Hello Beautiful

William let go of her hand, without seeming to notice. “He did? It’s not a book — it’s more notes at this point. I don’t know if it will ever be a book. I don’t know what it will be.”

“It’s impressive,” she said. “I don’t know any other college kids who are writing a book in their free time. It’s very ambitious. Sounds like a future professor to me.”

He shrugged, but she could see him considering the idea.

William was tall and shadowy above her. A man, but young. Pilsen was muted tonight under a navy-blue sky. They were on a smaller side street. She could see the spire of St. Procopius, where her family attended Sunday mass, a few blocks to the right. Julia thought of Sylvie being kissed against a row of science-fiction novels under the bright lights of the library. She reached over and tugged on the front of William’s coat. Come down here.

He knew this signal and lowered his head. His lips met hers — gentle, warm — and they pressed together in the middle of the street, in the middle of their romance, in the middle of her neighborhood. Julia loved kissing William. She’d kissed a couple of boys before him, but those boys had approached kissing like it was the starting pistol in a sprint. Presumably, the finish line was sex, but neither of the boys had expected to get that far; they were simply trying to cover as much ground as possible before Julia called off the race. A cheek kiss veered into kissing on the lips, which escalated rapidly to French kissing, and then the boy was patting her breast as if trying to get a feel for its measurements. Julia had never let anyone go further than that point, but the whole endeavor was so stressful that she’d only been able to experience kisses as wet and reckless. William, though, was different. His kisses were slow and not part of a race, which allowed Julia to relax. Because she felt safe, different parts of her body lit up, and she pressed her soft body against his. With William, she wanted more for the first time. She wanted him.

When they finally pulled apart, she whispered into his chest, “I’m going to leave this place.”

“Where? Your parents’ house?”

“Yes, and this whole neighborhood. After college. When”—it was Julia’s turn to hesitate—“when my real life starts. Nothing starts here; you saw my family. People get stuck here.” She pictured the soil in Rose’s garden: rich, pebbly, sticky to the touch. She rubbed her hand against William’s jacket, as if to wipe off the dirt. “There are much nicer neighborhoods in Chicago. They’re a different world from here. I wonder if you’ll want to go back to Boston?”

“I like it here,” he said. “I like your family.”

Julia realized she’d been holding her breath, waiting for his response. She’d decided William was her future, but she wasn’t sure he felt the same way, though she suspected he did. “I like them too,” she said. “I just don’t want to be them.”

When Julia crept back into the house later that night and into the tiny bedroom she shared with Sylvie, she found all her sisters waiting there in their nightgowns. They offered her triumphant smiles.

“What?” she whispered, unable not to smile in return.

“You’re in love!” Emeline whispered, and the girls pulled Julia onto her bed, a celebration of the first of them to take this step, the first of them to hand her heart to a boy. The twins and Sylvie collapsed onto the single bed with her. They’d done this countless times; it had gotten trickier as their bodies grew, but they knew how to tuck their limbs and arrange themselves to make it work.

Julia laughed with her hand over her mouth, careful not to make noise and wake up their parents. She was surprised to find tears in her eyes, wrapped up in her sisters’ arms. “I might be,” she said.

“We approve,” Sylvie said. “He looks at you like you’re the bee’s knees, which you are.”

“I like the color of his eyes,” Cecelia said. “They’re an unusual shade of blue. I’m going to paint them.”

“It’s not your kind of love, Sylvie,” Julia said, wanting to make that clear. “It’s a sensible kind.”

“Of course,” Sylvie said, and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re a sensible person. And we’re so happy for you.”

—