‘Are you free? Shall I call?’ he messaged after three excruciating days of silence.

Panic stirred in her chest, a small, insistent pulse. It spread into a quiet unrest she couldn’t name, then settled into stillness that felt like stone. Her hands hovered over the phone for a long moment before she finally called her best friend.

“No!” came the steady voice on the other end. “Don’t set the bees free again. Drop this relationship. End it.”

She pressed her forehead against her knees. Nausea rolled through her, heavy, relentless. The last three days had been torture. She craved him the way an addict craves a fix. He was a drug that slipped into her veins, coursed through her blood, and burned her from within. But lately, the doses had turned brutal. His words no longer soothed; they scraped, rough, corrugated, cutting her to ribbons.

“Love means never having to think before speaking,” he said. But his love now was edged with cruelty, stripped of tenderness.

I don’t need this, she told herself. Now is the time to be strong. Now is the time to walk away.

Her hand trembled as she lifted the phone.
‘Yes, you can call now,’ she typed. 

And hit send.