My Butterfly (17 page)

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.

Gone

“S
o, 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.

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.