My Butterfly

Chapter Thirteen Cold

“Hey,” she said.

I switched the phone to my other ear. It had been a couple of weeks, but I felt as if I could still hear the cracking and the popping of that fire in one ear.

“Hey. How was your day?” I asked.

“Same old, same old,” she softly replied. “How was yours?”

“You know, pretty much the same too,” I said, as I kicked off, first, one shoe and then the other. “I had to get to class early because…”

I stopped. There was something off in her voice.

“Is something wrong, Jules?” I asked.

There was a pause. Pauses like that weren’t ever good.

“It’s just that…I can’t…,” she started and then stopped.

I waited for her to finish. Instead, there was silence.

“You can’t what?” I asked.

I heard her take a breath.

“I just feel like we’ve grown apart,” she said.

Her sentence was straight and to the point, and it completely derailed me.

“What?” I asked.

“I know that sounds really cliché, but I don’t know how else to say it,” she said.

I felt my heart momentarily take a break in my chest. Then, I took in a deep breath and then slowly let out a sigh.

“Jules, I know it’s been hard, but…,” I started to say but then let my words trail off.

“It has,” she said.

There was another moment where there was only silence before she continued. I had no words, so I just listened.

“It’s just that I’ve been busy with track,” she said, “and you’re doing your training, and when we do finally see each other, I feel like you aren’t really even that excited, and…”

“Jules, is this about our anniversary?” I interrupted. “Jules, I’m really sorry, and it wasn’t my intention to have us spend it in a hospital…”

“No, Will,” she said.

Her words were soft and sincere.

“This is not about that,” she said and then paused. “It is, but it’s not.”

My eyebrows darted to the center of my forehead. I could see them staring back at me now in the mirror as I started to take in shorter, shallower breaths.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “It’s just…It seems like it’s a chore for you.”

“What seems like a chore?” I asked.

“Us, Will,” she said.

Her replies were getting shorter and shorter.

“I don’t fit into your life anymore,” she continued.

“Jules,” I softly said and then stopped. “Jules, that’s not true, and I’m always excited to see you. I’m just tired sometimes.”

I took in another deep breath and then let it slowly escape past my lips before I continued.

“You don’t have to answer to fire calls at two in the morning just to go back to bed and answer another one at five,” I said.

“You’re right, I don’t, and I understand that,” she said.

She sounded slightly irritated now.

“But since you’ve been doing that, you’ve never found a way to make it work,” she said. “You’ve never found even the tiniest bit of energy for me. Will, I might not be answering fire calls, but I’m working my butt off up here. Plus, I’m the one driving home to see you every month. You’re never here. I feel like I’m the only one trying anymore.”

“I try,” I said, my voice trailing off.

“How, Will? How do you try?” she asked.

“I stay up and watch movies with you,” I protested.

I heard her sigh on the other end of the phone.

“First of all, you don’t stay up,” she said. “I know you’re sleeping. Secondly, I don’t want to always watch movies. I want to get dinner. I want to go dancing. I want to do things.”

I felt my patience waning even as my heart was stabbing at the inside of my chest.

“I have a job, Julia,” I said. “You’ll understand how that works someday.”

My words had grown cold, and I knew it. I was on the defensive, and at this point, I didn’t quite know how to get back to the other side.

“Really?” she asked. “Will, this has nothing to do with me going to school or you having a job, and you know it — and I can’t do this anymore.”

Do what anymore? What was she talking about? Was she talking about us? She couldn’t do us anymore?

“What does that mean?” I asked.

She didn’t say anything. I took another deep breath, held it and then let it out, as a remnant of patience returned to my voice.

“Jules, it’s us,” I said. “It’s us, Jules. You can do us. We know how to do us.”

I heard her sigh.

“Maybe we should take a break or something,” she said.

Her voice had grown so soft I could barely hear it now.

“You mean break up?” I asked her, slowly lowering myself to the mattress.

“Well, just to give us some time to think about it,” she said.

“I don’t need time to think about it, and Julia, you and I both know that there is no such thing as a break. There is only a breakup. Is that what you really want?”

There was that deafening silence again, and I couldn’t believe what I had just asked her.

“Yes,” she stuttered, eventually.

My heart started to sink deeper into my chest. She didn’t mean that. She couldn’t have meant that.

“Yes,” she said again, more firmly.

“Jules, what are you saying?” I asked.

I waited seconds, but she didn’t answer, and suddenly, I knew. She wasn’t saying that she didn’t fit into my life anymore. She was trying to tell me that I no longer fit into hers. She was saying she didn’t want a firefighter; she wanted a lawyer. I let out a frustrated sigh. It had always been that. It will always be that.

“Well, I guess that’s it then,” I said.

The words stung even me, but I didn’t care. She would figure out soon enough that no one could love her like I could — not even a fancy lawyer.

“I guess so,” she softly said.

There was an awkward pause, and it scared me. I couldn’t remember the last awkward pause I had had with Jules. In fact, I wasn’t sure if we had ever had one. It made me nervous, and the nerves made me spit something out without even thinking.

“Take care,” I said.

There was a quiet moment then — one of those quiet moments when you could hear the crashing and caving in of your world and nothing at all, all at the same time.

“You too,” she eventually whispered.

Her last words came out sad, and immediately, I wanted to take everything back. I didn’t want our conversation to end like this. I didn’t want anything to end, and I didn’t want to hang up. I pulled the phone away and looked at its display. She hadn’t hung up yet either. I brought the phone back to my ear, and as soon as I had, I heard it go dead on the other end.

I tried to say her name, but nothing came out. And for the first time, I noticed I hadn’t been breathing. I sucked in a quick gasp of air and tried again.

“Julia.”

There was no answer. I slowly lowered the phone to my lap and stared at its display for a minute before my hand found my face in frustration. I rubbed my eyes, let my head fall back and then eventually forward, and then I habitually ran my fingers through my hair.

They might be college-educated and have fancy cars, but I knew Jules. I knew everything about her. I loved everything about her. That had to count for something.

I took a deep breath in through my nose and slowly let it escape past my lips. Then, my eyes rushed to the phone in my hand again. She would call back. She was going to call back any second. And she would tell me that she hadn’t meant what she had said, that she wanted me and that she loved me.

Another five minutes passed with my stare frozen on the phone’s display before I rested my finger on the button that would speed-dial her number. But just before I was able to follow through, I heard my tones go off in the other room. And what was left of my heart sank to the deepest pit of my chest.

“Damn it,” I shouted out loud as I squeezed the phone in the palm of my hand and thrust it hard against my thigh.

Then, I hurled my hands to my face again and rubbed my eyes before standing up, shoving the phone into my jeans pocket and hurrying toward the tones.