When Juli was a little girl, she used to go out with her father to catch bark scorpions. In fact, the first time they went out together was one of her earliest, most vivid memories of her father from when she was a child. He used a special lamp on which he applied blue and purple dyes to adhesives, which he attached to the outside of the lamp to give it a dampened, purplish hue. According to her father, it helped him to see the scorpions, which Juli learned much later when he trusted her enough to pick them up herself, glowed in the dark.
But Juli didn't learn any of these technical details until much later. No, the four or five year old Juli, when she asked about how any of this was done, just got the answer, "Magic!" from her father. That first night he took her out, this answer irritated her. She had always been a precocious, curious girl, and her mind appreciated understanding things and being spoken to like an adult and an equal.
Nevertheless, especially after capturing their first scorpions together, the scorpion-hunting lamp and ritual, slowly batting with a shovel through their field crops, the process did feel a little bit like magic, which soured Juli's mood further. She didn't want to admire her father when she was already annoyed with him, but as a girl she couldn't understand how any of the details worked. It was only after repeating this ritual monthly for a few years that she figured out that the bark scorpions glowed at night and loved to nestle in the soft, warm, mushy patches of unturned soil produced from the crops their village planted.
That first night, Juli was terrified. Her father had equipped her with tall boots that went up all the way to her knees, and long gloves that went past her elbows. It was itchy and hot, and it didn't help that both her parents had obviously been laughing at her when she came waddling out of her room with the get-up on. Now, in the evening of her first hunt, Juli's toddler stomach clenched and unclenched constantly. The idea of getting close enough to touch, let alone capture or kill, any scorpion was gut-wrenching. She had a cousin, a baby who she barely even remembered, who'd been bitten by one who'd died within hours of the bite only a few weeks prior. Juli didn't want to be anywhere near anything that could do something like that to a baby. It was scary and confusing.
But her father, in that soft, quiet, firm way of his, insisted that Juli go out with him "to fulfill her duty to the village." That was his way. That was their village's way. A simpler time. A good childhood.
On the eve of her first scorpion hunt, now fully equipped with long rubber gauntlets and boots, she waddled after her father, who easily outpaced her. Without saying a word, he held out in his hand a large, clear jar that they used to catch rainwater, now emptied and without the lid it usually had to keep the water dry. As the moon rose behind them higher and higher in the sky, her father entertained her with terrifying fun facts about the scorpions that were "right beneath our feet." Some were the size of a person's fisted hand, her father said, others could barely wrap around her father's little pinky. The venom, though, was the concern, as it was ten times more poisonous than it had been before the bombs dropped.
Each time they found a scorpion, Juli expected her father to squash it with his boot, to thwack it hard with the pointed shovel he used to dig them up.
He didn't.
Instead, he put the scorpions inside the glass jar Juli was holding, sometimes picking them up so quickly and effortlessly, turning fluidly towards her in the dark like a dancer, that Juli would miss the action altogether. What she did catch was waddling face first into her father's side, which made her even angrier than before. She wondered why he'd stopped so suddenly when she heard a faint tinkling from within the jar she was holding. That was when she realized what her father had done and that her task was now in motion, her duties real. She had to hold the scorpions in the jar while her father plucked them up out of the ground.
The pincers were pretty close to her fingers, she thought. What if they broke through the glass and bit through the gloves she was wearing? Would she die? What if she dropped the jar and the scorpions landed on her father and killed him? What if she tripped over her giant rubber boots and they escaped again? What if the jar tipped and one crawled in between her toes? And why did her father think this was a good idea for her to do it?
The speculation was endless, and maddening. The thoughts about her tripping and falling made her boots seem five sizes larger, her gloves four times too tight. She suddenly wished the outfit was better suited to her size so she could worry less about what might happen. This also made her move a lot more slowly, which caused her father to call after her more than a few times, holding the dark lamp higher over his head to check on her slow progress. They walked along for some time repeating this process: Juli, dragging behind, her father, calling after her.
After a while, Juli huffed along to keep up with her father, growing just slightly more comfortable with the barrier in her hands that kept the scorpions at bay, but she didn't address him. Juli was grumpy and angry with her father. He'd said something to upset her earlier that day, then laughed at her clothes that he was making her wear, and finally was dragging her out to do this task that made her so scared. She had vowed not to speak to him ever again, so even when he engaged her, her silence was answer enough. Her father was patient and gracious, however, and tried to include her the whole time while she sulked just a few steps behind him.
