Just a Call Away

Her best friend is horrified when she tells her the news.

“Jenny!” Aria exclaims, “You- you can not be serious right now?!”

Jenny rolls her bottom lip between her teeth. She knew Aria would react that way. Hell, it would’ve been odd if she didn’t. If the roles were reversed, Jenny probably would have reacted the same way, if not with more screaming and a couple dozen curse words.

“Jenny, please,” Aria continues; Jenny swallows against a tight throat, “Please tell me you’re joking.”

Her silence is answer enough. Her best friend makes a distressed noise over the phone, there’s the sound of a chair being pushed back. The soft swish of fabric tells Jenny that she’s started pacing. 

“Jenny,” she pleads, like she can’t say anything else, “Jenny-“

“I’ve made up my mind,” Jenny finally says, and her chest feels heavy, like she’s swallowed stones, “You can’t make me change it-“

“I know!” Aria interrupts, and her voice has that telltale wobble she gets when she’s near tears, words fighting to escape through the trembling planes of her teeth, “You don’t think I don’t know that? God- you’re just so- fucking stubborn. You know that, right? Stubborn.”

Her best friend always had the most expressive eyes, Jenny thinks. Bright like the sun and as deep as the ocean. Aria couldn’t hide much with eyes like those, but then again, she never did. She wasn’t like Jenny, who held her feelings with clenched fingers and bared teeth; Aria split her chest open and let everything spill out.

She freely laughed, she loudly sobbed. She offered her hands and body belly up to the world and she did it with pride. She was the petals of a newborn bud, unfurling and fragile and so full of life. It was a trait Jenny admired very much in her, to be so comfortable in oneself.

Aria sniffles and Jenny closes her eyes, takes a deep breath through her nose. Tries not to let the wobble overtake her too.

“At least promise me,” Aria whispers, and Jenny can picture the way Aria’s eyes look right now, wide and radiant and lashes wet with morning-dew tears, “Promise me you won’t let him hurt you again.”

And Jenny barks out a laugh, bitter on her tongue. The fingers around her mouth tremble.

“You know he can’t do that,” she says, “Not anymore-“

“Not all scars are physical,” Aria says and Jenny stops smiling.

A pause, where they both just breathe. Aria, with all her cards on the table. Jenny, with the king still hiding up her sleeve.

“I have to do this, Aria,” Jenny says, because she can’t lie to Aria, not now and not ever, “I have to talk to him.” 

Aria is silent for so long that Jenny almost thinks Aria hung up on her, but Jenny still holds fast, clutching onto the phone with a bruising grip. Her breath stutters in her chest, like she can’t get enough air in.

“……Fine,” Aria finally says, and Jenny blinks past the stinging in her eyes, “Fine. I might not like what you’re doing. Or even understand it. But I respect your decision.”

Jenny lets out a long breath, feels a little lighter.

“Thank you,” she says, and Aria makes a sound in the back of her throat, sounding almost offended.

“Tell me, God,” Aria whines through tears, “What did I do to deserve such a crazy best friend?”

This time when Jenny laughs, it’s genuine.

*********

Her brother is furious when she tells him.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” he deadpans, “That’s gotta be the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever said to me in your entire life.”

“Brian-“ 

“You wanna talk to your fucking ex-husband?” Brian continues, irate, “Are you fucking insane? What, you a glutton for punishment?”

“No-“

“What the actual fuck is wrong with you? You wanna get yelled at, huh? Berated? Insulted? ‘Cause I can do that plenty for you- you-“

“Bria-“

“No. No. You- shut the fuck up. What, did he hit you hard enough to knock a couple of screws loose in that empty brain of yours?”

Jenny rears back from the phone like she actually did take a blow to the face. She can hear how her brother is panting over the phone, silent.

“……Sorry,” he finally mumbles, sounding small, “I shouldn’t have said that. Any of that.”

“No,” Jenny says, “You shouldn’t have.”

She takes a deep breath.

“I understand why you’re upset,” she starts, but her brother has always been a quick draw, a firecracker in a bottle; if he saw an opening he would always strike, whether or not the chances were in his favor.

