But I failed to be loyal to my best friend.
“Ugh… I…” I can’t get the words out. My chest hurts.
“Abuse is abuse even if it’s not all physical. I knew he had it in him the second time you brought him around. Motherfucker was playing mind games from day one, Violet. Day one. He found twenty ways to tell you the sky was green until you were convinced of it.”
My words come out in a fast jumble. “I don’t know what’s happened to me, Susanna. I’m broken. And he’s been gone a week and this week I’ve done a lot of soul-searching and… and you probably won’t recognize me. I mean, I look like me, but inside, I’m… I’m not me. I miss you.”
I hear her choke up. Damn, but I’ve really missed her.
“And I miss me, too, Suse,” I add.
“We will get you back,” she vows. “We will fucking get you back, Violet. That sonofabitch. I knew it, but you didn’t, and you wouldn’t hear it and I just hoped you’d eventually open your eyes.”
“I opened them a long time ago, but I didn’t know what to do about it.”
“Girl, you should’ve called me a long time ago. You know that right? I will be there for you any time, any place, no matter what. I’m as loyal as you are, but to people who deserve it. You know?”
“I know. I fucked up.” I sniffle.
“Okay, it’s okay. It’s fixable. What’s the plan?”
“I have to pick him up from the airport tomorrow and…”
“Fuck that. Fuck him.”
“No, I think I do because I got all his stuff packed and after I pick him up –”
“Pick me up first. I’ll be there every minute. He’s gone, Violet. Gone even if I have to get him gone myself.”
I love my best friend. And I really do miss her.
“I should’ve done this two years ago,” I say.
“Three. And I know,” she whispers. “But better late than never. You’re doing it now.”
“I am.”
Damn it, I am!
“Pick me up at work tomorrow at five,” she demands.
“I’ll be there right after I finish work.”
“Good. I’ll be outside. I love you. I’ve missed you. And I will help you put yourself back together, Violet. I promise.”
“Okay. I love you, Suse. Thank you. Thank you for this despite that I have been- I just wasn’t, I couldn’t…” I don’t know how to explain it.
“I love you, girl. I got you.” She doesn’t make me keep struggling to find the words.
God, I love her.
I hang up and cry myself to sleep.
It feels like a good cry, though, mostly, because whatever happens from here on in, I’m no longer feeling so alone.
***
My workday Thursday? Never-ending. Endless. Not only do I have extra to do because they’ve given me Friday off, but also, what I’m planning to do tonight weighs on me, making every task feel like torture.
I’ll pick up Susanna after work and then head somewhere to fortify myself and brainstorm ideas for how to play it. Then, the airport where we’ll pick up Ray. She’ll probably tell me to greet him at Arrivals and say goodbye right there.
***
My best friend stands outside her job at a bank a short 10-minute drive from my work. All this time, she worked so close to me and lives ten minutes in the other direction and yet I’ve felt so alone. The instant I see her, emotion overwhelms me and my heart feels like it’s about to burst from my chest.
She’s pacing with her arms folded across her chest and she looks angry. She sees me pull up and opens the door and looks in at me, eyes on fire.
“Your face is covered in angry sauce,” I tell her.
She climbs in, throwing her overnight bag in the back seat, bursts into tears and puts her arms around me.
“I fucking hated him for the past three years but now… seeing your face, hate isn’t a strong enough word,” she says.
Susanna is such a good friend. She and I met in grade seven when her family moved two streets away and we’ve been inseparable ever since the first day of school that year. If I wasn’t at her house, she was at mine. We were together constantly, even through our late teens and early twenties.
Until Ray.
She’s gorgeous. She’s a mixture of French and Barbadian heritage. Susanna is slim and almost flat-chested up top and curvy from the hips down with envious unblemished and unlined caramel skin. She has striking pale grey eyes and is such a beautiful soul it shines from her. She vaguely resembles a young Mel B from Spice Girls and the Scary Spice part fits because she stands up for people she cares about and causes she believes in. She is the only soul I know with more hair than me. We both have mad curls and hers are a cross between her black mother’s and white father’s hair. Light brown but insanely curly, bordering on untamable. Like her spirit. As much as I’d been sad about seeing her posts and pictures online as my only connection to her for a long time, seeing her in person has me feeling a bit more like my old self already.
Something-Sauce face was a joke we’d used to make one another laugh in the past if one of us was grouchy, dating back to her getting angry at a boyfriend in high school and fighting with him in the cafeteria with barbeque sauce on her face.
She angrily clicks her seatbelt on while staring ahead at the windshield. Then she starts to speak, not looking at me.
“Okay, first off, rage sauce.”
Oh shit. That’s a new sauce.
“Violet, I love you and I’m happy you’re back, but girlfriend, we aren’t talking shit out as a post-mortem until this is over. If you tell me what he’s been doin’ to you, I know I’m gonna cut the sonofabitch and he’ll need a post-mortem for real, and if I’m in jail, I can’t be getting reacquainted with my girl and helping her get back to her amazing self. So, what’s the plan?”
She’s still not looking at me.
“I figure we can go get a coffee and figure that out.”
“Coffee, yes, but I got it figured out. We pick him up and drop it like it’s hot. No beating around the bush. Welcome back, Ray, we’re over. If you promise to be reasonable, I’ll drive you to my apartment and you’re gonna pick up your stuff and take a cab wherever. Our time together is over. He’s not reasonable? We drive off and leave him there. I spend the night and make sure that a) he does not hassle you and b) that we get drunk and you tell me all about it. Purge it and get it gone out of your gut and your heart and then you begin your healing journey. Okay? I have to be at work tomorrow, but I already told my boss I’d probably be late and hungover, so she has me in the back room filing and shit instead of customer-facing, so no biggie.”
“I have tomorrow off, and my work is sending me for a spa day.”
“Perfect timing then,” she says. “My bag has a change of clothes, my makeup, pepper spray in case he tries to be an asshole, and three bottles of wine I bought on my lunch hour. One for you, two for me since you’re a lightweight. Oh, and a zappy thing I bought that I’ll use on that motherfucker if he gets out of line.”
“Perfect,” I nod, vision blurry with my own tears.
Pepper spray. Zappy thing. God, I love my bestie.