I pick up my phone again anyway and open my messages.
Melissa’s last text thread is there. The one I haven’t responded to.
I scroll up.
I’m sorry.
I didn’t mean to hurt you.
Pathetic, in retrospect. Not because it wasn’t true, but because it was incomplete.
I said it like an ending, hoping it would close the door on a conversation I didn’t know how to have.
But she doesn’t want words. She wants presence.
My thumbs hover over the keyboard.
I type, then stop.
What do you even say when you’ve spent your whole life insisting you don’t need anyone?
What do you say when you do?
I delete the half-formed sentence. Start again. Delete again.
The truth is, I don’t want to talk yet. Not because I don’t want her … I do. In ways that have become deeply, dangerously entwined with my sense of calm.
But if I go to her right now, it will be for the wrong reason.
It will be because I’m cracked open and desperate for something to stitch me back together.
Melissa isn’t a bandage. She’s a person, and the last thing I will do, after everything she’s survived, is make her responsible for holding me upright.
Frank’s words echo again.
You don’t need to choose today, but you do need to stop hiding.
I stare at the screen, then force myself to do the first honest thing I’ve done in days.
I don’t ask her to fix this. I ask for time to face it.
My fingers finally move.
Me: I got a letter from Frank today.
I pause, heart thudding.
Me: I’m not okay. But I’m trying not to run.
I stare at the message for a long moment before sending it. My stomach twists, as if pressing that button might detonate something.
I hit Send anyway.
The reply doesn’t come immediately, and that’s fair. I set the phone down and lean back in my chair, staring at the ceiling.
The tightness in my chest remains, but it’s different now. It’s less frantic.
I don’t know what comes next. But I know I can’t go back to the way it was.