For some love is simple. A certain person appears in your life and that's it. No more searching. For most it is messy; a complicated weighing of pros and cons - fights, blissful moments, and everything between, forcing you to decide what you can liv...
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The phone vibrates again on the nightstand, insistently tugging her from dreamland. Izzy groans into the greylight of her bedroom as she struggles to wake up enough to answer. Whomever is calling her at this hour will be dead to her come morning. She blurrily reads the caller ID and amends that thought, answering as she furrows her eyebrows together. Her best friend gets a pass, always.
"Sane people are trying to sleep, here."
"Izzy."
Her name, sobbed out, sends her abruptly into high alert. Isabetta sucks in a sharp breath, fumbling to sit up and turn on a light. Something has happened. Something bad, by the sound of it.
"Izzy. Please."
She's caught trying to figure out just what's happened, and if she should be launching herself out of bed. "What is it? Is someone hurt?" She doesn't hear wailing, or sirens, or sounds of pain in the background. It's just her friend's body-wracking sobs coming through the line. Sobs and mangled words.
"No-o."
No. Thank goodness. The tightness forming in her chest loosens just a little. But then why is her friend in such distress?
"No – he..."
Her friend's words devolve into sobs again, but she'd conveyed enough to solidify Izzy's stirrings of concern into something harder – harder and bone-wearingly familiar. She shoves the sheets aside and starts the hunt for her shoes and jacket. He. Tom. Not goddamn again. "Hey. Hey. Take a breath. Breathe for me. Breathe. Can't hardly understand you. Breathe – and tell me what he's done this time."
Fuck Hiddleston for doing this again. Fuck him for hurting her friend.
"Izzy. He walked out."
What? She stops in the middle of shoving her foot into one of her shoes, foregoing socks entirely.
"What?"
"He—" her friend hiccoughs hard, her words snuffled through the congestion caused by her tears, "He walked out. I fucked up, Izzy. I really fucked up."
She fucked up? By letting him back into her house and her heart, by letting Tom back into her life... but Tom had seemed to heed every warning levied. He'd acknowledged that the second chance he was given was not to be wasted. So what the hell was going on?
"I'm coming over."
"Please." Her friend exhales the wobbly word, and rather than requesting a flavor of ice cream for Izzy to pick up on the way over, says the most unexpected thing, "Please come. In case Max wakes up. I... I need to go talk to Tom. I need to explain..."
Izzy tries not to snort. Really. It's just the noise that comes out when she's twisting to snag her bag before heading for the door. "I'll be there in a bit. But I'm not hanging up. You want to explain to him, first you've gotta explain to me."