They did finally finish, though, and returned to the barn her family had constructed for the season. The pitch black unnerved Juli. If she dropped it in here, it would be even worse and the scorpions would bite her and she wouldn't even be able to see it coming. Full of relief, Juli was grateful when her father placed his shovel down, resting it against the makeshift table he had created only a few weeks earlier, and plucked the jar from out of her hands. With a small thud, Juli heard her father place the jar on top of the table. It was too dark without the lantern, which had been deposited on the floor, to see the inside of the jar, but the clicking and scratching from within the jar gave Juli the creeps. With the anxiety of being responsible for the scorpions lifted, but while remaining in close proximity to them, all irritation and anger for her father floated away. In its place, fear resounded, and her skin crawled as her fingers latched around her father's shirt.
He reassured her with soft tones before bringing the lantern out from his feet. Everything changed then. The two scorpions inside clawed furiously at the outside of the jar and her heart skipped a beat.
They were alive. They glowed and clamored for the edge of the smooth glass jar, but they were trapped inside. They weren't just bugs or whatever scorpions were (her child's mind called them bugs). They were things, living things. She felt sad that they had captured them until her father congratulated her on finding a mama and child scorpion - a good find.
That broke her silence and she and her father stayed up for a few more moments whispering about the magic of scorpion-hunting.
The next morning, Juli's mother roused her to feed their chickens, which she did before sleepily shuffling back to her cot to instantly return to sleep. When she woke the next time, she shot off the fur mat that was her bed and bolted outside of the house, pausing only briefly to bow to her mother and bid her an official good morning. Her father stirred in the room beyond, and she knew she had to hurry to get a glimpse of the scorpion family before her father made them go away.
Her bare feet plopped against the hardened sand as she trotted down the hill to the barn. She flung open the door, which cast brilliant white lines into the barn from the outside, casting away the shadows of the dark structure. Juli's pace slowed, almost reverently, as if approaching magical treasure that was booby-trapped. But there weren't two anymore. There was just one.
Suddenly, the terrible thought of what could happen to her if one had escaped - she wasn't wearing shoes after all! - washed over her, and Juli cried out, sprinting back out of the barn without pausing to shut the door. Her father had to know!
Her heart pounded in her chest as flew through the open door to their hut, where her father was now eating breakfast and drinking the tea her mother had made.
"Baba!" she cried. "A scorpion got out!"
He smiled with a look on his face Juli remembered as being very strange.
"No, baobei," he told her, "the mother ate her young in the night. This happens sometimes."
"The mama ate her baby?" Juli squeaked out.
As a child, for whatever reason, this struck Juli as exceedingly distressing. Her eyes filled with tears, her heart sank in her chest, and the beating of it felt like it was seizing in her chest. She ran back out the door to the table with the jar to look back at the murderous cannibal scorpion, who seemed a little bigger now than the last time she'd seen it.
And the jar seemed a little smaller.
The thought of how scared the baby must have been overwhelmed her, trapped in that jar in the dark by a giant monster with fingers that snatched. It was dropped into a black hole with invisible barriers on all sides, and the next thing it likely realized, it was collapsing into itself, dying, being crushed by the person who had given it life. The emptiness it must have felt was palpable, and her little heart couldn't take it.
She leaned over onto the wooden table and burst into tears. Granted, she was probably three or four years old, and the sleep deprivation from the night before hadn't stopped her mother from waking her early to feed their chickens. So she sobbed. And sobbed.
Until her father walked into the barn.
"Baobei," he whispered to her, taking her in his arms, "why are you crying?"
"We trapped the scorpion and now it's dead. I thought you said we weren't going to kill it!"
"But we didn't kill it," her father replied, rocking her. "The mother killed her baby, not us."
"But the baby must have been so scared."
Her father continued to rock her for some time before his voice rumbled from his chest into her ears.
"I am going to tell you some wisdom that my mother told me. Are you going to be able to listen?"
That tone. No judgment. No irritation. It was a simple question, and a request: pull yourself together, little one, and be strong. He said it without saying it, which was his way, and it made Juli ache as an adult with remembering how masterfully he could communicate such large messages with so few words and the tone of his voice.
