On the surface, she was handling it. She told people she’d learned something: she deserved someone who was sure about her, not someone who needed his ex back in town to figure out what he wanted. Her friends reminded her that his confusion was never about her not being enough. She even told herself she wasn’t angry at him or at Brianna, because feelings are complicated and sometimes love just doesn’t make things work.
Three months in, a silver Honda drove past her favorite coffee shop window and her stomach dropped. She had an essay on European history due the next day, but she stared at the empty street, half hoping she’d imagined it, knowing she hadn’t. The cursor blinked on a blank page while her mind ran through the options: the bookstore, a meeting with someone, a meeting with Brianna.
An hour later her roommate Valerie dropped into the seat across from her, took one look at her face, and ordered two hot chocolates without asking anything. She waited until her friend was ready. What came out was the secret she’d been keeping for weeks: she’d blocked Jerome, but she kept checking his social media from a friend’s account, and every night she logged into a fake one she’d made, hunting for clues about whether he was with Brianna. Valerie wasn’t shocked. She just said, gently, that maybe she wasn’t as over it as she kept telling everyone.
That night she sat on her bed with her thumb over the delete button, her heart racing like she was ripping off a bandage. She pressed it, and the account vanished. The urge to make another hit immediately. Instead she went to the living room, where Valerie had queued up a terrible reality show about people marrying strangers, and they watched three episodes with popcorn while she reached for her phone every five minutes and found nothing to check.
The next morning her older sister, Tiana, called while she was pouring cereal and asked whether she was really okay or just pretending. The worry in her voice broke through, and she cried right there in the kitchen as it all came out: the fake account, the car, the shame of still missing someone who couldn’t choose her. Tiana said three months isn’t long for a two-year relationship and suggested the campus counselor. She wanted to say other people had real problems, but Tiana told her pain doesn’t have to win a contest to count. By the end of the call, she’d agreed to look into it.
Thursday Nights and a 6 A.M. Elliptical
The counseling form took three tries. She typed breakup and emotional processing, deleted it, and wrote relationship issues instead because it sounded less dramatic. The receptionist who called two days later was kind and didn’t make her explain anything over the phone. Her first session barely lasted five minutes before she was crying, then apologizing for crying, then crying about apologizing. The therapist handed her tissues and told her grief over a relationship is real grief, with no timeline and no wrong way to feel.
Matthew, a friend she’d made through Jerome, texted to ask about lunch, and she almost said no before realizing she was letting Jerome take her friends along with everything else. Lunch was surprisingly normal. When she finally asked whether he still talked to Jerome, he said he was friends with both of them and refused to carry messages either way, a boundary she respected even while wanting to ask if Jerome seemed happy. He also mentioned that everyone missed her at Thursday game night, the pizza-and-board-games ritual she’d quit without really deciding to.
She went the next week after changing outfits twice and talking herself out of it three times. Nobody mentioned Jerome. Someone handed her a controller, someone ordered pizza, and she laughed at the same dumb jokes as always. By the end of the night her face hurt from smiling.
Then she tried the campus gym at six in the morning, something she’d wanted to do for months but Jerome never liked mornings. For thirty minutes on an elliptical she thought about nothing but moving and breathing. By Friday she’d been three times, and at the water fountain she ran into Kellen from her biology class. They compared notes on the genetics unit for ten minutes, and he didn’t seem to know a thing about her breakup, which felt like a small vacation.
One Saturday set her back. Valerie came in holding her phone, and she took it knowing what it was: a photo of Jerome and Brianna across a restaurant table, him laughing. It felt like being punched. She spent the weekend in bed, angry at Jerome for moving on so fast, at Brianna for existing, and at herself for still caring. On Monday her door flew open and Tiana stood there, having driven up without warning, and she pulled the covers off, took her to get a haircut, and told her over lunch that she was allowed to have bad days but couldn’t live in them.
A Party, a Phone Number, and One Honest Question
In therapy she said the photo made her feel like she’d wasted two years. The therapist asked what she’d learned in that time and helped her see it as two years of figuring out what she did and didn’t want. Her homework was to list what she wanted in her next relationship that she hadn’t had with Jerome. Meanwhile Kellen asked her to be study partners, and she said yes right away.