Page 55 of Mostly My Girlfriend
11
Three monthsapart
Jules,
This might be the longest we’ve gone without communicating in the past twelve years. You can’t feel good about this. It can’t be easy for you, either. I know you too well.
You’re mad. You’re hurt. You’re stubborn (way more than I am, btw).
I understand all this. But cutting you off from me means you’ve also cut me off from you. And that worries me.
Who is watching over you? Who is making sure you don’t work too hard? That you take time for lunch? That you stop stressing over every little issue?
Who is sitting in your office with you to break up the intensity of the day by making you laugh?
You can say I did a lot of shitty things. And I did. Compartmentalizing how I feel about you being the biggest and most obvious one.
But I’m also the guy who has always been there for you. The guy who has worried about you when you were hurt. The guy who has pushed you when you were afraid to take the risk.
The guy who held your hair when you puked up your guts over ANOTHER GUY!
The guy who has loved you.
In all of the worst things I’ve done, did you ever once feel like you were alone? That I wouldn’t move heaven and earth to protect you? To support you? To be by your side?
Think about it, Jules.
Do you ever remember a time when we weren’t each other’s person?
Please forgive me. Please.
Ethan
* * *
One week ago
Japan
Ethan
“She’s not writing me back,” I told my mother. We were sitting in a meditation garden. I wasn’t sure what the rules were about talking, but it felt like a good place to confess.
My mother sat next to me on the bench and took my hand. I hadn’t been lying when I said her grief was the worst thing I’d ever seen. But I hadn’t lost her to it. She was still fighting to stay a part of the world.
“You need to go home to her. Tell her what you’ve been telling me to her face. So she can hear you.”
“I…I don’t know if I’m ready. With Jules, there is no screwing this up again. If I get her to talk to me, hear me, I’ve got one chance. Only I don’t know what that one chance looks like.”
“Marriage. Grandbabies,” my mother said simply.
“It’s not that easy for me. You said so yourself.”
“I did. And I told you not to let it get away,” she said, nudging me with her shoulder. “I love that I’m sitting in this garden. I love that I’m so far away from everyone I know in New York. I love that sometimes I can close my eyes here and still hear your father in my head. So thank you for bringing me here. But Ethan, you’re an idiot.”
I winced.
“She’s not going to wait for you forever. She’s too proud. And more than that, she’s too afraid of getting hurt. More than she’s already been, if I had to guess. I’ve never met a girl more courageous and scared all at the same time.”
