Chapter 22: Trampled under Foot

When Lara and I arrived home after the fishing trip, Sarah was awake, reading on the porch. It was after midnight.

“Hi, Mom. You didn’t have to wait up for us.”

“I know. I just wanted to see how it went.”

Lara and I recounted the adventure. I’d never seen Lara so excited about fishing before, so it was a pleasure to watch her eyes flashing as she told the tale of catching her prizewinner.

“I’m happy things went well,” Sarah said. “Frej seems like a good man.”

“He is,” I agreed.

“I’m off to bed, then. I’m glad you’re home safe.” She gave us each a hug and a kiss. She looked at me, her manner tentative. “Matt, there’s something for you on your bed.”

“What is it?”

She held my gaze. “Julie stopped by.”

“Oh. What did she say?”

“She left you a letter.”

My stomach lurched a little. Lara and I glanced at each other.

“All right, thanks. I’ll check it out,” I said evenly.

After Sarah left, Lara and I went to my room. Indeed, there was an envelope with my name on it. It sat on the bedspread like a neon sign.

“What do you think she wants?” Lara asked.

“Only one way to find out,” I huffed, tearing at the envelope.

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No, stay. I’ll probably need your help translating from Girl to English.”

Lara nodded and gave me a little hug of appreciation for including her. As I pulled out the note, I was thrown back to that winter evening when I’d opened her last letter. How far away that seemed! Despite still being able to hear an echo of those terrible feelings from that night, I almost couldn’t understand how I’d reacted that way. Now I was miles away from that dreadful place. Everything that had been wrong about being with Julie was right with Heather. The only thing that weighed on me was that we were departing in a few days. But even that thought carried promise. Yes, things had changed since last year.

The message was short:

Dear Matt,

I really would like to talk to you. I know I’ve done some wrong things, but I want to meet and talk. I have things I need to tell you. I’ve been thinking a lot about my life. I’ll be on the pier tomorrow night at seven. Please come, OK? I miss you.

- Julie

I read it twice, but couldn’t really tell what it was that she wanted to say. Except for the part about missing me, I thought the letter was pretty vague about her specific intentions. I passed it to Lara.

“You don’t think she wants to get back together with me?”

Lara shrugged. “She has to know you’re with Heather.”

“Yeah, but maybe she thinks ... Oh, I don’t know.”

“Are you going to go?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I should go, at least to see what she wants to say. Do you think she just wants to be friends?”

“I don’t know. Would you even want that anyway?”

“Sure I would. I don’t like seeing her unhappy or having her be angry at me, if we can work it out.”

“Just don’t get mesmerized by her siren call,” Lara warned.

“I won’t. Believe me, I’ve learned something from my Julie experiences.”

“Good,” Lara said, smiling, “because I haven’t seen you this happy in a long time!”

I gave her a tight hug. “Thanks for coming out tonight. I was glad you were on the boat with us. Really.”

“Cool, it was fun. I can’t believe I won! I mean, you two fish every morning.”

“That’s the way the luck goes sometimes.”

“True.” She yawned into my shoulder. “Okay, I’m going to bed.”

“Yeah, me too,” I agreed.

Lara didn’t want to leave our embrace, so we stood a while longer in the center of the room before she finally pulled away.

“Goodnight.”

Surprisingly, curiosity about Julie’s message wasn’t enough to keep me awake, so I soon fell asleep.

The next morning at the pier, I wasn’t as excited about meeting Julie as I was the night before. I took one look at Heather smiling at me and decided that I wouldn’t show up at the pier that night. I was happy again. Why revisit that old wound? Heather could tell something was on my mind, though. After I goosed her a little about catching a bigger bass than she had – to which she merely made a face – we got to fishing. The pan fish were much less exciting after the previous night’s expedition, though.

“You seem preoccupied,” Heather observed.

“I guess.”

“What’s up?”

“I’m leaving in three days,” I blurted out.

“Yeah, that sucks. Sure you can’t transfer schools? Live with your aunt and uncle?”

For a moment I imagined it, but it was just a dream, of course. “I wish, Heather, I wish.”

There was some silence. Nothing moved save the waves.

“Julie came by the house last night,” I finally said.

“While we were on the boat?”

“Yeah. She left me a note.”

“What does she want?”

“To talk. She wants to get together and talk.”

“Do you want to?”

“I don’t know. She said something about meeting her here. Tonight, on the pier.”

“I think you should.”

I frowned at her. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“But we only have a few days together. I’d rather be with you.”

“You should get some closure with her.”

I sighed heavily. I’d pushed almost all thoughts of Julie aside since I’d gotten together with Heather. Now, after seeing the note, I had to admit some regrets were making me feel uneasy about how I’d left things with her. Plus, her father had skipped town again. None of which was my fault, but still...

“You really think I should talk to her?” I asked Heather.

“Yes, I do.”

“What if she wants to get back together? Aren’t you worried about that?”

Heather smiled at me warmly. “Should I be?”

Relief flooded over me as I realized that she knew the answer to that question. I pulled her in for a hug, made a little awkward by the fishing rods we still held.

“No. Of course that’ll never happen. I want to be with you,” I said.

“I know. So go and fix things with her. You’ll both feel better, I hope. And that would be a good thing.”

I hoped so, too.

