Текст книги "My Butterfly"

Автор книги: Laura Miller

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

“Jeff said that you are getting your paramedic’s license and that you want to be a firefighter,” I heard her say, as if her voice were coming from some distant world.

My eyes were temporarily locked on our hands.

“Uh, yeah, I am,” I managed to get out, as I forced my gaze instead to her face. “I’m a, it’s a…”

“My uncle is a firefighter,” she said, saving me again from my stumbling tongue. “It’s a tough job, but it’s really honorable.”

She slid her fingers around mine as she spoke, and suddenly, the room’s temperature rose another ten degrees – as if it weren’t already as hot as hell in the small room. I habitually pulled at the collar of my shirt.

“I mean, it’s super dangerous,” she continued. “My uncle has been trapped in a burning building and…”

She kept talking as I searched the room for Jeff. What was taking him so long? Now, all of a sudden, his stupid mountain story didn’t sound all that bad. At least, it had distracted Jessica. And damn it, this dumb plan of his would surely be the end of me if Julia was to walk…

My thoughts stopped then. And my eyes came to rest on a thin blonde in a short, black dress, standing in the doorway. I met the blonde’s fiery, green eyes as the words from the girl beside me quickly turned to mush before they reached my ears. Then, the blonde softly smiled and bit her bottom lip. She always did that when she was nervous.

God, she’s beautiful.

I watched Jules take a step and then stop. Then, all of a sudden, her face went blank, and her eyes fell fast to the hardwood floor. I held my gaze on her, until her own eyes returned to mine seconds later. But she wasn’t smiling anymore. In fact, now, her green eyes had turned sad. My heart sank as I remembered Jessica’s hand still wrapped up in mine. I tried to pull my hand back, but it was numb. I couldn’t move. I could hardly breathe.

God, what have I done?

I looked back up at Jules, and for a second, it looked as if she were going to run. No, don’t run. Yes. Run. Let’s both run. Let’s get out of here together.

Instead, she took a step toward us, and then another, until she was standing in front of Jessica and me.

“Hey,” Jules said, softly. “How have you been?”

I looked up at her, into her eyes. I felt as if I were dreaming. I wished I were dreaming. I expected her to be here. I wanted her to be here, but now, everything just felt wrong. It was all wrong.

“I’ve been good,” I said, slowly nodding my head.

They were the only words I had, but it wasn’t completely a lie. I felt good, compared to how I was going to feel after she slapped me across my face and told me that she never wanted to see me again. And how could I blame her? Yeah, we weren’t together. But what did that really mean for two people who weren’t meant to be apart?

“That’s great,” she said.

There was a smile on her face, but it wasn’t a good one. I had seen that smile before. It wasn’t one of my favorites.

“So, did you go to Will’s high school?” Jessica suddenly interjected.

Then, it all hit me like a massive wave to the chest. Sometime in the last few minutes, Jessica had stopped telling me about her uncle, the firefighter; Julia had found me in the living room, sitting too close to Jessica; and my hand had become even more intertwined with the brunette’s.

My eyes fell onto Jessica’s face for the first time since Julia had entered the room. Her focus was on Julia, and I followed her eyes back to the blonde.

Please, Julia, keep it short. Make this end. Please make this end quickly.

“Yes,” Julia finally said. “I did. I went to New Milford.”

I let out a deep sigh. Thank you, Jules.

“Julia,” a voice suddenly called out from behind her.

It was Rachel. She had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, out from the swaying heads and idle bodies in the other room.

“Chris wants to ask you something about track and find out how outstandingly well you’re doing,” Rachel said in a loud, commanding voice.

She pulled on Julia’s arm and gave me an if-we-weren’t-in-public, I’d-kill-you look. Rachel was known for those, but I wasn’t really known to get them. My heart sank further.

Julia willingly complied and allowed Rachel to guide her away from me.

“It was nice to meet you,” Julia said, turning back in Jessica’s direction.

Her words came out soft and gentle, and they weren’t the words I was expecting.

At the same time, Jeff returned from wherever he had been and proceeded to distract Jessica again. My eyes followed Julia until she reached the doorway and shot a quick glance back at me.

“Thank you,” I mimed with my lips because somehow I knew this could have gone even worse than it had.

She gave me a half-smile, and I felt the corner of my mouth edge up my face just a little, in a purely instinctive reaction to her smile because, in reality, I knew that I was as good as dead. There was no way that Jeff’s plan ever had a snowball’s chance in hell of working. Desperation will drive you to do things you know will never make you whole again and even to lose the very thing you’re desperate for. And as if I had to live it first, I knew that now – a little too late.

