I Spent Ten Years Loving a Man Who Never Existed

I stared at my phone for the third time that morning. The screen stayed dark. No new messages. I set it face-down on my desk and tried to focus on the textbook in front of me, but the words blurred together like watercolors in the rain.

Bailee's phone buzzed from her side of the room. She glanced at it, her expression tightening for just a moment before she tucked it into her pocket. She'd been doing that a lot since the restaurant. Counting the buzzes, I realized there had been at least six since I'd woken up.

'Do you want me to turn it off?' Bailee asked, catching me watching her.

I shook my head. 'He's going to keep texting anyway.'

She nodded and went back to her notes. We both knew what the texts said. I didn't need to see them to know they were following the pattern—casual at first, then defensive, then wounded. The entitled disbelief of someone who had never been told no.

My phone buzzed. I flinched. Bailee reached over and picked it up before I could.

'He says you're overreacting,' she said quietly, reading the screen. 'That it was all Francesca's idea and he never meant for it to go this far.' Her thumb hovered over the delete button.

I looked at her. 'You don't have to do that.'

'I know.' She deleted it anyway. 'But you don't need to see them.'

The buzzing continued. Each time, Bailee would check the message, her jaw tightening, and then delete it without reading it aloud. I didn't ask what the later ones said. I didn't want to know if they were getting more desperate, more entitled, more convinced that I owed him my forgiveness.

I was grateful she never asked me to stop her.

* * *

The library felt different on Tuesday. The same tables, the same fluorescent lights, the same smell of old paper and industrial cleaner. But I felt like a different person walking through the familiar stacks.

I was twenty minutes late. I'd almost turned around three times on the walk over—convincing myself I was too tired, too raw, too anything to face even the quiet routine of study session. But something pulled me forward. Maybe it was the thought of letting Garrett take this from me too.

Soren was already there, sitting in the same chair he always took, the one with the best light from the window. He had the same textbook open to the same chapter we'd been working through last week, as if nothing had changed. As if my entire world hadn't tilted off its axis.

He looked up when I sat down. His eyes were the same—calm, present, asking nothing. He didn't say, 'How are you?' or 'I heard what happened.' He just nodded once, the way he always did when I arrived, and slid his notes across the table.

'We left off on chapter fourteen,' he said.

I stared at the notes. They were neat, organized, with color-coded highlights and margins full of additional examples. He'd clearly prepared them before knowing whether I'd show up at all.

'Thank you,' I said. My voice sounded strange to my own ears.

He nodded again and opened his own book. 'We can start with the protein synthesis pathways if that makes sense.'

I opened my textbook. The pages were familiar. The work was familiar. For the first time in days, something felt solid.

* * *

I started taking the long way to my classes. The route through the humanities quad added ten minutes to my commute, but it meant avoiding the main walkway where Garrett liked to sit on the benches with his friends. I started eating lunch at the coffee shop on the edge of campus, where the tables were small and tucked into corners, instead of the dining hall with its open seating and constant movement.

I skipped Professor Chen's lecture on Thursday. Garrett and I shared that class—had shared it, I corrected myself. We'd never actually spoken much during it, but knowing he was somewhere in that room, maybe watching me, maybe talking about me, felt unbearable.

I told myself I was being rational. That I was taking care of myself. But the truth was, I was shrinking again, making myself smaller, avoiding the spaces where I might be seen.

Soren noticed. Of course he noticed.

The first time, I was leaving the library late, the heavy evening air settling over the campus like a blanket. I was walking toward the math building to grab my mail when I heard footsteps behind me.

'Same route tomorrow?' Soren's voice was quiet, steady.

I turned. He was a few steps back, hands in his pockets, looking at me with that careful attention I'd grown used to.

'I didn't know you were behind me,' I said.

'I wasn't until just now.' He fell into step beside me. 'I have a meeting in the math building tomorrow. Seven-thirty?'

It wasn't a question that needed an answer. It was an offer, wrapped in something that looked like coincidence.

The next morning, he was there, leaning against the railing outside my dorm, scrolling through something on his phone. He looked up when he saw me and straightened.

'Good morning,' he said, as if this was normal. As if he always waited for people outside their dorms at seven-thirty in the morning.

'Good morning,' I replied, and we walked together across the quiet campus.

He never mentioned why he was suddenly walking with me. He never said, 'I know what happened, let me help.' He just appeared, consistently, reliably, until the sight of him became something I expected, something I counted on.

And slowly, I stopped taking the long way.