Biting her lower lip, Juli brought her hand up to cover one eye with her palm, pressing the other into her father's chest. Her father waited without speaking as she hiccuped and heaved a few times, her chest giving with the exhaustion of calming down from a good cry, but she was quiet.
"There are four things in this world that we cannot get back."
He paused and Juli asked,
"What are they?"
"Words we say, things we spend, what happened before, and what happens when we waste a chance."
Juli grappled with this for a while, and her father hoisted her higher up his arms.
"Do you understand, little one?"
Juli shook her head.
"Sometimes life is hard," her father explained, his tone even, but not cold. "But that doesn't make it bad. What is done is done. We cannot take back words that we say that are unkind, and we cannot take back money we give to merchants for food and supplies. We cannot change things that have already happened because they are in the past. We cannot un-take the scorpion because you and I decided yesterday to capture them. It is done. So, yes, the scorpion is dead because we took it. But because we took it we took our chance to save more children in our village."
"But the scorpion wouldn't have died if we hadn't taken it!" Juli protested, trying to keep up.
There was a pause, and he kissed her forehead before speaking again.
"Do you remember your cousin?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Your cousin died because she was small and the scorpion made her very sick. This made her weak and she couldn't breathe anymore. Do you remember how sad this made your aunt?"
Juli did. Her heart swelled and her eyes welled up again.
"She was just a baby," Juli remembered.
"Yes, she was," her father affirmed. "But you know what? We use the scorpion poison that comes out of the stinger to make the medicine, and we get it by collecting the scorpions into those jars."
Juli's head shot back from her father's chest.
"Really?" she asked, wide-eyed.
Her father nodded.
"Mhm," he explained.
Juli's chest began to relax, her shoulders sagging.
"If we get the scorpions, my cousins will be safe?" she mumbled in question.
"Yes, baobei," her father replied, rumbling with laughter. "And you will be. That is why we collect the scorpions. I know it's very sad that the mama scorpion ate her baby, and the baby scorpion was probably very scared, you're right. This is a bad thing, a hard thing. But you know what?"
"What?"
She was eating up his every word.
"For every bad thing there is always a good thing. The scorpion died, and that is sad, but now if another baby is bitten, if you have another cousin, he will live to grow old and fat because we can take the medicine from the scorpions. This is a good thing."
He parted Juli's hair and finally set her down before turning to the entrance of the barn. When he was nearly out, he turned back to say.
"Be like water, baobei. Fill the cup no matter what shape it is, but remember not to let the vessel sour the tea."
Juli dreamt of this early memory before waking on her cot across from Veronica. The fire pit, which she had made and not prepared, was stark, even in the dark, against the white sands. Veronica, who had met up with her several days back, slept a little ways off, as she did, and didn't stir. They were in a rocky underpass, very sheltered from the outside world, and without a fire, it would have taken a miracle for anybody to find them. They both needed some "shut eye," as Boone called it, and this was exactly the kind of shut eye her father would have prescribed.
Some weight inside of her lungs was lifted, and she felt the fog of grief begin to drift away as her father's words played back in her ears. He usually spoke in maddening metaphors and similes, proverbs of wisdom that, in her formative teenage years, pissed her off to no end. As a three or four year old, she didn't have any idea what a proverb about tea meant...but now?
Now was different, and the words gave Juli hope. A kick in the pants, a firm, determined wiping of the tears from her eyes and her soul. Words that were hard, but words she needed. Words without judgment but full of purpose, the way her father always was.
A wise man could adapt to the surprises life threw at him, just like water filled the cup. That's what it meant. The wise person faced life's challenges, no matter the challenges, because they would come.
But that didn't mean it had to sour the whole tea pot.
Her whole life.
Just then, another proverb popped into her head, one of the last things her father said to her, which, given its timing just before his untimely demise, had been eerie to Juli for a long time - until now.
"To die is to stop living, but to stop living is something very different."
She had brushed him off, obviously, even as she bowed, smirked over her father's shoulder at her mother, who winked.
New tears came now, and Juli sniffled.
They were still here. Her parents. Her father and mother. They were here with her. She wasn't a stranger, not even someone they wouldn't recognize. They were with her.
They were here in her dreams, in her memories. She heard her father's voice as clearly as she heard the wind whistling through the underpass, and if that wasn't real, Juli didn't know what was.
Like a revelation, Juli's tears intensified, relief pouring out of her like a sieve, and Veronica was up instantly.
