Hugs and kisses didn’t fix everything. In fact, they fixed very little in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes, there was no fixing things at all. Time, people said, could heal all wounds but that wasn’t true. Time just distracted you, it could make you forget for a moment. No amount of time could ever undo something that happened. Time didn’t erase trauma. It was easier during the day. Julia could wear a mask. Kady knew it was a mask, but she didn’t pry. As selfish as it was, it was better to see Julia fake a smile or a laugh. There were heart-breaking moments when Julia didn’t know Kady was watching. When her eyes got hollow and she stared off, as though she wasn’t really there anymore. Kady tried not to see. She tried to focus on the good because she didn’t know how to fix the bad. The internet didn’t know how to fix the bad. It was possible that there was no fixing it.
Night was harder. Night was when memories crept back in and you couldn’t ward them off with a joke or a book. Night was when Kady had to watch helplessly as Julia struggled in her sleep against invisible demons. She spent so many nights feeling completely powerless as she saw her lover cry in her sleep.
This was one such night. They had fallen asleep with Julia facing the door, neither of them touching. The space between them felt like an ocean, vast and impassable. Kady had longed to reach out and rub Julia’s back to help her sleep but didn’t. The last time she had tried Julia had tensed up and quietly whispered for her to stop. There weren’t as many goodnight kisses as there had been before. There was no cuddling. There was only Kady watching Julia watch the door until they both fell asleep.
It was half past three when Kady woke up to a throbbing pain in her knee. Blinking in the darkness she had just enough time to adjust her eyes before she was hit again. She winced and rolled over, Julia was kicking in her sleep. She did that a lot, but usually there was so much space between them that Kady was out of the combat zone. Flicking on the side table light Kady decided to try something new. She didn’t want to have to watch Julia fight this alone anymore. She wanted to help, somehow.
“Hey,” she said and reached over and put a hand softly on Julia’s shoulder, giving her a gentle shake. “Hey, it’s alright. I’m here, I’m right here.”
The reaction was immediate. Julia’s eyes flickered open and her hands came up. It all happened so fast that Kady couldn’t be sure what was first: the punch or the magic. For a moment everything just stopped. Kady was pressed against the wall by an invisible force field, her left eye throbbing and burning. The Julia she was looking at didn’t look like her Julia. Her Julia had a soft face, gentle eyes, and a crooked little smile. This Julia’s nostrils flared, her eyes narrowed, and her jaw was slack in hyperventilation. She was breathing heavy, her chest rising and falling with pained pants, like she had been chased. She didn’t look like Julia. She looked like something out of a Japanese horror film.
Just as quickly as it had happened it was over. The pressure against Kady was gone and she slumped down on the floor, coughing. Had she not been breathing? How had she not noticed that? Kady brought a hand to her throat, trying to rub away the pain. It hurt to breathe and it hurt to blink. For just a second, a second that felt incredibly selfish, she forgot about her girlfriend. Her injuries were minor, nothing she couldn’t live with. In one panicked moment she turned her attention back to Julia.
Julia was cowered in the corner of the bed, her knees to her chest and her arms over her head. It was like she wanted to make herself as small as possible or disappear entirely. Her back was shaking though she didn’t make any noise as she wept. Kady wanted to just reach out and touch her, hold her, do anything that might ground her. But the pain in her eye reminded her that was a bad idea. Julia was one of the strongest people that Kady had ever met. She was determined, stubborn, and brilliant. It wasn’t that she wasn’t still those things, but there were new descriptions forming over Julia’s being. She was haunted, hurt, and afraid. The old words mixed with the new, creating the Julia that Kady saw in front of her. She was the same strong girl she had been, but there was something Kady couldn’t quite articulate.
“Hey, baby,” Kady said, crawling back onto the bed. It took a great strength not to reach out and bring Julia close to her but Kady knew that wouldn’t help. Her stomach twisted watching Julia suffering silently, but what could she do? “I’m right here. It’s okay.”
It didn’t seem like Julia could even hear her. She stopped rocking and leaned forward, vomiting up what little was on her stomach. Foul smelling bile spilled from her lips and onto the white sheets, not a lot but to enough to form a darkened spot where Julia slept. Her body shook and she brought her hand to her lips, her dark hair spilling over and mostly hiding her wide, terrified eyes. She wasn’t crying, perhaps too horrified to form tears.