I watched Julia’s face turn until I couldn’t see her pretty eyes anymore, and then her black silhouette faded away into the crowd. My heart shattered right then and there. I tried to stand, but I still couldn’t feel my limbs.

“Will!”

My face instinctively turned toward Jeff.

“Dude, you all right?” he asked.

I blankly stared at him.

“I just said your name three times,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

I looked at him and then glanced at Jessica. Both of their expressions made me feel uncomfortable. They looked worried.

“I just, um,” I stuttered. “I’m going to get some more to drink.”

I looked into the glass in my hand. I saw that it was full, and I remembered then that it was Jessica’s. But I didn’t bother changing my excuse for leaving. I simply took a quick glance at each of them, forced a smile and then pushed myself up from the couch and made a beeline for the room that Julia had just disappeared into.

But no sooner had I made it through the doorway, I ran straight into a brick wall. It was Rachel, and her pointy, narrow finger was digging into the muscles in my chest.

“Will, I don’t know what messed-up act you’re trying to play tonight, but you need to stay away from her,” she said, in her very serious tone. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

She dropped her finger from my chest, sighed and then placed a hand on each of her temples.

“Seriously, Will,” she said. “Who is that girl?”

“It’s just a girl Jeff goes to school with,” I said. “Really, Rachel, it’s nothing. It’s not what it looked like.”

“Really, Will?” she asked.

Her voice sounded exhausted.

“Because what it looked like to me was that you were holding hands with a girl you just met, knowing that the love of your life would see it.”

I grabbed the back of a chair pushed up against the wall as my knees slightly buckled under my weight. Rachel’s eyes fell to my white knuckles gripping the chair and then narrowed back on my eyes, but this time, her expression seemed a little softer.

“What are you doing, Will?” she asked. “I know you, and I know you love her.”

“Rachel, I just…,” I said and then stopped and lowered my head. “I mean, this whole thing was her idea. She wanted the break. I just don’t understand.”

I lifted my eyes to Rachel’s again, as she sucked in a big breath of air and let out a sigh.

“You just don’t know everything about her like you think you do, and you might have just screwed this up for yourself, Will Stephens,” she said, her eyes turning stern again. “You’ve just got to give her some space now.”

She turned then, walked to the corner of the room, grabbed Julia’s arm and escorted her to the door. I watched Rachel pull a coat off the coat rack and hand it to Julia before pulling one off for herself. Julia’s eyes were sad. I could tell that much from where I stood, even though she never looked up at me. My heart stabbed at the inside walls of my chest. It took everything in me not to run after her, but I knew Rachel was right, and even if she weren’t, there was no way I was getting past her and to Julia – not tonight anyway. Instead, I watched Julia walk through the door – and possibly out of my life forever.

An anxious breath quickly escaped past my lips as the hard, wooden door closed behind her and the room grew dark around me.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been standing there when, seemingly by instinct, I charged toward the door. I swung it open, and a blast of cold air engulfed my body. I knew I should have felt it more than I had, but a part of me was still numb. I hastily scanned the street. The night was black, so the taillights of her jeep pulling away were easy to see.

I took a couple of steps, and I was off the porch and on the sidewalk. I reached for my keys in my pocket but then stopped. I couldn’t chase after her. I couldn’t leave Jessica in there. And chasing after Jules ultimately wouldn’t get us anywhere tonight anyway. I wouldn’t want to see me either. My heart stung my chest again, and at the same time, a chill ran up my spine, reminding me that I wasn’t invincible. I shoved my hands into my pockets and leaned up against a porch beam. Then, I forced my head back against the beam’s wood, as I took a deep breath, slowly let it out and then watched the fog it made disappear into the night.

After some time, I glanced at my watch. It was midnight, a new year. A set of headlights on the street in front of me caught my attention. I stood up and locked my eyes onto them. They slowed, stopped at the sign and then continued on.

I let out a sigh, as my eyes fell to the ground again and my hand found my forehead in frustration. She wasn’t coming back. She was gone, and it was all my fault.

* * *

It was a little after one in the morning, and I was following Jessica up the walk and to her doorstep.

When she reached her door, she stopped and faced me. I, meanwhile, took in a deep breath of air through my nose. It was even colder than it had been earlier, and it stung my throat and lungs.

“You know, you disappeared before midnight, and I didn’t get a New Year’s kiss,” she said, softly smiling.

I looked up from the ground, found her eyes and forced an awkward smile.

“Jessica,” I said and then stopped.

Her eyes were planted on mine, and I knew she was waiting for me to say something else, but I just didn’t know how to say what I had to say. I repositioned my feet in the spot where I was standing, shoved my bare hands into my warm pockets and lowered my eyes to the walk again.

