The City | GirlxGirl

thirty three ➳

"No. He didn't talk to us much," she cried, "we called him a few times since he moved. We'd probably spoken for ten minutes in total since he left."

That didn't sound like Thom. But then again, she didn't even really know Thom.

"Your parents told me. They didn't tell me why, they just said you left him. I know something must have happened that maybe they didn't want me to know." She sobbed again, and it sounded like she was heaving for breath. And then she repeated, "I don't blame you, Jude."

Jude didn't have to ask to know that it was suicide. Yesterday when she spoke to her parents, they had said Thom always sounded "devastated" on the phone. He lived alone, and there was no target on his back-that Jude knew of. He was healthy. Or rather, he was physically healthy. But he clearly wasn't mentally stable.

"I'm so sorry," said Jude sincerely.

That piece of her heart that had hung on for so long, the piece that belonged to Thom, that snapped in two the night she left him, still rested somewhere inside her body. But now it was gone, as if suddenly, it had vanished.

She couldn't help crying over the death of the man she once loved, the man who once was her heart and soul. It didn't matter what he did to her, or who he was in the final moments they had together. Suddenly, she wished she could see those emerald eyes again. It had been so long since she stared into them, she couldn't remember if the single turquoise fleck was in the left or the right eye.

And suddenly, this seemed like the most important detail. Like it was the most important thing she needed to remember-not locking the door behind her, or paying the bills. But remembering which eye the fleck belonged to.

When Jude asked Ruth this, she became confused, and didn't give a straight answer.

Jude mumbled another apology and hung up. She dialled Skylar next.

-

"I just can't make sense of it."

"Death isn't really something you can make sense of," said Skylar, whose fingers ran up and down Jude's bicep so tenderly, the smaller girl could barely feel it.

They were huddled together on Jude's sofa, which the previous tenant of this apartment had left behind. The once black leather was now faded so light it had to be considered grey, and was peeling off in more parts than it was intact. Jude wished she could have a little bit of space, that Skylar didn't have to be right here, that she didn't have to feel Skylar's overprotective hands all over her.

"I don't know why he did it," Jude confessed. There had never been a sign. Even his abrupt anger directed at her once they moved to the city wasn't what she would call a sign. She had never seen the man cry.

Her eyes widened. Maybe that was a sign in itself.

"I think there was something bigger going on," Jude said, talking more to herself than to Skylar. "He was so closed off, even to me. It was like there was a wall in between him and the world. Behind that wall, there was something."

"Depression?" Skylar guessed quietly.

"Maybe."

There was a long pause of silence, in which Jude pulled her arm away from Skylar's touch.

"Do you think I contributed to it?" Jude asked, tilting her head towards the ceiling.

Skylar knew that she wasn't really asking her, but she answered anyways. "I don't think so, Jude. He hurt you. You left him, but for a very good, and very obvious reason. Besides, it's been months since you left him. Maybe something else happened."