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I’ve never felt better in my own skin. Or more importantly, in my own mind.
There is nothing left to run from. Nothing left to hide from. And while I know that healing is not linear, I’m no longer afraid to reach for the things I want most in life. I’m no longerafraid,period.
And the very first thing I want to reach for, is Jude.
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I call him as soon as I land.
My heart racing, my hands shaking, my palms sweating.
Ring, ring, ring. Ring, ring, ring.The line continues to ring until I’m connected to his voicemail.
“Hey, it’s Jude. Leave a message.”
I inflate my lungs and part my lips to do just that, doing my best to ignore the way my stomach dips with disappointment at the fact that he didn’t answer, when my phone vibrates against my cheek with a new call. I pull it away from my ear and see Jude’s name and face lighting up my screen.
I slide my finger over the acceptbutton with my heart in my throat.
“Hello?” I say, the single word holding every emotion barely contained inside me.
“Hey, Little D,” he responds, and the low, comforting timbre of his voice—after not hearing it for three long months—feels like being wrapped up in the warmest, softest, coziest blanket. There’s a lightness in his tone, too. In his soft, relieved exhale.
My own surge of relief sends a rushing shiver up my spine, even as the ache of missing him burrows deeper into my chest.
Did he miss me, too? Has he been counting down the days as much as I have?
The night I left with Addy is a complete blur. I was so upset, so angry, so lost, and I sure as hell didn’t have my head onstraight. One minute I was upset with Addy and storming out of our shared dorm room, and the next I was crashing into Jude, and almost getting myself hit by that car, and I—I’ll never forget the broken look on Jude’s face when he desperately searched me from head to toe to make sure I was okay.
It was that look alone that pulled me out of the dark ocean I’d been drowning in.
The surety that I had some big changes to make flooded into my psyche in its absence, and it was all I could see.
I didn’t need a break from him, though. I needed space from every mistake that had accumulated in my life, landing me on that sidewalk with him, broken and angry and lost. I needed a break from feeling like I was failing him as much as I was failing myself.
I told him I needed the summer, until the fall semester started, to get back on track and start healing all the pieces of me I’d broken in the few months prior, and that’s exactly what he did. Without question, without a fight, he gave me the time I needed to get my head on straight again. Away from the pressures of work and needing to earn and save every dollar I could. Away from the pressures of school—classes, and coursework, and labs. Away from the disappointment of finding myself falling short in what I knew Jude needed and deserved, too. Away from the pressures of… life.
But maybe…maybe he decided he was going to stop waiting. That he was tired of waiting. That I was no longer worth waiting for—
I silence the unwelcome thoughts with a deep breath and say, “I just landed in New York. Would you want to meet me for coffee?”
“Coffee?”
“Yeah.”
“Coffee.” He clears his throat. “That’s where we’re at. Okay. Yeah. Of course. Let’s do coffee.”
I’m the one who suggested it, but now getting coffee feels entirely stupid. I just wanted to do anything,anything,as long as it involved Jude and me together in a room as soon as humanly possible.
But I’m making this awkward.
Because I’m nervous.
And because I truly don’t know what to expect now that I’m here.
I have a million wishes, hopes, and dreams sitting patiently in my mind for what today might mean for us, but I don’t know what any of his expectations are. His hopes. His wishes. His dreams. If any of them still include me in any capacity whatsoever.
Call me as soon as you’re ready, Little D. I’ll be waiting,are the final things he said to me that evening, but it still left a lot unspoken. Even more questions left in the wake of three months spent apart.