"Oh no - Juli," she whispered, crawling over to Juli's cot.
"No!" Juli cried, smiling into the strings of salty tears pouring down her face. "No, no, I had a good dream."
"Then why are you crying?"
"It will be okay!" Juli whispered at first, and the revelation forced a bubble of laughter out of her. "It hurts, but it's okay."
Words she needed to say, words she needed to hear, words her father came to visit her with in her waking memories, words their spirits delivered on the wings of a pained, mangled beast of pain.
It would all be different now. And that was scary. And it would hurt.
But it would be okay.
Because her baba said it would.
Things would never be the same after that. There would be no dark time of the year, no fog. There would be pain, but it would never steal away her soul again. Because she couldn't allow it.
She wasn't nearly as religious as her mother had been, but Juli prayed a thank you. She prayed at the shrines to their ancestors, as well as to the Christian God, and to the figurines that allowed her to communicate directly to the souls of her family members in heaven. She knew this wasn't the way English people prayed, but this had always been the way with them. Two parts of one whole, and it felt that every power there was had finally delivered.
As Juli reveled in these sensations, Veronica sat back. Her eyes were wide and she just blinked, and Veronica's blank stare gave cause for Juli to burst into laughter. For a moment, Veronica seemed so perplexed that the mask Juli knew she assumed slid off for a moment. Underneath, Juli saw terrible loneliness - and an opportunity to fix that.
Her father's wisdom rang in her ears, and, despite the pain, fear, and anxiety that was waiting in the wings, the sheer joy of it overwhelmed her and she laughed harder.
And harder.
She laughed so hard that eventually the two of them together on the cot fell back on top of each other, laughing so hard their sides hurt, laughing so hard that the other was laughing, laughing so hard tears streamed down their faces and past their neck, a leeching of the collected pain and loneliness they felt together.
It had been so many years since Juli had gone to sleep content, but tonight, things were different.
And they would be after that.
With Boone gone, Juli felt she was finally able to relax a little bit, especially since Juli found Veronica to be exceedingly funny. Even better, the two could be funny together without drinking into oblivion, and there was some kind of unspoken boundary about this that really felt good to Juli.
There was honesty between them that Juli found refreshing.
Veronica answered things bluntly. She cut no corners and never growled out some vague half-truth. She spoke her mind, sometimes so much and so often that Juli was taken aback. In ways that spoke volumes to Juli about emptiness, Veronica often spoke of sex, either through favors or otherwise. Veronica always framed it like a joke, but...it wasn't funny.
Her friendship with Veronica was different than her friendship was with Boone. It felt...more far away. Distant. It felt like Veronica was a chronicler of time and the events that occurred in it, while Boone felt like her partner, bound to her by blood, pain, and suffering. She felt the same as Boone and felt distinctly separated from Veronica, which came with some perks. It was like befriending a zoo animal you went to see every day. Veronica was nice and pretty and funny, but at the end of the day, even if their conversation went personal, it was never too deep, never as deep as it had been with Boone.
It was a different section of her soul that Veronica touched, a shallower surface. It didn't scrape the bottom to drudge up the marred underbelly of who she fundamentally was and who she experienced.
It was both pleasant and mildly lonely. It wasn't deep or crazy or passionate. It just...was.
Comfortable.
Until it wasn't.
Every now and then, Juli wanted to ask about why Veronica sometimes looked so empty and alone that her eyes were dead.
Boone was up front about his stuff. He didn't want to talk about it, but he didn't ignore it either. He said, "This is what happened, now let's just move on." Veronica just didn't want to talk about herself altogether, which, of course, made Juli curious.
"Veronica?" Juli asked absently.
The two were sitting on rocks, facing each other. Juli and Veronica had been cleaning their energy weapons at Veronica's request and Juli had long since finished. She didn't use energy weapons, so clean was clean, Juli thought. Obviously, Veronica didn't agree, so she was still hard at work while Juli relaxed on her back, her arms sprawled over her arms as the sun gently warmed them both. Part of Juli felt bad for finishing so quickly, but it wasn't as if she had much practice. Boone, who used only regular weaponry, had always volunteered to clean their weapons, and Juli thought there was probably some cathartic solace to the process for him. She'd never needed to do it, let alone with energy weapons.
Veronica just wanted the damn things to be immaculate.
"I like the way you say my name," Veronica replied absently over the energy rifle she was cleaning.
