“But I really am just looking out for you, buddy,” he continued. “And no one would be happier than me to see you and Julia together — and Jessica finally wise up and fall for me, of course.”
He stopped and cleared his throat.
“But have you ever thought that maybe Julia just isn’t coming back?” he asked.
His voice had grown sheepish.
“I mean, they go off into that big, college world, and they don’t come back, Will,” he said. “They don’t ever come back. I mean, name someone who’s come back.”
I paused and thought for a second, while names started scrolling through my mind. Most of the names were of people who had never “left” New Milford. The rest were names of people who had “left” and who had never come…
I stopped in mid-thought.
“Jeff, it’s Julia,” I said.
The words were gentle but deliberate.
Jeff paused and set his eyes on me again.
“Will, it could be Juliet, but the fact is, most times, they don’t come back, and you know it,” he said.
I sat back in my chair, as a dull pain began stabbing at the inside of my chest near my heart. Jeff kept talking, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I was starting to feel sick.
“Will,” I thought I heard him say.
“You all right, buddy?” he asked.
My eyes slowly turned up toward him. I must have had an uneasy look planted on my face or something because he was backing away from me and into the stair railing. I could always count on Jeff to run from trouble, even if it meant leaving me in it.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, finally.
Then, I was quiet. Jeff found the stool again in the meantime and slid back onto it. Then, we sat there, wallowing in our own thoughts for a reflective minute.
“I probably should have told you that you were never going to win Jessica that way either,” I eventually confessed.
Jeff’s eyes fell to the floor, and he shook his head.
“You always get the good ones,” he said, starting to crack a smile.
He looked back up at me and then raised the glass of water he had been holding in his hand.
“Here’s to moving on,” he said.
I stared at him for a second, then picked up the bottle of soda that sat in front of me and brought it to his glass.
“To moving,” I said, with a heavy half-smile.
Chapter Eighteen
The Call
I cradled my phone in the palm of my hand. There was only one light on — a small lamp. Otherwise, the room was dark. Lately, the station seemed to be the only place where I could concentrate — and maybe that was because I had no memory of Jules being there.
I used my finger to scroll through the contacts in my phone. Her number was still on speed dial — number two—only because one was already assigned to voicemail. But tonight, I skipped the speed dial. Scrolling through the contacts gave me more time to think — what I was going to say and how I was going to say it.
If time were what she needed, like Rachel had said, I had given her some time. She deserved that. And despite what I had let Jeff believe, I had no intentions of moving on. What I did plan to do, however, was move forward — do something, anything to get Jules back.
I finally found her name but wasn’t any closer to figuring out what I was going to say. I stared at the phone’s screen for five, solid minutes, then I closed my eyes and pressed the button that sent the phone dialing her number. A deep breath in and a slow, uneasy exhale followed.
I heard the first ring, and it sent my heart into overdrive. I anxiously waited for the second ring, and then it came just as the first had — unexpected but deliberate. My heart continued to race. But, oddly, the sound of the rings, one after the other, was comforting somehow — that was until the fourth ring. On the fourth ring, I started to panic. And by the fifth ring, the sound of the solid tone was shrilling and unsettling. By that time, I knew that I wasn’t going to have the chance to talk to her. I took another deep breath and waited for her voicemail to pick up. Then suddenly, the ringing stopped, and a familiar, robotic voice poured through my phone’s speakers.
“The caller you are trying to reach does not have a voicemail box set up yet. Please try again. Goodbye.”
And with that, the other end of the line went silent.
I sat there on the edge of the cot, phone again cradled in my hand and my eyes locked on the phone’s screen. I waited there for minutes, willing the screen to glow and for her name to appear in bold letters across it. But when the minutes passed in silence, I couldn’t bear to hear the deafening sound of the quiet anymore. I lowered my head and cradled my face in my hands. I wasn’t sad. It felt more like anger, but it wasn’t anger either. It was like nothing. I felt numb. At least with sadness, I could mope away my sorrows. But with this strange pain, it was as if there was nothing I could do to make it go away.
I took another deep breath in and tried to collect myself. Then, I refocused my attention onto my phone, and it suddenly came to me: I could text her.
I started typing, but I only got to “Jules, I need to” when a sound at the doorway made me look up.
“Why are you still here?” asked a tall, shadowy man.
The man was the station’s chief. He wore a New Milford Fire Department tee shirt — just like the one I was wearing — but he also had short, wavy, graying hair and a mustache. In fact, he kind of reminded me of Clark Gable from that long movie Jules always loved to watch.
“I, uh, was just working on some homework,” I said.
He eyed the phone in my hand.
“In the dark?” he asked.
I glanced over at the small table next to the cot with the lamp and an opened book on it.
“I can’t concentrate with too much light,” I said.
He shot me a suspicious look, held it on me for a few seconds, then started to leave but stopped.
“Something on your mind, son?” he asked, turning back toward me.
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t really in the mood to talk.
“Aah,” he said. “It’s a girl, isn’t it?”
My eyes turned up.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Because that’s the only reason a young man, such as yourself, ever sits in this station in the dark with a frown that wide on his face,” he said.
I tried to laugh.
“I’m right, though,” he said, dragging a fold-up chair to the cot.
I smiled, but it felt unnatural.
“What did you do?” he asked.
I flashed him a puzzled look.
“Come on,” he said. “I also know you did something stupid. I forgot to mention that every young man, such as yourself, that comes into my station with a frown that big on his face has also done something stupid to a girl.”
I dropped my head and slowly shook it back and forth.
“I let her go,” I mumbled.
My eyes locked onto the phone in my hand again.
“You let her go?” he asked.
“Yeah, I should have said something when she said it wasn’t working, and I should have followed her that night on New Year’s,” I said.
After a couple of moments, my eyes turned up from the phone, and I realized he didn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about.
“I let her go,” I repeated.
“I see,” he said, nodding his head.
“We’re talking about Julia, aren’t we?” he asked.
I nodded my head.
I watched his eyes travel to the lunch bag he had been holding in his hands. He turned it over a couple of times and then looked up.
“Sometimes, you just have to let go,” he said. “She’ll come back, when she’s ready.”