Butterfly Weeds (36 page)

             
“It hurt, Will. You gave up on us. You stopped trying, and at the very end, when it mattered the most, you never even fought for us – or at least, I never had known that you had even tried,” I
said firmly, without wavering.

             
I surprised myself at how quickly my voice enveloped with passion – at how quickly I had jumped back through the years. It had been so long ago.
How cou
ld this all still matter to me?

             
“I was foolish, Jules,” he said. “I shouldn’t have let you walk out of my life. I should have protested. I should have fought for you, but I was young, and I thought you would change your mind in a short while and come back to me. And more than that, I was selfish. I wanted all of you, and I wanted you to want me too. And, believe me, I wanted to tell you. God knows I wanted to tell you so many times, but you see, I had to wait. I loved y
ou too much to lose you twice.”

             
My heart broke at his words, and tears welled up in my eyes again as I fought to keep them locked within my eyelids. Some piece of me was rebelling against my body, even
as I silently begged it not to.

             
“Wil
l, I loved you,” I said softly.

             
There was no turning back then, I knew. The conversation I had both longed for and dreaded for most of my adult life had begun. Closure had begun.

             
“But you made me a different person, Will,” I confessed softly. “I was fighting for survival in the last days we were together.”

             
I paused to look at Will’s face. His baby blue eyes looked
as if his heart were breaking.

             
“You made me never want to hurt like that again,” I continued, almost as if it had
been a long-awaited confession.

             
“I’m so sorry, Jules,” Will said, his eyes pleading with me. “But you’ve got to know that the longer I waited for you, the more my heart broke. My ship sank, Jules, and my plan failed, and before I knew it, I was lost without you back then. Even though I could no longer wrap you in my arms or kiss your pretty forehead, I still saw you.”

             
He paused for a moment before continuing.

             
“You haunted my nights and then even my days. I lived for sleep at times when you would come to me, and it would be just like you had never left. Dreams would always end with you, and then mornings would steal you away with a cruelty that haunted my days. The start of each new day pained me as I opened my eyes only to face my merciless reality. No matter how I tried to push you to the back of my mind, you always found a way back to the forefront,” he said.

             
Will hesitated and then looked down, locking his sta
re on his black, leather boots.

             
I kept my gaze on his face. I could see an indescribable pain that I had never seen on him before, radiating from his eyes and lips. I knew he was sincere. I wanted to pull him close – even if it was out of habit – but I commanded my hand
s to stay on the sedan instead.

             
He continued.

             
“I eventually learned to live as normally as possible again,” he went on. “I learned to get out of bed and put on a smile everyday, though even in my laughter, my heart ached. I learned to hide my hurt when someone asked about you or mentioned your name, which they often did and still do. I slowly learned to live a quiet existence without you by my side, carrying the he
avy burden that was my secret.”

             
Will paused, and then he returned his eyes to mine.

             
“Then one day, I received an answer to my prayers, and it came in the form of a business card. It sounds crazy, I know, but it was almost as if fate had conspired for us, Jules. It took me a little while to realize it, but once I had, I was on a mission. Jules, I took the offer for you. All of this – the performing, the tours, the songs – is for you. I did i
t all to bring you back to me.”

             
“What?” I questioned softly.

             
If that were even possible, I wondered how he had collaborated all of it in his favor. Here I was, and here he was right next to me. It had been years, and he’s now telling me that all it had taken to get us back in the same time zone, in the same place, was a business card, a prayer and what had to
have been a whole lot of faith.

             
I still hated him for letting me go and for not telling me anytime in the last decade that he was still in love with me. But could there have been some truth to his words? Does timing really play into this at all? Had I never had gone to law school or worked at the firm if I hadn’t at least got the chance to spread my wings – outside of New Milford? And had he not tried to tell me several times, even through Rachel at times, that he still had feelings for me? I was starting to believe that I wasn’t completely innocent either. And the truth was, after I had left my hometown in search of new adventures those years ago, I had never really looked back. And he eventually became a beautiful piece of my past, like the rest of it, to which I could not return. I had shut him out – not completely – but just enough to make it count, and I had forgotten what it felt like to be his. But it had been so long, and so m
uch had changed. I had changed.

             
My silent thoughts again failed to reach his ears, as he continued his soliloquy. He was telling a story, and it seemed to be one of his favorites.

