Hello Beautiful

William proposed when they were juniors. This had been the plan, Julia’s plan. They would marry right after graduation. She’d shifted her major from humanities to economics, after taking a fascinating organizational-psychology course. She learned about systems, how every business was made up of a collection of intricate parts, motivations, and movements. How if one part was broken or out of step, it could doom the entire company. Her professor was a business consultant who advised companies on how to make their workflow more “efficient” and “effective.” Julia worked for Professor Cooper during the summer between her junior and senior years, taking notes and drawing business-operations charts on architectural paper. Her family made fun of her navy pumps and skirt suit, but she loved walking into the air-conditioned chill of office buildings, loved how everyone dressed like they took themselves and their work seriously, even loved walking through clouds of cigarette smoke on her way to the ladies’ room. The men looked how she thought men should look, and she bought William a crisp white button-down shirt for his birthday that year. She planned to add a corduroy blazer at Christmas. William had decided to make Julia’s suggestion that he become a history professor a reality. Julia appreciated the elegance of her plans: engaged this summer, graduation and wedding next summer, and then William would enter a PhD program. Julia loved living in this moment, with her life directly in front of her instead of off in the distance. She’d spent her entire childhood waiting to grow up so she could be here, ringing all the bells of adulthood.

William was spending his last full summer at Northwestern in basketball training camp, and Julia would often meet him at the athletic center at the end of the day so they could have dinner together. She ran into Kent on the quad occasionally, when he left practice early for his summer job at the college infirmary. Julia liked Kent, but she always felt slightly uncomfortable around him. It seemed like their timing was off, to the extent that they often spoke at the same moment. When they were with William and he said something, they both responded and ran over each other’s words. Julia respected Kent — after all, he was planning to put himself through medical school — and thought he was a good influence on William. Part of her discomfort was a desire for Kent to like her. She wasn’t sure that he did. In his presence, she flipped through possible conversations in her head, looking for one that would put them on solid ground.

“Good evening, General,” Kent said, when he saw her that evening. “I hear you’re burning it up in the corporate world.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said, but she smiled. It was unthinkable to take anything Kent said as an insult; his tone and ready smile didn’t allow for that possibility. “How’s basketball?”

“Joyful,” he said, and the way he said the word reminded Julia of when Cecelia had answered a question with an excited purple.

“Our boy was feeling himself at practice today,” Kent said. “He’s having fun this summer. It’s good to see.”

This had a note of chiding to Julia’s ear, but she couldn’t see what Kent would be chiding her about. Did he think she didn’t want William to have fun?

When Kent said goodbye, she sat down on a bench to wait. She shook her head, annoyed at how she allowed William’s friend to fluster her. She pulled a compact out of her purse and reapplied her lipstick, then stood up when she spotted her handsome fiancé leaving the gym in the middle of a flock of tall, gangly young men. She’d run into an acquaintance from her freshman biology class on the street recently, and the girl had said, I heard you were engaged to that tall boy with the beautiful eyes. He’s very cute. Julia held tight to William’s hand while they walked to a café for dinner.

William was slow-moving and unable to hold a conversation until he’d eaten a thousand calories and the color returned to his face. Julia, on the other hand, was rattling with excitement, unable to stop talking about every moment of her day.

“Professor Cooper says I’m a natural problem-solver,” she said.

“He’s right.” William cut his baked potato into a grid and then ate a square.

“I was wondering, have you been working on your writing?” She’d learned not to call it a book. “You could use it as your senior thesis.”

“It’s a mess,” he said. “I haven’t had much time for it lately, and I can’t figure out how to focus the material.”

“I’d love to read it.”

He shook his head.

She wanted to ask, Has Kent read it? But she didn’t want to hear William say yes. She wanted to read the book because she was interested and so she could have a sense of how good it was. Whether it had the potential to build a career around.

“I’m going to start this year,” he said. “Coach said my playing has taken a leap.”

“Start?”