How to Fall

by Rebecca Brooks

  Julia awoke to a sudden banging and groaned. Not daylight—it wasn’t fair! She wanted to sleep forever. What was that noise?

  She gathered the sheets up across her chest and sat up sleepily. Bang. Blake slammed a drawer shut.

  “Too early for noise.” She yawned. “Mmm, do I smell coffee?”

  “On the dresser,” he said without looking up.

  She sat up straighter. “What’s going on, Blake? The bus isn’t until four—we have plenty of time.”

  “Yeah, I gotta go sooner than that.” He balled up a pile of T-shirts and stuffed them in a bag.

  It felt like someone was lining up to punch her in the gut. But the hit hadn’t connected yet, because Julia didn’t understand what he meant.

  She just knew that for some reason, in a matter of moments, there was going to be pain.

  “Blake?” she asked.

  He straightened his back. “Have you seen my trainers?”

  “Blake, what are you doing?”

  “Shit, can you see if they’re under the bed?”

  “Blake!” she practically shouted, trying to make him snap out of it. She reached for one of the hotel robes and wrapped it around her, suddenly aware of how naked—how vulnerable—she was. “I thought you were coming with me to São Paulo.”

  For a moment he stopped, one sneaker hanging out of his bag, the other still in his hand. “And do what? Spend all that time stuck on a bus to wind up in a city where I don’t want to go?

  “We were just talking about this last night. You said you wanted to take me to the airport. You said you didn’t have any plans.”

  “Yeah, well, something’s changed.”

  “Apparently it has.” She stared at him in disbelief.

  “What does it matter? You’re going home anyway.”

  “Is that what this is about? Me going home? Talk to me, Blake,” she pleaded as he hastily crammed clothes into his bag. “Where are you going?” Her voice sounded small in her ears.

  “Santiago. No point going to São Paulo when I can get a flight from here.”

  “Well aren’t we Mister Practical.” She swung her legs around so she was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Blake, will you slow down a minute? Why Santiago? Why are you so upset?”

  “I’m not upset!”

  “Like hell you’re not!” Julia gestured at the room, which looked like a tornado had torn through it. In all his packing, he’d made the place a mess.

  “Something’s come up,” he said with exaggerated patience, as though talking to a child. “Believe it or not, there are things I have to do that aren’t about you.”

  “That’s not fair, Blake.”

  “No, not fair is waking up to a note and half your bank account gone.”

  “What are you talking about?” Suddenly she realized. “Oh my god—Santiago. Did something happen to Jamie and Chris?”

  Blake shoved the contents of the bathroom counter into his bag. She didn’t bother pointing out that he’d taken her toothpaste, too.

  “She left,” he said.

  “What do you mean, she left?”

  He shrugged like it was no big deal, but he was a terrible liar. “I got an email from Jamie this morning. They were going to Chile and then flying out later this month and she just…up and left. With Lukas,” he added like an afterthought, and Julia felt her heart stop. Shit. So that’s what this was about.

  “I thought Lukas was going to the Pantanal,” she said carefully, still trying to put the pieces together.

  “He is. With Chris.”

  “So what, Chris is traveling with Lukas and then meeting up with Jamie for their flight?”

  “Don’t you get it, Julia?” He turned on her in exasperation. “Chris is gone. She isn’t going back to Australia. And she isn’t going back to Jamie.” Blake leaned against the bathroom counter, his back to her. “I thought they were joking,” he said quietly. “When they said that in the bar by the river that night, I thought they were joking.”

  Julia stood, but she didn’t reach for him. She felt herself poised taut on the narrow tight rope line that connected them. She had to walk carefully, but she didn’t know how.

  “Jamie’s in Santiago now?” she asked.

  “He got on the plane to Chile like they were going to, an empty seat beside him the whole time. His flight to Australia isn’t for another two weeks, and it’s expensive to change it.”

  “So you’re going.”

  “Yeah.” He locked eyes with her through the mirror. “I’m going.”

  “I guess this is good-bye, then.”

  “I guess it is.”

  The silence between them dragged on, Julia standing behind him, both of them looking at each other through the bathroom mirror. She took a deep breath. This was going to be okay, because it had to be. That was all there was to it.

  “You’re a good friend,” she sighed, feeling suddenly exhausted. “I’m surprised he asked you to come, but I understand needing to help. It’s good of you to be there for him.”

  Blake frowned in the mirror and his eyes darted away.

  “Wait.” Julia took a step back, wrapping the bathrobe tighter around her. “He did ask you, didn’t he?”

  “What does it matter?” Blake said quickly, turning around to face her. “Obviously I need to go.”

  “Blake, you know I’m the last person who’d ever say ditch your friends. But no, there’s nothing obvious about it.”

  “What were you expecting? It’s not like I wasn’t going to go anywhere after you left.”

  “But you’re not just leaving, Blake. You’re making your big dramatic exit so that you can be the one to leave before I do.”

  “I didn’t plan to get this email from Jamie,” he started.

  “The email that doesn’t ask you to come to Santiago.”

  “What do you want me to do, Julia? Ditch Jamie? Come to Chicago? As if you’d ever ask.”