             
“I had just finished my first album, and I knew that it would only be a matter of time before you’d come back. After all, you promised,”
he said.

             
A confident smile danced to life on his face as he gazed into my eyes again.

             
“Jules, I’ve already waited too long to tell you this,” he continued.

             
Will reached behind him and held out an object, which slowly became visible in the moonlight, between the two of us. I panicked involuntarily for a moment. The weight of his confession was hitting me.

             
“Julia, when I said that I would love you until the last petal falls, I meant it,” he said, serenely and self-assured. “You’re the answer to my every prayer.”

             
A little more of my heart melted then, and as I looked at the tiny, little flowers nestled in his rough hand, my heart also ached. I recognized the small, hand-written note attached to the flower’s stem by a fine, white ribbon. It had been the same butterfly weed that he had given to me almost a decade earlier. Its color had faded to a pale peach color now, and it didn’t look as new and as vibrant as it once had, but nevertheless, it still had all of its silk petals.

             
“Where did you find this?” I asked, taking the stem into my hands. A ce
rtain surprise filled my voice.

             
“Under that raggedy, old teddy bear of yours and some track medals,” he said, smiling. “I had some help.”

             
I smiled too. Then, I remembered. It all came flooding back to me as if it had been a repressed memory nearly forgotten. I remembered how heartbroken and how loved I had felt when his same, sad eyes first handed me the flower those many years ago. My own eyes had welled up with tears then as they threatened to do now. My heart throbbed as I recalled driving my jeep farther and farther away from my high school sweetheart that day. For some reason, me driving away had always been the last memory I had associated with our storied love, and it had always left me feeling bitter sweet.

             
I stared into the flower’s silk petals as my heart beat wildly and my mind raced with thoughts – thoughts from when I was sixteen to the present. Within a night, my whole world had unfolded, revealing to me the innermost pieces of my heart. The memory of how I had felt to be loved by him had finally squeezed out of its box that had been stored in the furthest part of my mind. And it sounded crazy, even to me, but I wanted to tell him immediately how much I had loved him and that I would always love him in some way. Maybe it was because I thought it would bring some kind of closure or maybe it was only to make his sad eyes happy again. I wasn’t quite sure. I loved him for the memories he had given me and for showing me that true and honest love was possible. He had been mine once for awhile, and he had been my best friend. I knew that I would always save a piece of my heart for him, and I wanted desperately to let him know that, but I knew that telling him wasn’t practical, and it wouldn’t be that easy. In the end, I realized the moment had long passed. Now, too much time had gone by, too much life had been lived and too much change had changed us. We weren’t kids anymore. Now was the time to be realistic – to realize moving on is
just a necessary part of life.

             
My silence seemed to have discouraged Will’s already bleeding heart. It looked as if pain like needles stung the inside of his chest as he tried desperately not to fall to pieces from both, what seemed like, feari
ng and preparing for the worst.

             
“Will,” I said hesitantly, still trying to gather my thoughts and my words so that they would match when they fell off of my lips. I stared straight ahead so as not to be distracted by his handsome features and his own seductive lips.

             
“I’m not the same person I was when we were in high school. You don’t even really know me anymore,” I said softly.

             
Will seemed taken aback for a moment.

             
“Well, Jules, if you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly the same person that I was ten years ago either,” he said with a half smile. “I’m here fighting for you, aren’t I?”

             
A coy smile slipped across my face.

             
“I’m just trying to tell you that you might not be saying all of these things if you really knew me now,” I said.

             
“Hmm,” Will said softly, nodding his head.

             
“Then, just who is the new Miss Julia Lang?” he asked sincerely, yet also with a hint of playfulness in his voice.

             
“Well, okay,” I said, pausing, then taking a deep breath before exhaling. I wasn’t quite sure how to answer him. I wasn’t expecting him to call me out on my stat
ement. I started in hesitantly.

             
“Well, I’m a vegetarian and a staunch independent,” I said and then stopped to gauge his expression.

             
It hadn’t changed. He was still wearing that goofy grin of his, as if everything in the world were right all of a sudden. So, I continued.

             
“I make a living arguing, and I don’t believe that there is a perfect someone for anyone,” I finished.

             
Will sat back against the windshield again, and then his eyes left me and began a tranquil stare off into the distance.