Her voice got smaller. “He blamed me for everything. Said I ended things out of nowhere.” She drew in a shaky breath. “And then, I just... snapped.”
My eyebrows arched in surprise.
“I told him everything. About the nights I felt invisible. The way I kept reaching for him. How he refused to see me when I needed him.” Her eyes held a quiet sorrow, but the kind that’s no longer sharp. The kind that can’t hurt you anymore. “I told him what it felt like to slowly disappear next to someone who promised they loved me, but never really cared for me.”
At that moment, a quiet realization washed over me—how extraordinary it was that tonight, we had both fought for our own truths. How much courage it took to strive for the person you wanted to be.
“What happened then?” I still waited for some big bombshell she would drop on me.
“Nothing. I told him it was over and he should accept that. Okay, maybe ‘told’ is too generous, ‘yelled’ would be more accurate. Ugly crying and all.”
I lightly grazed her knee with my thumb.
“And then he left. Heartbroken.” She lowered her gaze in guilt.
“That was the least of how he was supposed to leave,” I reminded her.
“I didn’t want to make him feel worse, but I just lost it. Like my body refused to hold it in any longer.”
After a moment, the image of him bleeding on the floor rushed through my mind. “Did you patch him up?”
“I may have given him a napkin or two,” she tried to hide a small smile. “But I resisted the temptation to look at the cut.”
A laugh escaped me at how effortlessly she could disarm me. Hazel and her weird obsession with bodily functions.
“I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” I exhaled with a laugh.
“It is what it is.”
After a moment, something in my chest unraveled, a softness I hadn’t expected. “You called for me.”
Her eyes met mine, raw and vulnerable. In that fleeting moment, I could see all the quiet fears and unspoken truths that lay hidden beneath the surface.
“Yeah...” she whispered, her voice fragile, as though it might break if she spoke too loudly. I laid my palm gently on hers, my thumb brushing her skin. Her lips parted, but no words followed, only the weight of everything that had happened between us.
“I’m glad you did,” I said softly, watching her shoulders ease into the calm that had finally settled over her.
“I’m sorry I scared you back there. The confrontation, all those months of silence and holding things back, it just... it all came rushing out. I wasn’t physically injured or anything,” Hazel murmured, letting her gaze drop to the cup in her hands, trying to peel off an invisible label. “I’m just shaken up,” she paused, her face tightening, like the floodgates of emotion were fighting to break free. As if she were trying to convince herself. “I’m fine.”
“Hazel,” I sighed, turning my body more toward hers. “Pain is pain. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t injured. Thank God you weren’t, or that sucker would have bled more than that.” I watched her closely, needing to make sure she understood, needing her to know that it was okay to be raw, to not hide behind silence or restraint.
“You have every right to feel sad, angry, and hurt,” I continued, my voice thick with a protective urgency. “And you have a right to say it. Out loud. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
I let the moment stretch, searching for the right words, careful not to call her out but to make space for her instead, hoping she’d let me in on her terms, not mine.
“People will always want to be around you when you’re happy, but life is not just sunshine and rainbows. There is a lot of sadness in us. Some darkness, too. And it’s okay to talk about the darkness. You should.” I held her gaze, silently begging her to see that her pain and hardships weren’t a burden, but a necessity for her to truly be alive. That to me, it was nothing but a privilege—a proof that she trusted me enough. “It’s okay to feel the heaviness out loud sometimes.”
She nodded, her head sinking back against the cushion in a quiet surrender. In acceptance. But I could sense something else lingering in her thoughts, and after a moment, she said, “You avoided me. This past week.”
Not a question. A fair statement. A truthful observation.
Guilt climbed up my throat, strangling my tongue. I couldn’t lie to her. Not anymore.
“Yes, I did.”
She lowered her gaze. “Because you don’t usually see the women with whom you—”
“Because I was an asshole.” She didn’t need to finish for me to know what she thought. “Because I was sad.”
