Page 160 of A Solid Guide to Surviving a Situationship

And that was the part that got me.

He looked okay.

Like whatever we had—whatever I thought we had—wasn’t heavy enough to follow him like a ghost into the next day.

My chest tightened, something sharp and quiet pressing underneath it, because I had spent the last three days sitting in it. In the hurt. In the gnawing ache beneath my ribs. Replaying everything. Every word. Every look. Every moment leading up to that night.

And he… he was just there. Unbothered.

I swallowed, my thumb trembling over the screen, like I didn’t know what to do with it now.

Message him?

Say something?

Pretend I didn’t see it?

I locked my phone instead and set it face down beside me.

But the image stayed in my mind: him, in that soft light, laughing at something I wasn’t part of.

And suddenly, tears came. Soft at first. Then heavier. Because my chest tightened even more as a truth settled in: the silence between us didn’t feel mutual anymore.

It felt one-sided.

Like I was the only one standing in the aftermath, while he had already walked out of it.

I didn’t even remember falling asleep.

I just remembered crying… and then nothing.

And then, suddenly, I woke up.

The room was still dark—the kind of dark that told me it was the middle of the night, when everything felt heavier than it should.

For a second, I didn’t move.

Then instinct kicked in.

My hand reached for the phone, unlocked it, and still found nothing.

No messages. No missed calls. No name lighting up my screen like I had hoped it would.

My chest hadn’t even gotten the chance to rest.

I stared at it for a few seconds, as though something might change if I just waited a little more.

It didn’t.

And just like that, the tears came again—almost second nature. But this time, it felt deeper, because it was starting to feel real now.

The silence.

The distance.

Him.

I turned on my side, pressing my face into the pillow like that would somehow hold everything in—but it didn’t. It just made the ache feel closer.