Phone A Friend Part 2 - You Were Mine
You knew that somehow, you’d return to Albuquerque, but you never imagined it would happen like this. Not after everything that had happened.
A stroke. Your father had been briefly hospitalized. It was sudden, but not unexpected. That’s how your mother phrased it. She was composed, efficient, already booking your flight before you had time to process the words. You told her you’d come. That it was no problem because… it felt like the right thing to do— the only thing to do.
That was always how it worked in your family. Obligation dressed up as love.
So you flew in. Took time off work.
Pressed paused the life you'd built so carefully—far away from this place, from them.
A life that looked perfect on paper; An impressive job, a beautiful apartment in the city, an extraordinary resume that checked all the right boxes. All the dreams they spun for you realized.
But lately, when you look at it too long, it all feels warped. Like some funhouse version of who you were supposed to be. Like watching yourself from the outside, mouthing all the right words while something inside quietly drifted.
Your parents never saw it.
They still saw the image—poised, polished.
They never really asked about the version of you that didn’t fit into that frame. They acted like it all hadn’t happened. Nothing changed after you came home from rehab. You don’t think they ever understood what they had taken from you, or who you might have become if they’d only listened.
You never would’ve thought you’d find yourself back here. Your childhood bedroom. The carpet was still that scratchy beige. The walls still wore the same pale blue your mother insisted was calming. Your trophies—science fairs, spelling bees, certificates of excellence—sat gathering dust on the shelves. Proof that, once upon a time, you had done everything right.
And yet, standing here now, you felt like an intruder in someone else’s life. This room belonged to a stranger.
Everything was exactly as you’d left it—frozen, almost tranquil. A time capsule sealed shut and only just unearthed. The air was thick with dust, hanging like ash, catching fire in the sunlight. Golden beams spilled through the window in long, reaching arms, pulling you back into the past.
There you were, hunched over your desk, grinding through some assignment or another with a tension in your shoulders that had never truly left.
There, by the closet, stood a version of you agonizing over what to wear to your first ever high school party—a party you almost didn’t go to because your mother said it “sent the wrong message.”
That’s where Jesse had stood. The last time you saw him, it had been here.
You still remember the morning your mother found it. The moment the two halves of your life collided—Who you were and the person you were supposed to be.
With your family—and most everyone else—you were the image.
The golden girl.
The quiet achiever.
Not a crack in the mask.
A life of polished hallways and muffled applause. A life where your worth was measured on a broken scale.
You smiled when you were supposed to. You spoke when spoken to.
You toed the line, played by the rules, lived contentedly in the shadow of your family’s reputation.
But with Jesse—
With Jesse, you could breathe.
Stretch into the sun.
It felt like someone had opened the windows and let the light pour in.
You felt your edges soften. Your lungs expand.
Warmth soaking into skin that hadn’t seen daylight in forever.
The kind that glows in your chest. The kind that makes you forget you were ever cold.
With him, you weren’t the model daughter or the prodigy student—you were just you. Messy. Curious. Loud where you’d been taught to be silent.
You could laugh too hard, speak without filtering, ask questions that had nothing to do with success and everything to do with wonder.
You felt untethered. Weightless. Golden in your own right—not because someone held a spotlight on you, but because you were standing in the light. Because it radiated from within you.
A light that was all too quickly blown out. Your mother was standing before you, holding that half empty bag of weed like a contagion, a dirty secret.
She didn’t scream.
She didn’t have to.
The silence was worse.
There was nothing you could say to bridge the gap.
You couldn’t lie—what was the point?
But you couldn’t tell the truth either.
There was no version of reality that would make her understand.
No explanation soft enough to land safely in her world.
She only asked, “Where did you get this?”
At first, it was just voices—sharp-edged, low. A conversation behind a closed door.
Then it grew. Your father’s voice thundering down the hallway. Your mother’s voice tailing after, adding fuel to the flame.
“We don’t even know who you are anymore!”
You could still hear it.
The echo of it ricocheting through the walls, the furniture, your head.
Your whole life had been a carefully constructed exhibit, and one crack in the glass sent everything crashing to the floor.
Your mother wept not out of heartbreak—but humiliation. Your father paced like he was preparing a case for trial.
Accusations flew.
Were you lying to them this whole time? How long had you been using? Were you sleeping with him?
You were cornered, dissected.
You tried to make them understand. Maybe.
Maybe you didn’t.
Maybe your voice caught somewhere in the back of your throat. Maybe you never even tried. Maybe you already knew it was over.
Your relationship. Your future. Your life.
Well, they may as well have been. Because by nightfall, your case had already closed.
The decision had been made:
Rehabilitation.
No one spoke to you. Only around you.
You were a problem. A situation. A blemish.
They didn’t want the story.
They wanted the solution.
You heard your mother’s voice through the wall as she made the call—cordial, clipped, like she was booking a hotel.
You heard your father’s voice too, cutting through the conversation, stern, certain. There was no discussion, nothing left up to debate. They knew what was best. They always did.
And you—
You shrank.
Smaller, and smaller still, until even breathing felt like disobedience.
You hadn’t called him.
Maybe your mother had.
Or maybe he just knew. Like he always did, somehow, when you needed him most.
You didn’t know what you were going to tell him.
For once, you didn’t have a plan.
But if you had, crying wouldn’t have been part of it.
It was going to be clean.
Swift.
