If I Were Her

Chapter 15

Ava sat on the edge of her bed, the silence in her room pressing in on her like a weight she couldn’t shake off.

Her phone lay beside her, face down.

Still.

Too still.

She hadn’t touched it since she turned it over hours ago, but her eyes kept drifting back to it anyway—as though it might suddenly come alive, as though something would change if she just looked long enough.

Nothing had.

Her fingers curled slightly against her palm. The anger from earlier had dulled into something quieter now, something worse. Not gone. Just buried under exhaustion and pride.

“Three years…” she muttered under her breath, her voice barely audible in the room.

It sounded different now.

Less like anger.

More like disbelief.

She exhaled slowly and leaned back against the bed frame, staring at the ceiling. The same ceiling she had looked at countless nights while talking to him on the phone. Laughing. Arguing. Making up.

Now it just felt… empty.

Her phone buzzed.

Ava’s body reacted before her mind did—her hand snatched it almost instantly, flipping it over.

Her breath caught.

Ethan.

The name lit up her screen again.

For a moment, she didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t breathe properly.

Then her thumb hovered over the screen.

Answer.

Decline.

Her chest tightened.

A part of her wanted to ignore it—wanted to make him feel even a fraction of what she had felt. The waiting. The calling. The silence.

But another part of her… smaller, quieter…

Her thumb pressed the screen.

“Hello?” she said, her voice controlled, but not as steady as she intended.

There was a brief pause on the other end.

Then his voice came through.

“Ava.”

Just her name.

No explanation.

No apology.

Just her name.

And something inside her shifted.

Her expression hardened almost instantly, her grip tightening around the phone.

“You have a lot of nerve calling me now,” she said, her voice low, sharp. “After everything.”

Another pause.

“Ava, I—”

“No,” she cut in, sitting up straighter now. “No, you don’t get to ‘I’ your way into this. You disappeared. For over a day. Do you know how that looks?”

Her breathing grew heavier, but she didn’t stop.

“I was calling you. Texting you. You didn’t pick up. Not once.”

“I was—”

“Busy?” she laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Right. Busy enough to ignore me completely.”

On the other end, Ethan exhaled.

“Ava, something happened.”

That sentence made her pause.

Not soften.

Just pause.

“…What happened?” she asked slowly, her tone dropping slightly.

There was a hesitation.

A longer one this time.

Ava’s eyes narrowed.

“Ethan.”

Her voice sharpened again.

“Say it.”

Another beat of silence.

“I got hit.”

The words landed heavily.

Ava blinked once.

“…What?”

“My father—” he started, then stopped, as if choosing his words carefully. “He… he hit me. I was at home. Things escalated.”

Ava’s grip on the phone loosened slightly.

“…And you couldn’t tell me that?” she asked, quieter now. Controlled, but confused.

“I couldn’t exactly call from the hospital immediately,” he replied, his tone strained. “It wasn’t planned.”

Ava sat still.

Her mind trying to process it.

Not denial.

Not acceptance either.

Just… processing.

“So you went through all that,” she said slowly, “and still couldn’t send a single message? ‘Ava, something came up’… anything?”

Silence again.

That silence said more than his explanation.

Ava’s jaw tightened.

“…I see.”

“Ava, listen—”

“No,” she said, standing up now, pacing slightly. “No, you listen.”

Her voice rose again, the emotion returning—but this time it wasn’t just anger.

It was something more complicated.

“You don’t get to disappear and then come back and expect everything to just… make sense. People don’t work like that.”

“Really? This is all I get? A day ago you were begging to make up” he said, more firmly now.

“That was me being nice, but you don’t get to act like I’m just something you can pause and resume when it’s convenient,” she replied, her voice quieter—but sharper.

A long silence stretched between them.

This time, neither of them spoke.

And in that silence, something shifted.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

But enough to feel it.

Ava closed her eyes briefly.

When she opened them again, her voice had changed.

Calmer.

Not softer.

Just… controlled.

“…Are you okay now?” she asked.

Ethan exhaled on the other end.

“Yeah. I’m back home.”

Another pause.

“…We need to talk properly,” he added.

Ava didn’t respond immediately.

Her eyes drifted back to her phone resting on the bed beside her.

The same phone she had been staring at for hours.

Now it felt different in her hand.

Heavier.

“…We will,” she said at last.

And this time, her voice wasn’t shaking.

Not anymore.

“On my terms.”

She ended the call before he could respond.

________________________

Ethan sat on the edge of his bed, hands braced on his knees, staring at the floor. The hum of the city outside was muted, just a distant thrum that didn’t reach the hollow he carried inside. His phone lay face-up beside him, still warm from the call he had made—and the silence that had followed.

He ran a hand over his face, feeling the ache beneath his skin, the tightness in his chest that didn’t go away. What had made him call in the first place? Why had he thought she would care?

It wasn’t the first time he’d shared pieces of himself with her—tiny fragments of worry, bursts of exhaustion, confessions he barely admitted to himself. And each time, she had… moved past it. Not cruelly, not intentionally, just casually.

As if his problems existed only to be glanced over, folded neatly into the margin of her own life, less important than her own needs.

He had hoped this time would be different.

The thought of her voice answering—or not—had felt like a tether, a fragile thread pulling him from the edge of his own thoughts. But now, sitting in the quiet of his room, he realized how naive that hope had been. Even as he remembered her yelling in the hallway, the sharpness of her words, the fire in her eyes, a bitter smile pressed against his lips. She had always been strong. Too strong, maybe. Strong in ways he wasn’t, strong in ways that left him exposed.

Ethan closed his eyes and let the memory of her face drift through his mind: flushed, fierce, refusing to let him off the hook. And somewhere beneath that flare of anger, he could still see the vulnerability he knew she tried to hide—just enough that he had believed he could reach her.

But what had he really reached?

Silence.

That flat, impossible nothingness that made him question every choice that had led him here. Every time he thought he could confide, every time he thought he could lean on her, it had been brushed aside—folded, minimized, not noticed.

He pressed his palms to his eyes, wishing he could rewind, wishing he could explain without words, without pride, without failure. But he knew that wasn’t how it worked. The world didn’t wait for him. She didn’t wait for him. And maybe, just maybe, he had never waited for himself.

After a long moment, he lifted his head, letting the weight shift slightly from his chest. The quiet of his room felt sharper now, but also a little less suffocating. He didn’t know what he would do next. Call her again? Wait? Give her space? Maybe finally stop lying to himself and end it all, for real.

He didn’t know.

All he knew was that the tether was still there—fragile, taut, and unbroken. And despite everything, he felt the pull toward her, toward the voice he had risked reaching for.

He exhaled slowly, the tension in his shoulders easing just enough for thought. Maybe this time, he would try differently. Maybe he would find a way to be heard—or at least understood, by her or someone else.

And maybe, that would be enough.