Betty’s POV
The notification on my phone sat unopened, Brent’s name glaring back at me like an unanswered question. I stared at it for a moment, the small glow of the screen seeming impossibly bright against the chaos of my desk. With a sharp exhale, I swiped the screen off and shoved the phone face-down, burying it beneath a stack of papers.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to him. I did. But between the magazine feature, the fallout from the showcase, and the creeping sense that everything I’d worked so hard for was teetering on the edge of collapse, I couldn’t find the words. Not for him. Not for anyone.
I turned my attention to the designs scattered before me, hoping for a distraction. My pencil hovered over the sketchpad, but the lines on the page refused to come together. No matter how much I tried, the shapes blurred into incoherent fragments, refusing to form anything close to what I’d envisioned.
Normally, Brent’s steady voice would pull me out of this spiral. He’d remind me to take a step back, to breathe, to trust myself. He always seemed to know exactly what to say, how to ground me when I couldn’t do it on my own.
But something held me back now. Something I didn’t want to name.
“Earth to Betty,” Lucy’s voice broke through the fog, her hand waving in front of my face.
I blinked, startled. “Sorry, what?”
Lucy raised an eyebrow, her expression half-concerned, half-annoyed. “I said Dana needs the final draft by tomorrow. Are you good? You’ve been zoning out all day.”
“Yeah,” I lied, forcing a smile that felt like it might crack my face. “I’m good.”
She didn’t look convinced, her gaze lingering on me for a moment too long. But to my relief, she didn’t press further. Instead, she gave a small nod and retreated to her workstation, her attention quickly shifting back to her own tasks.
Alone again, I let my shoulders slump, the weight of my thoughts pressing down harder than ever. With a sigh, I reached for my phone, pulling it out from under the stack of papers. Brent’s last message sat there like a tiny time bomb:
Betty, we need to talk. Let me know when you’re free.
I stared at the words, the weight of them making my chest tighten. Brent deserved a reply. He deserved my honesty, my attention. But even as I started typing, I could feel the hesitation creeping in, the doubts I couldn’t silence.
Let’s talk tomorrow, I finally typed, pressing send before I could overthink it.
I set the phone down again, this time with a little more care. The notification disappeared, replaced by an uncomfortable quiet that wasn’t quite relief.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’d find the words. Tomorrow I’d figure out how to explain this growing distance that neither of us wanted to name.
But deep down, I knew tomorrow wouldn’t make the silence any easier to break.