by Doyle, S.
Before our future could start.
Me ruling the world. Her by my side.
It hadn’t been easy without her. The letters had helped but they were a poor substitute for her grounding presence.
It’d been over three years since I’d seen her. Almost a year since I’d asked her for a picture. We hadn’t done calls or texts. We hadn’t done Google Hangouts or FaceTime. It was like we could each put the other in the space we needed as long as there were just the letters.
Now I was about to break all of that, and no fucking lie, I was nervous as shit.
A woman brushed by me on the street looking down at her phone. Her blond hair was chin length and streaked with highlights. Her shoes were short heels, but high quality. The dark blazer and pants fit her in a way that showed off her ass, and her bright-red Kate Spade bag said up-and-comer but not there yet.
I didn’t need to see her face. It was in her walk, in her purpose. In the way her entire look said Fitting In, No Drama Here.
“Jules!”
She stopped on the top step and turned around, slowly, deliberately. When she saw me she didn’t smile. Neither did I.
She stuffed her phone in her purse and took the steps down, stopping on the second to last step so she was almost a head taller than I was.
I handed her the magazine.
Science Today. Front cover. A lead article that suggested a breakthrough in software that would return nearly instant results on blood tests. After the Theranos debacle, scientists were cautiously optimistic.
She looked at it, then at me.
“I’m making six figures,” she said, handing the magazine back.
I shrugged. “I’ll pay you more.”
She sighed. “Why didn’t you come to my graduation?”
I could tell her it was because of my parents. She would know it wasn’t the total truth.
“I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t going to see you again until I had proof. Until I had done something to prove I was worthy.”
“That’s fucked up. We’re supposed to be best friends.”
“We’re not supposed to be anything. We are friends and you know me. I called you out for being fat on, like, your first week at school.”
“You were fat shaming me! I knew it!”
“Jules,” I said quietly. Because this was it. The now-or-never moment. No school degree between us, no family farm to save. I’d already saved it. She really was going to be pissed when she found out. “Are you with me?”
“Where are we going?”
My heart flipped over in my chest and I took a few shallow breaths to control the rush of emotion.
“Back to Seattle for now. I’ve got a building I’m using as headquarters. We’re going to have to think about the next steps.”
She crossed her arms and popped out her hip. It was a very un-Jules-like move and I could see how she’d grown in these past few years. More confident in herself, her power. A dangerous creature to be sure. Not that she would ever scare me.
“Is this the part where I tell you I need to think about it?”
“Do you really have to?” I asked.
“No. Come on inside. I’ll type up my resignation. You’ll tell me what your plans are and then…”
“I know,” I acknowledged. I knew what she was going to have me do.
“You have to, Ethan.”
I nodded. “I told you I’m ready. I wouldn’t be back here if I wasn’t. You first. Them second.”
My parents. I hadn’t seen or spoken to them directly since the one call I’d promised Jules I would make. To say that the call hadn’t gone well was an understatement.
My father had accused me of compromising my mother’s mental health. Maybe I had. Maybe that was my shame to live with, but after years of feeling like I was in a prison, I deserved the freedom.
Or thought I did.
She looked me up and down then, as if realizing how long it had been since she’d seen me. Unlike me, she hadn’t asked for a picture.
I’d filled out some but was still lean. I spent time lifting weights, but I would never be ripped. I kept my hair more trimmed to my head after her brothers kept asking me about The Big Bang Theory. Other than that, I didn’t think I’d changed too much.
Not like her.
I’d left a girl. I was standing in front of a woman.
“You look good, Jules.”
“Your eyebrows need a trim,” she replied. She reached for my hand and pulled me upstairs. “I have a roommate. Her name is Kaitlyn. Don’t fuck her.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said with a smile.
Jules and I were back. I was finally home.
* * *
Therapy
Julia
“And that’s how it all started. Our working relationship, anyway,” I said. “If we’re not counting that first year when he paid me to take notes.”
“Just like that, you quit your job and went to work for him?” Carol asked me.
Just like that. Simple and not simple at all.
“I never told you how happy I was to see you that day,” I said, admitting the truth to myself. Feeling like, now, it was safe to say it out loud. “I told myself a hundred times that you would come for me someday. I took the subway to work for almost six months wondering when that day would come. Then you were there at the bottom of the steps and…”
I stopped talking because I couldn’t say anything more without revealing everything. And I didn’t want to do that. Not at the end of us.
This wasn’t a good idea. Therapy, counseling. Truth and honesty. It would have been easier to just walk away.
Or maybe it would have been easier to just leave things the way they were. To do what he wanted and to put us back into the friend and coworker zone. That’s really what he wanted.
“We should leave, Ethan,” I said, even as I swallowed all the emotions that wanted to burst out. “We should go right now. I’ll come back to work for you, if that’s what you want. Nothing has to change.”
“You said you weren’t happy. You said you were hurting,” he reminded me. “That I was hurting you.”