“Do you?” Brian counters, “Do you really?”

And god, does she understand. If anyone understands more than anyone, it’s her; and her brother knows that. He knows that she knows that. And she suspects that’s why he’s riling her up in that specific way only he can, when he wants her to see things his way.

“You tell me then,” she snaps and Brian gives her a sharp laugh.

“No you tell me. Should I be jumping for joy here about my little sister wanting to talk to her abuser? Should I be celebrating the fact that apparently she wants to have a kumbaya with the guy who broke her leg in three places? Gave her a concussion on her birthday?”

Harsh. He was always so harsh-

“What am I supposed to say? ‘Yeah, go ahead sis, go talk to him. Have a little heart-to-heart. I hope you guys get married again in the afterlife.’ Get the fuck outta here with that shit. Just what are you thinking-“

“I need to know!” Jenny shouts and she’s crying, god she hates crying, she’s done enough of it to last two lifetimes- “I- I need to know why he did those things to me. Why he was so mean. What I did to deserve-“

“Don’t you dare finish that fucking sentence,” Brian’s voice is like a knife, “Don’t you dare.”

Silence, with only her sniffles to fill it. Brian takes in a breath.

“Jen,” he says, and his voice is soft now, melted from all that rage, “He hurt you. Badly. You shouldn’t talk to him. Please.”

Another breath, this one a little shaky.

“You didn’t deserve what he did to you, not any of it. He was a bad man, Jen. And he deserves to rot in Hell in this lifetime and the next for what he did,” he continues, “Please, as a brother to his sister, please do not talk to him.” 

And as always, her brother was well-meaning but he never understood her, no matter how much he wanted to.

“I have to, B,” she whispers, “One last time, I have to.”

“…..I can’t stop you, can I?” he asks, but he says it like he already knows the answer, tired, like the fight’s out of him. 

“I’m sorry,” Jenny says but her brother scoffs.

“No you’re not,” he says and it’s the truth, because he knows her better than anybody else.

“No I’m not,” she agrees.

Brian lets out a long suffering groan.

“Fine, go talk to the bastard,” he spits, “But you better not do any of that ‘I deserve it’ bullshit, you fucking hear me?”

“Yeah,” she says, and she isn’t lying, “Yeah, I hear you.”

“And Jen?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell him Brian said to go fuck himself.”

Jen smiles through the tears. Because while he may never understand her, her brother was always her biggest defender.

*********

When she tells her mother, her mother is crying too much to answer her back.

“I’m sorry,” is all Jenny says, before she hangs up.

*********

Jenny still remembers the first time he had hit her.

It had been a slap, open-palmed and flat, swung at her after they had come home from having dinner. He hadn’t liked what she wore, he thought it was too revealing. That she was begging for other men’s attention. How she was flirting with the waiter all night. 

He was yelling. She was yelling. She had rolled her eyes and that was what did it. She remembered that the hit wasn’t all that hard, a bit of a sting, her falling to the floor more from her heels than him. But what she will never forget was how she felt.

Of how disoriented she was, of how angry he was. That it was like she was looking at a stranger, the way his eyes were narrowed and his lips were curled back and how in that moment he looked like he hated her. The confusion. The shock. The fear. She remembered each feeling vividly.

And the one thing running through her mind: 

Why?

Why did he hit her? Why was he so angry? Why didn’t she change her dress when he asked her the first time? Why didn’t she see this coming? Why would he do this to her? Why why why whywhywhywhywhywhy-

And here she was years later, still asking those same questions.

Her phone rings.

Well, time to ask the source, Jenny thinks.

She picks up the phone.

*********

When she tells her father, he gets straight to the point.

“Will this bring you peace?” he asks.

“Yes,” Jenny answers.

“Even if you don’t get the answers that you want?” he says, and there’s a bit of desperation in his voice, “Even if it’ll amount to nothing? Even if you get hurt?”

“Yes,” she says again, “I can’t explain why. I don’t love him, not anymore. I don’t forgive him either. I’m getting better at not blaming myself anymore. But it’s eating me alive- the what-ifs, the whys.”

She curls her fingers into fists.

