What I Wish You'd Say

Blair was never particularly creative – at least, she didn’t think so. In high school, her friends had taken visual arts, photography, music and drama. She was always at their showcases, always in the audience, always a guest (once even a muse!) but never the artist herself.

And at university, she’d taken forensic accounting, but the course wasn’t nearly as colourful as the artist retreats or improv. nights her friends attended – not to her, at least. Rather, her degree was grey and overcast like a storm cloud, and if it were a person, it’d wear a white dress shirt, a boring tie and a frown. It’d carry a briefcase, a black umbrella and a disposable coffee cup.

But now, while all her ex-friends were artists and actors (or baristas, trying to make ends meet), Blair inhabited this space, this office, of white collars and fancy watches. And it had been fulfilling at first—she was excellent at her job, after all, and nothing was as satisfying as the thrill, the a-ha!, of uncovering evidence of money laundering, and building a case—but something was missing now that her health was deteriorating, and she craved the colour she’d only ever caught glimpses of.

“But you were always a talented writer,” her friend Nora had reminded her, and maybe she was right. Maybe writing was the creative outlet she needed. Maybe writing would get her through this. Nothing else, it seemed, was working – not the therapy, not the yoga, not the miserable Paint n’ Sip nights her brother had enrolled her in. It was hard to be empathetic about others’ problems (i.e. gossip) while her life was falling apart, and it was hard to justify painting her entire canvas black every night – sometimes textured, sometimes not. I feel like I’m being swallowed up by a vacuum or an abyss, she wanted to say, and sometimes, even, I find respite in that. It’s oddly soothing – the emptiness, the nothingness. Instead, she’d shrugged and laughed. She wouldn’t burden them with her problems, and this, in turn, had burdened her. She’d kept the darkness to herself, and it had grown like mould in the cold, damp space that was her mind.

Blair clicked open a Word document and began typing. Click, clack, tap, tap, thud: “What I Wish You’d Say.”

              It was the apology Blair had been waiting to hear, the answers she’d been craving. Why hadn’t he been there? Why hadn’t he been there during the hardest time of her life?

“I didn’t know how to be,” said Hugh. “And I thought that if I was there for you, you’d become dependent on me. And I was scared – I was scared of the responsibility, because I wasn’t sure if I could do it.”

“And you’re back now because I’m doing well?”

“No, I’m back now because I’m sorry. I should have been more supportive.”

Blair leaned back in her chair and glared through the screen. Hugh would never say that, and he hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. Maybe she was asking for too much, after all. I mean, Hugh wasn’t her caretaker – he didn’t owe her anything. And he was there, he was always there, even though he felt absent, distant, withdrawn. Her health was something they never broached but danced around. Her health were the cracks in the pavement, and they were just two kids – this was bigger than either of them.

              She hit the enter key a few times, until the page was mostly blank. If you abandoned me in a burning building, she typed, don’t ask if I made it out alive.

              Hugh hadn’t abandoned her, not physically at least, but she felt some resentment for his emotional absence, resentment for the way she had to zip her lips to accommodate his feelings, the way she had to keep it all together.

“Blair.” The intern was placing a coffee on her desk, her manicure strikingly red against the white cup. “I thought you looked a little tired,” she said.

“Thank you, Rebecca,” said Blair, simultaneously flattered and offended.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Could you leave this on Michael’s desk?” said Blair, handing over a clip-bound report. They weren’t supposed to entrust Rebecca with sensitive documents, but fuck it, she’d signed a confidentiality agreement.

              Rebecca click-clacked towards Michael’s office, her hips swaying rhythmically in her pencil skirt. Blair wondered what her life was like, if it was anything like her own. She clearly had lip fillers, and her chin was much sharper after returning from her holiday to Seoul.

              Blair unlocked her phone. No notifications. Five hours, and Hugh still hadn’t responded. Her friends had told her to ask for what she needed, and so she’d messaged him—against her better knowledge—requesting a ride to her appointment with a new immunologist. After dissolving her fillers a year ago, her life had been turned upside down – and with it, Hugh’s. “But we’re not a burden to those who care about us,” Nora had said. “We’re a burden to those who only love us when it’s convenient.”

              Blair took a sip of coffee – oat milk latte, cinnamon. At first, she’d told Rebecca it didn’t matter, an Americano would do, but she’d insisted. “If you’re going to spend six dollars on a coffee, you deserve to get what you want.”

              Blair took another sip, savouring the cinnamon, and her own manicured nails clicked away at the keyboard.

              “I shouldn’t have turned a blind eye. I knew you were going through it, but I thought pretending otherwise would make it all go away.”

Blair could almost collapse from relief – finally, Hugh could see her. But there was a piece of her that still resented him, resented his pleading eyes, resented the pathetic scrunch of his forehead.

              “I should have called you more often. I should have checked in. I should have driven you to your appointments. I should have asked if you were OK.”

‘Should have.’ Her relief, her resentment, morphed into regret. Why’d he have to mess up? Why’d he have to remind her just how strong she was, when all she’d needed was a place to be weak? a place to fall apart? hands to hold her?

Blair was never particularly creative—at least, she didn’t think so—but as she glared through the screen, her words, her very own words, seemed imbued with the familiar colour she’d always been witness to. And this, at least for today, was enough.