I ran to the door, and as soon as I did, the smile dropped from my face. Because it wasn’t Emily standing there.
It was Julia.
16
Emily
To my surprise, I actually got a fair amount of work done after I ended things with Kaitlyn. Mostly because I had to bury myself in work to not feel completely and totally depressed.
I studied even more than I had before, which I didn’t think was possible. I studied while I ate, on my breaks at work, every moment I wasn’t in class. I was frequently turning down Abby’s invitations to go out, because even hanging out with people was not enough to keep my mind off Kaitlyn.
No, I had to occupy my brain completely. Studying was the only thing. I guess the one pay-off was that, in the last several weeks, I’d gotten As on pretty much everything.
There was a time I couldn’t avoid thinking about her, though. Every time I fell asleep and woke up, she was on my mind, because I couldn’t have a book in front of me in those moments. Not to mention while I actually slept, since I was bombarded with constant dreams of her.
And, in those moments before and after sleep, the same question popped up in my mind every time… had I made a mistake?
I had to get started on working again, because I knew that I had.
What Kaitlyn had said to me the night we’d broken up had been right. When school was over, when I had an engineering job that I’d likely hate, I was going to have nothing else. I was going to be alone. Hell, eventually even Abby was going to move out and live on her own, and I wouldn’t even have friends to keep me company. So was this worse?
Though she hadn’t said it, I still knew Abby had thought I’d taken an extreme approach to fixing this situation, and that was something I couldn’t forget either. Because I was starting to think I’d taken an extreme approach, too.
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t think of calling her every night as she crossed my mind. Telling her I was sorry, that I wanted her back, that I’d do anything to make it up to her…
But every night that I didn’t do that, I felt like I lost my opportunity. I’d let too much time pass without reaching out to her and admitting my mistake.
If I were her, I wasn’t sure I would be able to forgive me. Especially with the whole having sex with her before dumping her thing. Not the most sensitive decision on my part. I hadn’t been trying to hurt her; on the contrary, I’d wanted to have one beautiful moment with her before things had ended. But it was selfish to not consider how it was going to make her feel.
And that was what I was, selfish. It was my first relationship, and I didn’t yet know how to consider another person’s feelings. Relationships were a learning process, and while I was usually pretty good at learning, I had obviously failed here.
I heard a knock on my door, and I looked up from my textbook.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Hey, can I come in?” Abby questioned.
“Be my guest,” I told her as I glanced down at my textbook.
She opened the door and peeked her head in. “Hey, just checking in. I’ve barely seen you all week.”
I shrugged. “I haven’t been anywhere, been home the whole time.”
“Yeah, holed up in here.” She motioned around to my plain room. “You’re, like, eating, right?”
I laughed. “Of course I’m eating. You think I’m just stuck in here, wallowing in all my misery and starving myself?”
“Well, maybe,” she said seriously. “You haven't exactly seemed very happy.”
I leaned back in my chair and took in a deep breath. “I’m not, I guess. But I’m not depressed to the point of not eating. I’m just studying… since it’s the whole reason for all my misery right now.”
“Right,” she said, and nodded. “Okay, then…”
I could tell she had more she wanted to say.
“What?” I asked.
“Can you spare just, like, an hour for me? I brought home a pizza, we can eat and talk and stuff.”