  “You didn’t even give me the chance!” she cried.

  He shook his head. “If you wanted it, you would have said something.”

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “Do you want to come?”

  He looked her right in the eye. “Of course not,” he said coldly, without even the smallest trace of a frown.

  He was telling the truth.

  Julia staggered back and sank onto the edge of the bed. The punch had finally come, knocking her down. It felt like everything within her had stopped working—her legs, her brain, her heart.

  “You stormed in here determined to be mad at me,” she said. The tears were streaming down her face, but she wasn’t crying. Her voice was remarkably calm. “Congratulations. Now you’ll never be left, since you get to leave first. I hope you have a nice life, Blake. I hope you have fun traveling.”

  She said the last word with as much venom as she could muster, trying not to hiccup through her tears.

  Blake grabbed the last of his clothes and zipped up his bag, heaving it onto his back. “You’d never ask—not for real. You didn’t ask me to Rio. You didn’t bring up anything about Chicago earlier. Of course you wouldn’t ask without me first paving the way.”

  “How dare you—” Now she really was crying, but her hands were balled into fists and she was too angry to wipe her cheeks. “How dare you pretend your leaving is my fault.”

  “I’m just speaking the truth. You’ve got this vault, and sometimes I think I’ve gotten through but then your guard is right back up again, telling me you’re a good friend like you’re not upset. Pretending that everything’s fine.”

  Careful. She’d tried to be so careful. Until, before she knew what was happening, it was too late.

  “Leave,” she whispered, everything watery through her eyes. When he didn’t move, she said it again, stronger this time. “Leave.” She didn’t have to take this from him.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got the bill covered. Turn in your key when you go.”

  “Fuck you, Blake.”r />
  There, she said it. She’d thought it the night that he made it clear he wasn’t going to Rio with her, and now she had finally said it out loud.

  She should have seen it coming. He’d already shown her he wasn’t going to stick around when he said he wasn’t coming to Rio with her. Of course he would drop her when it was convenient. It was when things got a little too real that she could count on him to bounce.

  She knew that Jamie was hurting now, and that having Blake there would make a difference. But she also knew that it was an awfully convenient excuse.

  “Nice knowing you, too,” Blake said.

  And then he was gone. Just like that, her days with him were over without so much as a proper good-bye.

  She’d once envisioned him holding her at the airport, the last feel of his lips, the hope that finally, in their last moments, there might be a chance for something more. Suddenly she couldn’t imagine anything more foolish.

  When the door clicked shut, Julia cried so hard her shoulders hurt from shaking. She stood under the shower and the water mixed with her tears until everything felt like drowning and she knew that this was it. She had finally crashed.

  Blake waited in line for a cab. He waited in line for a flight. He waited in line through security. He waited in line to board. When the plane took off, he felt like he was still waiting. Waiting for something to happen.

  But of course it already had.

  It hadn’t been definite. Not even when he’d said it out loud. There had still been time for anything to happen. For Julia to shake her head and tell him that if he really could go anywhere and do anything, he should come to Chicago with her.

  Not an invitation that he backed her into, said in anger and tears, but a real one. One that she meant with every part of her.

  But she didn’t.

  Blake reminded himself again that he was doing the right thing. Maybe not the right thing by Julia, but the right thing by Jamie. He was determined to show the loyalty that Liam hadn’t. Relationships didn’t work out—people cheated, they left, they said they loved you until it turned out they no longer did. But Jamie had shown that friendship still meant something. And right now, his friend needed someone to supply the coffee and the booze and to make sure he wasn’t alone on his ass in Santiago waiting for his flight.

  Blake knew the reasons he had to go to Jamie. Yet when he’d told Julia he was leaving, some small part of him had hoped she’d be able to talk him out of it, to point out everything wrong with his so-called reasoning. For one wild, crazy second he’d even hoped that she was going to say she’d leave her job for the rest of the year and travel to Chile with him.

  But that was preposterous. There was no way she could do that and no reason she would. And so he wasn’t surprised but it still hurt like hell when she told him he was a good friend.

  Like she wanted him to go. Like she was okay with him walking away.

  Like this was a fling, nothing more.

  But of course it was. What they’d had would never work in the real world, in their real lives, where they were completely different people who lived thousands of miles away. It wasn’t his fault for being the first to slam them back to reality. The one relationship he had believed in, that had given him hope after Kelley that some people really did find each other and work together and stay through all the ups and downs, finding joy in each other’s company even after so much time… The relationship he’d admired in the friends he’d met was over. Just like his.

  Julia had said she thought there was something up between Jamie and Chris, but Blake hadn’t wanted to see it. Why was it that he never wanted to see it? Jamie had advised him to go after Julia, and yet he’d failed to realize what was happening to his friend before it was too late.

  He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. How much had he ignored when it should have been obvious that Kelley’s heart wasn’t in it anymore? He wasn’t going to let that happen again. He wasn’t going to go out on a limb just to watch it disappear once she’d had her fun.

  And he wasn’t going to let someone suffer through the shock of heartbreak alone. Not the way he’d had to, with no friend to support him because it was precisely that friend who’d caused such pain.

