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ONE
JULIA
October...
I see the door shut behind him, but I don’t hear it. I feel it deep in my chest. It feels like the apartment windows should be rattling in the frames, and pictures should be crashing to the floor with the strength of that silent click of the door. But it doesn’t. It slides closed as if through warm butter. As if he didn’t just slam the door on every plan I had for our future, now shattered into pieces across the marble floor of the entryway.
But I don’t hear it. Instead, I hear blood rushing inside my head and the pounding of my heart inside my chest. My hands are shaking, and sweat breaks out on my face. I pull at my fingers, trying to calm my runaway heart, but it’s much too late for that, and I gasp for air as I sway on the spot.
I open my mouth to scream, or to cry, or to ask how the fuck did my world tilt on its axis so suddenly, but all that comes out is a whimper. Then my throat closes up until the only noise I make is a death hiss as all the oxygen is squeezed from my lungs.
“Shit!” I hear Justin say, but even though he’s directly in front of me with his hands on my face, I hear him through a tunnel. I’m looking through a tunnel. The creams of the walls and the table that holds Remi’s key, the key that’s been his since we bought the apartment all those years ago, fall away until I’m staring through a pinprick, barely large enough to see my husband before me.
He’s the only person who loves me now. Mrs. Jones doesn’t count.
I pay her to love me.
I can’t breathe, and I gasp in air as my hands shake and my knees buckle, but it doesn’t help because my throat is closed, and there’s a boulder sitting on my chest, and I want to puke, but I can’t fucking breathe!
“Shit!” I hear again, farther away than last time.
My knees hit the ground, but it doesn’t hurt because Justin catches me. Like he’s always done. Justin has always been my hero. Just once, I’d like to be his. I want to be his pillar while he shakes and breaks and lets his emotions take him.
But that is not my lot in life. My lot is to be abandoned and left alone and—
“I need you to breathe, baby girl,” Justin coaxes, running his thumbs over my cheeks. He takes both of my hands and places them on his chest so I can feel the way his lungs expand and collapse with the act of keeping himself alive.
I don’t want to be alive. I want to wallow and die in the misery of my broken heart. Except that would leave Justin alone, and I could never do that to Justin.
“Fast,” I whisper, wasting what precious air I’ve managed to gather. I stare into Justin’s eyes and see the depths of his worry and pain; one lover on the ground, the other running away.
I don’t know what I’m trying to say, but Justin does because Justin knows me better than I know myself.
“Yeah, sure did come on fast.” I think I pick up him swearing at Remi deep and low, but I’m still having a hard time hearing. His lips move, but it doesn’t penetrate the fog over my head. My head...it feels so heavy on my neck. If I could just— Justin runs his knuckles over my breastbone, and the pain forces my eyes open. “Look at me, Jules. It’s okay. It’s just a panic attack. You’ve had those before. You know what to do. Breathe with me and think of the color blue. How many shades are there? Light and dark. The ocean and the night sky.”
I love the color blue. It’s my favorite color in the world.
“That’s right,” Justin encourages me, and I try to breathe again.
Deep breath in, and the world spins as oxygen hits my red blood cells. My chest squeezes my lungs, the rubber band fighting back against being stretched.
“List me all the shades of blue, baby girl.”
His heart is thundering in his chest, but its beat is stable, even if it is a bit fast. It’s soothing to know that while I’m falling to pieces, Justin is strong enough to hold those pieces together.
“Brown,” I say, thinking of the whiskey color of Remi’s eyes and the umber tone of his skin. The light cinnamon colored skin our children would have had, blending beautifully with the dark cream-colored flesh of the children I’d have had with Justin.
My chest starts to hitch again.
“No!” Justin barks, looking past my limited vocabulary and knowing exactly where my mind has wandered. I jerk at the harshness of his voice, but it startles me enough that I gasp in air, and the force of it loosens the band around my ribcage just a smidgen more. Just enough that I can breathe without fighting for every breath.
His hand cups my cheek again, leaving his other hand to anchor both of mine to his body. Justin has always been my anchor. “I want to know about blue.”
I nod and swallow, finding it difficult but possible to bring moisture back up my throat and over my tongue.
Blue is a primary color. Water and the sky, as Justin had mentioned, aren’t actually blue. They appear blue because of an optical effect called Rayleigh scattering, which is basically the way light scatters across wavelengths.
“Aqua,” I say, and close my eyes and let the color wheel in my mind take over my body.
