Just Until February

Júlia

“What now?”

I looked up from my phone. My mother was sitting across from me with a mug between her hands, watching me over the rim in a way that told me this wasn’t a casual question. I knew exactly what she meant. I just wasn’t particularly interested in answering.

“What do you mean, what now?”

“Now that you’ve finished school.”

I dropped my eyes back to my phone. “I knew you were going to ask me that.”

“And how long are you planning to avoid the question?”

“I’m still calculating.”

She laughed, but unfortunately, laughing didn’t make her forget what she’d asked. It was October, and apparently finishing school came with the expectation that I should immediately know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. People kept asking about college, work, plans, as if there had been a meeting where everyone received instructions for adulthood except me.

“Have you thought about college?” Mom asked.

“I have.”

“Work?”

“That too.” I put my phone down. “That’s the problem. I think about a million different things, and I have no idea what I actually want to do. I don’t want to choose something just because everyone expects me to have an answer right now.”

“You don’t need to figure out your entire life right now. But you can’t spend the next year telling me you’re still thinking about it.”

Before I could argue, her phone started ringing on the table. She glanced at the screen and reached for it. “It’s Fátima.”

Fátima had been part of my family’s life since I was six or seven, when she and my dad worked for the same company. They became friends, Mom became her friend too, and somewhere along the way she stopped being Fátima and became Aunt Fátima. She wasn’t actually my aunt, but she’d been part of our family for so long that nobody bothered with the distinction anymore.

Our families had been through enough together for the friendship to stick. She’d helped my parents through a difficult period when my sister and I were little, and years later, they’d been there when she needed them too. Even after she moved to Switzerland, she and Mom stayed close.

Mom answered the call and got up from the table, taking her coffee with her. “Hey, girl.”

I picked up my phone again. Their conversations could last anywhere from five minutes to the rest of my natural life, but then I heard Rebeca’s name.

“In December?” Mom stopped near the counter. “Traveling all that way alone with two kids? She’s crazy.”

She went quiet, listening to whatever Fátima was saying on the other end.

“Oh.” Her eyes moved to me. “Yes. Actually, that could be really good.”

I looked up from my phone. She was still watching me.

“What?”

“Mm-hm,” she said into the phone. “I think she’d love that.”

“Mom, what?”

She finally pulled the phone away from her ear. “Rebeca is coming to Switzerland with the boys. Fátima asked if you’d like to go with her.”

I sat straighter. “Wait. Switzerland?”

“No, Júlia. Rio de Janeiro.”

“Mom.”

“Of course Switzerland.”

She put the call on speaker. “Rebeca is coming in December,” Fátima explained. “Her sister can’t travel with her because she’ll be working, and I don’t want Rebeca doing that whole trip alone with Theo and Ben. So I thought of you. You could help with the boys when she needs it and enjoy the trip too. See some places, maybe finally see some real snow.”

I looked at my mother. She was smiling.

“How long?” I asked.

“About three months.”

Less than five minutes earlier, my biggest problem had been not knowing what I was supposed to do next. Now someone was offering me a way to postpone the answer on the other side of the world.

“I want to go.”

Mom laughed. “You didn’t even think about it.”

Fátima laughed too. “Talk it over with your mom. If you’re both okay with it, I’ll speak to Rebeca and we’ll arrange everything.”

When the call ended, Mom sat back down. “I actually think it’ll be good for you. Get away for a while, see somewhere new. When you come back, you can worry about what comes next.”

“So I can go?”

“You can.”

I grabbed my phone and opened the browser.

“What are you doing?” Mom asked.

“Seeing what there is to do there.”

She laughed and walked away with her coffee while I typed Switzerland in winter into the search bar.

Mountains, lakes, snow-covered towns and landscapes that looked too perfect to be real filled my screen.

Whatever came next could wait.

I was going to Switzerland.

The next few weeks disappeared into tickets, documents and preparations for the trip. Rebeca and I talked more as it got closer, mostly because traveling internationally with two children required a level of organization I hadn’t known existed.

On December 10, my father dropped Rebeca, Theo, Ben, and me at the airport, and I left Brazil convinced the hardest part would be keeping two kids entertained across several flights.

I was wrong.

Our first flight was delayed long enough for us to miss our connection in São Paulo. The airline put us in a hotel overnight and rerouted us through Paris the next day, which sounded almost exciting until we landed in France and discovered our reservation to Zurich hadn’t been transferred properly.

What followed was hours of airport Wi-Fi, phone calls to Brazil, Rebeca’s sister arguing with the airline from another continent, and Theo repeatedly asking when we were leaving. Just when they finally found our reservation, we discovered Ben wasn’t on it.

“He’s two,” Rebeca said, staring at the woman behind the counter. “What exactly am I supposed to do? Leave him in France?”

I shouldn’t have laughed. Exhaustion made the decision for me.

