The Phone Call

Isaac sat tense, leaning into the phone as the pause in conversation dragged on.

“Why did you leave?”

“What do you mean?” Melody asked.

He could tell the question made her uncomfortable. He was forcing a crowbar under floorboards they’d both been walking on for what felt like ages. Caution told him he should drop the subject, be quiet and hope he didn’t awaken something he wasn’t prepared to handle. But there was anger too. Something he didn’t really understand but which drove him forward anyway.

“Please don’t do that right now.” He tried to sound reasonable but he felt stretched thin. “You left. All at once without any explanation. Four weeks ago we talked every day. You ranted about your day, told me your plans, laughed at whatever ridiculous thing your friends were on about. Then, suddenly, I can’t get so much as a text back for a month? Just...nothing? I’m trying really hard to be understanding here but you can see why its hard not to take it personally and you just…” He took a deep breath to gather himself, “You just disappeared one day and didn’t so much as leave a note.”

The other side of the line was silent. Isaac wanted to crawl out of his skin. He wove his fingers upwards through his hair and rested his forehead on his hand, a habit he had whenever he felt overwhelmed.

“You’re exaggerating.” Melody said, voice flat. “We’ve texted some, and I’m sorry we haven’t been talking much lately but I’ve been busy. The new job has my hours changed all around now, trying to make new connections there, you know how it goes. Plus taking care of all the drama in my friend group and keeping things together with Jacob. It’s been busy, you know?”

Her tone grew conciliatory by the end, but Isaac did not feel calm. He brought his hand down as if to strike the arm of his chair but pulled at the last moment, making a tight fist instead.

“Stop,” he said, harsher than he’d meant. “Just..stop. Please.”

“You’re hiding behind all that and you know it. And that’s fine, honestly. I’m not here to...I don’t know, attack your coping mechanisms or something. But it’s a lie and I really can’t handle lies right now and I’m begging you to just be a person with me and help me make sense of things. Pointing out that we both said ‘Good morning’ a few times doesn’t change the fact that a month ago we were as close as I’ve ever been to another human being and now you’re just...gone.”

Isaac felt himself losing steam. He didn’t want to be fighting, he wanted to be telling bad jokes and listening to Melody snapping at the random drives audacious enough to be in her way while she drove home. His mouth opened as if to speak but nothing came to his tongue. He leaned back into the chair and tried to relax his shoulders, but held onto the insistent heat knot in his stomach.

“Look,” Melody said “You moved away, and I know you had good reasons and I’m really excited for you, but people grow apart when they can’t see each other. It’s not like we’re not friends anymore, but I’m not going to be able to be there every time you need me. I’m sorry - that’s just life sometimes.”

“What about the poem you wrote me?” He said “The one you sent right after I left. How am I supposed to fit that into all of this?”

“I was sad. You were gone and it made me sad, so I wrote a poem. You don’t need to take it any farther than that, Isaac.”

The anger flared and deadened the bite of fear Isaac felt as she spoke.

“Bullshit.” He said, steel in his voice. “I don’t know what you were feeling then, no matter how desperately I want to. You throw up so many walls any time you feel something I end up guessing at what’s actually true nine times out of ten. But the fact is, as soon as Jacob got back from his trip you went off the grid and I haven’t heard your voice since then.”

His body shot forward, fingers braced white against the phone. His eyes, seemingly fixated on some point in the distance, could have bored a hole in the wall.

“Do you have any idea how terrible that felt? Every day, arguing with myself on whether I was overreacting or being too needy or if I’d just somehow imagined the whole thing? It’s like suddenly I wasn’t worth so much as a second thought and”

Isaac’s heart raced. The words got away from him as a hundred conversations he’d played out in his mind tumbled over each other trying to be spoken at once.

He took a deep breath. He couldn’t just quell the fire in his veins, but he knew he couldn’t let it run the show either. He wouldn’t become that person again. Isaac closed his eyes and poured water over his voice.

“Look. I know that this whole situation is complicated, and I know I only have some of the information. I know we’re both in relationships and that for better or worse that’s a problem on some level between us. But I also know that I don’t care. I know that I’m terrified that you’re just going to disappear, because it’s hard and you don’t know what to do about it. I know that I’m terrified that I’m wrong and that I’m just playing shadow puppets with the things you’ve said and that I’m making a total fool of myself right now.”

Melody made a sound to interject but Isaac cut her off. If he didn’t say it now he probably never would and he didn’t know how long his momentum would last.

“I love you, Melody, in ways that I don’t even know how to talk about. I won’t pretend that there’s not a part of me that wants a relationship with you but that’s not all it is either.”

Warm tears had begun pooling behind Isaacs closed eyes. He struggled to keep them from reaching his words

“I have never met anyone or anything that moved me the way that you do. There are whole continents in my being I didn’t even know existed until you showed up. I’m somehow...more when you’re in my life and I can’t just let that go without fighting for it. How can I just throw away the first piece of actual magic I’ve ever found?”

A knot in Isaac’s throat made it harder and harder to get the words out. Where there had earlier been a wound spring in his gut there was now a spreading softness. He let his head fall loose over the head of the chair, eyes closed, barely moving his lips as he spoke

“I don’t need us to be romantic. At least, I don’t think I do. But I’m not going to walk away like that’s the only possible ending to this story either. Just because it won’t be easy to navigate doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying. Maybe a relationship would have doomed us to breaking anyway and we secretly dodged a bullet here, I don’t know and I don’t really care. We don’t choose the world, just what we do in it, and this thing in my chest is howling that letting you just Irish goodbye is the worst thing I could possibly do. You are the first thing that brought color and music into the world and I can’t stomach the thought of that just...gone.”

Isaac rolled his head toward the right and stared unseeing out the window. An ember of embarrassment had sparked but he let it lie for now.

“I don’t actually know what you’re thinking and that’s half of what’s killing me and so for better or worse I’m making myself as open as possible to you and asking that you talk to me.”

Isaac lay back deep into the chair. He felt like he could sink right into the earth for a thousand years. Whatever had driven his speech was apparently spent. He couldn’t even muster enough energy to be afraid of her response.

“Please, just talk to me,” he almost whispered.

He paused. A tense silence on the other end of the line.