“I-I threw up,” she finally managed, her voice sounding lost. There wasn’t any trace of Julia in her words. It sounded almost like a child was speaking using Julia’s body.
Kady moved slightly closer but not enough to really fill the painful space between them. “It’s okay, we can change the sheets.” Kady wished she could say that her voice was strong and that she was keeping it together. But she faltered and cracked, tears pricking at her eyes. It would have been easier if she was a psychic. If she could go into Julia’s head and make it better somehow.
Julia twitched and looked up as though she hadn’t realised Kady was there at all. Kady wanted her presence to relax Julia, but instead the smaller girl tensed up and hugged her arms around herself. “I don’t know why I threw up.”
“It’s alright. We can change the sheets and—“
“Your eye.”
Reaching up Kady touched her cheekbone and winced. Yeah, that was going to bruise up real pretty. “You got an arm on you, girl, what can I say?”
Julia looked down, her chin quivering and her eyes searching the bedspread for an answer she wouldn’t find. “I hit you?”
Oh god. Kady tried to be comforting, tried to make a joke, and just managed to make everything that much worse. She should’ve lied and said something else. Anything else. “You were having a nightmare. It’s okay.”
The look in Julia’s eyes said clearly that it wasn’t okay. Even if Kady forgave her there was no forgiving herself for that. “I don’t want you to hurt.”
Well, that wasn’t going to happen. It didn’t matter if Kady got punched in the face, she was going to hurt. As long as Julia was struggling and fighting Kady was going to hurt for her. There was no way around that. Looking at Julia made her hurt. “It’s fine. Let’s just get the sheets changed and go back to bed, okay?”
Shaking her head Julia stood up. With her white gown and washed-out face she looked like a ghost. Maybe she was a ghost. “I’m sleeping on the sofa,” she declared.
“Why?”
“So I don’t hurt you again!”
Oh no, no, no, no. That wasn’t happening. Julia wasn’t going somewhere where Kady couldn’t see her. Not again. Kady climbed off the bed and gently put her hand on Julia’s arm. “Stay with me?”
Julia ripped away from Kady, taking a step back. “Don’t touch me,” she said through her teeth. For a moment the feral look returned to her eyes but it was quickly replaced with the same haunted look she had when she thought Kady wasn’t looking. “You don’t need to be around me right now. It’s for your sake.”
“Well, what about your sake, Julia? For a smart girl you’re being kind of…you can talk to me. You think I want you to have to fight this alone? Let me in, talk to me. Let me fight the demons you can’t.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Julia said and it didn’t. It didn’t work like that at all. Kady couldn’t just kill the memories that Julia had inside her. She couldn’t change them. She couldn’t replace the bad touches with good ones. “This is my shit. You don’t have to deal with it. You can’t deal with it and you shouldn’t have to try. Just…stay away from me for a while.”
There was no way Kady was letting Julia walk away. Not like this. “What about my shit? Who was there for me when I had shit going on? I know we weren’t exactly on the best terms for a while, but you talked to me about my mom. About Marina. About everything.”
“We had those things in common. This…this we don’t have in common.”
“I know, I know it’s not the same thing. I know that Richard—“
“Don’t call him Richard,” Julia said and turned to face Kady. “That thing wasn’t Richard. It just had his body. Reynard wasn’t Richard. Richard’s dead.”
Okay, that was a misstep. Kady took a breath, blinking back tears as she tried desperately to make Julia understand her. “Reynard, right. I was there when it happened. I saw…you can talk to me, Julia. Tell me what you’re feeling. I can help. You can help. I know it wasn’t the same but I saw it happen. I’ve never felt so helpless in my—“
“You—You felt helpless,” Julia snarled, something akin to a laugh escaping her. “God, I wonder what it was like to feel completely helpless when it happened. He put me on the ground, Kady. He made me live with it.”
Kady had run. She should’ve stayed. She should’ve done something. Everyone else was dead and Julia was stuck with suffering. If she had stayed she would’ve died, she knew that. But the guilt ate away at her. She had watched from under the table, unable to move until she was already running. “I thought you were dead. You saved my life, let me save yours.”
“If you want to help me then stay away.”
“I’m not leaving you alone again. I did that once and it’s not happening again. Please, please don’t make me leave you alone again.”
Julia shook her head and pressed her lips together. “You didn’t leave me. I told you to run. You don’t have to atone for running.”
