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Jude

Jude spent the rest of the week wallowing. She stayed on the couch with the blinds drawn, watching TV and not moving. But she wasn’t alone anymore.

That first day, Jude’s friends had stayed late into the night, cleaning Jude’s apartment and then watching movie after movie with her.

As they started Sleepless in Seattle, L.J.

and Rhys had been pointedly ignoring each other.

But by the time they’d finished Four Weddings and a Funeral, they had both relaxed, cracking jokes back and forth like they usually did, while Talia shot amused smiles their way.

After that night, the three of them came over in shifts, making sure Jude got some human contact every day. They didn’t shame her or try to pep-talk her or suggest that she get off the couch. Instead, they just sat beside her and kept her company.

It felt good to just sit there and fall apart. But Jude could only sit still for so long. After a week, she asked Rhys to meet her for lunch in the triangle-shaped park across from Joe’s Pizza.

“Hey.” Rhys reached down to hug Jude, then sat on the wooden bench next to her. The fountain in front of them burbled soothingly over the usual West Village hum of car horns and shouting. “It’s good to see you in clothes without an elastic waistband.”

“Ha, ha,” Jude said dryly. She pulled two enormous Alidoro sandwiches out of a paper bag and handed him one. “How was your day?”

“Fine,” Rhys said, shooting her an assessing glance as he unwrapped the foil.

“You can talk about the bookstore,” Jude said. “I can handle it.”

“Okay, things have been kind of shitty since you left,” Rhys said. “Stephen’s been in every day, acting as interim manager, and talking about changing literally everything.”

“I’m sorry.” Jude twisted the foil on the end of her sandwich. She’d known that would happen. But she’d abandoned her friends anyway.

“It’s not your fault,” Rhys said. “He’s just a dick. The good news is that it spurred me to finally apply to grad school.”

“Hey! That’s amazing.” Jude knocked him in the shoulder with a fist, and he smiled. “In two years you could be starting your glamorous library career!”

“Oh yeah,” Rhys said. “ So glamorous. I definitely won’t be underpaid and overworked at an insufficiently funded institution.”

“I mean, why else do people become librarians but to make the big bucks?”

Rhys grinned. He took a bite of his sandwich, nearly dropping a giant piece of balsamic-soaked mozzarella. He caught it just before it fell onto his lap and popped it into his mouth. “How are you doing?”

“I mean, bad,” Jude said. “But I’m outside, at least.”

“You’ve been through hard things before,” Rhys said. “I know that doesn’t make it easier, but at least you know you can get through it.”

“I guess,” Jude said. “It’s a little embarrassing, though. I mean, having a total breakdown and refusing to get off my couch for a week? Needing you guys to come rescue me? How pathetic can I get?”

“That’s what friends are for,” Rhys said. His hands and face were thoroughly coated in balsamic now. “Also, sometimes you just need to fall apart for a little bit. It’s part of the healing process.”

Jude handed him a napkin. “I’ve never fallen apart like that before, though. Not even when my mom died.”

“Maybe you should have,” Rhys said, scrubbing his face with the napkin. “Maybe it would have helped.”

When Jude looked back on those years—the surgery, the radiation, the endless hospital visits, finding cars to borrow to get her mom to the hospital, cooking any meal she thought her mom would eat more than a few bites of, studying for tests in cancer center waiting rooms—what she mostly felt was weariness.

She had been bone-tired for two years. Fear and panic had run through her so many times, an endless wash cycle, and by the time grief hit, she’d felt faded.

Jeans gone threadbare, a shirt washed down almost to white.

She’d wanted to sleep constantly, but there had been an endless parade of tasks: wills and calls to insurance companies and canceling credit cards and moving utilities into her name.

When she looked back on that year after her mom’s death, all she remembered was a never-ending shift at the register before coming home to a never-ending to-do list and tumbling into bed too tired to enjoy finally falling asleep.

“Maybe you’re right,” Jude said. “I didn’t feel like I could fall apart, though. There was so much to handle. I felt like I had to keep moving, and if I stopped or thought about things at all, I’d never start back up again.”

Rhys let out a thoughtful hmm as he chewed. Once he’d swallowed, he said, “You were in survival mode.”

“Yeah.” Jude unwrapped one end of her sandwich but didn’t eat it. “I feel like maybe I’ve been in survival mode ever since. And I’ve only recently started to lift my head and look around and think about what I actually want beyond just getting by.”

Rhys went to touch her knee, then stopped himself, seeming to remember how sticky his hands were. “That’s not easy to do.”

“But other people lose parents and they don’t fall apart.” Jude’s voice wavered. She’d been doing so much crying lately. Someone was going to come confiscate her tough-butch card any day now.

“How do you know?” Rhys said. “Maybe a lot of people are falling apart and they’re just hiding it, the same way you were.”

“Maybe. Although I wasn’t hiding it very well, apparently.”

“I know you too well, dude. You can’t hide anything from me.”

Jude let the corner of her mouth flicker upward. Rhys was an incredible friend. Which was why it was time for her to repay the favor.

“I have to tell you something,” she said. “The reason I told you not to date L.J. isn’t because I thought they weren’t serious about you. It’s because I was afraid you guys would start dating and wouldn’t need me anymore. Which I know was really, really shitty of me.”

Rhys chewed his next bite very slowly, clearly buying himself some time to think. “That is pretty shitty,” he said finally.

“I know. Especially because you’ve supported me so much these past few years,” Jude said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you doubt yourself. L.J. clearly likes you a lot. I mean, how could they not? You’re hilarious and caring, and you’re also jacked as hell now that you’re juicing.”

Rhys snorted. He didn’t smile, but he did flex his biceps in Jude’s direction.

“See? Look at that. You’re a fucking meathead now.”

Rhys rolled his eyes, but the corners of his mouth twitched.

“I got you something.” Jude pulled an envelope out of her pocket and handed it over to him. He pried it open delicately, trying not to get it too sticky.

“Tickets?” he asked.

“Yup. To see The Empire Strikes Back with a live orchestra playing the score.”

Rhys started to grin. “That’s L.J.’s favorite movie.”

“Imagine that,” Jude said. “It’s in three weeks, and you know they’re going to want that whole time to make your costumes, so you’d better text them now.”

Rhys groaned. “They’re going to make me dress up, too, aren’t they?”

“Yup. That’s what you get for crushing on a major dork.”

“I don’t care how cute they are. I am not being Chewbacca,” Rhys said, but he took out his phone and started typing. After he pressed Send, he stared nervously at his phone, his leg bouncing. A few seconds later, his face broke into a smile.

“They said yes.”

“Of course they did,” Jude said. “I hope you have an amazing time.”

Rhys put his phone back in his pocket, but he couldn’t stop grinning. “What about you? What are you going to do next?”

“Start applying to jobs,” Jude said. “I have enough saved to pay rent for a little while. So I can afford to look for something that I’m really excited about.

I’d like to stay in the literary world if I can.

That Gala job made me realize how much I’d like to be a part of getting queer stories out into the world. ”

“That’s really exciting.” Rhys balled up his empty sandwich foil in his fist. “What about Kat? Do you think you’ll ever see her again?”

Jude stared at the tumbling fountain. She was furious with Kat, but she also really fucking missed her. The pain was like a toothache—she could distract herself, but she could never fully ignore the sharp ache of walking through each day without this person she loved.

But it had all been a lie. Kat had been pretending that entire time. Nothing that had happened between them was actually real.

“No,” she told Rhys. “It’s over. The sooner I forget about Kat and move on, the better.”