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And then she hung up. Together. Whatever it was, we’d get through it together.
She should call Keegan, her constant, but she couldn’t drag her into something like this when she had so much going on at home. She didn’t want to burden anyone–not without knowing exactly how much weight she would be laying on their already brittle shoulders. And so she didn’t call anyone. She didn’t tell anyone.
She laid back on the bed in her drenched towel as her dripping hair soaked the pillow beneath. Sun crept in through cracks in the blinds, but she didn’t open them. Her stomach growled, but she didn’t have the energy to get up. She laid there as the light turned to dusk, as Saturday came and went.
Saturday night she awoke to a racket vibrating the pillow next to her head. Her high-pitched piano ringtone blared in her ears, completely disorienting her slumber state. She reached across and touched the cold screen, her eyes squinting at the blue light screaming at her.
“Hello?” she croaked.
“Are you sleeping?” Keegan asked. “It’s 6:00 p.m. on a Saturday! Even the kids are up!”
“Just fell asleep while reading,” Julia lied, pushing back the bile that crept into the back of her throat. She rubbed her still exhausted eyes with the back of her palm as she rolled over and faced the ceiling. “What are you up to?”
“We just got back from dinner at Hennen’s Steakhouse,” she explained, screaming children her backup singers off in the distance. “It reminded me that I should remind you about our double date.”
Julia went blank. She remembered Keegan saying something about it months ago, and then maybe she said something else about it earlier that week. Her mind was a scrambled egg. Think. Think. Think. Did she say it was next week? Or was it the week after that?
“Of course,” she hummed. “I’ll be there. What was the place we were meeting at again?” Her head throbbed, a tension headache wrapping her shoulders in a vise, pulling at the temples and squeezing her neck.
“Rosana’s Hall at seven.”
“Ooh, fancy-smancy.”
“I told you, this is important for Ben! If he wants to make partner this year, Lauren needs to be wrapped around his fat little fingers.” She sighed deeply. They needed the raise that would come with making partner at the marketing firm. “Thank you for agreeing to this.”
“Just remember,” Julia said and smiled into the phone, “this is the last setup you get to guilt me into.”
“I know, I know,” she groaned. Julia could practically feel her eyes roll through the phone. “Just don’t be late, please!”
“When am I ever late?” Julia scoffed. “I’ll be there early. I have plenty of time to plan an outfit that will ‘knock her socks off.’”
“Why do I have a feeling you don’t remember what day we planned for?”
“Hmm?” She was caught red-handed.
“Julia,” Keegan sighed sternly. “You–”
“Next week,” she guessed, but with the gasp that escaped the mouth on the other end of the phone, she knew she was wrong.
“Do you ever listen to me when I talk!”
“Selectively.”
“Our reservation is for tomorrow, you doofus.”
“So, I wasn’t far off.”
“Ugh!” Keegan moaned through the phone and Julia could picture her palm pressed against her forehead.
“I won’t be late. I’ll be there,” she sighed.
She wanted nothing more than to hide away in that bed for the rest of her life, avoiding how the pulsating from her tender chest sent shivers up her spine.
They got off the phone and Julia disappeared back beneath the sheets. Her exhausted body welcomed the darkness behind her eyelids, sinking so deeply that only the noon daylight slithering through cracked blinds awoke her the next day.
Erin - 12:39 p.m.
Hey there.
