Unsent Text Message

Dear Diary,

It is Saturday, 1:26 a.m., and I have just returned home with Victoria's phone charger, one hoop earring that does not belong to me, and enough screenshots to open a small detective agency.

Tonight started at 8:47 when Victoria dropped a screenshot into the group chat followed by three words:

Nobody call me.

Everyone knows this means call immediately.

The screenshot was from Marcus, a man who spent eight months being "unsure what he wanted" and apparently three months learning how to type hey stranger.

Sophia called first. No answer. Sabrina called next. Straight to voicemail. A minute later, Victoria sent, "I'm fine." The group chat lit up like an alarm panel.

I grabbed my jacket, ordered a car, and called her again from the back seat.

This time she answered.

"I am not responding," she said.

I could hear her typing.

"How many words?"

Silence.

"Victoria."

"Eight hundred and forty-seven."

I told the driver we were making another stop.

When I found her, she was outside the restaurant where she had been having dinner with her sister, pacing with the focus of a woman preparing closing arguments. Her draft began with I hope someday you understand and somehow included a complete history of their relationship, two examples from last Christmas, and one paragraph about his mother.

"Give me the phone."

"I need closure."

"You need fries."

She handed it over, mostly because she knows I will wrestle her in public and neither of us wanted to become somebody else's story.

We started walking with no destination. She talked, I listened, and every few minutes she remembered another detail that needed to be added to the prosecution. By the third block, she was making jokes again. The emergency was passing.

At one point she asked, "What if he has changed?"

I reminded her that a changed man could probably manage more than hey stranger.

That earned the first real laugh of the night.

We found a table, ordered fries, and reviewed the evidence like responsible adults with absolutely no legal authority. Sophia joined us on FaceTime wearing a sheet mask. Sabrina voted to block him. Kaia wanted to know what Marcus's mother had done to earn an entire paragraph. Even Victoria had to admit that part may have wandered away from the central issue.

At 11:42, she asked for her phone back.

The unsent text message was still sitting there. I watched her open the draft, read the first line, and hold down the delete key until all 847 words disappeared.

She closed the draft, put the phone facedown, and reached for the last fry.

On the walk back, she made me take pictures because the light was good and, according to her, emotional growth deserves documentation. In half of them we are laughing. In the other half she is pointing at me because I kept telling her to stand somewhere that was technically traffic.

She changed Marcus's name in her phone to ABSOLUTELY NOT before we got into the car.

For the record, she still has not blocked him.

We are calling it progress.

xoxo,

Bella

Unsent Text Message | Bella's Look

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