I nodded once, turned around, and walked away.
On the bus ride back to my apartment, I stared out the window and counted stops so I wouldn’t cry in front of strangers. The ache in my chest wasn’t just grief. It was dismissal. Erasure. The sudden feeling that a life I thought I belonged to had been quietly edited to remove me.
When I got home, I collapsed onto the couch and let the tears come in silence, the way I’d learned to do growing up. Quietly. Neatly. Without making a scene.
Three days passed.
