She doesn’t text me like before. I had to find out from Jenni that she’d already moved to France two days ago. When I texted her about it, she apologized and cited some excuse, but I don’t believe it. She has never been too busy to text me until now. It feels like we’re drifting further apart with every passing day. I want to explain, to tell her the truth, but I can’t bring myself to say it. She doesn’t deserve to be caught up in the mess I’ve created.
The silence is loaded. It’s suffocating. Everything hurts.
Even my dreams are restless.
Each night, when I finally close my eyes, he’s there. Sometimes he’s angry, his face twisted with something I can’t quite understand. Other times, he’s quiet, just watching me with those intense, unreadable eyes, the weight of his gaze suffocating. I wake up disoriented, my body tangled in the sheets, my skin damp with sweat. It’s always the same.
I try to shake it off, to push the feeling away, but it lingers. It’s like he’s invading my mind, seeping into the very fabric of my thoughts, whether I want it or not. The ache, the pull toward him—it won’t stop. I try to pretend it’s nothing, try to tell myself I’m over it, over him.
But my body doesn’t listen.
Tonight, it’s worse. I wake up with my body engulfed in sweat. He was in my dreams, touching me, making me feel pleasure more intense than life itself. When I wake up, disappointment shakes me so hard, I cry. I don’t know why.
The tears come so suddenly, a wave I can’t control, and I don’t even understand it. I want to stop, but I can’t. The emotions crash over me, raw and unchecked, and I hate myselffor it. I hate that I’m still so tangled in him, that I’m still thinking about him when I promised myself I’d let it go.
I miss him.
I hate that I do.
But the ache won’t go away. It’s constant, like a dull throb deep in my chest, a reminder that something I tried to push aside is still very much alive inside me. My mind tries to erase him, to block out the memory of the way he made me feel, but my body remembers.
I bury my face in the pillow, my body trembling, the tears coming in quiet waves. I’m tired of fighting it. Tired of pretending I don’t care.
But I do.
And every time I close my eyes, every time I breathe, he’s there. Waiting. Watching.
I can’t escape it. I don’t know if I even want to anymore.
That morning, I finally try to snap myself out of the fog that’s been hanging over me. I’m tired of feeling like this—tired of being consumed by the memory of him, by everything I can’t shake.
I decide to clean. Something mindless. Something that’ll take my focus away from my thoughts, from him.
I start sorting laundry, moving around the apartment in a haze, folding clothes and stuffing them into baskets, pretending that I can get a handle on something in my life. It’s supposed to be simple, routine. But then, halfway through, a sudden wave of nausea hits me.
I stop, gripping the side of the counter, my stomach lurching in a way that makes my body tremble. I brush it off at first, blaming the coffee I drank too quickly that morning. It’s nothing. Just a passing discomfort.
But then it happens again.
The nausea comes back, stronger this time. It’s overwhelming, forcing me to take a deep breath, clutching the edge of the counter as I try to steady myself. My head spins, my hands shake as I drop the laundry basket on the floor.
Something’s wrong.
I lower myself to the floor, my knees buckling slightly as I sit, trying to steady my breathing. The room feels too warm, the air too thick. My skin is clammy, and every breath feels like it takes more effort than the last.
This isn’t normal.
Something is definitely wrong.
The nausea finally starts to ease up a bit, and the wave of discomfort subsides, but the unease still lingers, thick in the air. I’m still trembling, my heart racing faster than it should. I steady myself, pushing away the panic that’s crawling under my skin, and grab my phone. My hands shake as I unlock it, desperate for something—anything—that will make sense of this.
I open my period calendar, the one I’ve been using to track everything, to make sure I stay on top of it all. I scroll through the weeks, my fingers dragging slowly over each square, hoping I miscounted. Maybe I’m just off. Maybe I’m stressed. Maybe…
But no.
I stop at the square for last week. I freeze, my heart stopping in my chest as I see it. My period was due last week. Seven full days late.
The room feels too quiet. My breath catches in my throat, my pulse echoing in my ears, and I feel it—the rising panic curling in my stomach, making everything around me feelblurry. I blink hard, trying to make sense of it, but the words on the screen don’t change.
