Page 28 of Goodbye Again
“I don’t think you’re a screw-up, it’s just that sometimes there’s a Julia-ism attached to things you’re in charge of.” This last bit was unnecessary and undoes the whole apology, but I let it slide. I want to get out of here.
“Well, it was a lovely party, Mom. I’ll see you next time.”
“Which will be?”
“Thanksgiving, most likely,” I answer. She gets pulled in the direction of another goodbye so there’s no time for her to express her disappointment.
I finish my goodbyes with Emily and Austin and step out the front door. I need to get back to the hotel, but there’s one place I’d like to go first.
five
MY HEELS WOBBLE AGAINSTthe pavement so I slip them off and clutch them to my chest.
“I’m not letting you walk alone barefoot in the dark to a park,” JP says, stepping in stride with me.
“How do you know that’s what I’m doing?”
“You strike me as practical and reasonable. And the practical and reasonable thing to do after an evening like that is to get some air at a park nearby.”
I smile despite myself but I keep walking.
“Let me hold you,” he says.
“What?”
“I said, let me”—he swoops me into his arms, cradling my legs in one arm and my back in the other—“hold you.”
“I did not consent,” I argue, and he squints, studying me for a moment.
The ache in my feet disappears and the heat from his body warms the jagged and cold pieces of my heart. “Fine,” I relent.
We walk quietly for a few minutes. Our breathing somehow becomes in sync even though I feel like my heart is hammering out of my chest. Instant love is just hormones. I know this. I’m not a stupid, naïve little girl. I’m a thirty-year-old therapist. I know how to differentiate reality from fantasy. I know how to identify my emotions at their core and yet... JP makes me feel like I’m floating in a dream.
When we arrive at the park, I unlock my phone to request an Uber. JP lowers me into the grass. The wet earth hits my feetand I breathe in the fresh scent of the Pacific Northwest. The evergreens. The lake water. The wet grass and fresh earth.
“You love it here,” he says.
I smile with a slight shrug. “Yeah.”
“Would you ever come back?”
I contemplate. I love Washington. It’s home in so many ways. But home is also Chicago. “It’s easier to not be close to family since Gramma died.”
He tilts his head like the goldendoodle he is and without a word from him, I explain.
“After my dad died when I was eight, my mother took a lot of her grief out on me and it’s never gotten better. Gramma was my lifeline. She stuck up for me, protected me, and overall made sure I didn’t feel like the failure Mom treated me as.”
JP’s expression fills with sadness. My gaze falls to his chest, and I watch the cadence of his breath as he absorbs what I just told him.
“I just trauma dumped, didn’t I?” I wince.
“No.” He shakes his head, swallowing, then forcing a smile. “I mean a little, but damn. That’s a lot, Jules. How did he die?”
“Car accident. Pretty standard.”
His lips twist. “Doesn’t make it less hard.”
I inhale deeply through my nostrils.