  Blake’s stomach rumbled, reminding him he hadn’t eaten breakfast. The bag was probably still sitting on the hotel dresser, vanilla cream oozing out the sides, the pastries partially crushed from where he’d knocked them swinging his bag around.

  He wondered if she’d bother to eat any of it. It was hard to imagine her ever standing up from that spot on the edge of the bed where she’d sat, frozen at his words. She’d been oblivious to the bathrobe sliding off her shoulder, the knot coming undone. He’d almost reached out to slide it back up. But then she’d cursed and told him to leave.

  He’d thought her voice sounded funny, higher pitched or something, but his mind was swimming so he couldn’t really tell. He’d stood outside the hotel room until he heard the spray of water come on. He knew then that she wasn’t frozen. She was fine without him.

  So he left.

  Chapter Twenty

  Julia was disappointed when the bus pulled into São Paulo and she had to uncurl from the fetal position she’d wrapped herself into in the very last seat. Stop crying, she scolded herself again and again as her final hours in Brazil ticked down. Did she expect Blake was going to drop everything and—what? Come back to Chicago with her on the spot, like some trinket she happened to pick up? Blake had his friends. He had his plans. He had his life. What had started as a fling could never be anything more.

  She’d known the rules when she got into that pool their first night in Foz do Iguaçu. Somewhere over the week she’d forgotten them. But the rules didn’t change just because now she had feelings involved.

  But didn’t he feel something, too? She couldn’t believe that things like this happened to him all the time—meeting someone and clicking with them so well, having this good a time over so many days and nights, moving from quiet to laughter to serious conversation with such incredible ease.

  And the sex. Oh God, the sex. Would she ever experience anything like that again? There was no way that it was always so good. It wasn’t just that she had let herself go in a way she’d never been able to with Danny. It was that she felt something with him she’d never had with anyone else, period. At first she’d assumed that was just Blake and the way he rolled with everyone he was with. But the more time they’d spent together—the more they’d needed each other—the more she’d been convinced that this was something special, something different, for him, too. She wasn’t sure she’d ever find anything like it again.

  So then why was he getting on a plane to Santiago while she was boarding for Chicago? Why had their last words been so mean? She didn’t want to remember Blake with that icy stare, looking so disgusted by her tears. She didn’t want to remember what she’d said. If he had come to her, put his arms around her, she knew everything would have turned out okay.

  But instead he’d blamed her. After all the things they’d done together and all the ways she’d opened up to him, he turned around and told her it wasn’t enough. Maybe he was right and she should have been the one to take the leap and beg him to turn their week into something more. But why was that her responsibility? What if she hadn’t been sure until he left that a relationship was what she wanted from him? It was complicated, their lives were complicated, and yet he’d ended it all without giving them any kind of chance.

  She didn’t understand. It wasn’t like they needed carrier pigeons to communicate. She had his address and cell number in Sydney scribbled on a piece of paper in her bag, along with his email address. He was the one with the open schedule and money to spend. He could have taken the time to come with her or suggest they meet somewhere in another few months, or—Julia didn’t even know what she wanted, just that she’d hoped for something. She’d let herself go when she knew that she shouldn’t, and all she wanted in return was some indication
that it had meant something. That there was more to Blake than the man who’d stormed into the hotel room and then stormed out.

  She knew why, though. It was easier to be angry than sad.

  When she finally boarded, she sat down in her window seat and set her jaw, keeping her face blank, refusing to cry as the plane took off and carried her away from the best time of her life.

  It was only when she landed in Chicago, freezing, the snow piled so high for so long it had long since crusted over into gritty gray ice, that she lost the strength to keep the mask on. Liz picked her up from the airport early in the morning and threw her arms around her, gushing about her tan and eager to hear all about it.

  But when Julia collapsed in the front seat, exhausted from two nights of not sleeping, all she could do was cry.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chicago

  It was surprising how easy it was to slide back into her old life. As easy as pulling on her snow boots: one foot at a time. Step by step, day by day, and there she was. A few innocuous details bandied around the faculty room during breaks—the waterfalls were gorgeous! Rio is such a lively city!—and by the end of the first week, it was as though she’d never left.

  Except that buried in her heart was a deep, pulsing throb that still remembered the taste of fresh coconuts on the beach, and the sand between her toes, the feel of Blake’s soft lips on hers. The last word that she’d said to him. Leave.

  She hung out with Liz and Danny and showed them all her pictures that didn’t involve Blake. Liz wanted to see the evidence: Blake in front of the waterfalls, Blake with his arms stretched out in front of the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer, Blake making goofy faces under his round blue helmet before they made their jump. But Julia didn’t want to keep living in a past that could never be her future.

  Danny had a new girlfriend, Amy, whom Julia liked well enough. She was hard to get to know, but the four of them went out together, sometimes accompanied by Liz’s new beau of the moment, and Julia tried not to feel like there was someone missing.

  Amy was a great match for Danny, no question. She was shy and accommodating and incredibly kind. She would never say fuck me or jump off a cliff with wings on her back. Would never stay up all night wearing next to nothing, dancing and laughing too hard to care.