Yes, but I was going to hurt worse if this all broke apart. I’d been a basket case after he left me. I was worse after I quit. How foolish to think I could end this cleanly with a resignation letter. That I could break my addiction of him with a snap of my fingers.
So, fine, I was weak. I was backsliding. I knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself. I just wanted him to stop saying those things. All those things that couldn’t be true.
Ethan shook his head slowly and I wanted to slap him. I wanted to slap him so hard. Didn’t he understand what was happening? Couldn’t he see where this was all going to lead?
Did he need my pride, too?
“We can’t go back, Jules. It’s only forward for both of us. No matter how scary that is. Ask the question again, Carol. The one you asked us at the start of the hour.”
I blinked a few times and wiped the sleeve of my blouse across my nose.
Snot on a three-hundred-dollar blouse, because that’s how I dressed now, but I was still the poor girl from the farm who didn’t really fit anywhere.
“It’s okay, Carol,” he said, not looking at her, but looking at me instead. “Ask it again. We’re ready now.”
“All right. How long have you two been in love?”
A sob rushed out of me. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t. Ethan was breaking things open that couldn’t be put back together.
“I’ve been in love with Julia for a very long time,” Ethan said. “So in love with her that it felt too big and too frightening to ever acknowledge it. So I didn’t. When my father died, and I reached out to her…that’s when I knew I couldn’t hide from it anymore. And it was as big and frightening as I thought. So I got on a plane and ran away to the other side of the planet. That was my mistake. I came back to fix it. We’re here now. And we’re going to push through this to the other side.”
“And you, Ju
lia?” Carol asked.
“I can’t,” I panted. Breathing was too hard. The anxiety was crushing me. “What are you doing?” I shouted at him. “I told you I would come back. Now you’re ruining everything!”
“I don’t want you to come back to the way things were. That’s not what all this was about. You working for me again... I don’t know why I’m even discussing it. There’s nothing to come back to.”
I tried to think. I tried to breath. Nothing made sense anymore. He didn’t love me. He’d never loved me. If he’d loved me…
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“I sold it. The company. Phoenix. All of it. It’s gone. No more job. And I’m not your boss anymore. That’s why I was late getting here today. There was an endless amount of red tape Daniel had to walk me through. Julia? Look at me. What are you thinking?”
“You. Sold. The. Company.” I shook my head trying to clear the buzzing in my ears. This was madness. The company had meant everything to Ethan. It was his life’s work. Money was like some secondary prize for him. What he cared about were the ideas. Always the ideas. He’d already revolutionized the medical industry. He was working on the airline industry. None of this made sense.
He nodded. “I thought that if we were going to do this, we should be equals.”
Equal. Equal with Ethan. That didn’t seem right.
“Julia, you haven’t said how you felt. About Ethan,” Carol prompted.
I looked at the counselor, so calm, so unfazed as she sat there pushing all my buttons to the point where I felt like I was coming apart at the seams.
“I feel…I feel…like...” I looked at the clock on the wall behind her. The clock I’d used as a focal point to see my way through this. A countdown until I could finally be free. Only, in the end, I’d nearly caved, offered him everything he wanted, which was for me to stay.
Only there was no place to stay anymore.
He sold the company. He said he loved me.
None of that could be true.
“I feel like the hour is up.” I stood, my legs barely able to hold me.
“Jules, don’t do this,” Ethan growled.
“You said one hour. I gave you that hour. Goodbye, Ethan.”
“Jules!”
He was shouting but I wasn’t listening. I had to get out of that office. I had to or I was going to fall apart. So I ran. On my fancy heels, through the lobby, to the elevators.
The doors were closing as Ethan came through the lobby still shouting my name. Ordering me not to go. Demanding that I come back and talk to him.
Because that’s how it had always been between us. He was the boss and I was his loyal servant. Until I wasn’t.
“You’re not the boss of me anymore!” I shouted at him through the closing doors.
And when they closed, shutting him out, I slid down the back of the elevator until my ass hit the floor, and I sobbed.
* * *
Hey everyone! Hope you enjoyed part 1 of Ethan and Julia’s story. Turn the page for a preview of Mostly My Girlfriend
Mostly My Girlfriend
One week apart
Jules,
I get it. You’re not speaking to me. Not even through letters. Okay, I admit it: I fucked up. I should have stayed, and we should have talked about it…
I ran. Like a coward. So do that. Write me back and call me a coward and at least we can talk about that. But shutting me out is killing me.
Please write back.
Also know that Mom is here with me now. I pushed and pushed and finally she relented. I’m not sure if it’s me or just the challenge of being in another country, but at least she’s engaged in the world.
But the sadness, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed before.
When I work through this, I’ll figure out what to do with her, but the bottom line is I can’t leave her behind in New York. Wherever I go, wherever we go, she’ll need to come with us.
I just need some time to get my head straight. Is that too much to ask?
