Chapter 4- finding me

My thumb slid across the screen, not to answer, but to send the call to a silence deeper than any voicemail. I powered the phone off.

The world didn’t end. The pavement beneath my feet stayed solid. I took the third step, then the fourth and more.

One minute I walked out of Alberth lounge then the next I was collapsing into the backseat of a pigoet, gasping for air.

The taxi ride home was a blur of streetlights and a low hum of radio talk. I kept the phone off, a dead weight in my lap. The silence it represented felt like the only thing I controlled.

Back in my apartment, the stillness was a physical presence. I toasted a slice of bread, forced down a few bites, the food tasting like ash.

The act felt ridiculous, nourishing a body that housed a completely shattered spirit. But I did it anyways.

The thought of Eleanor’s offer enveloped me,how she spoken, how she looked at me…I didn’t deserve any of this from both Austin and his mother,I thought of her last statement, “He would come begging.”

Then, the itch started.

It began as a faint tremor in my hands, a restlessness in my chest. It was the same compulsion that had driven me to the photo box, to the old text logs.

A need to know, to probe the bruise, to confirm the rot. Eleanor’s words "He will come for you” had set up a terrible expectation in my bones even though I had refused his calls earlier. But what was he doing right now, while I was waiting for his next move?

My phone sat on the kitchen counter, a black rectangle of potential pain. I told myself I was just checking for a work email. I told myself I was strong enough now to be a passive observer.

I was a liar.

I powered it on. The screen lit up, and for a moment, there was only my neutral wallpaper a photo of a blank canvas I had taken in a moment of optimism. Then, the notifications cascaded in. The missed calls and texts from PAT were a dull, expected throb. I ignored them, my finger moving with a will of its own to the blue app icon.

His profile loaded. And there, pinned at the top, was the update.

Posted two hours ago.

It wasn’t a yacht. It was a rooftop bar, all gleaming glass and string lights against the night sky. Austin stood in the center of a group, his arm slung around a guy I recognized as his college friend, Mark.

They were all laughing, faces flushed under the warm light. In his other hand, he held a bottle of beer. On the table in front of them, the remnants of shared plates truffle fries, sliders. Out with the boys.

The caption was casual, effortless, "Much needed laughs with the crew. Good vibes only. #FriendsAreTheBestTherapy”

I stared.

#FriendsAreTheBestTherapy.

While I had been in a gilded prison being offered a blank cheque for my broken heart…

While I had been gasping for air in the back of a taxi…

While I was right now, in my silent apartment, forcing down dry toast and trembling with the aftershocks of his mother’s strike…

He was laughing. He was eating truffle fries. He was broadcasting his resilience, his good vibes, to the world.

The wailing sadness that had been my constant companion for days didn’t rise up. It evaporated. In its place flooded a vacuum, so cold and empty it stole my breath.

This was the reality. Not the dramatic, tear streaked confrontation. Not the betrayal. This. The simple, brutal fact that his life had a pause button for our drama, and then a swift, seamless play button for his own enjoyment. My world had stopped. His had merely skipped a beat.

I looked from the bright, noisy, smiling photo on the screen to the profound silence of my own apartment. The contrast wasn’t just painful, it was absurd. It was the punchline to a joke I had been the butt of, for who knows how long.

A sound left my lips not a sob, but a short, sharp puff of air, almost a laugh. The laugh of someone who has just seen the final, undeniable proof of their own foolishness.

I was the one wailing over spilled milk, while he was already at a different bar, drinking a fresh pint and joking with his friends about the mess left behind.

The pain didn’t vanish, but it crystallized. It hardened from a weeping cloud into a sharp, clear lump of truth lodged in my chest. This photo was the gift Eleanor hadn’t offered,the gift of seeing him clearly, without the filter of my own longing.

He wasn’t heartbroken. He was… fine. He was moving on, hashtag by hashtag.

My thumb moved. Not to like, not to comment, not to scream into the void. I went to his profile. I clicked the three dots. I selected Unfollow. Then, Unfriend.

It wasn’t an act of anger. It was an act of hygiene. Like wiping a dirty mirror clean. I could not see my own reflection through the smudge of his performative recovery.

I powered the phone off again. The screen went black, reflecting my own pale, stunned face back at me.

I got up, walked to the living room, and looked at the shattered glass of the sketched frame I had gathered to replace,I had broken it in a fury, a symbol of destroying our memory. Now, I saw it for what it was, just glass. Just a frame. The memory it held was already being overwritten, by him, with truffle fries and rooftop laughs.

I fetched the dustpan and brush. I knelt and swept up every last sliver. I dumped it in the trash, the soft clink a final, satisfying period.

The crying was over. The wailing was done. He had given me the one thing his apologies and kisses couldn’t, the cold, clean clarity of his indifference. And with it, a strange, quiet power.

The milk was spilled. He had already bought a new drink. It was time, finally, for me to stop staring at the puddle on the floor.

A hollow, restless energy buzzed under my skin. The clarity was clean, but it was also empty. And the silence of the apartment, the silence I had craved now felt like it would swallow me whole.

I needed noise. I needed a crowd to disappear into. I needed to prove, if only to myself, that I could feel something other than this piercing silence.

That was when I thought to visit the club.

The club wasn’t a desire. It wasn’t even fun to me. It was more like a prescription,a massive, auditory antibiotic for the infection of memory. A way to sweep my mind clean through volume.

If I could not find peace in my sanctuary, I would seek comfort in the crowd.

Wipe completely every thought of Austin and his mother.