All the parts were spread out onto the ground before her and Veronica was covered in weapon grease. The smell of it wafted through the air into Juli's nose, but it wasn't bad enough to complain about.
"How do I say it?" Juli mumbled out, feeling lazy in the sun.
"I don't know. With an accent. But I guess you say everything with an accent."
Juli made some non-committal noise, unsure of how to breach the conversation topic she wanted to, but feeling the itch that told her she had to.
"What is it?" Veronica asked. "If you were any more obvious about wanting to ask something, you'd have to write it out."
"I am not so good at English spelling and reading," Juli admitted, feeling the familiar tug of anxiety about this play with her insides.
"Maybe we should stop somewhere to find some books and try learning sometime or something."
"I'd like that," Juli replied, "but I did want to ask you something."
"Okay, shoot."
Juli turned her head towards her friend, using her arm to cover her face from the sun. Veronica was now wiping the barrel furiously, her brow furrowed into her task.
"Have you ever been in love?" Juli asked.
Veronica's back ticked up and her eyes pinched with irritation.
"Ever been nosy?" she snapped with a scowl back at her friend.
The reaction seemed a little harsh.
"You do not need to answer," Juli snapped back.
As if thinking, Veronica froze before sighing.
"I was, once," Veronica admitted, throwing down the rag onto the gun. "We were pretty young, but I like to think it was love."
"What happened then?" Juli asked, sitting up to face the other woman.
"What do you mean?"
"You have love and you left it. Why?"
Veronica's smile transformed instantly, even though her face didn't change at all. It seemed a little more pinched, something she'd seen Boone do a thousand times. A tell that meant whatever the answer to the question was was going to be tremendously sad.
"It wasn't...like that. She left the Brotherhood. Wanted to put some distance between herself and her parents."
Veronica's words sunk in slowly. Then, the operative pronoun struck Juli in the face.
"She?" Juli repeated.
A woman. Veronica was in love with a woman.
"A woman?" Juli asked again, trying to hide her surprise.
"Yes, I was in love with a woman," Veronica stated flatly, raising an eyebrow. "Does that surprise you?"
Juli didn't know how to answer. She didn't want to offend her closest girlfriend, but this information was more than a little surprising. She racked her brain for all the times Juli had changed in front of her friend, all the times they had joked about sex or men or body parts. Was it different now? Juli didn't think so little of her friend to assume Veronica had been checking her out, but if she had known, Juli knew she would have been as diligent about remaining separate with changing, using the bathroom, bathing, if for nothing else than for her own modesty, as she was with Boone.
Juli's face flushed with her lack of decorum. What would her mother say?
"Does it bother you?" Veronica asked gently.
Juli sat back, leaning her palms against the warm rock beneath her.
"A little..." Juli stated, careful with her tone, "but maybe...I don't understand."
"What's there to understand?" Veronica ground out.
"Hm. I am maybe not good to talk about this. My village believed that making babies is most important to stay alive, so I have this belief too. Does that bother you?"
"It might be...a little offensive, but I get it."
"I don't mean to offend you!" Juli replied quickly, eyes widening. "No, I am sorry. I mean...I do not understand this way of being and have...difficulty...with it."
Veronica peered at Juli for a long moment with critical eyes.
"I guess I'm used to that reaction," Veronica finally said, her eyes falling with disappointment.
"Do not be sad, Veronica," Juli told her, trying to instill upon her friend what she truly meant. "I would not treat you differently because you want to sleep with other women. What you do with sex and who you do it with is none of my business unless you choose to make it mine. Then, I feel I can tell you my opinion, but only if you talk to me about it. Does that make sense?"
Veronica's disappointment evaporated, and her toothy smile returned.
"Just...tell me if I do something that makes you uncomfortable," Juli requested, "so I do not...put you in an uncomfortable spot. I will be more careful in the future."
"Deal, chief," was Veronica's reply, as if Juli hadn't even said anything at all.
"I guess I know this is something many other people in the world do too, but like I said, not in my village, as far as I know. Making babies was always the honorable choice where I lived."
"Funny you should mention that," Veronica quipped, a bitter smirk taking shape as she stared into the horizon. "Since our membership isn't open to outsiders, some members think that obligates all of us to procreate, too."
"Make babies is this word?"
"Yeah."
"So you can't be with the woman you love?"
"No, I told you, she left."
"Why didn't you go with her?"
