CHAPTER FOUR
The Weight of Silence
The days after feel like moving underwater.
Everything is muffled, distant, harder to navigate. I go through the motions ,wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, answer my mother's questions with vague reassurances.
"Are you feeling okay?"
"Yeah, just tired."
"You seem quiet."
"I'm fine."
The lies come easily now.
What I don't say is that sleep barely comes anymore. That food tastes like nothing. That the silence in my room feels louder than any noise.
I delete social media apps from my phone.
Not dramatically. Not with some grand declaration.
I just… remove them.
Because every time I opened them, I saw their faces. Photos from weeks ago, smiling, tagged in places I didn't know they'd been together. Comments I'd liked without thinking twice. Evidence of a reality I'd been too naive to see.
So I stopped looking.
My phone becomes lighter. Quieter.
And somehow, that makes everything worse.
Because now there's nothing to distract me from the thoughts circling endlessly in my head.
How long has it been going on?
Were there signs I missed?
Did other people know?
The questions don't have answers. And even if they did, I'm not sure I'd want them.
School becomes a minefield.
I see her in the hallway on the third day.
She spots me first, eyes widening, lips parting as though she's about to call out.
I turn and walk the other direction before she can.
My heart pounds the entire way to class, hands shaking so badly I have to shove them into my pockets.
I hear whispers.
Not loud. Not obvious.
Just quiet murmurs that stop when I get too close. Eyes that linger a second too long. Conversations that shift topics abruptly when I approach.
They know.
Of course they know.
Small towns don't keep secrets. And apparently, I was the last one to find out.
I stopped eating lunch in the cafeteria.
Instead, I find a quiet corner in the library, tucked between shelves where no one thinks to look. I bring a book I don't actually read, flipping pages at random intervals so it looks like I'm busy.
It's easier this way.
No forced smiles. No awkward questions. No pretending everything is fine when it's not.
He tries to talk to me once.
I'm at my locker, grabbing books for next period, when I feel someone standing too close behind me.
I don't have to turn around to know it's him.
"Can we talk?" he asks quietly.
I close my locker, gripping my books tighter. "No."
"Please. Just for a minute."
I finally looked at him.
He looks tired. Guilty. Like he hasn't been sleeping either.
Good.
"There's nothing to talk about," I say flatly.
"I know you're upset"
"I'm not upset," I interrupt. "I'm done."
His expression shifts,surprise, maybe, or hurt. As if he actually expected something different.
"That's it?" he asks. "You're not even going to hear me out?"
I almost laughed.
"What do you want me to say?" I ask. "Is that okay? That I forgive you? That we can go back to how things were?"
He doesn't answer.
"You made a choice," I continued, voice steady despite the tightness in my chest. "And now I'm making mine."
I walk away before he can respond.
My hands don't start shaking until I'm halfway down the hall.
My mother notices something is wrong.
She doesn't push, but I can see it in the way she watches me during dinner. The way she lingers in the doorway when she says goodnight. The way she hesitates before asking if I want to talk.
"I'm fine," I tell her every time.
And every time, I can see she doesn't believe me.
But she doesn't press.
And I'm grateful for that.
Because I don't know how to explain what I'm feeling.
It's not just heartbreak.
It's something deeper. Something that sits heavy in my chest and makes it hard to breathe sometimes.
It's the realization that the person I thought I knew never really existed.
That the future I'd been planning was built on nothing solid.
That trust, once broken, doesn't just heal with time.
At night, when the house is quiet and there's nothing left to distract me, I let myself think about the party.
About the bottle.
About the choice I made that everyone said was wrong.
And for the first time, I wonder if maybe it wasn't.
Not because anything happened in those seven minutes.
But because in that brief moment, someone looked at me like I was more than an assumption.
Like I was a person capable of making my own choices.
Even if those choices didn't make sense to anyone else.
I think about the way he asked if I was sure.
The way he gave me space to say no.
The way he didn't treat my decision like it was something to be managed or corrected.
And I realize that I can't remember the last time my boyfriend made me feel that way.
The thought should hurt.
But instead, it just feels true.
Graduation is approaching.
Everyone else is excited talking about parties, trips, celebrations. The end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
I feel none of it.
I submit my university acceptance paperwork mechanically, filling out forms with the same careful precision I use for everything else.
Name. Date of birth. Program. Residence preferences.
It feels surreal.
Like I'm watching someone else's life unfold from a distance.
My acceptance letter is still in my desk drawer.
I haven't looked at it since the day I found them together.
But it's there.
A reminder that no matter what happened, I still earned this.
And maybe that's enough for now.
One afternoon, I ran into his uncle at the grocery store.
I'm in the cereal aisle, staring blankly at boxes I don't actually want, when I see him rounding the corner.
Our eyes meet.
For a second, I consider walking away.
But something keeps me rooted in place.
He approaches slowly, cautiously, as though I'm something fragile that might break if handled wrong.
"How are you?" he asks quietly.
The question is so simple. So genuine.
And suddenly, I feel tears prickling behind my eyes.
I blink them back quickly. "I'm fine."
He doesn't look convinced.
"I heard what happened," he says after a pause.
Of course he did.
I nod, not trusting my voice.
"I'm sorry," he adds.
And the strange thing is, he sounds like he means it.
Not in the performative way people do when they don't know what else to say. But in a way that feels real. Like he actually cares.
"It's not your fault," I manage.
"No," he agrees. "But I'm still sorry."
We stand there for a moment, surrounded by brightly coloured cereal boxes and fluorescent lights.
"For what it's worth," he says finally, "you made the right choice that night."
I look up at him, confused.
"Not the choice everyone expected," he clarifies. "But the right one for you."
I don't know what to say to that.
He offers a small, sad smile. "Take care of yourself."
Then he's gone, disappearing around the corner before I can respond.
I stand there long after he's left, his words echoing in my head.
The right choice for you.
That night, I pulled out my journal for the first time in weeks.
I stare at the blank page for a long time before I finally start writing.
The words come slowly at first, then faster, until I'm filling pages with everything I haven't let myself say out loud.
About the betrayal.
About loneliness.
About the strange, hollow space where my future used to be.
But also about something else.
Something quieter.
A growing awareness that maybe,just maybe I don't have to be who I was before.
Maybe this ending is also a beginning.
That maybe the person I'm becoming doesn't need to be defined by who stayed or who left.
I write until my hand cramps.
Until the sky outside my window starts to lighten.
Until the weight in my chest feels just a little bit lighter.
And when I finally close the journal, I realize something.
I don't know who I'll be when I walk onto that university campus.
But for the first time in weeks, I'm curious to find out.