Page 53 of A Solid Guide to Surviving a Situationship

I let out a breath, leaning back slightly in my chair as I tried to find the right place to start.

“I think,” I began, then stopped, shaking my head faintly. “I don’t think anything big happened.”

He frowned a little, but still listening.

“We just… faded,” I continued. “One day we were okay. Then we had small fights that we never really fixed. And then somehow, without even realizing it, we just stopped talking the way we used to.”

I let out a humorless laugh.

“It’s actually kind of crazy when you think about it,” I said. “You can go from talking every day to not talking at all, and there’s no exact moment where it ends. It just… disappears.”

Francis stayed quiet, letting me speak.

“We also got busy,” I added. “Graduation was coming up. Requirements, deadlines, everything just kept piling up. I guess… I guess we thought we could just pick things back up later.”

I paused.

“But we never did, did we?”

The silence that followed felt heavier this time, because that wasn’t the real answer.

Not completely.

I looked down at my hands, fingers loosely wrapped around each other.

“And honestly,” I said, my voice tightening slightly, “it killed me.”

I glanced back up at him.

“It killed me seeing you every day and not talking to you the way we used to. Like we were just… normal people again.”

My throat felt dry, but I kept going.

“I remember walking past you on campus and pretending everything was fine. Acting like I didn’t care. Acting like it didn’t bother me the way we barely spoke anymore.” I let out a small breath. “But it did. It actually did.”

A lot.

Francis’ expression softened, but he didn’t interrupt.

“I didn’t want to be that kind of boyfriend,” I continued. “The demanding one. The clingy one. The one who always needed reassurance or attention. I didn’t want to be too much.”

I shook my head, almost at myself.

“So whenever something felt off, I just… kept it to myself. I told myself it wasn’t a big deal. That it would pass. That you had other things to do.” I looked at him again, this time holding his gaze. “But it didn’t pass.”

There was a brief pause before Francis finally spoke.

“But you never told me,” he said.

Not accusatory. Just honest.

I blinked, caught off guard by how simple it sounded. Like it was something obvious—something that didn’t need explaining.

“You never told me anything,” he continued. “Whenever something was wrong, you just shut down. Even when we fought, you would just go quiet. I didn’t know what you were feeling half the time.”

I opened my mouth slightly—instinctively ready to respond—to defend myself.

But nothing came out.