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“Oh,” Marin replied.
Her voice was so soft, so relieved and hurt at the same time, that it twisted Julia’s stomach even more. Was this just as hard for her as it was for Julia–to have her standing in a place that was empty due to her absence for so long?
“Come sit,” Julia suggested, but more for her weak legs than the comfort of her guest.
Julia picked up her tea and walked to the couch. She pushed the blankets to the side and took a seat. Marin could have sat next to her, but she took the safe route and sat in the chair on the other side of the room. She held her warm mug in her hands, her eyes never leaving the steam swirling above it.
“I meant it when I said I’m sorry.” She briefly looked up. “I will forever be sorry.”
“Why?” Julia asked.
She wasn’t trying to get a rise out of her. She wasn’t trying to be coy. She wanted to know how she could be so sorry, but do it anyway. Not just stick with it for a few days and then come back, but a year of nothingness.
“Because you always deserved better.” She let out an exasperated breath, tears glossing over her eyes.
Julia involuntarily grunted, her eyes rolling. That was crap. The biggest steaming pile of crap she’d heard in a longtime. You don’t just leave decades of a life with a woman you claim to love without another word and then come back and tell them they deserved better. No shit, Sherlock.
“And yet, you never reached out. Never called. Never explained what happened. You never gave me the chance–”
“I’m sorry for that too,” she cut in.
“What happened?”
Julia could barely fight the tears. She was too afraid to blink because then they’d start falling and never stop. They slammed on a door in the back of her eyelids, splitting the wood as they begged to be let out.
“I didn’t know the state we were in,” Julia confessed. “Not to the extent it would have taken for you to leave me.”
“I, I, I,” she couldn’t get it out–tears glistening over the cerulean in her eyes, “I woke up one morning and you were still asleep.” She set her tea down on the table as she wiped above her cheeks. “I just looked at you and I felt so much love, even after all that time. I looked around and I couldn’t remember what we were doing. I couldn’t remember the last time I made you laugh–really laugh. I couldn’t remember the last time I thanked you for making my lunch, or getting me tea, or making the bed. I couldn’t remember the last time I told you how beautiful you are.”
Julia’s face was now covered in streams of salty tears blurring her vision, but she refused to wipe them–too afraid that if she allowed her eyes to close even for a mili-second, Marin would disappear just like last time.
“I realized I was no longer good for you. I was always mad,” she paused, “and at you, of all people, when you were nothing but the sweetest partner anyone could ask for. I wasn’t putting you first. I wasn’t thinking about how my words, or how the lack of, could hurt you.”
“And so you ran away instead of telling me?”
“Jules, I ran away because I didn’t know how to fix something that broken.” Now she was crying too. “My love,” she sobbed, “I wanted you so badly to be happy… It killed me when I realized that I couldn’t do that anymore.”
Julia sighed and stood, grabbing the tissue box before her shirt was permanently stained. She pulled out a few and then slid it across the table to Marin. She didn’t sit back down. She paced behind the couch–the tissue pressed firmly on her eyelids until red dots blurred her vision like painful sun rays.
“You know what?” She stopped walking and faced her. “You shouldn’t have made that decision for me. You don’t get to go around and make decisions that affect us both. You don’t get to leave and leave me in this big house! You don’t get to make me think it’s my fault!”
“You’re right.”
“You don’t even get to say that,” Julia’s voice broke. “I tried. God knows I tried, Mar.”
Tears streamed down her face and soaked her sweater. She wiped them with her already drenched tissue, smearing those salty droplets across her skin. Marin leaned forward on her knees, her legs and hands visibly shaking.
“You tried harder than you should have,” she agreed. “You were trying for the both of us when I already gave up.”
Her voice cut off at the end. She broke into such a gut clenching cry that she hid her face in her hands. How could something happen so long ago but still be so fresh? How could any layer of healing be instantly taken away by such a momentous flood?
“Why,” Julia cried, “why couldn’t you just admit that then?”
“Because I didn’t realize it until I was too far gone,” she confessed–her tears streaking mascara down her face. “I told myself over and over that you were better off without me. I said it again and again until I believed it. I couldn’t bring myself to see you because I knew I couldn’t walk away from you again. I never wanted to in the first time. Then I saw you in that theater and I didn’t know what to do.”
“I just started to heal.” Julia held her breath, forcing the cries to settle in the back of her throat. “I just started learning how to pick myself off the floor and then there you were calling me Jules.” She gasped for air–holding her breath for too long as she shunned all feeling away.
“I didn’t know–”
