"Please talk to me"
If Erza scrolls all the way back she'll see two years worth of unanswered text messages. She should delete them but she can't.
On her twenty-fourth birthday her boyfriend buys her a new phone. The gift is sweet. Thoughtful. He knows her phone is old and the screen is cracked. Once he's asleep beside her, she activates the new phone on a new line entirely.
'I have a new number. Please talk to me.'
The old phone stays silent in her bedside table drawer.
The proposal feels impulsive even though they've been dating for four years. Erza accepts even though a very big part of her is still on pause. She still wonders.
'I'm getting married. I don't know if it's because I want to or because I feel like I should.'
When she sees two pink lines, Erza panics. She stays in the bathroom for a very long time trying to convince herself this is okay when her heart is screaming that it's not.
She doesn't text him about the baby until two weeks later when she's bleeding again and the doctor confirms a miscarriage.
'I lost it.'
Simon sighs in his sleep and Erza cries.
He says nothing when she goes back on birth control and never mentions trying again. She thinks, though, that his thoughts on the matter are clear when he starts traveling more and rips the carpet out of the bedroom at the end of the hall. By summer, the room has a polished concrete floor and is filled with workout equipment he rarely uses.
'I think he's having an affair.'
She sends the message on impulse but doesn't regret it. After long trips, Simon's dirty shirts smell of something feminine she can't quite put her finger on. Erza has never been one for perfume.
Whatever the full scope of Simon's infidelities, she doesn't quite care. She tries to care but fails.
When he returns just before the New Year, there is a smear of lipstick on the collar of one of his button up shirts. Simon catches her with the shirt in her hands and the lipstick has left a mark on her thumb.
He stares. She stares.
The silence is deafening.
Their marriage counselor is frustrated but remains professional. Erza doesn't quite know how to verbalize the horrifying fact that she's been cheating on Simon for much longer than he's been fucking his assistant.
'I want to break up.'
She falls asleep with her cracked phone pressed against her palm under her pillow.
Simon has been home for less than an hour when the doorbell rings. The doorbell is immediately followed by a hard knock. Erza watches him cross the living room floor with the kind of blurred attention that hits her quickly when she's halfway through a bottle of Shiraz.
The voices twist her insides in a knot. Simon appears in the archway and stares blankly at her. Behind him are two men in uniform. She recognizes neither but she suddenly wishes she weren't drunk.
"Erza Scarlet?" The man with the golden eagle pinned to his green lapel addresses her stiffly.
Erza watches Simon open his mouth to correct him but he quickly closes it. His hands disappear into his pockets.
"Yes?" She stands awkwardly trying not to slosh her Shiraz on the floor. "I mean yes."
"We need to speak with you regarding Captain Jellal Fernandes." The colonel glances at Simon. "Privately, if that's alright."
Simon says nothing. On his way through the living room he pries Erza's wine glass from her hand and snatches the nearly empty bottle of Shiraz from the tea table.
"Jellal is dead," Erza whispers. She feels the wine churning in her gut. She's never said that Jellal was dead before. Not out loud. Not in her head. Not ever.
"Captain Fernandes was extracted from an undisclosed site approximately seventy-two hours ago, Miss Scarlet."
Erza flinches. No one has called her Miss Scarlet in two years.
"Okay," she whispers dumbly. Her skin hums. She thinks she might vomit.
The colonel purses his lips and frowns. His partner – Erza squints at his rank but her fuzzy brain can't recognize the symbol – steps forward and clears his throat.
"We understand this must be difficult news for you, Miss Scarlet, but you are still listed as Captain Fernandes's next of kin."
"Still?" The words are a choked whisper. Erza blinks and her mouth opens again. She doesn't think. "Take me to him. Please."
The colonel gestures toward her bare feet and Erza almost laughs. Instead she excuses herself and tries not to sway into the wall as she leaves the men in the living room.
Simon is stretched across their bed on his back. He's left a trail of wet footprints from the shower to the bed.
"If you go to him, I won't be here when you get back."
Erza leans against the closet doorframe and tries to shove her bare feet into a pair of sneakers.
"You haven't been here in a long time, Simon."
He finally looks at her and she sees absolutely nothing on his face.
"Erza, I don't think you've ever been here."
The hospital isn't cold but she shivers anyway. Her pajama pants feel shabby under the fluorescent lights. She pulls her jacket tighter around her body and folds her arms.
"Just here, Miss Scarlet." The colonel stops in front of a room with a closed door.
"Is he okay?" she finally blurts out.
"Captain Fernandes has sustained a few injuries," the man beside the colonel says. Erza finally recognizes his rank as major. It's been a long while since things like rank mattered. "But his prognosis is positive."
She nods, realizing they aren't actually going to tell her anything. Her hand closes around the lever and she presses down. The wine is still smudging her edges but she feels sober.
The door closes behind her before Erza realizes she's stepped through it. A powder blue curtain hangs between herself and the bed. The sound of the rings scraping against the bar startles her and the low light of his bed lamp glints off her wedding set.
Jellal sits on the edge of the bed. He's in a pair of cotton pants the same pale blue color as the curtain she is still clutching. Her eyes are drawn to his hands. His wrists are covered in badly healed slash marks. His skin looks as if he's been left out in the sun for an age. But his eyes are still the same deep forest green they've always been and it breaks her heart.
She can feel when he sees the ring but she doesn't care because when he lays his palms open on his knees she rushes forward and pulls him against her.
"Erza." Her name is a breath against her neck. His fingers find the tangled strands of her hair and the palms of her hands find his back. Beneath his t-shirt she knows there is a host of scars – she can feel them.
"I thought –" She can't finish the sentence.
Her hair is still wrapped around his fingers when he touches her cheeks. His thumb presses against her bottom lip. Jellal's palms slide over her shoulders and arms and the world stops spinning when he reaches her left ring finger.
"I'm sorry," she whispers.
"Don't be," he finally says. His voice is ragged. "Six years is –"
"Not that long."
When he meets her eyes she blinks away hot tears. "It was an eternity for me."
It is two months before Erza breaks down the last of the moving boxes and sets them aside for recycling. The flat is smaller than the house she shared with Simon but it is hers.
She knows Jellal is out of the hospital and free of the military. She knows he has her new number but it is another month before the cracked phone in her bedside drawer vibrates.
The number is new. The text thread is new. The way the words settle in her heart like they belong there is not.
''Please, talk to me.'
