I had chalked it up to jealousy at the time. Arthur never warmed to Julia. When I was with her, I wasn’t with him. Simple as that. I suspected that they were too much alike. Not superficially, but underneath they had that same quality. A watchfulness, a gaze that never missed a thing. It was why I liked them both so much. They took me in whole without my needing to explain myself.
So that’s all it was, I told myself while Julia and I drove a rented U-Haul down I-95 to New York the day after graduation. Arthur’s words had been humming through my head since our fight. He was jealous. He thought I was picking her over him. Those nasty things he’d said—it was just envy. In our tiny new living room that first night in New York, I looked over at Julia. She had her hands on her hips, head cocked to one side, deciding where to hang the pictures. I felt such a rush of love at that moment, watching our new life become real. It wasn’t a fluke, the way I felt about her. We were meant to be.
But Arthur’s words were back again. Fresh and whole, like a submarine breaking through the surface. Had he been right all along? Self-centered. Self-pitying. Julia had an independent streak that I’d always liked, but since graduation, it had hardened into something else. A life so separate that I wasn’t even part of it.
Had I known it, too? Julia was flawed, like anyone else. Sometimes she could be selfish, it was true. But she had so much that transcended it. When things were good, the selfishness disappeared completely. And for most of our time together, that’s the way it was. I’d had glimpses of how it might be different. Our fights. The way she could snap like a sprung trap. One weekend sophomore year, when her friends from boarding school were visiting, I watched her turn into this other version of herself. They were catty and cruel, making fun of old classmates on Facebook, getting more vicious with each bottle of wine. “Look at her dress!” Julia shrieked, mouth stained red with drink. “God, she looks like a Russian prostitute.”
But those moods passed quickly. Mostly, college had been good to us. Julia’s arc bent toward a happier version of herself. Senior year, after we got back from our summer abroad and our visit to British Columbia, she was more comfortable and relaxed than I’d ever seen her. There was one night in particular that sealed it for me, that seemed like definitive proof of the kind of person Julia had become. A Saturday in early September, near the start of senior year.
“You sure it’s cool if I don’t go?” I said. Abby’s society was throwing a big party that night. A fancy one, with a dress code and bartenders. I sat on her bed as Julia was getting ready.
She caught my eye in the mirror. “Of course. You already had plans.”
“It’s just with the guys. I could cancel.”
“I don’t mind. Hey, how do I look?”
She spun in her dress and heels. I smiled. She didn’t even need me to say it.
But later that night, when I was hanging out at the hockey house, plans shifted. One of our teammates was also in Abby’s society, and he texted me and some of the other guys around 11:00 p.m., begging us to come to his rescue at the party. It was a question of loyalty; we couldn’t leave a teammate twisting in the wind like that. When we arrived, ten minutes later, I saw what the problem was. This was one of those parties where the main form of interaction was conversation. The lights were too bright, the music too quiet, the whole vibe too stiff. He stood in a corner, eyes wide and terrified. Making friends with new people, especially nonathletes, was not his strong suit. The poor guy. When he saw us, he practically shouted “Thank God.”
A few heads turned at his outburst. Julia was one of them. I felt immediately guilty. So I hadn’t been willing to come to this party for her, but I had been willing to come for my friend? We lumbered in like a bunch of cavemen. I was still wearing a baseball hat and hadn’t shaved in more than a week. There was no way this wasn’t embarrassing for her. She spotted me and walked quickly across the room. I braced for impact. I deserved whatever I was about to get.
But instead she threw her arms around me. “Thank God is right,” she whispered. She turned to my teammate and added, “I am so glad you told them to come.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Why would I be mad? This party is dead. You just saved my life. Come on, let’s get a drink.”
Julia got the bartender to pour a dozen shots of whiskey. She raised her glass for the first toast. “To bringing home that championship,” she said, and everyone cheered. One of my teammates nudged me after Julia threw her shot back without a grimace. “She’s a keeper, man.”
It was one of those long, meandering nights, the best kind, when you don’t need a plan. By senior year, all of us finally understood that we did, in fact, belong there; that we were no longer faking it. We ended the night, many hours later, lying in Julia’s bed in the darkness.
“I’m so happy,” she said. “Evan. I want you to know that.”
“I’m happy, too.”
She was quiet for a while. Then her hand drifted over, her fingers intertwining with mine. “I’m just so glad we made it. You know?”
I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “I love you, Jules.”