Page 60 of Mostly My Boss
“Jules!”
I saw it happen. When she heard my voice and turned around to look for me. The jolt in her body like she was excited or nervous, maybe both.
Then her eyes found me, and I raised my hand to wave to her. She started to run but quickly changed to a swift walk. Running was far too dramatic for her. This was just a simple reunion between friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time.
Just that. Nothing more.
She stopped in front of me, her smile wide, her blue eyes clear, and in that small moment, everything made sense again. Like I could finally, after all these months, breathe.
“Hey,” she said. “You’re back. I didn’t know what classes you were taking—don’t know why you wouldn’t tell me—so I had to guess. I actually enrolled for twenty credits, but I figure I can drop what I need. I—”
“Jules,” I said. “I’m not coming back.”
“What do you mean? You’re here.”
“I’m here to…say goodbye. For now.”
“Ethan, what are you talking about?”
“They’re weren’t going to let me go. They wanted me to stay home. Another year.” I shook my head. “I couldn’t do it.”
“Your parents weren’t going to let you come back to school because you had one bad night?”
“That’s what I said. More than one bad night, though. A few where I didn’t remember… I’m not drinking anymore. They’re right about that. But I can’t do the meds. I can’t stay in that apartment with them. And I can’t be here. They could come and it would get ugly. I don’t want that. I didn’t want to say goodbye in a letter or, worse, a text. So here I am.”
She crossed her arms over her stomach and looked away from me. I knew I was hurting her, but I also knew there was no other option.
“What are you going to do?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t come up with the big plan yet, but now the pressure is on…so maybe soon. I can’t stay in Boston. They’ll look for me here. I’m thinking the West Coast. I’ll let you know once I have a place.”
I pulled out my new burner phone and sent her a text so she would have the number. My other phone I’d left at home so they couldn’t trace me.
“They’ll try to get in touch with you,” I said. “Possibly hire a private investigator. Or they might go so far as to track you down here. Don’t be freaked out. It’s not like they can do anything legally. I’m over eighteen.”
“Ethan…what about your degree?”
So practical. Jules couldn’t deal with the thought of me leaving my parents in a way they wouldn’t be able to find me. With leaving her, too, for that matter. It was so like her to focus on the paper instead.
“I don’t need it. It was just a way to leave home. Steve Jobs didn’t have one. Gates didn’t have one. I’ll figure it out.”
She looked away from me again and I would have paid any amount of the money I had to know what she was thinking. Was she angry? Sad? Heartbroken?
I wanted her to be heartbroken. I wanted to matter that much to her.
“So that’s it? You leave and that’s it?” she asked, her voice becoming a little shrill.
I shoved my hands in my jeans pockets. I wanted to be strong, stronger than I was. In the end, though, I wasn’t. I cracked.
“It doesn’t have to be it. You could come with me.”
“Ethan,” she said, clearly exasperated.
“Jules, I’m serious. We can do this. I have plenty of money for us to live on. I’ve already got ideas of areas I want to explore. Come with me and we can do this together…”
She lifted her hands up in the air. “Ideas, Ethan. Lots of ideas. That’s all you ever have. Ideas that involve Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. That’s not realistic!”
That pissed me off. I’d thought she understood me better than that. “So all last year, you were what? Humoring me?”
