“I’m sure your parents looped you in, but if it makes you feel any better, my setups were all failures.”
“It does, thanks. They were destined to be flops from the start.”
She furrowed her brow and glared at Jisoo. Well, that was rude. Jisoo had no faith in Julia’s dating abilities either. Great.
Jisoo’s smile was huge. “Just being honest. It’s nice not being the only single one left. And I didn’t mean they were flops because of you. I meant, well, because of you and Tae. I saw you two together, remember? I knew it right away. Nobody else stood a chance.”
“How did you know...” Julia furrowed her brow as she let the question trail off. She and Tae weren’t together long enough for anyone to know, really. There wasn’t anything noteworthy to know.
Jisoo shrugged. “There was just something between you two, something obvious.”
“Really? I don’t know, that surprises me. But in the end, that didn’t work out either. The me-and-Tae thing.”
“Oh? I didn’t realize you two had started...”
“We didn’t really, I guess.” Julia shook it off. “Anyways, we’re not really talking now. Giving each other some time and space.”
“Seriously? Time and space. Huh, sounds... nebulous. That’s too bad. Hey, Julia?”
“Yeah?” Julia replied.
“Remember when we were in middle school, and we accidentally knocked over that big candle in the church sanctuary and it burned down the whole altar? And Tae didn’t talk to usfor two weeks and you were mad at him for being mad at us? And it turned out that he was grounded because he took the blame for it so we wouldn’t get in trouble and wasn’t mad at us after all?” Jisoo detailed out the contents of her entire memory bank.
“Um, that’s not how I remember it at all. In fact, I was mad at you because you were the one who was trying to steal some of the communion wafers under the altar and knocked over the candle that set the place aflame and got us in trouble in the first place, and I didn’t talk to Tae because I was the one who was grounded... because of you,” Julia corrected her.
“You were mad at me?”
“You’re an arsonist!”
“But I just broke off an engagement!”
“What does that have anything to do with anything?”
The two of them stared at each... and burst out laughing. Julia laughed so hard she doubled over, grabbing her stomach. She couldn’t breathe. Jisoo wiped tears daintily away from her eyes.
“You should talk to him,” Jisoo finally said as their laughter died down. “The point I’m trying to make is I think you guys have a lot to say to each other. And, well, it would suck if you both left without clearing the air.”
Bothleft? Was Tae going somewhere?
“He’s going back to Chicago,” Jisoo answered the question Julia was too afraid to ask.
Her heart stopped. He was leaving. Going back to a life that had made him miserable. But why? Was it because of Julia? She felt the ache everywhere, her chest, her lungs, her stomach.
Julia needed to stop obsessing over everything she heard about Tae. She was worried about how codependent she felt. Time away in Korea was going to be good for her. She needed to start focusing on herself.
And she had to trust Tae to make his own life’s decisions.
“Oh.” It was all Julia could get out from within the jumbled mess of her brain.
Jisoo reached out and squeezed Julia’s hand. “Talk to him,” she said in her doctor voice.
Julia would. Talk to him. At some point. But right now, she wanted to focus on herself. Her life’s worth wasn’t dependent on whether she was dateable or not. It wasn’t dependent on whether her company sold in Korea or not. What mattered was that she was living for the bar she’d set for herself. Not what others set for her. Julia was going to make her thirties the best ever. Let all the other chips fall where they might.
She smiled and shrugged. “Good talk, Jisoo. Thanks for the walk down memory lane. And thanks for the advice. I’ll store it away for the next time I actually ask for it.” Julia couldn’t help herself.
“You do you,” Jisoo shot back. “At least if we’re both single, I won’t get so much shit for it.”
The two of them smiled at each other. Julia meant hers. She thought Jisoo did too. Frenemies indeed.
