Laura Miller - My Butterfly

A happy smile finally broke free from my face.

“Jules, I’ve already waited too long to tell you this…,” I said and then stopped.

I reached behind me, grabbed the butterfly weed and placed it in between us.

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

She took the stem into her hands and gently caressed its silk flowers.

“Will, where did you find these?” she asked.

I smiled wider.

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

I watched her lips turn up into a smile, as she stared into the flowers for a long moment.

“Will,” she eventually said. “I’m not the same person I was when we were in high school.”

Her confession took me aback.

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

A coy expression shot to her face.

“I’m just trying to tell you that you might not be saying all these things if you really knew me now,” she said. “You might not even want a girl like me anymore.”

She peeked at me from behind her big eyelashes.

“Hmm,” I said, nodding my head in a pretend, reflective thought. “Then, just who is the new Miss Julia Lang?”

I watched her eyes quickly travel back to mine. She looked a little surprised.

“Well, okay,” she eventually said.

She took a second, and I watched as she inhaled a healthy dose of the night’s cool air before letting the breath pass through her lips again.

“Well,” she said, meeting my eyes, “for starters, I make a living arguing. Not many people understand why I do it, and it’s tough sometimes, but I love it.”

I kept wearing my smile as she continued.

“And I don’t wish on stars anymore or entertain fairytales, and I can’t remember the last time that I climbed out of a window in the middle of the night,” she said. “Oh, and I’m a vegetarian now.”

She lowered her eyes.

“And I don’t believe that there is a perfect someone for anyone,” she softly said.

I sat back against the windshield again and let my eyes stare off into the black distance. She had changed a little, that’s for sure. No meat? No meat at all? No cheeseburgers?

“A vegetarian? Really?” I asked.

Her eyes searched mine. I could tell that she was trying to judge my reaction.

“That is a big change all right — but I’m afraid that you’re going to have to do a little better than that if you want to scare me off, Miss Lang,” I said.

Her eyes smiled then, even though her lips refused to waver.

“Look, Jules, it really is simple,” I said. “See, I’m in love with the person you can never outrun. I’m in love with you, Julia.”

She was quiet for a good minute, and I watched as her eyes searched my own. Somehow, I just knew that she wasn’t buying my confession.

“Will,” she said, finally, taking a deep breath, “I just think…I think that it has been a long time. We’re two, different people now, despite what you might think. We’re not two sixteen-year-olds. It’s been ten, long years, Will. And you have your life here, and I have mine in Charleston. You fight fires and have an amazing singing career. And I have a great job doing something I love also.”

She paused and bit her bottom lip and then returned it to its natural place again. I barely noticed that she had stopped. Something was telling me that I didn’t want to hear the rest of her story.

“You see,” she continued, despite my silent protests, “no matter how you look at it, our lives just don’t match up anymore. I mean, there was a time that I really wanted them to — to match up — but that was some time ago.”

Somewhere in her last, few words, my eyes had fallen to a dark place on the car’s hood.

“I just don’t think it would ever work, Will,” she said. “We’re living our realities now. Besides, it just makes sense that we couldn’t have possibly known what was best for us at sixteen.”

She was quiet then for a moment, but I couldn’t find any words.

“But I promise you that you’ll be with me in my dreams,” she eventually went on. “When I rest my head on my pillow each night, when time is all my own to escape the world and dream, I’ll meet you there. We’ll both be sixteen, and we’ll be happy, and we’ll do all the things we used to do. We’ll climb out windows, and we’ll wish on stars, and we’ll watch old movies and make fun of Jeff.”

She stopped again, and I met her eyes.

“What we had belongs in dreams and meeting there each night seems to work well anyway,” she said, with a soft smile. “But, Will, as for us in this lifetime, we’ve just changed too much, become two, different people and followed two, different paths. It’s life, Will, not a fairytale.”

I swallowed hard.

“Why did you come back, Jules?”

“I made a promise,” she said, in almost a whisper.

“But why now?” I asked.

“It’s a good cause, Will,” she said.

I sat there frozen for a moment. Did she really believe what she was saying? Or was what she had said only what she had told herself to believe?

I let out a heavy sigh.

Either way, it seems as though it ends the same.

Eventually, I turned toward her and took her hand in mine and gently kissed the back of it. She looked a little thrown off, but she let me hold her hand all the same.

“Julia,” I said, meeting her eyes again, “you have been my world since I first laid eyes on you, and you may not realize it, but I have taken you with me every day in the last decade. Please know that there is not one moment that I stopped loving you. You are the reason for my smiles and my songs. You are my hope and my inspiration. My heart has only beaten for you. I do admit that I had my doubts, none of which involved my love for you. I did worry that you had forgotten me and that you had forgotten what we had, but just being here with you now, it’s proof. It proves to me that you haven’t. I see no change in your eyes, and it’s the most comforting feeling I’ve ever known. Jules, please know that I will love you unceasingly for many lifetimes to come.”

I took a shallow breath and then let it quickly escape before I continued.

“Jules, but no matter what big dreams you’re living or what lucky guy you end up marrying…”

My voice cracked, and I tried hard to swallow the growing lump in my throat.

“Please know that I love you,” I continued. “Even if I have to do it in secret — or in dreams — I’ll love you forever.”

Then, I set her hand gently back down onto her bended knee and slowly slid down the hood of her rented sedan. And when my feet hit the ground, I turned around one, last time.

“I guess I’ll be seeing you in my dreams,” I said.

I tipped my baseball cap toward her. Then, I started to turn but then stopped.

“And, Jules,” I said.

Her eyes darted to mine.

“I believe that there is a perfect someone for everyone, and I know that you still believe that too,” I said. “There is a perfect someone, even if the road to that someone isn’t all that perfect.”

I felt the warm liquid behind my eyes again. It was an all-too-familiar part of our story in the last ten years or so.

Then, I slowly turned and made my way back to my truck. And when I reached its door, I stopped, thought about turning back but didn’t. Instead, I opened the door and slid behind the wheel.

I sat there for a moment, staring into the dashboard, still trying to figure out if my dreams had just slipped away right there on the hood of her car in the middle of this black night. I sat there trying to find the words to say that I hadn’t already said that would make her say that she loved me too. I searched through every moment that I had kept locked away in my chest for the last decade. I searched every piece of us, but I couldn’t seem to find another way to say: Stay with me, Julia. Love me like I love you. Be my world again. Love me.