Kady didn’t even realise she was crying until she felt the hot tears run down her cheeks. Was that what Julia thought? The guilt was overwhelming, sure, sometimes it felt like it swallowed her up completely. But there was so much more than guilt. “Julia, I loved you before this happened and I’m going to keep loving you. Even if you don’t love me anymore.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is,” Kady choked out, her words catching in her throat. “You’re…my obnoxious, arrogant, Ivy League girl. You’re too smart for your own good. You’re Trouble with a capital T.” She sniffled, rubbing at her eyes with her arm. “You’re Julia. You like your coffee black and your pancakes with butter and no syrup. You like reading god awful Russian literature. You speak Latin like a pro. You’re hurt and suffering but you still….you still sleep with one arm under your head and stop the microwave with three seconds left to go. You hate fresh cut flowers and—“
“That’s—that’s not what I meant.”
“What?”
“You said I don’t love you,” Julia said, looking down. “I never stopped being in love with you. I just…don’t want to hurt you.”
Cautiously, Kady took a step forward. She didn’t touch Julia, but she did get closer. “Well, you are. You think I’m not hurt when you’re hurt. I’ve…I’ve never had anyone that I was close to. You knew my mom so…but, I think when you’re in love with someone you want to do everything to see them happy. And I can’t make you happy and that hurts.”
“Sometimes I’m happy…”
“Like when?”
“Like, yesterday. When you went out—“
“You’re happier when I’m not here?”
Julia shook her head and sat down at the edge of the bed, landing heavy as though it had taken a great deal of effort to stand there as long as she had. “No, when you came back. You were going on about coffee. Pumpkin spice lattes, you were yelling, what the fuck is a pumpkin spice latte? Then you took a drink of your coffee, looked me dead in the eyes and said they’refucking delicious and that pisses me off,” Julia recalled, almost sort of smiling. “It was the first time you …acted like Kady. I know that I’m not—not my best, but you don’t have to walk on eggshells around me. Don’t—don’t say you haven’t been. You ask if I’m okay a hundred times a day.”
“And not once do you tell me that you’re not okay.”
“What am I supposed to say? Nothing is okay and it never will be again? I might never be able to touch you like I used to? I might not…I don’t know when I’ll have sex again? Because I know you really enjoy—“
“I don’t care about having sex with you. Julia, if I never have sex with you again that’s fine. I’m hardly in love with your vagina. I’m in love with my stubborn, hedge bitch. Even if she’s a little broken right now.”
“More than a little.”
“Okay, a lot broken. So, you’re broken. That’s…not fine. It sucks what happened and it sucks that I can’t fix it. But I can be here. I might not be able to do a lot but…I’m here.”
Julia nodded and looked down at her hands. “I know you are. Sometimes…it helps. And sometimes…sometimes I can’t get out of my own head long enough to be a real person.”
Kady shrugged. “Mind if I sit?”
“Don’t sit in my vomit.”
“Yeah, we’re gonna fix that. That part we can actually fix. Washing machines, great invention. Remind me to thank the guy who invented them.”
“Alva Fisher,” Julia said immediately. “And…unless we have a séance you’re not thanking him. He died in 1947.”
Rolling her eyes Kady sat down on the other end of the bed. “Yup, still my Julia. My weird, freaky smart, Julia.”
“I used to be obsessed with inventors. I made my mom buy me books about it.”
“There are books about the guy who invented the washing machine?”
There was a small smile there. It wasn’t huge and it wasn’t overly happy. But it was a comfortable smile, and it was real. “I had books on modern day inventions. It was a phase. But, I know a lot about washing machines now.”
“Do you know enough to help me get these sheets in ours?”
Nothing was okay and nothing was fixed. It wasn’t even that things were really better. But, they did strip the bed together and put fresh sheets on together. They talked, not about anything in particular and not about anything important. The important stuff would come out when Julia was ready for it to happen. Until then Kady kept prodding her for more information about washing machines and other stupid things, just to hear her voice, just to hear her sound like Julia for a few minutes. There was still space between them in the bed, but it didn’t feel impassable. It felt like maybe, one day, the space would shrink. Not all at once, but bit by bit like a rock eroding from an ocean’s waves. It felt like the bottom of Pandora’s Box. Everything was messy and violent and broken, but somewhere, small and hidden, there was hope. Not hope that Julia would get better, but hope that, one day, she could live with being broken.