It's All Red

Recollections

Mari’s Pov

I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. "It’s Nothing. I just…" I squeezed my eyes shut. "Sorry. It was stupid. I shouldn't have called. Go back to sleep, okay? I'm sorry."

I hung up before she could answer.

For one second, I felt relieved. Then my phone started ringing. Tracy.

I stared at her name until the screen blurred, then answered.

"What the hell, Mari?"

Despite everything, a wry laugh escaped me. "Sorry."

"Stop apologizing and tell me what's going on."

"Nothing's going on."

"Right. And I'm the Queen of England." I heard rustling on her end, followed by the thud of something hitting the floor. "You call me in the middle of the night, sound like you're standing at the edge of a cliff, hang up on me, and expect me to go back to sleep?"

"I didn't want to disturb you."

"Well, it's a little too late for that, isn't it?"

I pressed my free hand over my mouth. "Tracy—"

"Are you okay?"

There it was.

Four ordinary words.

No accusations. No demands for an explanation. No attempt to tell me what I should have done differently.

Just a question.

Are you okay?

And suddenly, I wasn't.

The first sob came so violently that I had to bend forward, clutching the edge of the sofa as if the whole room had tilted beneath me. I tried to stop it, tried to swallow it back down, but another followed, and then another, until I couldn't get enough air into my lungs.

"Oh, Mari." Tracy's voice changed instantly. She was fully awake now. "Baby, what's happened?"

I shook my head, forgetting she couldn't see me. "I don't know."

"Okay. That's okay. Just breathe for me."

"I can't."

"Yes, you can. Slowly, sweetheart. Come on. In and out."

I tried. Failed. Tried again.

She stayed with me through all of it, saying my name softly whenever the crying got too loud for me to hear anything else. She didn't rush me. She didn't ask questions I couldn't answer. She simply waited, and somehow, that made it worse.

Because Tracy had always known how to wait for me.

She knew the difference between the tears I cried because I was angry and the ones I cried because I was scared. She knew when I needed to be held and when I needed someone to sit beside me without touching me at all. She knew that when I said I was fine too quickly, it usually meant I was anything but.

And she knew me before I learned how to make a home out of my own unhappiness.

"Talk to me," she whispered.

I dragged the heel of my hand across my face. "I'm sorry I called."

"Mari."

"I know you're tired, and I know it's late, and I know you have things to do tomorrow. I shouldn't have—"

"I'm coming over."

"No."

"That wasn't a question."

"Tracy, please. You don't have to—"

"I'm putting on my shoes right now."

"Don't."

She went quiet. I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line. Somewhere in the background, a drawer opened and shut.

"Do you want me to come over?" she asked gently. "Because if you do, I'm coming. If you don't, I'll stay on the phone with you until the sun comes up. But don't tell me not to come just because you're worried about being a burden."

My chin trembled. I hated how easily she could find the truth hiding beneath my words.

"I don't want you to see me like this."

"Like what?"

I looked down at myself. The blanket pooled around my waist. My pajama sleeves were damp from wiping my face, and my hair was tangled from sleep. I must have looked a mess.

"Like this," I repeated helplessly.

"Oh, Mari." She sighed, and I could practically see her rolling her eyes. "I've known you since you ate sand in the playground because you thought it was chocolate powder. I've seen you throw up on your own birthday cake. I've seen you get dumped in a restaurant bathroom and then come out and finish your fries. There is absolutely nothing you can do at this point that will make me think less of you."

A laugh broke through my tears, small and miserable. "I was four when I ate that sand."

"And apparently, you haven't made a good decision since." Her words hit a little too close to home, but I covered it up with a quick chuckle.

"You're horrible."

"Yes, but I'm horrible and on my way to you. Now, unlock the front door when you hear me knocking."

She ended the call before I could argue.

I sat there with my phone in my hand, listening to the silence she'd left behind.

The truth was, I had called Tracy deliberately.

Not because Delilah wasn't my best friend. She was. Delilah had held my hair back when I was sick, sat with me through heartbreaks, celebrated my victories as if they were her own, and loved me with the kind of fierce loyalty that made me feel safe even when the rest of the world didn't.

But there were things I could say to Tracy that I couldn't say to Delilah.

Things that had nothing to do with trust and everything to do with history.

Tracy had known me before I learned to soften my disappointments into jokes. Before I became skilled at making excuses for people who hurt me. Before I started confusing endurance with love and silence with peace.

She remembered the girl I had been before I became so determined to prove that I could make things work.

And sometimes, I needed someone who remembered her.

Because Delilah would ask me what had happened, and I would have to explain. She would try to understand, and I would have to put my pain into sentences neat enough for someone else to hold. She would want to help me fix things, and I would have to admit that I didn't know whether I wanted anything fixed anymore. Plus there was a certain bias towards Grant, and I didn’t want that at all.

Tracy wouldn't need me to explain everything. She would hear the part I left unsaid.

She would know that there was a difference between a woman who was unhappy in her relationship and a woman who had begun to feel like a stranger in her own life.

And I was beginning to fear I had become the latter.

My gaze drifted to the pillow.

I pulled it into my lap and reached underneath it, my fingers closing around the card. I drew it out slowly, turning it over in my hands without opening it.

Even in the low light, it looked innocent.

A little rectangle of cardstock.

A few words.

Something that shouldn't have been capable of making my stomach twist the way it did. I pressed it against my chest and began to cry again.

I didn't hear Tracy arrive. One minute, I was sitting on the sofa, trying to convince myself that I could survive another hour inside my own head, and the next, someone was knocking softly at the front door.

I stumbled to my feet.

When I opened it, Tracy stood on the other side in leggings, an oversized sweatshirt, and mismatched slippers. Her hair was pulled into a crooked bun, and she had a handbag hanging from one shoulder and a look on her face that made my throat close all over again.

She didn't say anything.

She just opened her arms.

I fell into them.

Tracy held me in the doorway while I sobbed against her shoulder, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other rubbing slow circles between my shoulder blades. She didn't ask me to stop crying. She didn't tell me it would be okay. She just held me as if she had all the time in the world.

When the worst of it passed, she guided me back to the sofa and sat beside me, pulling my legs across her lap the way she used to when we were younger and I was too upset to sit still.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

Then she looked at the card clenched in my hand. "What's that?"

I shook my head. "Nothing."

She gave me a look I understood immediately. I sighed and placed it on the coffee table between us.

She didn't reach for it. She didn't need to. Instead, she studied my face, taking in my swollen eyes, my trembling mouth, the exhaustion I could no longer hide.

"Is this about him?"

The question was so quiet that I almost pretended I hadn't heard it.

Almost. I stared at my hands, recalling the feel of those hands.

Tracy waited.

That was the thing about her. She could be impatient with almost everything else in the world, but when it came to me, she knew that pushing would only make me retreat further into myself.

So she waited until I could no longer bear the weight of the silence.

And then, finally, I said it.

"I think I'm gonna leave him, Trace."