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Erin was in her complete element. Around her sat piles of papers; she was old-fashioned like that. It would’ve been so much easier for her to store all those on a laptop–easily accessible at any time and light as a feather. Instead, she opted for the pen and paper route, just like Julia preferred. It’s more confidential, Erin explained. I like to feel the words as I write them.
“Are you okay?” Julia asked, taking one more step into the room.
She didn’t want to sit down. She wasn’t going to get sucked in. She was going to make sure she was okay and then go back to her hideaway.
Erin looked up from her desk and set her pen down.
“Earlier,” Julia said softly, “you seemed like something was wrong.”
Erin opened her mouth to say something, but closed it with a sigh. Her eyes didn’t glimmer in this room; the green melded with yellow and created gray shadows around her retinas.
She stood, walking around her desk and leaning on the edge. She wore short black boots, her jeans cuffed at the hems. Her stance looked as if she was adjusting the power within the room, as if there was a physical scale she tipped in her favor.
Her pale shirt pulled at the front buttons as she bent her elbows and pressed her palms against the desk behind her. She gave Julia a slight smile, the fake kind that pulls at the cheeks but doesn’t lift the eyes.
How did they go from words flowing like a beautiful, sickly sweet caramel river, to not knowing what to say? Where did the familiar comfort disappear to, and was it gone forever between the cracks or just safely packed away in the back of a closet like a cherished family heirloom?
“Do you want to dance around the situation with small talk and white lies?” Erin asked with soft eyes and a kind, quiet voice. It didn’t match the sting of the words. “Or do you want to have an honest conversation?”
Her words hit Julia in the chest–air lost instantly on contact. How can someone with so many fewer years lived, fewer lessons learned, have more foresight to stop wasting another minute and just be true? Why had it taken Julia so long to learn that truth?
Julia was never like that, not like Erin. She’d walk into a coffee shop and order a simple latte, no sugar. Not that price was of consequence, but she would see it was only $4.95 on the black chalkboard above her. When the barista would state that her total was $6.95, Julia was the type of person to smile and give her card, anyway. She would even go the extra mile to say, I really appreciate it and have a great day before leaving.
She knew the price was wrong–knew what she was charged for certainly wasn’t what she ordered. It could have been a simple mistake, one easily able to fix. But no, she’d pay that extra two dollars over the confrontation of having to ask about it.
She was never as strong, as confident, as Erin. Sure, she held herself that way. No one would know that when she started teaching, she practiced her lessons in front of the mirror in her apartment–taking hours to replay what would only be a twenty-minute activity. She’d play through the entire dialogue, every waking moment, until it felt just right.
Because that was the type of person Julia was. Nothing came easy, but she damn well made sure no one knew. Her mother taught her that from day one. Never let them see you cry, she’d say, picking her up on the playground as blood seeped through her skinned knees. They’ll see it as weakness. Never let them see you struggle.
Today she was the picture of calm and collected, which was why she was the emergency kit that everyone kept in their back pocket. She liked it that way. She liked knowing she was needed, that she was relied on. If she didn’t have that, what would she have?
“Honesty, please,” Julia’s voice was more of a beg. She felt small against Erin’s composure.
Erin sighed, letting her shoulders drop as she sunk more onto her desk. Julia walked around the wooden table in the middle and perched on the edge of it, just three feet away. Slouched, they were eye level. No distractions. No interruptions. No more excuses.
“We talked, and we agreed we could do this,” Erin began. “We agreed the job was more important.”
“Yes,” Julia said and softly nodded. Was it more important? How had the conversation turned back to this? But was any conversation ever more than one step away from it?
“It’s hard to do that job when the person I need to help me avoids me.” Her voice was full of frustration but soft at the same time, almost like the squish of a burnt marshmallow.
Julia took a deep breath–somewhere in between a breath and a silent sigh–her chest slowly heaving up and then deflating.
“You’re right,” she confessed, the noise escaping from her mouth like a gust of wind through gutters.
There was no light coming through the window anymore, and she just realized how dim that box really was. The rain turned to a winter mixture and slush began to fall behind Erin. It tapped on the ice-covered grass outside, thumping on the window as the wind pushed it around.
Erin was covered in a hazy glow from the last bit of sunlight not covered by gloomy clouds. The noise swirled around her like a constant whisper, there and not.
“Why?” Erin asked, her voice almost a whimper in comparison to the pounding rain.
Julia didn’t know how to answer, so she just stood there. How had she spent so much time with Erin, but still lose her voice when face to face?
“I get it,” Erin continued. “You’re not interested in anything that doesn’t include our professional obligations. I pushed it. I continued to do so, and I shouldn’t have,” she sighed, the sound of a broken voice vibrating in Julia’s ears. She broke eye contact, squeezing them closed as she rubbed her forehead. “It won’t happen again,” she added, her voice still quiet but now crossed between frustration and composure. “You have Marin. I get it now.”
Julia found herself wishing she could go back to that very first night she met her. The way the light shone off her hair and the way her voice filled her head; if she knew what she did at that very moment, she would’ve done it all differently. She lost months of time, afraid of the fact that she couldn’t see the future, and that meant walking on eggshells until it came into sight.
Honesty. They agreed on honesty.
