My Butterfly

answer to fire calls at two in the morning just to go back to bed and answer another one at five,” I said.
    “You’re right, I don’t, and I understand that,” she said.
    She sounded slightly irritated now.
    “But since you’ve been doing that, you’ve never found a way to make it work,” she said. “You’ve never found even the tiniest bit of energy for me. Will, I might not be answering fire calls, but I’m working my butt off up here. Plus, I’m the one driving home to see you every month. You’re never here. I feel like I’m the only one trying anymore.”
    “I try,” I said, my voice trailing off.
    “How, Will? How do you try?” she asked.
    “I stay up and watch movies with you,” I protested.
    I heard her sigh on the other end of the phone.
    “First of all, you don’t stay up,” she said. “I know you’re sleeping. Secondly, I don’t want to always watch movies. I want to get dinner. I want to go dancing. I want to do things.”
    I felt my patience waning even as my heart was stabbing at the inside of my chest.
    “I have a job, Julia,” I said. “You’ll understand how that works someday.”
    My words had grown cold, and I knew it. I was on the defensive, and at this point, I didn’t quite know how to get back to the other side.
    “Really?” she asked. “Will, this has nothing to do with me going to school or you having a job, and you know it—and I can’t do this anymore.”
    Do what anymore? What was she talking about? Was she talking about us? She couldn’t do us anymore?
    “What does that mean?” I asked.
    She didn’t say anything. I took another deep breath, held it and then let it out, as a remnant of patience returned to my voice.
    “Jules, it’s us,” I said. “It’s us, Jules. You can do us. We know how to do us.”
    I heard her sigh.
    “Maybe we should take a break or something,” she said.
    Her voice had grown so soft I could barely hear it now.
    “You mean break up?” I asked her, slowly lowering myself to the mattress.
    “Well, just to give us some time to think about it,” she said.
    “I don’t need time to think about it, and Julia, you and I both know that there is no such thing as a break. There is only a breakup. Is that what you really want?”
    There was that deafening silence again, and I couldn’t believe what I had just asked her.
    “Yes,” she stuttered, eventually.
    My heart started to sink deeper into my chest. She didn’t mean that. She couldn’t have meant that.
    “Yes,” she said again, more firmly.
    “Jules, what are you saying?” I asked.
    I waited seconds, but she didn’t answer, and suddenly, I knew. She wasn’t saying that she didn’t fit into my life anymore. She was trying to tell me that I no longer fit into hers. She was saying she didn’t want a firefighter; she wanted a lawyer. I let out a frustrated sigh. It had always been that. It will always be that.
    “Well, I guess that’s it then,” I said.
    The words stung even me, but I didn’t care. She would figure out soon enough that no one could love her like I could—not even a fancy lawyer.
    “I guess so,” she softly said.
    There was an awkward pause, and it scared me. I couldn’t remember the last awkward pause I had had with Jules. In fact, I wasn’t sure if we had ever had one. It made me nervous, and the nerves made me spit something out without even thinking.
    “Take care,” I said.
    There was a quiet moment then—one of those quiet moments when you could hear the crashing and caving in of your world and nothing at all, all at the same time.
    “You too,” she eventually whispered.
    Her last words came out sad, and immediately, I wanted to take everything back. I didn’t want our conversation to end like this. I didn’t want anything to end, and I didn’t want to hang up. I pulled the phone away and looked at its display. She hadn’t hung up yet either. I brought the phone back to my ear, and as soon as I had, I heard it go dead on the other end.
    I tried to say her name, but nothing came out. And for the first time, I noticed I hadn’t been breathing. I sucked in a quick gasp of air and tried again.
    “Julia.”
    There was no answer. I slowly lowered the phone to my lap and stared at its display for a minute before my hand found my face in frustration. I rubbed my eyes, let my head fall back and then eventually forward, and then I habitually ran my fingers through my hair.
    They might be college-educated and have fancy cars, but I