Nine months after, I saw him.
Not in person. But close enough to make my heart stop.
I was scrolling through Instagram—my real account this time, not some burner—when a mutual friend posted a story. A birthday party. Group photos. People laughing, dancing, having the time of their lives.
And there he was.
In the background of one photo. Blurry but unmistakable.
My breath caught. My hands started shaking.
I told myself to swipe past. To keep scrolling. To not let this derail the progress I'd made.
But I couldn't.
I watched that story three times. Paused on the frame where he appeared. Studied his face like it held answers to questions I'd stopped asking months ago.
He looked exactly the same. Happy. Carefree. Untouched.
The rest of the day was a blur.
I went through the motions—class, lunch, studying—but my mind was elsewhere. Back in that loop I thought I'd escaped.
He's still out there. Still living. Still going to parties and smiling like nothing happened.
The unfairness of it made me physically ill.
That night, I did something I'd promised myself I wouldn't do.
I created a new burner account. Just to look. Just to see.
His profile was public. Easy to access. Like he had nothing to hide.
His recent posts were all about his new photography business. Professional photos of models. Captions about perseverance and following your dreams.
One photo from two weeks ago showed him at some networking event. Suit and tie. Looking successful and put-together.
The comments were full of praise:
King behavior
So proud of you bro
Your time is coming!
I felt sick.
I scrolled further back.
I found myself drafting a message.
Not to send. Just to write. To get the words out.
Do you ever think about what you did to me? Do you ever lose sleep over it? Or am I just another girl you hurt and forgot about?
I typed and deleted it five times.
Then I typed something different:
I saw you in someone's story today. You looked happy. I'm glad one of us is.
My thumb hovered over send.
One second. Two. Five.
Then I closed the app. Deleted the burner account. Threw my phone across the room.
My roommate found me crying on my bed an hour later.
"What happened?"
"I saw him. Not in person but... I saw him."
She sat down next to me. "And?"
"And he's fine. Completely fine. Living his best life while I'm still—" I couldn't finish the sentence.
"Still healing," she said gently. "You're still healing. And that's okay."
"It's been nine months. I should be over this by now."
"Says who? Trauma doesn't have a timeline."
"I was doing so well. I went a whole week without thinking about him and then one stupid photo just—"
"Setbacks don't erase progress," she interrupted. "You're allowed to have bad days. That doesn't mean you're back at square one."
But it felt like square one.
The nightmares came back that night. Worse than they'd been in months.
I woke up gasping, drenched in sweat, my hands checking for blood that wasn't there.
My roommate was already awake, reaching across the space between our beds.
"You're okay. You're safe. It was just a dream."
But it didn't feel like just a dream. It felt like my body remembering what my mind had tried to forget.
The next few days were hard.
I caught myself checking that deleted burner account—except I couldn't because I'd deleted it. So I'd create a new one. Look. Delete it again.
The cycle was back. The obsession. The inability to let go.
I was angry at myself for backsliding. For giving him power over me again after I'd worked so hard to take it back.
Kelvin noticed something was off.
We were supposed to study together but I'd been staring at the same page for twenty minutes.
"You good?" he asked.
"Yeah. Just tired."
"You sure? Because you seem... somewhere else."
I looked at him. At his kind, concerned face. And I made a decision.
"Can I tell you something?"
"Of course."
"Something happened to me. Last year. With a guy." I paused, gathering courage. "He hurt me. Badly. And I thought I was healing but lately I've been... struggling."
kelvin's expression shifted. Understanding, not pity.
"I'm sorry that happened to you."
"I saw him recently. Not in person, just in a photo. And it brought everything back."
"That makes sense. Trauma doesn't just disappear because you want it to."
"I just wish I could stop caring. Stop thinking about him. Stop giving him space in my head."
"Maybe the goal isn't to stop caring," kelvin said thoughtfully. "Maybe it's to care less over time. To let it take up less space until one day it's just... something that happened to you, not the thing that defines you."
His words stayed with me.
Something that happened to you, not the thing that defines you.
Was that possible?
That night, I wrote down everything I was feeling.
Not for anyone else. Just for me.
I wrote about seeing his photo. About the backslide. About feeling weak for still caring.
But I also wrote about the progress I'd made. The week without thinking about him. The friendship with kelvin. The good night's sleep. The small victories that proved I was healing, even when it didn't feel like it.
And at the end, I wrote something I'd never written before:
I want to confront him. Not to get closure—I know he can't give me that. But to say what I need to say. To tell him exactly what he did and how it affected me. Not because I think it'll change anything. But because I deserve to speak my truth to his face.
