We Need To Talk
1144 Words
Xavier's name fills my screen.
We need to talk.
I read the message twice before it sinks in. After everything that happened, after six days of silence, these are the first words he chooses.
Not I'm sorry. Not I made a mistake. Just four words, flat and careful, like he's drafting a business email instead of texting the woman he humiliated in front of two hundred people.
I should block him.
Delete the message.
Delete him.
But my thumb never moves.
My heart reacts before my mind does. I hate that it still knows his name.
Six days.
Six days without a call.
At first I kept checking my phone.
Then I stopped checking.
Somewhere between the fourth and fifth day, I stopped expecting anything at all.
Now he wants to talk. Now, after Elena's ring has already made the rounds on every gossip page in the city.
I picture him typing those four words. Did his hand hesitate the way mine is hesitating now? Or did he send it without a second thought, the way he does everything else?
Is it guilt? Or did something go wrong with his perfect fiancée and he needs someone to complain to?
Too late. That's what I kept telling myself. So why couldn't I delete his message?
A knock pulls me out of it. Lena lets herself in with the spare key I gave her two years ago, back when locking her out felt unthinkable.
She's still in her scrubs, tired from a shift I can only imagine, but she takes one look at me and stops in the doorway, keys still in hand.
“You're still thinking about him, aren't you?”
“I'm fine,” I say, which is the kind of lie that doesn't survive contact with someone who's known you since freshman year.
Lena drops onto my couch and raises one eyebrow, waiting. She's always been better at silence than I am.
I hand her my phone instead of answering. She reads the message, then looks up at me like I've handed her a live wire.
“He wants to talk. After six days.”
“Six days,” I repeat, like saying it again will make it make sense.
It takes about ten seconds before the rest comes out. Not just the text. The six days of silence before it. And then, because I can't hold it in anymore, Robert.
Even saying Robert's name feels wrong.
Lena goes very still. “His father proposed?”
“A contract marriage,” I say. “Not a real one. Not that kind.”
“Tell me you're joking.”
I'm not, and she can see it on my face.
So I explain it. All of it. The sidewalk. The card he handed me. The inheritance clause that forces Robert to remarry before the board meeting. The mansion I'd move into. The seven days I have to decide.
I tell her the last part slowest, because saying it out loud makes it real in a way the contract never did. If I sign, Xavier becomes my stepson.
Lena's mouth actually falls open. For a woman who has an opinion about everything, she doesn't have one ready for this.
She sets her water glass down without drinking from it, like she needs both hands free for whatever she's about to say.
“That's insane, Ari.”
“That isn't revenge.”
“That's a disaster waiting to happen.”
“I know.”
She's quiet for a moment, chewing on the inside of her cheek the way she does when she's arguing with herself. Then something in her expression shifts.
“But if anyone deserves to regret losing you,” she says slowly, “it's Xavier.”
I don't know whether to feel comforted or more afraid. Maybe both.
“So what are you going to do?” she asks. “About either of them.”
“I don't know yet.”
“Ari.”
“I don't know, Lena. I have seven days for one and no idea what the other one even wants.”
She doesn't push. That's the thing about Lena. She lets the silence sit there until I'm ready to fill it myself.
My phone lights up on the coffee table between us. Not a text this time. A call.
Xavier's name sits there on the screen, glowing, patient, like he already knows I'll answer eventually.
Neither of us moves. We just watch the screen until the ringing stops.
Ten seconds later, it starts again.
“Answer it,” Lena says quietly. “Or you'll wonder all night what he wanted.”
She's right, and I hate that she's right. I pick up on the fourth ring.
“Ariella.” His voice is careful, like he rehearsed it. “Can we meet?”
“Why?”
A pause. I can hear him breathing, hear the hesitation stretching out between us.
“Please. Just meet me.”
“What is this about, Xavier?”
“You don't know the whole story. Not over the phone.”
My stomach tightens. As if the engagement wasn't already enough of a surprise for one lifetime.
I glance at Lena. She shakes her head, just barely, like she's warning me even though she already knows I'm going to say yes.
I'm not doing this because I forgive him. I tell myself that twice, just to be sure it sticks. I'm doing this because I need to stop wondering.
“Somewhere public,” I say. “Tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” he says, and for a second he sounds almost like the boy I fell for three years ago, before his family and his fear of disappointing them took over.
We settle on a time. A place neither of us has any history with, which feels like the point.
I hang up before that feeling can go any further.
For a moment I just sit there, staring at the blank screen like it might still be holding his voice somewhere inside it.
Almost immediately, the screen lights up again. A different name this time.
Robert. Have you made your decision?
I sit there holding the phone like it weighs more than it should, Xavier's missed call still sitting above Robert's message.
Lena looks over my shoulder and lets out a long breath. “Two Rothwell men in one night. God help you.”
She doesn't say anything else. She just squeezes my hand once, the way she's done since we were nineteen and broke and terrified of everything, and lets herself out.
I sit alone with both messages glowing on the screen long after the door clicks shut behind her.
Tomorrow, I would finally look Xavier in the eyes again. Whether I walked away with closure, or walked toward becoming Mrs. Robert Rothwell, I still didn't know.
- Writer