“I’m, uh, not ready to do this yet,” I eventually managed to get out.

I didn’t hear anything, and my eyes soon rose to meet hers. She looked as if she had just been hurt, and she had been, and it was my fault.

“I thought that maybe I was,” I lied.

Her big, brown eyes continued to stare into mine. Then, eventually, she nodded her head, and it seemed as if she tried to smile.

“Okay,” she said so softly that I could barely hear her.

She stood there for a little while longer, then turned toward the door, placed her hand on the doorknob and paused. I waited for her to turn around, but she didn’t. Instead, she turned the knob and slid past the door’s frame and into the warm house. I watched as the door closed gently behind her, until all I could see was a wreath hanging from a nail at the top of the door. I quickly read the inscription underneath the wreath’s big, red bow: ‘Tis the season to be merry.

I let out a deep sigh and then followed with my eyes the path my breath made escaping back into the cold air.

New Year’s resolution – find a way to make things right again.

Chapter Seventeen
Gone

“So, how’d it go the other night?” Jeff asked as he sauntered into the room, one big foot after the other.

“What?” I asked.

I was finishing up a paramedic class assignment and would rather not hear Jeff’s voice over it, but I knew we couldn’t always get what we wanted.

“The party,” he said.

I stared at the words on the page in front of me for a second longer before I looked up at him.

“You really have no idea?” I asked.

He was giving me a puzzled look.

“No, Jessica seemed kind of down at school,” he said. “I figured she found out you were still in love with Julia.”

I impatiently looked up at him, then leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes with my palms.

“Julia saw Jessica holding my hand, and she left the party early with Rachel,” I said. “When I got up to get a drink that last time, I was going to talk to her, but Rachel stopped me. They left right after that.”

“You were holding hands with Jessica?” he asked. “Dude, you weren’t supposed to hold her hand.”

“I know that,” I said. “She just grabbed it, and then all of a sudden, Julia was there in the doorway, and I was screwed.”

“She grabbed your hand?” he asked.

He had a disgusted look on his face.

I audibly sighed.

“Julia left, Jeff,” I said.

“Well, has she called?” he asked.

I flashed him another impatient look.

“No, idiot, it turns out holding another girl’s hand just makes the ex-girlfriend leave you quicker the second time,” I said. “How did I let you talk me into that?”

“Well, they’re supposed to call. They get jealous, and then they call,” he said.

“Jeff, she’s not going to call,” I said. “She’s not jealous. She’s gotta think that I’m the biggest jerk in the world right now.”

He planted his feet in front of me and leaned up against a tall stool.

“Oh,” he said.

His face turned a little more sympathetic.

“Well, that doesn’t sound all bad,” he said. “It means she cares that you were holding Jessica’s hand.”

He had a point – almost.

“But she never called,” I said. “Jeff, I told her that I wanted to marry her, and then a month later, I’m sitting on a couch holding some girl’s hand when she shows up in the doorway.”

“I just don’t get it,” he said, shaking his head. “It always works in the movies.”

“In the movies?” I exclaimed, letting out a frustrated groan, as I threw my head back and rubbed my eyes again.

“I’m doomed,” I said out loud.

“Dude, it can’t be that bad,” he said.

“No, I really screwed this up,” I said. “Rachel made that pretty clear.”

I watched Jeff’s eyes lower to the floor.

“She said something though,” I said, suddenly remembering back.

Jeff’s eyes traveled up toward mine again.

“Who? Julia?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Rachel. She said that I don’t know Jules as well as I think I do or something like that.”

Jeff’s eyebrows furrowed together.

“Well, of course you don’t,” he said. “She’s a girl. They think and feel things on a daily basis that we’ll never think or feel in a lifetime.”

A crooked smile shot to my lips.

“I guess you’re right, buddy,” I said.

Jeff paused for a second then before he opened his mouth again.

“So, you gonna call Jessica then?” he asked, hesitantly.

He was wearing two, sad eyes now.

“No, I told her I wasn’t ready for a relationship,” I said.

He seemed as if he wanted to smile but stymied it.

“I’m sorry, buddy,” he said.

My eyes fell back onto the book in front of me.

“Actually, I was thinking about giving Julia a call in a little while,” I said.

My eyes happened to catch Jeff’s face in midsentence. His features had positioned themselves in a way that just looked strange to me.

“What?” I asked.

“Do you think that’s such a good idea?” he asked.

“And I suppose you have another great plan,” I said.

