Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Outsiders
"He left Mark."
Those three simple words reverberate in my head as I try to make sense of them. Of course, I knew whom she was referring to; I just didn't understand how he could actually leave. He said he cared about her, hell, he said he loved her, but evidently he didn't enough to fight for her. At least not anymore. There was a time when he would have. There was a time when she wouldn't have done what she had done. But time changes people and leads us down roads we never would have expected. I think, if anything, that's one lesson I have learned from this whole confusing situation. Confusing, and yet exhilarating, if I'm being honest with myself.
"Mark? Mark are you there?"
"Hey, sorry Addie, yeah, I'm here… So, he really left?"
Those are the only words I can get out. Saying anything else would be too dangerous. I need to know where she stands with this first.
"Yeah, he said he needed to get away. He could barely even look at me Mark. I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Are you going to go after him?" I squeeze the words out even though I don't really want to know the answer to my own question. But, I have to know. I can't just let this conversation pass without getting some semblance of what she plans to do.
"I really don't know… Sometimes I feel like chasing after him is all I've really been doing lately. What if there isn't anything left for me to find?"
She says the last sentence in such a small voice, and I can hear the cries she has been trying to keep at bay throughout our conversation finally begin to release themselves.
"Hey, shhh Addie. Its okay, you'll be okay."
I can't think of anything else to say and the words sound trite even to my own ears. But really, what am I, the dirty mistress in the middle of the mess that is the demise of my (former?) best friend's eleven-year marriage supposed to say?
"I know I will be, because I have you."
The simple statement, delivered so sweetly and innocently as if she couldn't imagine a time when it wasn't true, catches me off guard. But really, as scared as I am to admit it, and as scared as I am of what it will mean for us if I do, when she talks to me in that velvet voice that just seems to hold within it every emotion that we can't express in words I can't lie to her.
"Yeah, Addie, you have me."
I don't know where we will go from here, I don't even know if there is a real 'we' or 'us' to speak of, but I do know that as long as she needs me I'll be there, and as long as she's crying I'll be there to hold her.
