Page 46 of A Solid Guide to Surviving a Situationship

“God,” I muttered to myself. “She’s so convincing.”

The feeling in my chest tightened again.

But Victor wasn’t texting me.

Victor wasn’t coming back tonight.

And so, I hit Install. The circle began to fill. Slowly. Painfully slow—like it was giving me time to change my mind.

But I didn’t. I just watched it complete. Because doing something—anything—felt better than lying there waiting to fall apart.

A few seconds later, I opened the app. And I had to admit, it felt familiar, like a place I had outgrown. I had it together before, back when I thought self-love meant no longer needing this kind of validation.

Apparently, self-love had a curfew.

10:00PM.

But this was the part where I could still back out. Delete the app. Go to sleep and cry like a normal person.

Instead, I tapped Sign up. Entered a few fields until I reached the part where I needed to upload a profile picture.

I scrolled through my camera roll for half a second before deciding that I needed a fresh shot of me—something without my face, just my body, something vague and indistinct. I wanted it to be just enough to exist, but not enough to be known.

Exactly how Grindr was supposed to work.

So I took off my shirt, and then opened the Camera app.

God damn! I knew it would sound really narcissistic, but I looked like a million-dollar catch. For a brief second, it shifted something in me, lifting my mood just enough to remind me of who I was.

I wasn’t just someone who got left. I was someone people wanted.

Once satisfied with the photo, I uploaded it on Grindr.

And just like that, I was back.

The first thing I did the next morning was reach for my phone. Not to check the time but to check Grindr.

With just one tap, my lock screen lit up with twenty notifications.

Twenty new messages from random guys.

I blinked, suddenly more awake than I had been all morning.

And then, there it was—the thrill of validation. The quiet, immediate reassurance that I was desired.

I loaded the app and tapped into my inbox, my chest lifting just a little as I scrolled through the messages:

“Can you host?”

“You’re hot!”

“Damn! That bod!”

“Looking?”

“Free now?”

I paused, because they all read exactly how I expected them to be: fragments.