Her words were gentle, but they still managed to sting.
“We were going to get married and grow wrinkly together,” she continued. “But you made me a different person, Will. I was fighting for survival in the last days we were together. You made me never want to hurt like that again.”
I watched her chest rise and then fall. Then, her eyes seemed to get caught on a spot somewhere up in that big sky.
“Jules, I’m so sorry,” I pleaded. “But you’ve got to know that the longer I waited, the more my heart broke.”
She turned to me again, and I caught her stare.
“My ship sank, Jules, and my plan failed, and before I knew it, I was lost without you,” I continued. “Even though I could no longer wrap you up into my arms or kiss your pretty forehead, I still saw you.”
I paused for a moment and swallowed hard before I continued. I could feel the lump forming in my throat.
“You haunted my nights and then even my days,” I said. “I lived for sleep at times when you would come to me, and it would be just like you had never left. Dreams would always end with you, and then mornings would steal you away with a cruelty that haunted my days. The start of each new morning, Jules, pained me as I opened my eyes only to face my merciless reality. No matter how hard I tried to push you to the back of my mind, you always found a way back to the forefront. You always won,” I added, gently nudging her arm.
She lowered her head and smiled, as my eyes found the tops of my boots and locked onto them.
“I eventually learned to live as normally as possible again,” I went on. “I learned to get out of bed and to put on a smile everyday, though even in my laughter, my heart ached. And I learned to hide my hurt when someone asked about you or mentioned your name, which they often did and still do. I mean, Jules, even hearing your name in the grocery store would send me into a crazy, downward spiral that usually ended with Jeff acting as my badly equipped therapist.”
She cocked her head to the side and caught my eyes, but I only nodded my head and sucked in another deep breath, as I tried to smile.
“But I slowly learned to live a quiet existence without you by my side, carrying the heavy burden that was my secret,” I said.
I stopped then for a moment before I continued.
“Then one day, I received an answer to my prayers — in the form of a business card,” I said, starting to laugh. “It sounds crazy, I know, but it was almost as if fate had conspired for us, Jules. It took me a little while to realize it, but once I had, I was on a mission. Jules, I took the offer for you. All of this — the performing, the tours, the songs — is for you. I did it all to bring you back to me.”
“What?” I heard her softly ask. “How could you have done this all…?”
I listened to her words trail off.
“I had just finished recording your song, and I knew that it would only be a matter of time before you’d come back,” I said. “After all, you promised.”
A happy smile finally broke free from my face.
“Jules, I’ve already waited too long to tell you this…,” I said and then stopped.
I reached behind me, grabbed the butterfly weed and placed it in between us.
“Julia, when I said that I would love you until the last petal falls, I meant it,” I said. “You’re the answer to my every prayer.”
She took the stem into her hands and gently caressed its silk flowers.
“Will, where did you find these?” she asked.
I smiled wider.
“Under that raggedy, old teddy bear of yours and some track medals,” I said. “I had some help.”
I watched her lips turn up into a smile, as she stared into the flowers for a long moment.
“Will,” she eventually said. “I’m not the same person I was when we were in high school.”
Her confession took me aback.
“Well, Jules, if you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly the same person that I was ten years ago either,” I said, with a half-smile. “I’m here fighting for you, aren’t I?”
A coy expression shot to her face.
“I’m just trying to tell you that you might not be saying all these things if you really knew me now,” she said. “You might not even want a girl like me anymore.”
She peeked at me from behind her big eyelashes.
“Hmm,” I said, nodding my head in a pretend, reflective thought. “Then, just who is the new Miss Julia Lang?”
I watched her eyes quickly travel back to mine. She looked a little surprised.
“Well, okay,” she eventually said.
She took a second, and I watched as she inhaled a healthy dose of the night’s cool air before letting the breath pass through her lips again.
“Well,” she said, meeting my eyes, “for starters, I make a living arguing. Not many people understand why I do it, and it’s tough sometimes, but I love it.”
I kept wearing my smile as she continued.
“And I don’t wish on stars anymore or entertain fairytales, and I can’t remember the last time that I climbed out of a window in the middle of the night,” she said. “Oh, and I’m a vegetarian now.”
She lowered her eyes.
“And I don’t believe that there is a perfect someone for anyone,” she softly said.
I sat back against the windshield again and let my eyes stare off into the black distance. She had changed a little, that’s for sure. No meat? No meat at all? No cheeseburgers?
“A vegetarian? Really?” I asked.
Her eyes searched mine. I could tell that she was trying to judge my reaction.
“That is a big change all right — but I’m afraid that you’re going to have to do a little better than that if you want to scare me off, Miss Lang,” I said.
Her eyes smiled then, even though her lips refused to waver.
“Look, Jules, it really is simple,” I said. “See, I’m in love with the person you can never outrun. I’m in love with you, Julia.”
She was quiet for a good minute, and I watched as her eyes searched my own. Somehow, I just knew that she wasn’t buying my confession.
“Will,” she said, finally, taking a deep breath, “I just think…I think that it has been a long time. We’re two, different people now, despite what you might think. We’re not two sixteen-year-olds. It’s been ten, long years, Will. And you have your life here, and I have mine in Charleston. You fight fires and have an amazing singing career. And I have a great job doing something I love also.”
She paused and bit her bottom lip and then returned it to its natural place again. I barely noticed that she had stopped. Something was telling me that I didn’t want to hear the rest of her story.
“You see,” she continued, despite my silent protests, “no matter how you look at it, our lives just don’t match up anymore. I mean, there was a time that I really wanted them to — to match up — but that was some time ago.”
Somewhere in her last, few words, my eyes had fallen to a dark place on the car’s hood.
“I just don’t think it would ever work, Will,” she said. “We’re living our realities now. Besides, it just makes sense that we couldn’t have possibly known what was best for us at sixteen.”
She was quiet then for a moment, but I couldn’t find any words.
“But I promise you that you’ll be with me in my dreams,” she eventually went on. “When I rest my head on my pillow each night, when time is all my own to escape the world and dream, I’ll meet you there. We’ll both be sixteen, and we’ll be happy, and we’ll do all the things we used to do. We’ll climb out windows, and we’ll wish on stars, and we’ll watch old movies and make fun of Jeff.”
She stopped again, and I met her eyes.
“What we had belongs in dreams and meeting there each night seems to work well anyway,” she said, with a soft smile. “But, Will, as for us in this lifetime, we’ve just changed too much, become two, different people and followed two, different paths. It’s life, Will, not a fairytale.”