Page 152 of A Solid Guide to Surviving a Situationship

But she stayed.

That was her language too.

And then flashes of memories came rushing in⁠—

All of us crammed into one table, laughing too loud in the middle of brunch. Telling each other inside jokes no one else would understand. Jokes that if it were to be heard by someone else, we would all go to jail.

Late nights that turned into early mornings, music playing from someone’s phone, bodies sprawled across couches and floors like we had nowhere else to be.

A trip out of town—windows down, Taylor Swift playing throughout the whole drive and no one complained because she was our common denominator.

Wind rushing in, Mel singing off-key while the rest of us complained at that.

Group photos where no one stood still long enough, because we were too busy laughing before the timer even went off.

Moments that didn’t try to be important—but somehow became my everything.

They were always there…

Messy. Loud. Overbearing, even.

But never absent.

Never indifferent.

They showed up again and again and again…

My constants.

My best friends.

So no, I never believed my friends did it on purpose.

Misguided, but never out of spite.

And no, I will never let them go.

The memories softened at the edges, then slowly slipped away.

And just like that, I was back in the quiet.

Victor sat there, exactly where he had been the entire time.

Unchanged. Composed. Untouched by any of it.

He was saying something—I caught the movement of his lips—but I hadn’t heard every single word.

I was too busy looking at him.

Really looking.

At the way he held himself together so effortlessly.

At how nothing seemed to cling to him—not tension, not conflict, not even the weight of what I had just told him.

Everything rolled off him.

And for a moment, I tried to remember: when did it stop feeling like that for me?