I stared at those words for a long time.
Was I ready for that? Did I really want to see him again?
I didn't know. But the desire was there, growing stronger every day.
Ten months after
I made a decision.
I was going to reach out. Not to start a conversation. Not to rekindle anything. But to ask for one meeting. One conversation where I could say everything I'd been holding in for almost a year.
My roommate thought I was crazy.
"Why would you do that to yourself? You've worked so hard to move on."
"I haven't moved on though. I'm stuck. And I think I need this to unstick myself."
"What if it makes things worse?"
"Then it makes things worse. But at least I'll know I tried."
She didn't look convinced but she didn't try to stop me either.
I drafted the message carefully.
I need to talk to you. Face to face. Not to restart anything or create drama. I just need to say some things I should've said a long time ago. Let me know if you're willing to meet.
Short. Direct. No emotion.
I read it twenty times before sending.
Then, before I could change my mind, I unblocked him and hit send.
The three dots appeared almost immediately.
My heart hammered in my chest. My hands shook so badly I almost dropped my phone.
Then his response came through:
Okay. When and where?
Just like that. No questions. No hesitation. Like he'd been waiting for this too.
We arranged to meet at a neutral location. A café I'd never been to with him. Somewhere public but quiet enough to talk.
Three days from now. Saturday afternoon.
I had three days to prepare. Three days to figure out what I was going to say. Three days to either talk myself out of it or commit fully.
I barely slept those three nights.
My mind raced with possibilities. What would I say? How would he react? What if he didn't care? What if he did care but it didn't change anything?
I wrote out what I wanted to say. Practiced in the mirror. Ran through different scenarios with my roommate.
"Remember," she kept saying. "You're doing this for you. Not for him. Whatever he says doesn't change your truth."
Saturday came.
I changed my outfit four times. Tried to find something that said "I'm strong and over you" while not looking like I was trying too hard.
Eventually settled on jeans and a simple top. Minimal makeup. Hair pulled back.
I wanted to look like myself. Not the broken girl he'd left behind.
Just... me. As I was now.
My roommate walked me to the café.
"You sure about this?"
"No. But I'm doing it anyway."
"Text me if you need an out. I'll call with a fake emergency."
"Okay."
"And remember—you don't owe him anything. Not forgiveness. Not understanding. Nothing."
I nodded, took a deep breath, and walked inside.
I arrived five minutes early and immediately regretted it. Sitting alone, waiting, gave my anxiety too much room to grow.
What was I doing? Why had I reached out? What did I possibly think this would accomplish?
Then he walked in.
And time stopped.
He looked exactly the same. No—he looked better. Like the past ten months had been kind to him in ways they hadn't been to me.
His skin glowed. His hair was freshly cut. He wore a simple white shirt that somehow made him look like he'd stepped out of a magazine.
But it was his eyes that got me. Those eyes. The ones that had first pulled me in back in. Deep brown, warm, like looking at a sunset.
Beautiful.
He was still so beautiful it hurt to look at him.
Every cell in my body wanted to run to him. To throw my arms around him. To bury my face in his chest and pretend the past ten months hadn't happened.
To go back to that night in his car when he'd called me "my baby" and everything felt possible.
But I forced myself to stay seated. Forced myself to remember why I was here.
You're not here for him. You're here for you.
He spotted me and smiled. That same smile that used to make my stomach flip.
It still did.
God help me, it still did.
He walked over with an easy confidence, like we did this all the time. Like we hadn't spent ten months in complete silence.
"Hi," he said, sliding into the seat across from me.
"Hi."
Up close, he was even more devastating. I could smell his cologne—different from before, but still intoxicating. Could see the small scar near his eyebrow that I'd traced with my finger that night we made videos.
Could see the lips that had kissed me, the hands that had touched me, the face that still appeared in my dreams.
"You look good," he said, his eyes traveling over me in a way that felt too familiar.
"Thanks." My voice came out smaller than I intended.
"I was surprised when you reached out. But I'm glad you did."
"Are you?"
"Yeah." He leaned back, completely at ease. "I've been thinking about you. Wondering how you were doing."
Wondering how I was doing. As if he couldn't have just asked. As if he hadn't had my number this whole time.
"I need to talk to you," I said, trying to find my voice. Trying to remember my script. "About what happened. About us."
"Okay." He nodded. "I figured that's what this was about."
"Do you even remember? What happened that night?"
His expression shifted slightly. "Of course I remember. How could I forget?"