Veronica made a sad noise, as if the question had poured over her like ice water a thousand times.
"I couldn't bring myself to leave everyone else behind, and I couldn't convince her to stay. I'd hoped, maybe, love would be enough to influence her decision, but it wasn't. We were both too stubborn."
Juli knew all about this naivete. Love was never enough. There had to be more.
She'd learned that the hard way. It made Juli feel a small kinship with Veronica with the shared knowledge they each possessed, just as she had with Boone over the loss of his child, but nothing nearly as deep or immediate or solid.
"Do you know where she is?" Juli asked, dreading the answer.
She didn't want the answer to be "dead" or "mauled by a monster."
An all too common response.
"No, I don't," Veronica said, relieving Juli's tension, "but I'm sure she's moved on. I still think about her, though. Once in a while."
There was a lingering silence between them.
"I told you I'm a procurement specialist, right?" Veronica asked.
Juli nodded.
"The elder who brought us to the Mojave, Father Elijah, usually had me looking for these old memory units. Nowadays I'm usually sent to do business with traders at places like the 188. But between you and me, I think it's just to keep me out of everyone's hair."
"They keep you away? Your family?"
"Yeah, well...I was a nuisance there, and you can guess that it didn't go over well after Amanda and I were separated."
"The woman's name was Amanda?"
"Yeah."
A long silence resonated between them.
"What about you?" Veronica asked.
Taken aback, Juli just blinked.
"Have you ever been in love?"
The familiar tension, anxiety, pain, fear, anger, and a slew of other things shot through her at lightning speed. She didn't want to talk about this, she decided, but it was selfish of her to ask without being willing to reciprocate.
What was done was done.
She couldn't take back words she had said, or the exchange she had started.
Feeling a pinching on her insides, Juli's voice was stilted when she spoke next.
"I don't know anymore," Juli's mouth said slowly. "No, I don't think so now."
Veronica tilted her head like a dog, as if the answer amused her.
"What's that mean?"
"I thought I did, but I...I don't know how else to say it. I don't know."
"You'd know, I think."
"Well..."
Juli's hand found her belly.
"I was with a man once."
Normally, Veronica made a joke or other about this comment, but it was so rare for Juli to divulge personal information that the other woman's insides itched with curiosity. Plus, Juli thought, probably it was her tone that kept Veronica at bay.
Juli didn't like the wavering in her voice.
"I had a...baby."
The words hurt. Tears filled her eyes, turning Veronica into a smudge.
She was at risk of unraveling again, and she felt the shadowy monster of grief pacing outside the barrier she had created, waiting for a chance to get back into her as soon as she dropped it.
"Had?" Veronica repeated from somewhere far off.
"He lied to me, and because I trusted him, the baby...died."
"Oh my God, Juli..."
"Don't pity me!" Juli nearly snarled as the woman moved to sit next to her.
Veronica didn't recoil, instead wrapping her arm around Juli.
"I didn't know," Veronica whispered. "I'm sorry."
"Me too..." Juli whispered, looking at her hands.
The two of them sat there in companionable silence for a long time before Juli forced her mind, like choking her own mind, back to the present. The tears faded, but the echoes of pain remained. Still, she'd stopped crying, so that was something.
Progress.
"What about other guys?" Veronica finally asked. "I'm sure there were guys that weren't total asshat scumbags."
Her tone joked, and it gratified Juli more than bristled at her. Felt good to be vindicated in her hatred.
"I kissed a Brotherhood man once," Juli claimed, feeling shy.
Veronica's mouth was agape.
"What?" she cried out, laughing. "Oh my God, what was his name? I bet I knew him!"
"It does not matter what his name was!" Juli cried back, her face flushing.
"Yeah, to you. But we have a Code about this kind of thing and kissing a local would be sort of like fraternizing with the enemy."
Veronica's joking tone made Juli laugh.
"We saved his life. I tended to him. That is all I will say."
"Shit, Jules, too classy for your own good," Veronica clucked, shaking her head exaggeratedly.
Then, Veronica's posture changed slightly.
"Well, what about Craig? He's a good looking guy. He's not even my type and I'm blinded by his stunning pectorals. I don't even know how you stay focused with his sweaty chest flaunting all over the place all the time."
Juli's heart began to race and she squirmed next to her friend. If only Veronica knew the exchange they'd had right before they'd split up.
