Page 187 of A Solid Guide to Surviving a Situationship

“You’re safe now,” Andre said quietly. “You’re home.”

And somehow, that was what finally shattered whatever pain I was still trying to hold together.

Because maybe that was the cruel thing about love: how easily it could turn into grief. How one person could enter your life like magic and leave it like a storm.

But friendship?

It stayed.

Through heartbreak.

Through humiliation.

Through silence.

Through the versions of yourself you could barely recognize anymore.

And even at our worst, we kept finding our way back to each other.

And standing there beneath the lamp lights of the boardwalk, crying in the arms of the people who never stopped choosing me, I realized something for the first time in months.

Maybe love was not supposed to cost me myself. Maybe the right people—the people meant to stay—would never require me to survive them just to be loved.

And for the first time in a long time, home wasn’t a person.

It was the people who never stopped choosing me.

TIKTOK COMMENTS SECTION

2 WEEKS LATER

CHAPTER 21

IN A MUCH BETTER DISPOSITION

The strange thing about finally breaking apart completely was that there was nothing left to hide afterward.

That night at The Mandani, after all the crying and hugging and emotional collapse, we stayed there for hours.

And for the first time, I told my friends everything about Victor.

The situationship.

The ending last year.

What happened after that.

Leaving the city.

Coming back.

Getting back together with him.

And then losing him all over again.

There were moments while talking when I still felt embarrassed by the scale of my grief. Because saying it out loud somehow made it sound impossible.

Three months?