Stuck

Rose sat on the edge of her bed, her head buried in her hands. Her phone sat next to her, ringing. Why is he calling, again? she thought. I never pick up; can't he take a hint?! Scott was always hopeful to the point of being naive, but he had finally backed-off recently. Now he has one medical scare and suddenly he has to talk to Rose again.

It's not that Rose didn't like Scott, it's that ... well, what did she feel? She hated him intensely for making her follow him to an out-of-state school. The University of Florida was a fine school, but he had to run off to Missouri State, which he later admitted that he didn't like that much. Now they both had mountains of debt and no real prospects for good-paying jobs. Scott was doing better, finding work off in Berkeley in "Nor Cal," as he called it, but even he admitted he was struggling.

She also hated him because of what she'd gone through since they got separated. The way her family treated her, especially her mom, like she was a failure for moving back home, when she's only the second person in her entire family to graduate from college. Maybe things didn't work out the way they should have, but she still succeeded at something that few people had even tried.

Yet, even though she hated him, there were clear feelings of affection. Even as it annoyed her, she did like knowing that after everything, Scott still wanted her as his wife. And since moving to Nor Cal he had stayed steadily employed, like he always had while they were together. Plus, even with his prematurely-graying hair, he was still rather handsome.

Maybe she shouldn't be surprised by her feelings. Scott had been an important person to her for a long time, so it would make sense that she would be worried when he had a heart attack last week. He was fine now, even back to work, but it had really freaked Rose out when she got the text from Scott saying that he had had a heart attack the day before. She texted back, but Scott wanted to talk. She said she would call later, but when she was free, she couldn't bring herself to make the call.

And that was the problem. A simple call is so complicated. Her calling would imply that everything was okay, which it wasn't. But if she didn't call, it would make it seem like she didn't care, and that wasn't true either: even if she didn't want to stay married to Scott, she doesn't want him to die or anything. If she called, she'd probably lose her temper about something trivial; if she didn't call, the curiosity of how he was doing would eat away at her.

That, in a sense, was the same reason they're still married after nearly two years of separation. She had reasons to push for a divorce and end things once and for all, but she also had reasons to want to try to work things out; she wanted both options while also wanting neither. In the end, she felt paralyzed, unable to reconcile or complete the divorce. She was stuck in a sort of purgatory of marriage.

Dammit! Rose thought as her phone rang again. The caller ID displayed Scott's photo. She couldn't hit Answer or Decline. She couldn't do anything. She clutched at the sides of her head and just thought Stop! over and over again.