All day long, seven o’clock felt more like next week. Heather was working, Lara was reading, and I was restless as fuck. I had no idea what Julie wanted. For some reason I kept imagining scenarios, making up speeches for each one, only to cringe a half-hour later at my planned words. I didn’t know why I was so nervous about meeting Julie. She just wanted to talk, maybe apologize. Around six I called Heather at the market. She could tell I was anxious.

“Listen, go down there now, take your fishing pole and relax,” she advised.

That proved to be helpful, since the peace that came with the repetitive sound of the waves and the whirring of the reel helped me feel grounded again. By the time I saw Julie walking down the pier, I was only mildly nervous.

I stashed my fishing gear away and made my way toward the gazebo halfway between us. The sun was just beginning to turn the sky red and I lamented the fact that I had to share this gorgeous sunset with Julie, and not with Heather. Julie waited for me to approach, standing by the post of the gazebo.

“Hey,” I offered, as I set my gear down on the gray planks.

“Thanks for coming. I wasn’t sure if you would.”

I shrugged, for lack of a good answer. We entered the gazebo to sit on the bench seat, somewhat apart from each other. There was some silence as we contemplated the water, the shore, the sky. I was suddenly aware of the fact that this was the site of our first kiss. And our last fight. Much of Montauk was becoming spattered with memories both good and bad.

“Nice night,” I said.

That was dumb, I thought.

“Yeah, it is.”

More silence.

“What did you want to talk about?” I asked, not wanting to feel awkward any longer.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

I nodded slowly, though I didn’t really understand why she wanted to know that. I thought we were here to talk about her. I picked at a wood splinter.

“I’m doing all right. You?”

“Um, me, too.”

“Cool.”

I started regretting the decision to come. There were so many things between us now that it was daunting to even consider bringing them up again. And unnecessary! I didn’t want to talk about John, Becky, or even Lara. It was in the past. I had a future to think about now.

I finally looked at Julie. Her face was different than I remembered. There was no light in her brown eyes, no mirth in her cheeks. A burden sat there now that hadn’t ever been there before.

Suddenly, something shifted and I could see the pain she hid. I almost shivered from the feeling of it. As if a little gap in the wall between us had opened, I had a vision of her crying late at night. She was wondering what I was doing with Heather, why I’d broken up with her, why her father had left again ... What was so wrong with her that all these bad things were happening...

For a long time I couldn’t move. I just stared at her, torn between receding back behind the wall again, or reaching through that gap and taking her into a hug. Last summer’s friendship with Julie seemed so distant. And yet at the same time, it was only one embrace away.

‘Go and fix things with her,’ Heather had suggested.

I slid over to Julie and put an arm around her. She seemed surprised for a second, but she quickly melted against me. Her body started shaking gently as she cried. It was brief, but she didn’t pull away after letting out a final sniff.

“Julie, I know you’ve been through a lot in the last few weeks,” I said, after she’d calmed a bit. “I heard your dad left again. I’m really sorry about that. I know how important it was to you that he came back.”

“Looks like I won’t be moving to Florida after all.”

I felt a pain inside my heart, as I remembered her being sad at how that would pull us apart. Everything had to be very confusing to her.

“What happened?” I asked softly.

“They had a fight and he left,” she said simply.

“He’s gone for good?”

“Yeah, again. I guess it was just a tease to have him back. It’s for the best, though. It doesn’t really matter.”

“Julie, don’t say that. It does matter.”

“He’s just a liar. I think his ex-wife called him and he went running back to her.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“No, but I don’t really care.”

I didn’t know her dad at all. I wasn’t sure I should be defending him. “I’m sorry. It has to be tough to have him leave again.”

Julie didn’t say anything for a while. I just held her against me.

“Last time we were here, you were pretty angry with me,” she murmured. “I still don’t know what happened to make you so mad at me, so suddenly. I thought we were getting somewhere, back to how things were last year.”

It was my turn to be silent.

“Were you just looking for a way to break up with me that night?” she asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You wanted to talk about John, and Lara, and my past.”

“I did. But I didn’t bring that up so I could break up with you.”

“I should’ve told you, I know. Especially about Lara. I’m sorry I didn’t. Maybe things would’ve turned out differently.”

“Julie, it’s so complicated. I don’t know where we went wrong.”

“Well, it’s my fault, not yours.”

“No, don’t say that.”

“There was no excuse for what I did to you, with Brian. My dad has just proven to me again how much that hurts.”

Her words carried such misery! I closed my eyes, wishing I could somehow make her feel better. But I wasn’t in a position to do that now.

“And the thing with Lara, well, I hurt both of you I think,” Julie added slowly. “She probably told you I came over?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, she said some things that made me really think about what I did, and about ... about us.”

I tightened up slightly, and Julie must have sensed it.

“I’m not going to try to get you back, Matt, as much as I want to. I know you’re with Heather.”

I didn’t really relax any.

“But I miss you,” she continued. “I wish we could be friends. Or at least not hate each other.”

I let out the breath I was holding. Her voice was soft and open. The sunset was astoundingly exquisite, I realized, as I enjoyed its glow in Julie’s soft brown hair. I ventured a hand through her locks.

“Julie, I don’t hate you. I want to be friends, too. Maybe it doesn’t seem like it, but I am sorry for the way we left things the other day. It’s just...” I took a steadying breath. “Last year was really difficult for me. When I came back here this summer, I wasn’t expecting things to go like they did. I wasn’t being honest with you, about Heather, and about you. I mean she ... I was ... I love Heather.”