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“So, we’re not going to talk about this?” Keegan asked, standing in the doorway of Julia’s office. She leaned on the doorframe, her long patterned skirt draping over her body.
“Talk about what?” Julia asked nonchalantly.
She took another sip of her coffee and opened her planner. Keegan just gave her that mom stare, her eyebrows raising much higher than they should be able to, her lips a narrow straight line. When it didn’t elicit an instant response as it did for her kids, she sighed and took a seat next to the desk. She allowed her shoulders to slump as she soaked up the defiance.
“I know you don’t want to,” she sighed again, “but I think you should talk about it.”
Julia leaned back into her plush chair, trying to see if she could sink through it and out the window.
“Which part?”
“Really?” Keegan groaned, her patience wearing thin. “Marin? Or do you finally want to talk about Erin?”
“I’m not sure what there is to talk about either,” she grunted. “Marin was there, and that was it. Erin is Erin.”
“What did she say?” Keegan asked, leaning closer as she shifted her weight to the desk. “And what the hell does ‘Erin is Erin’ even mean?”
“Marin or Erin?” Julia smirked. Keegan rolled her eyes so far back she was sure she got a decent picture of the back of her skull.
“You drive me to drink.”
“You do enough of that on your own,” Julia quipped.
“What did Marin say?” Keegan clarified.
“Nothing,” Julia shrugged.
“What do you mean, nothing?” she shouted. “She put you through a year of hell. She blindsided you. She said nothing when she followed you out?” She shook her head vigorously as she talked, her black hair moving with the air.
“She asked me how I was.” Julia’s voice was so quiet, so soft, so sad.
“And what did you say?”
“I didn’t.”
Keegan took in her words and then nodded. “That’s fair.” Her face then wrinkled with anger. “I should have walked back out and handled it myself when I saw her.”
“No,” Julia groaned, the word exasperatedly dragged out.
“I should have told her where to stick her attitude and then I would have–”
“Keegan,” Julia sighed.
Keegan stopped talking with a huff. Julia was well aware of all the awful things she would have done and said to her. They planned half out while drunk, Mariah Carey screaming on her early 2000s boombox, on the floor of her living room one night.
“I’m happy you didn’t,” Julia added.
“I know you wouldn’t have appreciated it.” She rolled her eyes. “Was that it? Or did she spew any other bullshit? Because I’ve been waiting for the day you finally decide to let me go after her.”
“She followed me out as we were waiting for the last group to leave,” Julia paused, heat rushing to her cheeks. “But I kept walking.”
“Didn’t you want to know what she was going to say?”
Astonishment was plastered on Keegan’s face like cheap wallpaper. There were times when she held Julia on the floor of her living room while she fell apart, sobs wrenching her heart from her body.
After it first happened, Keegan drove to her house every weekend and waited until she ate something. She forced her into the shower and washed her dishes when they piled too high. She was there for every stumble along the way–a force to be reckoned with–the best kind of friend she could ever have hoped for.
Julia thought about that question. She thought she wanted to know. She used to think about it so much that it played on repeat in her head for months at a time. She wanted to know why. No, she needed to know why.