Somehow, they fixed that too. We collected four boarding passes, crossed an airport that seemed to have no end, and reached our gate with barely enough time to get on the plane.

I slept through most of the flight to Zurich. When I opened my eyes again, Theo was leaning toward the window beside me, trying to see past his reflection in the glass.

“Is that Switzerland?”

I leaned closer. Below us, clusters of lights broke through the darkness, connected by roads I could barely make out from the air.

“I think so.”

“Finally,” Rebeca murmured from across the aisle.

We landed sometime after ten at night. After collecting our luggage, we found Fátima and Andreas waiting for us outside baggage claim. Theo ran straight to his grandmother, and Ben woke up completely when she took him from Rebeca and covered his face with kisses.

“My God, you took forever!” Fátima said, pulling Rebeca into a hug.

“We almost moved to Paris,” Rebeca replied.

Andreas greeted everyone and took one of the suitcases while Fátima hugged me.

“Look at you. You made it.”

“Barely.”

After everything that had gone wrong, seeing Aunt Fátima standing there made it real. We’d actually arrived.

We took the train to Rotkreuz, mostly talking about the trip while I watched illuminated houses, streets and stations appear and disappear beyond the window. There were no mountains or snow-covered villages like the pictures I’d spent weeks looking at, but I didn’t care.

The cold hit the second we stepped out of Rotkreuz station. “Oh my God.”

Fátima laughed. “And you’re the one who wanted snow.”

“I wanted snow. Nobody told me freezing was part of the deal.”

We didn’t stay outside long. Everyone was exhausted, and all I wanted was to get somewhere warm.

A short while later, Andreas opened the front door and Theo and Ben rushed inside ahead of him. Rebeca followed, then me, with Fátima coming in behind us.

The hallway immediately filled with people, coats and luggage. Andreas was trying to move the suitcases out of the way when a girl came over to help him. I knew who she was before Fátima said her name.

Nicole.

Andreas’s daughter from his first marriage. I’d heard about her enough before the trip that the name was familiar, but until then, that was all she’d been to me.

Now the name had a face.

Her dark hair was short and slightly messy, and she wore an oversized T-shirt despite the cold outside.

“Look who finally made it,” Fátima said.

Nicole left the suitcase against the wall and hugged Rebeca. “I thought you guys were never getting here.”

“I wasn’t sure we were either. Paris tried very hard to keep us.”

“My dad told me.”

Fátima touched my arm. “Nicole, this is Júlia. Júlia, Nicole.”

“Hi,” Nicole said.

“Hi.”

We exchanged a quick hug and kiss on the cheek.

“I heard the trip was a disaster.”

“That might be an understatement.”

She smiled. “At least you made it.”

“That was starting to feel unlikely.”

With everyone exhausted, the rest of the evening passed quickly. We ate something, took turns showering, and began sorting out the sleeping arrangements. Rebeca and the boys would stay in Nicole’s bedroom, while Nicole would sleep on the double air mattress in Andreas’s office.

“And Júlia?” Fátima asked.

Andreas looked between Nicole and me. “She can sleep with Nicole. The mattress is big enough.”

Fátima frowned. “They just met.”

Nicole and I looked at each other.

“I’m fine with it,” she said.

“I don’t mind.”

Fátima still looked uncertain. “Are you sure?”

“We’re just sleeping,” I said.

“Then it’s settled,” Andreas said.

Apparently it was.

Nicole picked up her phone. “Come on. I’ll show you the office.”

I followed her down the hallway. A desk and computer occupied one side of the room, with boxes and cables tucked around them. The double air mattress took up most of the space that remained.

“You can leave your bag there,” Nicole said, pointing toward an empty corner.

“Thanks.”

I set it down and sat on one side of the mattress.

The entire thing shifted beneath me.

Nicole, sitting at the other end, rose several inches.

We both froze, staring at each other until the mattress slowly settled again.

“This is going to be interesting,” she said.

I laughed. “If this thing deflates in the middle of the night, I’m pretending I didn’t notice.”

“I’ll let you know when we hit the floor.”

“That seems fair.”

I pulled my legs onto the mattress, then looked at her. “You’re really okay with me sleeping here, right?”

“I’m fine with it. Really.”

“Okay.”

She reached over and switched off the light, and I settled beneath the blanket. The house gradually went quiet around us, and finally, there was nowhere else I needed to go.

“What a trip,” I murmured.

Nicole shifted beside me. “Did you want a trip with excitement or without it?”

“After all that? Without.”

She laughed softly. “Go to sleep. You look exhausted.”

“I am.”

“Good night, Júlia.”

“Good night, Nicole.”

I closed my eyes.

After missed flights, airports, phone calls, and more things going wrong than I could count, I’d actually made it.

Switzerland could wait until morning. Right now, all I wanted was sleep.