I sit there, harsh, ragged breaths tearing out of me, my head spinning from the news and, likely, from lack of oxygen. The ringing in my ears gets louder and louder until I have a full-blown fire alarm blaring in my head. Sweat drips down my back and my heart pounds and it suddenly feels like the wallsare closing in, squeezing me on all sides. I stand quickly, wavering a bit before I get my balance.
“Thanks, Doc,” I manage. “I’ll be in touch about the PT and all that.”
Then I rush out of his office, blindly making my way out of the stadium, praying to a god I don’t even believe in to take me anywhere but here.
Chapter Forty-One
Julie
“Jules,” Molly squeals when I walk through the front door of the office. “Hallie, Em, she’s here,” Molly yells up the stairs before throwing her arms around me and squeezing. She hasn’t let go yet when Hallie and Emma come barreling down the stairs, joining our hug so that all four of us are wrapped together in the entryway of the office. In the circle of my friends’ familiar arms, it hits me how much I missed them, and how grateful I am that I have this to return to. I have anchors all around me, I realize suddenly. It’s long past time I start using them.
“Missed you,” Hallie whispers.
“Missed you more,” I whisper back. She leans her head on my shoulder, and I am really, truly home.
We all pull apart and Molly studies my face carefully, her hands on my shoulders.
“You look happy, Jules,” she says. “Really, really happy.”
Her voice is quiet, a little serious. It’s uncharacteristic of her, and a little jarring that my happiness is thefirst thing she commented on instead of demanding the details about all the sex I’m having.
“I am happy,” I say simply, because it’s the absolute truth.
“I’m really glad.” There is something in her eyes, an expression on her face I don’t quite understand. For as close as we all are, and as outgoing as she is, there’s a part of Molly that stays walled off from us. A tiny piece of her she protects. Once, early in our first year of law school and soon after the four of us became friends, we all got drunk on tequila at some random dive bar, and Molly let it slip that she was still heartbroken over her college boyfriend who broke up with her late in their senior year. I will never forget the haunted look in her eyes when she mentioned his name. That was the only time she ever voluntarily brought him up, and the few times one of us has asked about him over the years, she clams up immediately and gets that same look in her eyes. She never talks about it, and she also never dates seriously, and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that those two things are linked.
Emma must see what I see because she slips an arm around Molly’s waist and gives her a squeeze before we all migrate to the kitchen, taking our usual spots around the island, Hallie next to me on one side and Emma and Molly on the other. Donuts and coffee are already laid out. Looks like they were serious about a breakfast story and, for probably the first time in my entire adult life, I’m not anxious or antsy about getting to work or making a list of all the things I need to accomplish on my first day back in the office in two weeks. All I want to do is sit here with my friends and eat donuts and talk.
“Heads up, Hal.” Molly tosses a bag at Hallie, no doubt with a maple donut inside. Hallie loves them, and we hate how they make every other donut taste like maple, so she gets hers in a separate bag. Just one of a million tiny details that make up the tapestry of our years-long friendship.
“Jules.” Molly gestures to me with a chocolate donut in her hand. “I think you have some things to tell us.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Emma says. “Spill it, Jules.”
“Hold on.” Hallie speaks through a mouthful of maple cream. “First, I think we need to have a moment of acknowledgement and appreciation for the fact that Julie has been in this office for five minutes already and is now sitting at the table, eating a donut, and has not asked about work one single time. She spent two weeks away and hasn’t demanded a progress report on her clients or asked what any of us are working on. That has to be some kind of record.”
I shrug a shoulder. “There’s time for that later.” And I know there will be. I haven’t turned into an entirely different person. Work will always be important to me, and it will always be important to me to be good at it. To give my clients the best service I’m capable of. I love being a lawyer, and it’s a big part of who I am. But what I understand now that I didn’t two weeks ago is that I don’t have to give itallof me. And that’s the most critical difference. Sitting here on a Monday morning having donuts with my friends instead of downing my fourth cup of coffee while I work, my entire body humming with anxiety, feels like a revelation. “You guys seem to have held it all together while I was gone.”
“And we did it with style.” Molly points at me. “Now spill, Jules.”
I wonder for a second where to begin and decide to just tell the whole truth of it. “I think it was the best two weeks of my entire life.”
All three of them stare at me.
“Better than the day you found out you got an Elle Woods level score on your LSATs?” Hallie asks.
I open my mouth to answer but Emma interrupts. “Better than when you posted that picture on Instagram of your scarilyperfect handwritten law school notes that went weirdly viral and that company sent you a lifetime supply of notebooks and pens?”
Molly jumps in again before I have a chance to respond to that. “Better than the day you found out you beat that asshole Joe Thompson’s GPA by less than a tenth of a point and edged him out for valedictorian of our law school class?”
“Yes,” I laugh. “Better than all of those things. It was…” I pause, not sure what to say next. “He is…” I try again. Then I think, fuck it. “He’s everything.”
“You love him.” Molly says it matter of factly, like she’s telling us the sky is blue.
“Are you psychic or something?” asks Hallie. “I remember another conversation about six months ago that went a whole lot like this.”
Molly shrugs. “I see what I see. You love him, don’t you?”
Fuck it, I think. These are my most important people. “I do.”