"Then you remember that you hurt me."
He was quiet for a moment. "I remember that things got complicated. That we both—"
"No," I interrupted. "Not we. You. You hurt me."
I'd practiced this conversation a hundred times. Knew exactly what I wanted to say. How I wanted to say it.
But sitting here, looking at him, breathing the same air—all my carefully prepared words evaporated.
Because part of me still wanted him. Still remembered the good moments. Still ached for the version of us that could've been.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "For hurting you. I never meant for things to go the way they did."
"But they did. You took my virginity. By force. I tried to stop you and you were stronger."
He flinched. "It wasn't—it was an accident. Things just happened so fast."
"Things don't just happen. You made a choice."
"I was caught up in the moment. We both were."
"I wasn't caught up in anything. I was clear about my boundaries. I told you I wasn't ready."
He looked down at his hands. "I know. And I'm sorry. I've thought about it a lot. About that night. About all of it."
"Have you? Because you moved on pretty quickly."
"That's not fair. You don't know what I was going through."
I almost laughed. "What you were going through? I spent months bleeding, having nightmares, unable to function. But please, tell me about what you were going through."
Silence hung between us.
Then he said: "I missed you. These past ten months. I missed talking to you."
The words hit me like a punch to the gut.
I missed you too, I wanted to say. I missed you so much it physically hurt. I missed you while hating you. I missed you while trying to heal from what you did.
But I didn't say any of that.
"Why didn't you reach out then?" I asked. "If you missed me so much?"
"I thought you needed space. You said you were stepping back."
"I also said I was hurt. That what you did wasn't fair. And you just... let me go."
"What was I supposed to do? Chase after you when you clearly wanted distance?"
"You were supposed to care enough to try. To at least check if I was okay."
He ran his hand over his face. "I did care. I do care."
"Caring isn't just a feeling. It's action. And you didn't do anything."
We sat in silence.
I watched him—really watched him—looking for signs of the person who'd hurt me. But all I saw was the person I'd fallen for. The charming smile, the pretty boy face, the eyes that still made my heart race.
How could someone so beautiful have caused so much pain?
"I want to make this right," he said finally. "Tell me what you need. Tell me how to fix this."
"You can't fix it. What's done is done."
"So what, we just... end like this? After everything?"
"After everything?" I repeated. "What everything? A few weeks of talking? Three nights together where you hurt me each time? That's not everything. That's barely anything."
"It felt like more than that to me."
"Did it? Because when I asked for clarity, when I asked what we were doing, you said you wanted casual. You used your cousin and your business as excuses."
"I was scared," he admitted. "Of commitment. Of what you made me feel."
What you made me feel.
God, I'd wanted to hear those words ten months ago. Wanted confirmation that what we had was real, that I wasn't crazy for feeling what I felt.
But now, sitting here, they felt empty.
Because feelings without action are just words. And words were all he'd ever really given me.
"I need you to understand something," I said. "What you did that first night changed me. It broke something in me. And I've spent ten months trying to put myself back together. Trying to heal from what you did."
"I know. And I'm sorry. I wish I could take it back."
"But you can't. So where does that leave us?"
He looked at me with those sunset eyes. "Where do you want it to leave us?"
The question hung in the air.
Where did I want this to leave us?
Part of me wanted to scream at him. To tell him exactly how many nights I'd cried over him. How many times I'd checked his social media. How thoroughly he'd destroyed my sense of safety.
But another part—the part that still remembered his laugh, his touch, the way he made me feel special—wanted something else entirely.
"I don't know," I whispered. "I don't know what I want anymore."
"Can I tell you what I want?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
He reached across the table, his hand hovering near mine but not quite touching.
"I want another chance," he said. "I know I messed up. I know I hurt you. But I've changed. I've grown. And I think... I think we could be good together. If you'd let me prove it to you."
My heart stopped.
Another chance. The thing I'd wanted so desperately ten months ago when he said he just wanted casual.
And now here he was, offering it like a gift.
"I don't know if I can do this," I said.
"Just think about it. That's all I'm asking. Don't decide right now. Just... think about it."
He stood to leave, then paused.
"I really have missed you," he said softly. "That's the truth."
Then he walked out, leaving me sitting there alone.
My phone buzzed. A text from my roommate: How did it go?
I stared at the message, unable to form a response.
Because I didn't know how it went. I'd come here to tell him off, to get closure, to finally put this chapter behind me.
Instead, I was more confused than ever.
He wanted another chance. He'd apologized. He said he'd changed.
And God help me, part of me wanted to believe him.