It’s always like this with him, and if I’m being honest with myself, it has been for as long as I can remember. There’s never any genuine conversation beforehand, no emotional runway, no effort to meet me halfway, no sense of intention that extends beyond whatever moment he wants to exist in. There’s just the vibration of my phone, his name glowing across the screen, and the way my body reacts before my mind even has a chance to form an objection. I don’t weigh the decision. I don’t debate it. I don’t slow myself down long enough to remember the promises I’ve made to myself before. I just go, almost instinctively, like muscle memory has taken control and my heart is still operating under a rulebook my brain has already outgrown.

By the time I arrive, everything already feels familiar in a way that sits somewhere between comforting and suffocating. The quiet hum of the room feels unchanged, like time folds in on itself when I step inside. The air carries the same weight it always has, thick with unspoken history and unacknowledged tension. And the way he looks at me when I walk in, as if the space between our last moment and this one simply never existed, makes the lines blur even further. It’s as if the world outside this room doesn’t matter. As if time hasn’t stretched between us. As if we are still exactly who we were when this all began.

And for a small fragile moment, the kind that feels warm even though it cuts if you hold it too tightly, it becomes easy to sink back into the version of us that feels familiar, even if it was never real enough to hold onto. Even if it was always more feeling than foundation.

We haven’t been together in any real way for a long time. Not in the kind of way that deserves a title or carries a promise. Not in the kind of way that means something stable or safe. But that has never stopped us from orbiting each other, from returning to the same cycle like gravity is pulling us back to a place we both know doesn’t actually hold us. It hasn’t stopped the late-night calls that feel heavier than they should, the quiet moments that linger too long, or the way I show up like my presence might somehow transform into something more solid if I just keep choosing to be here.

And that is the part that hurts the most.

Because sitting here now, watching him move around this room like I’ve always belonged in it, like my presence requires no explanation, no definition, no acknowledgment of what I am or what I’m not to him, I start to understand something that’s been sitting in my chest for a long time. The real issue isn’t him. It’s that I have convinced myself that this space, this role, this version of us means more than it ever has.

There is no title. There is no direction. There is no plan, no commitment, no clarity. There is no place for me in his life that exists beyond this room and these moments.

And yet here I am, over and over again... 

To Be Continued...maybe?