I watched as the bubbles came and went a couple of times on the screen, but when Chris didn’t respond again, I breathed a sigh of relief. As much as I loved her, it was obvious that our relationship wasn’t as strong as it needed to be. We’d both find someone else – eventually. I was sure of it.
The next week was hard. There was no way around it. I missed my girlfriend. I missed Chris. I didn’t hear from her again, and other than seeing her in an online work meeting, we had no contact. That just reinforced that I’d made the right decision. If she had any feelings for me she wouldn’t have given up so easily.
And I was fine. Well, mostly. I’d get over her eventually. Sure, I missed her, but I’d been single for a long time before I was with Chris. I knew how to do this.
What I didn’t know how to do was deal with my mother.
Chris and I had been broken up for a little more than a week when her name came up during my monthly dinner with my parents. Of course her name came up. It always did, ever since my mother had found us in bed together.
“How’s Chris?” Mom asked eagerly almost the minute I sat down at the dining room table. “You should have brought her for dinner.”
“We broke up.”
Mom dropped her fork to her plate with a clatter. “What? Her mother hasn’t said a word about it.”
I shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t know. It’s pretty recent.”
“Why’d you break up?”
I was surprised that the question came from my father. He normally didn’t comment on my personal life or participate in my mother’s interrogations. Then again, he really liked Chris and seemed happy that we were dating.
“It just ran its course,” I said with a shrug. “We were in different places, and we want different things in a relationship.”
Dad sent me a concerned look, then he said something that shocked me. “That’s too bad. I thought you two were good together. You seemed happy.”
“She certainly knew all about your little ADHD thing,” Mom sniffed.
She was still annoyed that I’d never told her about my diagnosis. I was fairly certain she’d done some research or talked to someone about it because unlike that day she first heard about it, she now seemed to accept my neurodivergence as a fact.
“Well, if you’re not going to be with Chris--.”
Dad interrupted her. “She’s going to need some time before you start with your matchmaking again, Jeannie. Right Julia?”
“Yeah,” I said, hearing the sadness in my voice. “It’s only been a couple of days since we broke up and to be honest, I’m not over Chris yet.”
It was possible I never would be, though I didn’t share that fact.
“I’ll give you some time to grieve then,” Mom said. “Or maybe you two will get back together?”
“We won’t,” I told her.
The truth was, I wasn’t just upset about what Chris said in Gina’s office. The more I’d thought about it, I believed her whenshe said that she panicked. But I also was pretty sure that she blurted the first thing that came to her mind, and the first thing was that we were just having fun. Not serious.
We’d moved too fast, I realized. We’d fallen into a relationship neither of us was ready for. A relationship that had us dry humping each other in closets at work. That wasn’t healthy. We were grown women, not horny kids.
And if we did stay together, we’d have to do a disclosure with HR. Our relationship would impact any project that we worked on together. People would always be watching us, wondering if we were treating each other differently or doing something inappropriate. I loved my job, and I knew Chris did too. Risking our careers and reputations would be incredibly stupid.
A little voice in the back of my mind questioned if this was about work at all, or if my real issue was that I was afraid to be loved. If I doubted that I deserved a real relationship.
I told that voice to shut up.
Chris
When I heard someone knocking on my door Saturday morning my first thought was that it was Julia. Maybe she’d changed her mind and reconsidered breaking up with me.
I’d given her space, thinking that she’d reach out after she got over what happened in Gina’s office, but that was a grave miscalculation on my part. We’d been broken up for over a week, and I hadn’t heard a peep from her. Apparently this break-up wasn’t just a simple fight or relationship growing pains. She’d meant it.
Every day I’d told myself to reach out to her. Call her. Text her. Stop by her office. Dosomething. But I didn’t do a damned thing. I was paralyzed waiting for her to make a move, even though I knew very well that I’d hurt her that day when I denied our relationship meant something.