“I need closure, Dad,” she whispers, “I need to know why he killed me. Even if it’s an answer I don’t like.”

Her father sighs heavy.

“You should do it then,” he says, even though she knows he wants to say the exact opposite, “Though, my approval wasn’t going to affect you anyway, right?”

Jenny’s silence is answer enough and her father’s next sigh is downright tired.

“Even when they’re dead,” he mumbles, “your kids still give you stress.”

And Jenny laughs and laughs and laughs.

*********

She remembers the night he killed her.

It’s something that plays across her mind in the quiet moments, on the back of her eyelids like a movie. After so many years, there’s almost a strange detachment that she has towards it, the way she analyzes the beats to it, the cause and effect. It still hurts, but the wound is old by now; unnoticeable but there, until something pulls the scar tissue taut.

They had just come from the bar, they both had a little too much to drink. Things were good, in the way it always was before it went bad. He had bought her flowers that day. He had told her he loved her. And now, he was calling her a slut, because a man offered to buy her a drink.

There’s something inevitable, that it was his jealousy that killed her. Perhaps it was fate. But it was irony, that she thought she’d be ok.

He had always been careful not to hit her in places where people would easily see. Her arms, her neck. Her face. But that night he had struck her across the cheek with his knuckles, his face twisted with fury. She had tripped, her body had swung left. Her temple hit the corner of her dresser.

She remembered that her descent had felt like hours, like everything had squeezed down to that very moment. But, time was a measurable thing, no matter how vast. An hour was an hour. A minute was a minute.

The time it took her to hit her head and die on impact:

45 seconds.

*********

“…..Hello.”

“J-Jenny?”

It had been years since she has heard his voice. He sounds different now, tired, gravely in a way he never was. She wonders how long he would have called, if she had not decided to pick up. How long he would have tried. If she had waited just a bit longer, how his voice would have sounded weathered with time, if he would even remember who she was. 

A memory was what she was now, but it didn’t mean that she still wasn’t there.

“Oh my g- Jenny,” he continues, and he sounds surprised, frantic, “I thought you’d never pick up-“

“Why did you kill me?” Jenny interrupts and he goes silent.

She had played how this moment would go, over and over in her head. She had imagined him yelling, cursing. Denying that he did it. Celebrating that he did. Maybe even try to rekindle a fire long gone cold, a special type of delusional only he can pull.

What she doesn’t expect is him to take a deep breath and say: “I loved you.”

The rage she feels is all-consuming. Burning her from the inside out, filling her lungs, clouding her vision, like she’s going to burst out of her skin. Her lips pull back from her teeth and she snarls.

“Fuck you,” her chest trembles, “Fuck you-“

“Jenny-“

“No- you don’t just get to say that kinda shit to me,” she spits, “Who the fuck do you think you are? God, you’re such a son of a bitch-“

“It’s the truth!” he cries out, “I loved you! Even now I still love you-“

“Then why am I dead? Why am I here and not there, with my family-“

“I didn’t mean too! It was- It was a mistake! I’m sorry- I’m so so sorry-“

“If you’re so sorry,” Jenny counters, “then give me your time.”

Time was a measurable thing. Broken down into pieces of history, in each beat of a butterfly’s wing. And because it is measurable, it also means that it has a price. A day, to spend with your sister. A week, to see your father again. Just thirty minutes, to hear the babbles of your stillborn son. 

After all, what is just a couple of months gone from your life, to be able to see your loved one again. The connection to the afterlife is a costly thing. Costly, but not unfair.

An hour is an hour. A minute is a minute.

And Jenny, she deserves a life’s worth.

“If you’re so sorry,” Jenny repeats, “then give me your time.”

He does not speak. The silence goes on long, but time does not stop for anyone. Seconds pass. Minutes go by. Jenny is content with letting the clock tick down.

“……Ok,” he finally says, and he is quiet, he is but a whisper, “Ok.”

And, Jenny does not thank him. She does not smile. The feeling inside her chest is not happiness, but it is not sadness either.

She hangs up the phone and cries, feeling like she finally got her dues.

*********

This time, when she goes to tell her best friend the news, it’s standing in front of her with a smile.