#shelbert

Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. 

It’d been ringing in her ears for the better part of a week, debating on whether she should call him or not. 

Was it her place? Would he still care? 

She would only have answers if she made the call. 

She stares down at the phone in her hands, punching in a number she hadn’t dialed in years but still knew by heart, still knew like the back of her hand. 

Would he pick up? Would he recognize her number and ignore the call? She didn’t know, wouldn't know unless she tried. 

But Ashley was important to them, was important to him once, and maybe she still was, she hoped.

She presses the green button and raises the phone to her ear, sending up a prayer to God above.

xXx 

Unknown flashes across his phone screen and usually that means an immediate ignore, but there was a voice in the back of his head telling him to answer it, just this once. 

“Hello?” his gruff voice answers and waits. 

There’s silence on the other end of the line and he looks at his phone again. “Hello?” he says a little more desperately. 

“Blake?” he hears her voice and it throws him back to the past. “Don’t hang up.” she pleads and he swallows back the lump in his throat. “Just let me talk, real quick. It’s about Ashley…”

He wasn’t going to hang up on her. He was surprised, of course, to hear her voice after so many years– she still knew his number? Did he– yeah, he still knew hers. He’d taken it out of his phone because that’s what you do when you marry someone else, but of course he still knew her number. They used to have a landline, at the house in Oklahoma that was their marital home, and he still has that number too. That phone was long disconnected, that house was long sold off to other people, they were long since sold off to other people, but that number lived on a shelf in his mind that he didn’t, wouldn’t, dust off.

“Is she okay?!” he asks. Miranda sounded scared and that made him scared, too, because she was never scared. Miranda didn’t get scared. 

“Um,” she starts, and Blake’s heart jumps into his throat. “I mean, yes, yeah, she’s going to be okay–”

“She’s going to be, what does that–”

“She has cancer, Blake.” 

xXx

“What do you mean? Wha-What kind of cancer? Is she gonna die?” His voice sounded frantic. 

Miranda's heart melted a little, knowing he still cared. 

“I-I wasn’t sure you still cared…”

“Of course I still care--”

“I know, but I got her in the divorce, and I highly doubt she’s reached out much since…”

“Well no, but I-I still care. I'm glad you called.” he says softly. 

“Y-yeah me too.” she whispers softly, closing her eyes and rubbing at the spot between her eyebrows. “It's blood cancer, by the way. Something with a really long name we’d both mispronounce.” She laughs lightly to try and lighten the mood. 

“But she’s gonna be alright, right?” 

“That’s the plan. Her doctors have a plan. She’s doing all the right stuff…” 

“Good. Good, I’m glad to hear.” 

She goes silent for a beat, and she can hear his deep heavy breaths on the other end of the line. 

There’s muffling on the other end, and she can hear a woman’s voice on the other end, and then Blake’s voice, half muffled through the phone, a quiet Love you too, Baby.

Gwen. She deduces from the context. 

She wipes the stray tear off of her cheek and pulls the phone away from her ear as she sniffles, not needing Blake to hear her crying. 

“...anything else?”

“Huh?” she says as she puts the phone back to her ear. 

“I said was that all or did you need to tell me anything else?” he asks, and she sighs softly. 

“That’s– That’s all, I guess, I just thought you should know. You know she had a kid, too, right? She has a son, he’s four. He’s great, he’s really… They’re doing really well, you know, minus this.”

Why is she still talking, why is she rambling? It’s time to go. She called, she said what she needed to say, and now it’s time to hang up. 

But, she doesn’t want to hang up. Hearing his voice for the first time in years, minus on the radio and in press interviews that were always so impersonal… 

“I did know that, actually. One of the, uh, one of the magazines did a spread, you know.”

“Yeah, I think I remember that. They done a lot of spreads on you, too. You and–” Miranda can’t bring herself to say her name. She isn’t jealous of Blake’s new wife– really,  she wasn’t, that was his business and honestly, that was his present and his future and she was his past, and she was fine with that. He deserves someone who makes him happy and wants the same things as him, leads the same life. She thought that’d be her, but it wasn’t. So it was Gwen, whatever. 

It doesn’t mean it doesn’t bring up acid in her throat when she goes to say her name.

“Yeah,” Blake answers. “A lot of those darn magazines. Same about you, and Brendan. I suppose congratulations are in order.” 

“Thank you. And you too. You’re a… you’re a newlywed, again Your face is all over the checkout lines.”

“Your invite musta got lost in the mail.” She hates him, she hates his sense of humor. She can just imagine the grin on his face right now, rubbing the back of his neck, his fingers in his graying hair, while she’s here turning all shades of red and a little green, too. 

So just hang up, Miranda, she tells herself. End this. 

But she still can’t.

“So was that all?” he asks again and she swallows hard. 

Hang. Up. Miranda. She tells herself. 

It’s all she has to do. Say goodbye and hang up the phone. 

But she doesn’t. 

Her and her big mouth, as usual, getting her into trouble…

“Are you happy?” She asks quietly. 

“Hmm?” 

“Are you happy? Y’know, with Gwen?”

xXx

How the fuck was he supposed to answer that one?

“I…Uh–”

“Nevermind, forget I asked, this was about Ashley–”

“Miranda, wait.” he catches her rambling. 

“Yeah?”

“I–”

I what? What was he supposed to tell his ex-wife? I still love you? I don’t love you? I hate you? 

He wasn’t sure if he had an answer for her. 

“Blake?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s okay y’know, to be happy, if you are. And it’s okay to not be happy too.”

At this moment, he wasn’t sure what he was feeling. Sure, he loved Gwen and her boys, they loved him too. Kingston wanted to be just like him. 

But Miranda? God, she’d always have a piece of his heart whether she knew it or not. Whether she wanted to or not. A piece of him will always be hers, and Gwen knew that. Gwen was good like that, she understood that, she’d been married before, too. She got it. 

“Blake?”

“Yeah Ran?” he slips, throwing in her old nickname just like the old days. 

“It’s okay, because I think I’m happy too. A lot of emotions are swirling around right now with Ashley’s diagnosis, but otherwise, I’m happy.”

“Th–That’s good to hear. I think I’m happy too.” 

“It’s just– it’s one of those check-in points in life, you know, one of our friends gets sick and it’s like, you start asking yourself these hard questions that it’s like, shit just got really real, life’s super serious and is this the life that I want, you know–”

“Is it?” he asks. “Is this the life you want?” 

He’s comfortable in her silence, even right now. He hears the exhale in her voice. “I think so. I think this is it for me, I think I got it right.”

xXx

And she isn’t lying. This life she has with Brendan; these past two years, even with a global catastrophe, have been some of the best years of her life. She never expected to hit her prime in her late 30s, but here she was. And it’s okay that it isn’t with Blake.

“Good,” Blake says simply. “Good for you. And you know, if it’s never not what you want anymore…”

“What, give you a call?” She almost chokes. 

“That is not what I meant. If it’s never not what you want anymore, you know that you can leave it to rest and find something that fits you better. You’ve done it once before, you could do it again. And hey, please– keep me updated, about Ashley. I don’t know how she’d feel about me reaching out, and I don’t wanna bother her, I just wanna know that she’s doing alright. If anything gets worse…”

“Of course, of course.”

“I think this is where I leave you, Ran.” 

She nods, even though he can’t see. It’s time to hang up. It’s time to go. 

“I think that’s it then…I’ll–uh–I’ll keep you updated. Um, bye Blake.”

xXx