as she turned to face Julia. “Can I come to your house and get some work done? I really don’t feel like going back to my apartment just yet.”
Julia checked her watch: it was well after midnight. She didn’t have a single thought in her body that could convince her she could do any work at that point. She wanted to fall into her bed, disappear between layers of sheets as she prayed for sleep to come. She wanted silence and wine, anything to push Marin’s memory out of her mind.
The streetlight dressed them in the dusty haze of night. The parking lot was empty–nothing but gusts of orphaned snow swirling across faded white lines. Julia’s chest warmed in spite of the chilliness that wrapped around her.
“I have no motivation left in me for work tonight,” Julia sighed, watching as disappointment flashed across Erin’s eyes, “but I’d love for you to come over. Are you hungry?”
“No.” Erin shook her head with the force of a blender.
“I think you should eat something,” she suggested quietly, knowing that she had to physically remind her to eat even when they were sharing the same space, knowing that her needs were always second on her list.
“I’ll pick something up on the way.” She smiled, that little glimmer of peace. “There’s a little Chinese restaurant that’s open until 2 a.m. not far from here.”
Julia was the tundra–frozen over in billions of years of failed evolution–as that single suggestion sunk into her, piling onto the layers of the day. The restaurant beneath their first apartment.
She thought a page officially turned, a painful lesson learned. It was a hill she finally had the energy to climb–a battle she faced and came out unscathed on the other side–but now that panic arose in the back of her throat and it burned like vomit threatening to rise within her.
Until that day–that day that she should’ve hidden beneath pounds of comforter feathers instead of venturing outside–she hadn’t thought of Marin in weeks. But now? There she was at every turn. Every thought. Every dream. Every nightmare. Everything she ran from. Everything she ran towards. Everything in between, and it felt like eons of pressure shattering her being until it disappeared like dust.
“That sounds delicious,” Julia lied, but Erin narrowed her eyes just slightly, as if she saw something else. How could she see so much?
Julia pushed away the sinking feeling within her stomach, just like she had thousands of times before. She smiled softly as she fished for the keys in her purse.
“I can pick it up and meet you back at your house,” Erin suggested. “I usually get shrimp lo mein. Do you know what you might want?”
“The same would be great. Here,” Julia began to rustle through her bag for money when Erin reached out and stopped her.
“Don’t you dare,” she grinned, “this one’s on me.”
“Okay,” Julia said with a nod, “but I’ll supply the wine.”
“No arguments here.” Erin walked backwards towards her car, the wind throwing her curls in front of her face in such a way that Julia wished she had a Polaroid camera.
Once home, she pulled a bottle of wine from the cooler. Slowly she twisted the cork and set two glasses on the granite beside it, the clinking slightly humming in her ears. She turned down the hallway to the bedroom, no longer noticing how bare the walls looked anymore.
She slid off her suit jacket and folded it neatly on the edge of her bed, leaving just her thin white blouse tucked into her jeans. In the bathroom, she stopped in front of the mirror with a sigh–hands pressing into the vanity so hard it could bore holes.
She was tired, sunken shadows highlighting her eyes in a halo of bruised yellow. She picked up her concealer and patted beneath those swirling pools of green and gold, wishing there was a serum that could erase the weight of years past.
Reaching behind her, she unclipped her hair and it fell in messy golden streams over her shoulders. She kept it up so much, sometimes she forgot how long it had grown.