Like pulling off a bandage.
Through muscle memory, your fingers found his name and dialed.
It hadn’t even rung twice.
“Hey,” he said and you could hear the smile in his voice.
“What’s up?” he asked after another beat.
God, what could you even say?
“Y/N?” he asked again, louder this time—trying to bring you back.
That was all you managed to say.
The hours passed like seconds. Or centuries,
It was hard to tell.
He climbed in through the window, just like he used to, not half way through the sill before he said “I can talk to them,”
His voice was hoarse, like he’d run here, or maybe like he hadn’t slept. His hoodie was half-zipped, chest rising fast, but there was no color in his face. His hair was a mess. “Tell them it was mine. That you didn’t—”
“No,” You cut in. “No, there’s no point.”
It wasn’t that simple. It never had been.
“No point?” he huffed out, incredulous—like the words had knocked the air out of him. He looked around the room like it couldn’t be real, like at any moment you’d crack and tell him it was all a bad joke. When you remained quiet, he felt his stomach plummet.
“This,” he gestured toward himself, toward you—toward everything in between, “this is the point!”
You wouldn’t even look at him. You couldn’t.
“C’mon, we have to try,” he said, making for the door, and almost involuntarily, you threw your arms out in front of him.
“Yeah? What are you gonna say, Jesse? That you broke into my room and left it on my pillow like a gift?”
You didn’t mean to make him flinch. What were you doing?
Everything was coming out wrong. Your words were sharper than you meant, brittle and splintered.
You wanted to fix everything, but you couldn’t admit that for the first time, you didn’t know how.
You wanted to reach out, to pull him into you, to bury yourself in the only place that had ever felt like home.
The warmth of his arms.
The sound of his heartbeat, gentle and sure.
Despite anything you may have wanted, you sat there—still.
Frozen, like if you moved even an inch, the ground might give way.
Why was it so hard to say it?
To just ask him to stay?
To beg, even—if you had to?
Maybe because a part of you already knew.
That a reminder of what you were about to lose—a glimpse, a taste—would burn you in ways you’d never recover from. That having something right before it’s taken would brand you worse than never having had it at all.
So you folded smaller, regressed, grew spikes. You tucked the longing somewhere deep behind the armor you’d spent your life polishing
“This is bullshit, you didn’t do anything wrong. Why are you leaving?”
You wanted to say I know . You wanted to scream it.
“I have to,” you whispered. But you could both head that it was really an attempt to convince yourself.
He kept going. “They can’t just ship you off somewhere like you’re—what, broken?” He stood there, eyes searching yours, like if he looked long enough, he’d find a real answer.
He could never see the quiet, invisible rules you’d spent your whole life obeying. The ones written in the glances your parents gave you at the dinner table. The ones that taught you love was conditional, a contract. That wanting something—needing someone more—was prohibited.
His voice dropped, too wounded to be angry now. “What’s with you? You’re not even fighting it. Why’re you acting like you’ve already given up?”
Because this was easier. Safer. Cleaner. Because wanting him to stay and saying it were two very different things.
And you had only ever been good at one of them.
“Let me talk to them,” he said again. But now it sounded more like bargaining, like a prayer—like maybe, if he just tried harder, fate would let him keep you.
You were right there, and he was right there, and all you wanted was to collapse the space between you.
To say I love you, even if you’d never said it out loud before.
To whisper please, even if pride was clawing at your throat.
To ask stay even if you were petrified.
But your body was already defending itself.
Shutting doors before anyone else had the chance to slam them.
Making sure you didn’t linger too long in the light—because the cold that followed would be unbearable.
You crossed your arms, fingers digging into your elbows. All you could think to do was straighten your spine—just like your mother taught you. No tears. No softness. No scene. What came out instead was cordial, clipped, the opposite of what you meant.
“You should go,” you said.
“Why are you saying that?”
“Because it’s done.” you sighed, exasperated. You were almost mad at him for putting up a fight. For making it harder than it had to be. You almost hated him because you knew that he alone could—would break you. A fear that consumed you, swallowed you whole. A fear that screamed abort at all costs.
“There’s nothing left to talk about.”
He scoffed in disbelief. “You want me to believe that? That this doesn’t mean anything to you? After—after everything?”
“I’m trying to make this easier.” you snapped, but your voice cracked halfway through, betraying you.
“For who?” he demanded. “For them?”
You didn’t have an answer for that.
You were both quiet for a moment until he took a step forward, brow furrowed, looking down. “I don’t get it,” he muttered, more to himself now. He looked up, “I thought—”
You don’t remember what came after that. Maybe he called your name. Maybe he lingered in the sill, waiting for you to stop him. None of it mattered, because you didn’t. You just sat there, jaw locked, arms crossed, like that could protect you from falling to pieces. It didn’t. Nothing could.
You had just watched—no, commanded—Jesse Pinkman to walk out of your life.
The memory slipped from you slowly, like breath against your glass world—there, then gone.
But the ache it left behind lingered, settling in your chest where the light once had been.
You blinked, and the past dissolved back into walls of powder blue, suddenly too real, too present.
If you could just go back . If only you could—
Your phone rattled on the desk.
You stared at it, breath caught. You must not have heard it ringing before. Glancing down, you almost couldn’t believe it.
You hadn’t even said anything.
You hadn’t even told him you were back in town.
Somehow, like always, he just knew.
[To Be Continued]
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