"Wait, I was just kidding and you seem oddly off-put by my description of our luscious friend. Am I on to something here?"
When Juli's red shade deepened on her cheeks, Veronica made a loud "gotcha!" sound, pointing.
"You like Boone!" Veronica accused. "I knew it!"
"Veronica, stop it!" Juli cried out, putting a hand on her cheek and looking away. "It isn't like that!"
"You're totally in love with him, admit it!"
Juli's stomach dropped. Anger came now. Veronica was fishing for something, and it felt manipulative and wrong.
"What? No!"
Juli didn't even know if she was capable of feeling anything as deeply as love ever again, which registered from some very far away place as incredibly sad. She didn't feel she was deserving of it, capable of it, or wanting of it. Somehow, her partnership with Boone transcended such petty titles. What they had was something else, but it wasn't love.
This thought made everything sour.
"No, it isn't like that, Veronica. He is handsome, I admit it, but he and I are friends. That's all."
"Who says you can't be friends with someone hot and sexy?"
"I can, but his friendship is more important to me. I would not want to destroy it by discussing sexual things behind his back. That is not fair."
Veronica huffed.
"So serious all the time," she complained, crossing her arms.
"He would not want me, anyway," Juli stated with finality that made Veronica's smile slide right off her face.
"What do you mean?"
Juli wanted to tell Veronica about Boone's wife, about all of it, wanted to rid herself of the burden, but it wasn't her place. Juli wanted to tell Veronica about Carla, about how Carla was so absolutely everything that Juli wasn't: large breasts, wide hips, a confident, toothy smile. Carla allured people with a single glance, and she knew it. She had manipulative eyes and big hair with bright eyes.
Juli didn't measure up.
And that was okay. Comparison would be the thief of her contentment with her friend. She had decided that long before when she'd first started to compare herself to Boone's dead wife, and it was poison in her mind. She'd decided to give that all up, and now here she was, doing it again because Veronica had suggested all this. Now thoroughly annoyed with her friend for causing this line of thinking, Juli bristled.
"All I can say is...I have seen some of his lovers before," Juli explained, looking down at herself. "They are big and I am small. They have wide eyes and fat lips. I am thin and...angled. He does not see me as a woman but as a friend. I know this is true. That is all."
Veronica hesitated, and when she spoke next, her voice was full of incredulity and doubt.
"Are you sure about that?"
"No," Juli replied waspishly, "but I do not wish to talk about it anymore, so I will go to gather herbs for our dinner."
She stood up and walked away. Along the way, Juli's abdomen clenched. After her meltdown, after what she'd told him and the way she reacted to everything, he probably didn't even want to see her again. She was a mess and he had his own anger to deal with. It might be better for him to have some time alone.
She missed him, she realized. Terribly.
But sex with Boone just wasn't possible. He'd lost a wife and child. It was callous to even consider him as a sexual partner. After all she'd lost, Juli chastised herself for even allowing that topic to go on as long as it did. He wouldn't want her, and that was okay. She wasn't ready to be wanted, and she was sure he wasn't ready to want. Not in the way that Veronica was implying.
Sex, maybe. But not the kind of wanting that sexual attraction and friendship afforded. That was called love, and neither of them, she thought, would be ready for it.
Plus, with painful acuity, Juli remembered the look on his face when he'd protested about her accusations. He maybe thought she was pretty, but not beautiful. Maybe she was funny, but not fun. That was okay. Juli had a role, which was important, and that was good enough for her. She didn't want to assume what Boone thought, but she was too afraid to wonder what he actually felt to wonder about what he felt.
Juli returned to the fire to cook a soup her mother used to make, and Veronica ate it silently. Veronica took their bowls and washed them with a pool under a rock near where they had made camp, and when she returned she looked like she had something to say.
"I'm sorry," Veronica muttered.
"It's okay," Juli replied, knowing it wasn't.
She'd be ruminating about all this for a long time. Boone, at least, would brood too in his own way, and they could be silent together. Veronica would push her, and it would take weeks to recover.
"No, really. I didn't mean to push you. I know things with you guys are...touchy. I guess I just miss the big guy too and wanted to know when we might see him again."
Juli's heart raced again. She wondered too, but she needed more time.
"I don't know. When I'm ready. Soon. We will find him. He said he'd be ready to join us again."
Veronica offered up a merciful smile, dropping the issue.
"Sounds good, boss."