So she kept her opinions to herself. A safe move, one that had always worked successfully and continued to come through for her then.
Mark was a year older and Julia was relieved when he graduated high school and went off to college. But their break up was worse than their dating. The tears, the fights, Liz sobbing hysterically curled up on Julia’s bed. How could she lose her virginity to this guy who just left, like college meant he no longer knew how to drive or operate a phone? Secretly, Julia was relieved that he was out of their lives. But she was wrong about that.
It happened the night of the bonfire. Julia tried to describe it to Blake. It was tradition for the graduating seniors and the college kids back for the beginning of summer to throw an enormous party out in the woods, where they wouldn’t attract any cops. Maybe some people knew. Maybe they thought it was campers, or hunters getting an early start. Nobody worried. It was just the bonfire, and once they had joined the ranks of Easterbrook High Alumni, they were officially allowed in.
“Drinking?” Blake asked.
“Hammered. Everyone.”
“You? I’m shocked!”
Julia twisted to face him as much as she could while lying down. “Absolutely not! I was way too good for that. Liz dragged me along because she wanted to find Mark. And so I was officially on Liz duty. Making sure she didn’t get so drunk she’d puke in my parents’ car. I still had to drive her home.”
“And then?”
“And then somehow I lost her.”
And then there was screaming, and she’d found her again.
“Mark tried to pull something out in the woods and I got Danny, because I knew he was there at the party. I knew he could help. We took Liz home and that was when we all started hanging out. Liz swore off men for—for a long time. And we stuck pretty tight together, the three of us, that summer. Danny and I started dating the following winter. It lasted eight years.”
Blake let out a low whistle.
“In the end, mostly what we had was our friendship and looking out for Liz. But Liz is all grown up, and she doesn’t need us to take care of her anymore.”
Blake spun a lock of hair tight around his finger. “I get the feeling there are some major gaps in this story.”
Julia lay still, wanting to curl up beside him and bury herself in his skin. Wanting to turn away and run down the beach until her legs couldn’t keep going. Until she never had to see him again. It felt like an enormous weight was crushing down on her, paralyzing her with pain. There was no way the words could squeeze through all that pressure. No way they could come out without ripping her to shreds if she spoke.
But this was her one chance to tell someone who wasn’t Danny or Liz, who wasn’t in it from the start. And if she could say the words, the relief might crush her as much as all those years of accumulating silences, keeping Liz’s secret safe. And so keeping Mark safe as well.
“In the woods, that night. She went to find him and he wanted to take a walk, said he wanted to see her again.”
She could feel Blake’s stomach tighten as he stopped breathing.
“It was like he thought that because they’d had sex before, they could always have sex again. So hey, you know, in the woods after almost a year of not talking? Sure!”
She barked out a bitter laugh. He had kept slurring out obscenities as she and Danny had pulled Liz away, trying to patch together her torn dress, carrying her instead of bothering to look around for the sandal she lost. You wanted it before, so what the fuck?
“She was lucky to have you as a friend looking out for her that night.” Blake’s voice was soft, and deeply sad. She wondered if he was thinking about his own friend, the one who would have stood by his side but was now lost to him for good.
But Julia shook her head against his chest. She always felt like it was somehow her fault. Like she shouldn’t have let Liz go to the party, knowing Mark would be there. Like she should have been able to do something besides tie the strap of Liz’s dress up and drive, stone cold sober, knuckles white on the steering wheel, shaking with rage.
She hadn’t said anything to Mark. Not one single thing. Hadn’t yelled. Didn’t raise her voice. Didn’t use her voice at all. How many kinds of useless was she? Who couldn’t even defend her own friend? Who brought her into the lion’s den and wandered around making inane conversation while she was mauled?
“It wasn’t your fault,” Blake said slowly, as if reading her mind.
“I know,” Julia said, but her voice cracked as she lied.
They had stayed up all night. Well, she and Danny had. Liz had fallen asleep, bruised and bloodied from where branches had whacked her shins. But Julia had been shaking too hard to sleep and Danny was ashen, gripping a coffee mug in the kitchen so hard she thought it might crack.
Liz’s parents had been away, and Liz refused to tell anyone what had happened. She was afraid no one would believe her. She didn’t know what she would say. She thought because she hadn’t been “raped,” it didn’t count. Maybe she really believed what Mark had said, that somehow she owed it to him. Mostly, she felt ashamed.
Julia and Danny stayed up all night drinking coffee because they didn’t know what else to do, until they were wired and strung out on nerves and no sleep and caffeine. After that, they were united in taking care of Liz, helping her through the aftermath, spreading her burden across three backs instead of one.
“I think that’s the only all-nighter I’ve ever pulled,” she said with a forced laugh, rolling onto her stomach so that she could see Blake.
He was incredulous. “Only? Ever? Not even for something fun?”
Julia shook her head. “That’s the part of the story you find shocking?”
“Jesus, no.” Blake exhaled through his teeth. “That’s the only part of the story I can wrap my head around without exploding.” His arm was around her and his grip tightened protectively. “I don’t know how you three got through that.”
“I feel like I spent so much of my twenties under water. Sometimes I wonder what college would have been like if I wasn’t—” She stopped abruptly, biting her tongue. The last thing she wanted was to say anything bad about Liz. So why was she talking like this, so free with someone she’d known for a matter of days when these were things she’d been holding onto for over a decade, alone?
“If you weren’t what?” he asked, and she knew then why she was talking. Because he would listen and cared what the answer might be. He didn’t know it in advance or have his own version to tell. He wanted to know her story, because it was hers.
She thought about the things she could say. About the time she and Danny spent looking after Liz, who retreated so deeply into herself that sometimes Julia wondered if the girl who dressed up in sequins and bossed her dolls around at tea parties would ever come back. Or how vast and terrifying her world became, and she so small and alone, that long night listening to Liz cry herself to sleep only to wake up still crying, and keep crying for years before she was finally able to stop.
But instead she said simply, “It wasn’t a great introduction to sex.” And in that one wry line, her lips pursed and frowning, she felt like she’d summed up pretty much all there was to say.
“You were…?” Blake trailed off.
“A virgin,” Julia finished his question. “Danny, too.”
“And did you…?”
“It took us a long time to work up to it,” Julia admitted. “Longer than it probably otherwise would have, in normal circumstances.”
“You were afraid.” It wasn’t a question.
It wasn’t something she normally talked about with people. There were so few men besides Danny that she would have had a reason to share anything about her sexual history with, and she always felt it was something she would have been judged for. For taking her time, for thinking sex was something that wounded more than it salved, for needing to know from whomever she was with that it didn’t have to be violent.