Page 7 of A Solid Guide to Surviving a Situationship

People didn’t come here to rush. They came to sit. To read. To disappear for a while.

Normally, that worked on me.

Today… not so much.

I took a sip and opened the book I was supposed to be reading, but my mind wasn’t in the pages. Instead, it was stuck on a phrase I’d said more times that I cared to admit.

“It was only three months!”

Out loud, in group chats, to strangers online, to friends who probably rolled their eyes more than once. I even said it to my reflection in the mirror—not that the mirror ever gave good feedback.

“It was only three months!”

I said it with the practiced cadence of someone trying to convince a jury. Something I could tell myself wasn’t a big deal even though it felt like a big deal to every nerve in my body.

Maybe I believed the phrase more when I first said it… back when the wound was still raw, bleeding into everything else. But five months later, it had become more of a mantra than an explanation. A shield. A rehearsed lie I told myself so many times that sometimes I forgot I’d ever said anything else.

I looked up, as if the skies could deliver an answer.

I looked around.

A woman inside the shop flipped a page.

A man beside a table laughed softly.

The shop owner fixed the shelf carefully.

No epiphanies.

But then, without permission, my mind went back.

It always started the same way.

An Instagram notification.

He had replied to one of my stories—a lazy selfie I posted at midnight because I couldn’t sleep.

Victor: You are so cute.

I remembered staring at the message longer than necessary, my eternal cynic mode activating immediately.

Cute? That was suspicious already.

I checked his profile. Private, but curated. Good smile. Decent captions. Mutuals… I did not trust that much. The kind of guy who knew how to exist online without revealing too much. But he had the kind of face that made my heart react before my brain could intervene.

I didn’t believe him at first. Men didn’t just call you cute without wanting something. Usually something that happened in the dark… in bed.

Compliments were currency. Attention was leverage. I knew that. I was thirty-four, not seventeen.

So I replied casually. Detached. Strategic.

But we kept talking… and talking.

And then two weeks later, I was live on TikTok, talking to my followers, performing the polished, charming version of myself I knew so well. And then he joined the live. I saw his username enter the room.

And then suddenly, my phone buzzed.

A text came from him.