“He sent me a few back episodes,” she groaned, sinking down into her chair, wanting to disappear.
Liz looked up sharply from the screen. “So you’re in contact?”
“I don’t know.” Julia threw up her hands. “A little?”
“You didn’t tell me there was potential here.” Liz narrowed her eyes like she’d been lied to.
“There isn’t. He’s God knows where right now—Patagonia and about to go to South Africa? And then who knows where, and in the end, he’ll wind up back in Australia. Last time I checked, none of those places were anywhere near Chicago.”
“So? What have I been telling you?”
Liz lifted up the laptop to make her point.
“Yeah, I know. The internet. But I don’t want some kind of weird long-distance online sexcapade.”
Liz laughed. “I don’t know who this guy is, but he was definitely good for you. Leaving school before it gets dark out, remembering to stay stocked in good wine, using un-Juliaesque words like sexcapade. What have I told you? Don’t give up so fast.”
“I didn’t give up,” Julia protested. “He knew I had a return ticket back and on the day I was leaving, he was all, Hey I’m going to Santiago!”
“Yeah, but to see his friend who got jilted, right?”
“Jamie. But he made that plan totally last minute, like he was looking for anywhere in the world he could go that wasn’t Chicago or the U.S.”
“But did you talk to him about it at all beforehand? Did you say anything about what would happen at the end of your stay?”
Julia shook her head, feeling worse by the second. “I asked him to come here,” she said weakly, but Liz wasn’t buying it.
“At, like, the very last second, when he was on his you can’t tie me down kick.”
“So? He wanted me to ask him so that he could say no.”
“How do you know he wasn’t waiting to see if you’d bring anything up sooner, and then when you didn’t,” she wagged a finger accusingly, “and this other thing came up, he went with that because it was something for him to do?”
“Because he could have said something if he wanted to see more of me!” Julia cried, exasperated.
“So could you!”
“He told me it was just a fling,” she said defensively.
Liz rolled her eyes. “One night is a fling. Two nights. A week of nothing but fucking and no talking whatsoever. But you guys? Please tell me he wasn’t dumb enough to really say that, and that you’re not dumb enough to believe it. You guys needed to talk about this, not have some stupid fight that neither of you meant just to make it easier to leave.”
“It wasn’t just some stupid fight,” Julia said defensively, even though she’d thought the same thing a million times before. “He acted like I have, I don’t know, intimacy issues.” She wrinkled her noise. “That’s hitting below the belt.”
“You do have intimacy issues, sweetheart,” Liz said matter-of-factly. “Obviously he does, too. That’s why you talk about it.” She over-annunciated the last part, as though explaining to a child not quite able to grasp the concept.
“I can’t believe I’m getting lectured on communication by you,” Julia grumbled.
“I know,” Liz agreed. “It may be the strangest thing that’s ever happened in the whole history of our friendship.”
Julia couldn’t help it. She cracked a smile.
“Almost as strange as the fact that I saw Rob last night and still want to see him again tonight,” she added, and Julia raised an eyebrow.
“That is surprising,” she said, grateful as usual for Liz’s ability to turn any conversation back to herself.
“Which is why you have to come to the show tonight to check him out again. I need to know what you think.”
“Yeah, fine, of course I’m going,” Julia sighed.
“I think Blake went to see Jamie because he was scared,” Liz said as they got their coats and headed to the door. “He didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t want to look like he was hanging around waiting for you to invite him.”
“I think he went to see Jamie because he wanted to,” Julia said crossly. “After all, he made it quite clear that we had come to the end. And anyway, Jamie’s his friend.”
“So? You can have friends and still have a life. You’re acting like this was inevitable.”
“Wasn’t it? He’s some hotshot TV writer and producer in Sydney. I’m a math teacher in Chicago. We only met because we were both completely out of our elements, but we can’t live outside our real lives forever. Sooner or later, things would have to get practical anyway.”
“Why?” Liz asked. And it was in the way she cocked her head at Julia, with that puzzled expression as she unlocked the car door, that Julia knew the question was a serious one.
Why did they have to get practical? Because that was what life was. Someone had to be there to take care of the everyday issues, the day in day out, the problems as they inevitably arose. Someone had to live in Chicago and trudge through the snow and smile at the other couples and laugh even when the jokes weren’t funny.
Didn’t they?
More to the point, didn’t she?
Chapter Twenty-Three
Months passed. The snow melted and the spring came too slow, like it always did. A painful unfolding full of fits and false starts. Flowers pushed up the first sunny weekend only to crumple in the next frost. The restaurants put out their sidewalk seating and found the chairs dusted in snow.
But eventually the sun came, the afternoons warmed, and then it was June, another school year over. On the last day of teaching Julia went out for drinks with her co-workers after class like she always did. Dutifully she clinked glasses around the table, congratulating everyone on a job well done. But every time a cry of “Cheers!” went up, she cringed. She’d held Blake’s eyes every time they said it and what did it matter? She was alone.
She made her excuses and headed home, but it was only to change out of her work clothes before going out again. Julia had been roped into dinner with Danny and Amy, and with Liz and Rob, who were still going strong. It was Liz’s longest relationship in forever, and while Julia was happy for her friend, she couldn’t help feeling like the third—or really fifth—wheel sometimes. Rob was supposed to be bringing a friend of his to dinner in some kind of awkward set-up for Julia. She wasn’t exactly interested, but she still didn’t know what to wear.
“The floral number with the low neck,” Liz said over the phone as Julia stood in front of her closet, frowning.
“Too much cleavage for a stranger. I don’t even know the guy.” Julia tucked the phone against her shoulder and rifled through the hangers.
“All the more reason to show off, silly. What about one of those cute sundresses you have? With a little shawl for later, it’ll be perfect for the garden bar.”
But Julia knew which sundresses Liz was talking about. The blue dress Blake had hitched up over her hips as he took her under the waterfall. The red one she’d worn in Rio, feeling his hand idly slide up the straps when they started to slip.
She’d tried to forget about “her Brazilian thing,” as Liz called it. But months later everything still reminded her of Blake. Something she read, a thing someone said, something she wanted to do…
On the nights when she let her resolution slide and stayed late working, assuring everyone else that they could go home to be with their families while she finished up the work that needed to be done, she wished she had Blake there to remind her that she didn’t have to be the one taking care of everyone else.