WRITER'S POV:
Ivy exactly ten minutes of pacing, overthinking, and checking for invisible security cameras before she finally decided to risk it.
She pulled the burner phone Jason had quietly slipped her the night before out from under her mattress, where she'd hidden it like contraband. The screen flickered to life, and her thumb hovered over the call button.
She pressed it.
Marcie answered on the second ring.
"I swear to God, if this is another spam call, I'm going to burn this phone—".
"Marcie."
A pause.
A long one.
"IVY?!"
Ivy flinched, holding the phone away from her ear as Marcie shrieked.
"Oh my God. You're alive. You're alive! Are you kidnapped? Did the mafia put you in a suitcase? Where ARE you?"
Ivy collapsed onto the bed, burying her face in a pillow. "I'm... I'm okay. Kind of. Sort of. It's complicated."
"Girl, complicated is if your ex likes your Instagram post. This is international crime! What's going on?" Marcie Replied, holding back a shriek of excitement and concern.
"I'm living in this... place. With Cassius. And his mother. And his ex who might kill me in my sleep." Ivy muttered, letting out a sigh.
"I'm packing holy water and a baseball bat." Ivy laughed at Marcie's subtle threat, It came out like a cracked sob. As she remembered Marcie's emotionally protective antics towards her back then when they were roommates.
"I thought you were dead. I was about to start a true crime podcast in your name. Ivy, what the hell?" Marcie Replied in a more calm tone while Marcie's background noise was more noisy with city movements, Ivy's room sound that was just her air conditioner making the most noise.
"It happened so fast. One second I was working, the next I was... involved. With him." she said.
"You mean broody mafia beefcake?" Marcie snorted.
"He's not—well, he is—but he's also... complicated." She sighed, ruffling her hair in contempted feelings for Cassius when she knows this is just a hostage situation with a soft blow.
"Do you trust him?" Marcie asked
"Maybe..." Ivy muttered and Marcie went silent but Ivy could feel the eye roll from the seventh dimension even though Marcie was dead silent.
After so many minutes of silence from Ivy, struggling to accept she has feelings, she finally broke the awkward silence "...Yes. I shouldn't. But I do."
Marcie exhaled.
"Okay. That's horrifying. But okay. What do you need?"
"I just... needed to hear your voice."
"You have it. Anytime. And if you vanish again, I'm flying to wherever he lives and hitting someone with my flat iron." Marcie sighed in exhaustion.
"Deal."
They stayed on the line for another half hour—longer than they should've, really.
And when Ivy hung up, something inside her had shifted.
Because hearing Marcie's voice made her realize how far she'd come.
And how impossible it was to go back.
The wall she'd built around herself cracked just a little
And in the quiet that followed, Ivy let herself cry.