“No, no more plans,” he promised. “I’m just…I’m not trying to suggest anything, but have you ever thought that maybe the two of you just aren’t meant for each other?”

A scowl replaced my puzzled look.

“Weren’t you the one who said, ‘Take Jessica to the party. Julia will be there. She’ll see the two of you. She’ll get jealous, and then she’ll come running back to you?’ Wasn’t that you?” I exclaimed.

He blankly stared at me.

“Hey, you admitted it was worth a shot,” he said.

“I know, but now you’re telling me to give up on her?” I asked.

The volume of my voice was rising.

“Listen,” he said, “New Year’s Eve was my fault. I’m man enough to admit it. In all honesty, I really thought it would work. I thought it would work for both of us. Instead, Julia hates you, and judging by her somber mood today, Jessica loves you even more.”

He let out a big sigh.

“I’m sorry, man,” he said. “It was a bad idea.”

I cradled my face in my hands and let out a frustrated grunt.

“It’s fine,” I eventually said. “I knew it wouldn’t work, but I did it anyway. Damn it! What do I do now?”

I directed my question not to Jeff but to myself, though I heard Jeff start to stutter.

“Um, I mean, I don’t always have the best ideas or say the right things,” he said.

My eyes, glazed over in sarcasm, found his.

“But I really am just looking out for you, buddy,” he continued. “And no one would be happier than me to see you and Julia together – and Jessica finally wise up and fall for me, of course.”

He stopped and cleared his throat.

“But have you ever thought that maybe Julia just isn’t coming back?” he asked.

His voice had grown sheepish.

“I mean, they go off into that big, college world, and they don’t come back, Will,” he said. “They don’t ever come back. I mean, name someone who’s come back.”

I paused and thought for a second, while names started scrolling through my mind. Most of the names were of people who had never “left” New Milford. The rest were names of people who had “left” and who had never come…

I stopped in mid-thought.

“Jeff, it’s Julia,” I said.

The words were gentle but deliberate.

Jeff paused and set his eyes on me again.

“Will, it could be Juliet, but the fact is, most times, they don’t come back, and you know it,” he said.

I sat back in my chair, as a dull pain began stabbing at the inside of my chest near my heart. Jeff kept talking, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I was starting to feel sick.

“Will,” I thought I heard him say.

“You all right, buddy?” he asked.

My eyes slowly turned up toward him. I must have had an uneasy look planted on my face or something because he was backing away from me and into the stair railing. I could always count on Jeff to run from trouble, even if it meant leaving me in it.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, finally.

Then, I was quiet. Jeff found the stool again in the meantime and slid back onto it. Then, we sat there, wallowing in our own thoughts for a reflective minute.

“I probably should have told you that you were never going to win Jessica that way either,” I eventually confessed.

Jeff’s eyes fell to the floor, and he shook his head.

“You always get the good ones,” he said, starting to crack a smile.

He looked back up at me and then raised the glass of water he had been holding in his hand.

“Here’s to moving on,” he said.

I stared at him for a second, then picked up the bottle of soda that sat in front of me and brought it to his glass.

“To moving,” I said, with a heavy half-smile.

Chapter Eighteen
The Call

I cradled my phone in the palm of my hand. There was only one light on – a small lamp. Otherwise, the room was dark. Lately, the station seemed to be the only place where I could concentrate – and maybe that was because I had no memory of Jules being there.

I used my finger to scroll through the contacts in my phone. Her number was still on speed dial – number two—only because one was already assigned to voicemail. But tonight, I skipped the speed dial. Scrolling through the contacts gave me more time to think – what I was going to say and how I was going to say it.

If time were what she needed, like Rachel had said, I had given her some time. She deserved that. And despite what I had let Jeff believe, I had no intentions of moving on. What I did plan to do, however, was move forward – do something, anything to get Jules back.

I finally found her name but wasn’t any closer to figuring out what I was going to say. I stared at the phone’s screen for five, solid minutes, then I closed my eyes and pressed the button that sent the phone dialing her number. A deep breath in and a slow, uneasy exhale followed.

I heard the first ring, and it sent my heart into overdrive. I anxiously waited for the second ring, and then it came just as the first had – unexpected but deliberate. My heart continued to race. But, oddly, the sound of the rings, one after the other, was comforting somehow – that was until the fourth ring. On the fourth ring, I started to panic. And by the fifth ring, the sound of the solid tone was shrilling and unsettling. By that time, I knew that I wasn’t going to have the chance to talk to her. I took another deep breath and waited for her voicemail to pick up. Then suddenly, the ringing stopped, and a familiar, robotic voice poured through my phone’s speakers.

