Chapter 11 — The Voicemail
803 Words
The next morning, Emma woke up on the studio couch to the sound of her phone buzzing itself off the coffee table. She flinched when it hit the floor, the cheap plastic case cracking at the corner.
She knew before she even picked it up that it would be him. Daniel.
Ten missed calls. Two voicemails. One text: We need to talk.
She pressed the phone to her ear. She didn’t want to listen, but she did anyway — maybe to remind herself of the sound of the life she was about to let break.
The first voicemail was clipped, carefully:
“Emma, it’s me. Look, I don’t know what that was last night. Your parents are worried. I’m worried. Call me back when you’ve had time to calm down, okay?”
The second was softer, but the softness had edges she’d cut herself on before:
“Em… I just want to understand. You know I love you. I want what’s best for us. I know you’re under a lot of stress, with the wedding and your art and everything. Just… come home. Let’s talk. Please.”
Come home.
She glanced around the studio — at the canvases tacked to the walls, the clothes she’d shoved into the corner, the empty takeout boxes, the coffee mug with half-dried brushes sticking out like wildflowers.
This was home.
The only one that felt like it had a heartbeat.
She didn’t call him back. Not yet.
Instead, she did something worse — she called Noah.
He answered on the second ring, his voice scratchy, warm.
“Emma?”
She pressed her forehead to her paint-smeared knees, curling tighter on the couch.
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
“You didn’t.” A pause, then his voice dropped lower. “Are you okay?”
She almost laughed. “I think I broke everything.”
“Good.”
The word hit her so squarely she sat up. “Good?”
“If it was breakable, it needed to break.” He sounded so sure, like he was handing her permission. She’d been waiting her whole life to get stamped and notarized. “Do you want me to come over?”
Emma looked at her canvases, the clothes on the floor, the leftover wine bottle from two nights ago. She wanted him there so badly she could taste it — but she also wanted him to be with her alone for a minute longer.
“Not yet.” Her voice caught the word. “I have to finish it first.”
“The painting?”
“All of it.”
She heard the soft huff of his smile along the line. “Then finished it. I’m here when you’re ready.”
When she hung up, she found herself staring at the old mirror propped by the closet door — the one she’d dragged up here from her mother’s attic when she first moved into the studio. For a moment, she half expected to see the polite girl in the blue dress, the one who knew how to sit still and smile just right. But the girl staring back at her had tangled hair and a smear of deep indigo on her cheekbone, like a bruise made of sky.
She didn’t look polite anymore. She looked hungry.
Emma spent the rest of the day packing up pieces of her old life. It was ridiculous — stuffing dresses and shoes into boxes she might never open again. She found the wedding binder, the swatches of ivory satin, the stack of glossy magazines that still smelled faintly of her mother’s perfume. She dragged it all into the corner of the studio like a funeral pile.
By evening, she hadn’t eaten. She hadn’t answered Daniel’s texts. She hadn’t washed the paint off her arms. She just opened the window, lit a candle, and pulled a fresh canvas out of the storage closet.
She stood there for a long time, brush poised over a clean expanse of white. Outside, the city hummed — car horns, laughter, music leaking from an open window in the building across the street. For the first time in her life, she realized none of it needed her permission to keep living. Neither did she.
She dipped her brush into the darkest paint she could find — a blue so deep it looked black in the lamplight — and she pressed the first stroke into the canvas.
At midnight, she sent Daniel a single text: "We need to talk. Tomorrow. No more pretending.
She turned her phone face-down. After that — let it buzz itself hoarse.
She painted until her eyelids fluttered, and her fingers cramped, until dawn bled through the window again and her mind drifted toward sleep, untethered but somehow clearer than it had ever been.
- Writer
