My Butterfly (16 page)

I took another glance around the room before ambling back toward the kitchen.

I got two drinks and then ventured back to the living room, where Jeff was already propped up beside Jessica, flapping his jaw. I saw him drawing the outline of a mountain with his hand, and I knew right away he was telling her the story of when he climbed some mountain in
Colorado two summers ago. Jessica had that same look every girl had when Jeff was talking to her. I really hoped she wanted to come to this party as bad as Jeff said she had. If not, I really was going to have at least two girls hating me by the end of the night.

I walked over to the two of them and handed Jessica her drink.

She looked up at me, smiled and took the glass.

“Here,” she said, “sit down. Jeff is telling me about his summer at
Estes Park.”

Her hand patted a small space on the couch beside her.

I stared for a couple of seconds at the spot where her hand had just been. Then, I looked up and caught Jeff’s bugged-out eyes. I was pretty sure he was silently telling me to just do something, so that he could get on with his story. So, after a few more seconds, I reluctantly fell into the couch next to her.

“
Estes Park, huh?” I asked.

“Yeah, Will hates this story,” Jeff nonchalantly said and then went back to flapping his jaw.

Jessica knowingly glanced at me and smiled.

I laughed once and took a drink from my cup. I was nervous, but I played it off by sneering at Jeff. He paused for a second but then continued.

I took another drink from my cup. I didn’t know if it were the sound of Jeff’s unending story or the thought that Julia could come waltzing into the room at any moment that was making me claustrophobic. Someone had to go.

I motioned for Jessica to trade me my cup for her glass. She obliged without much nudging.

“Hey, Jeff, I think Jessica needs another drink,” I said. “Can we put your story on hold for a minute?”

Jeff stopped talking just long enough to eye Jessica’s cup.

“I got it,” he said, snatching the cup from Jessica’s hand and shooting up.”

“No, it’s okay…,” she started and then stopped when she caught a glimpse of my shaking head. “Okay, thanks,” she said instead and smiled.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Save my seat.”

I watched as Jeff disappeared behind a group of people hovering around the doorway. Then, I looked back at Jessica to find her questioning stare.

“He likes getting girls drinks, believe me,” I said, thinking of a way to move to a spot on the armrest of the couch without making it too awkward. “And he’s a little wound for sound—his own, that is.”

I glanced at the armrest and then back at her. I felt the anxious smile still glued to my lips. I wondered if she could see it too.

“Besides, I don’t know about you, but I needed to get out of the Colorado wilderness for a second,” I said.

Jessica laughed and then rested her hand on mine. I flinched slightly, as my eyes darted to her hand.

“You’re my hero,” she said, playfully tossing her long, brown hair behind her shoulder.

Her hand was soft and kind, but it wasn’t Jules’s hand. What the hell was I doing?

I awkwardly smiled. I wanted to pull my hand back, but I couldn’t. I had already brought her to this party as a decoy for the girl I really wanted to bring; I had subjected her to Jeff’s loathsome hiking story; and if I took my hand back now, I would surely be the jerk I was turning out to be after all. I just couldn’t bring myself to embarrass her.

“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 on
to them. They slowed, stopped at the sign and then continued on.