“The caller you are trying to reach does not have a voicemail box set up yet. Please try again. Goodbye.”

And with that, the other end of the line went silent.

I sat there on the edge of the cot, phone again cradled in my hand and my eyes locked on the phone’s screen. I waited there for minutes, willing the screen to glow and for her name to appear in bold letters across it. But when the minutes passed in silence, I couldn’t bear to hear the deafening sound of the quiet anymore. I lowered my head and cradled my face in my hands. I wasn’t sad. It felt more like anger, but it wasn’t anger either. It was like nothing. I felt numb. At least with sadness, I could mope away my sorrows. But with this strange pain, it was as if there was nothing I could do to make it go away.

I took another deep breath in and tried to collect myself. Then, I refocused my attention onto my phone, and it suddenly came to me: I could text her.

I started typing, but I only got to “Jules, I need to” when a sound at the doorway made me look up.

“Why are you still here?” asked a tall, shadowy man.

The man was the station’s chief. He wore a New Milford Fire Department tee shirt – just like the one I was wearing – but he also had short, wavy, graying hair and a mustache. In fact, he kind of reminded me of Clark Gable from that long movie Jules always loved to watch.

“I, uh, was just working on some homework,” I said.

He eyed the phone in my hand.

“In the dark?” he asked.

I glanced over at the small table next to the cot with the lamp and an opened book on it.

“I can’t concentrate with too much light,” I said.

He shot me a suspicious look, held it on me for a few seconds, then started to leave but stopped.

“Something on your mind, son?” he asked, turning back toward me.

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t really in the mood to talk.

“Aah,” he said. “It’s a girl, isn’t it?”

My eyes turned up.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Because that’s the only reason a young man, such as yourself, ever sits in this station in the dark with a frown that wide on his face,” he said.

I tried to laugh.

“I’m right, though,” he said, dragging a fold-up chair to the cot.

I smiled, but it felt unnatural.

“What did you do?” he asked.

I flashed him a puzzled look.

“Come on,” he said. “I also know you did something stupid. I forgot to mention that every young man, such as yourself, that comes into my station with a frown that big on his face has also done something stupid to a girl.”

I dropped my head and slowly shook it back and forth.

“I let her go,” I mumbled.

My eyes locked onto the phone in my hand again.

“You let her go?” he asked.

“Yeah, I should have said something when she said it wasn’t working, and I should have followed her that night on New Year’s,” I said.

After a couple of moments, my eyes turned up from the phone, and I realized he didn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about.

“I let her go,” I repeated.

“I see,” he said, nodding his head.

“We’re talking about Julia, aren’t we?” he asked.

I nodded my head.

I watched his eyes travel to the lunch bag he had been holding in his hands. He turned it over a couple of times and then looked up.

“Sometimes, you just have to let go,” he said. “She’ll come back, when she’s ready.”

I sat there for a second in silence. Then, he reached over, patted me on the shoulder and chuckled.

“Happiness is like a butterfly,” he said. “The more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”

By the time he had finished, my eyebrows were in a heap at the center of my forehead.

“It’s Thoreau,” he said, chuckling some more. “Didn’t you ever learn that in school?”

I laughed.

“Can’t say I did, sir,” I admitted.

A moment passed, and my smile started to fade.

“Does that really work – the whole letting go and coming back thing?” I asked.

His eyes fell to the tiles on the floor before they found my stare again.

“Some of us spend our entire lives hoping it does,” he said. “And for some of us lucky ones, it does. But, boy, I have a good feeling that for you, it’ll work. Just be patient.”

I smiled and lowered my head again as he got up and scooted the chair back to its place against the wall.

“And don’t do anything stupid in the meantime,” he said over his shoulder as he made his way to the door again.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll try not to, sir.”

“Oh, and by the way,” he said, stopping at the doorway, “didn’t you just get some big, fancy job on the department in St. Louis?”

I smiled.

“Yes, sir,” I replied.

“That’s no small feat,” he said, shaking his head. “But if you’d ask me, I’d say they got the better deal. You’re a damn good firefighter, Stephens.”

My eyes traveled to the floor.

“Thanks, sir,” I said.

“And Will,” he said.

I looked up again.

“Turn some lights on. You’re going to end up lookin’ like me by the time you’re thirty,” he said, smiling and tugging on his glasses.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

My stare remained on the dark doorway for a few seconds, even after the chief had disappeared through it. Then, eventually, I lowered my eyes to my phone’s screen again, and I retraced the letters I had formed just minutes ago. Slowly then, I watched each one disappear as I backspaced the message out of the phone and repeated the chief’s words in my head: Just be patient.