Ethan
* * *
A few hours after therapy
Julia
I’ve been in love with Julia for a very long time…
The words echoed in my ears and I tilted the bottle of wine back to take a slug. There wasn’t enough wine in the world to make me drunk enough to forget what happened today.
He didn’t love me. He couldn’t love me. He left me.
He fucked me the first time and didn’t remember. He fucked me the second time and pretended like it didn’t change anything between us.
The third time… I couldn’t think about that night. I couldn’t think about it without crying and I didn’t want to cry anymore. Instead, I wanted to get drunk and forget everything that had happened today.
There was a knock on my door. The building had a doorman—one of the few in Seattle—which meant it could only be Ethan. What had been the point of running away from him if he was just going to follow me?
You wanted him to follow you.
Ugh! More honesty. I was tired of it.
“Jules, you know I have a key,” he called through the door.
Of course he had a key. He was my closest friend. He was my emergency contact. He was my…
I pushed myself off the couch hugging my large bottle of wine to my chest. I considered what I’ told him, how I would be willing to put us back together the way we were, and now I wondered if that was even possible.
I leaned on the door with one hand, took another slug of wine with the other. It was strange because, even though I was drinking from the bottle, removing its contents one gulp at a time, it still felt like it was getting heavier.
“Go away, Ethan.”
“You know I’m not going to do that.”
“I did what you asked. You said one hour and that’s what I gave you.”
“Fine. Then we’re done. Let me come inside and say goodbye.”
I pursed my lips. It was a trap. Ethan would never say goodbye. Would he?
He was the addiction I wasn’t going to be able to beat. The habit I would never be able to end. I was worse than my brother John in that regard. He tried to get sober.
My attempts at freeing myself from Ethan had been feeble at best. At the first rush of emotion, I backslid.
I put the bottle down and turned the lock. I opened the door and Ethan stood on the other side looking as wrecked as I felt.
“We’re not done, Julia. We haven’t even scratched the surface of us.”
I picked up my wine and made my way to the living room. “This is the part where I say, if you really cared about me, you would let me go.”
“This is the part where I tell you, you’re full of shit. You don’t want me to let you go.”
Because I was addicted to him, but that wasn’t healthy.
“You’re wrong.”
“We need more time with Carol. We need to work through more of our shit.”
I shook my head. “The deal was for an hour.”
“When have you ever known me not to want to renegotiate terms?”
That much was true. Ethan never settled for the deal on the table. He always wanted more. And because I was a sucker, he would probably win. Only I didn’t really understand anymore what winning looked like. At least for me.
I’ve been in love with Julia for a very long time…
I took a pull on the bottle, hating the fact that I wasn’t drunk enough yet. “I’m not going back, and you can’t make me.”
He looked at me as if he knew what I said was bullshit.
“Then we really are done?” he asked.
I nodded. Done and done. Finished. No more. And I was super happy about that.
“Okay,” he said, slowly walking toward me. “Then at least let me have you one last time. We’ll call it official break-up sex.”
My heart started beating more heavily and I could feel myself get wet between my legs. I gulped. “I don’t think…”
; He dropped the ridiculously expensive leather coat he’d been wearing on the floor. I knew how expensive it was because I bought it for him as a Christmas present six years ago. It was the first time, after paying him back for my family’s farm, that I’d made an indulgent purchase. It probably said something that the purchase had been for him.
Next, he pulled off his shirt. Then he kicked off his leather boots. I’d ordered those from Italy for him one year.
I should have stopped him when he stripped out of his jeans and boxers, but I didn’t. Instead I just sat there on the couch, wearing my tank top and hipster shorts, hugging my bottle of wine, while I stared at a naked Ethan who was very hard.
There hadn’t been a lot of lovers in my life. Work, I supposed, had been my most demanding lover of all. So I didn’t know what it was, in particular, about Ethan’s lean body that I always found so compelling. He was hard everywhere. His biceps, his chest, his hips, his dick.
Even his ass was tight, and it thrilled me, like no other body had ever done.
Or maybe that was Ethan.
He walked to the couch and pulled the wine bottle out of my arms.
“Get naked, Jules.”
Pretty sure that was a bad idea. The last time we’d done this he left me for three months afterward.
“You know how often I got myself off to that night?” he asked me, even as he was pushing me to lie back while he covered me with his hard, naked body. God he felt good.
“What night?”
“Not the night of Daniel’s wedding. That night I fucked you. And while it was hot as fuck, that’s not what I thought about in Japan. I thought about the night after my father’s memorial service…that night I made love to you and it was so incredible it blew my mind.”
It had felt like that. It had felt like he loved me. Until the next day.
He pushed his hand into the front of my shorts and smiled when he discovered how wet I was. I had no chance against a naked and aroused Ethan.
“Yeah, you’re not stupid, Jules. You know how good it was for us. Every time. Well, apparently not the first time, and you’re still going to pay for that. But for now, let me do it again.”