Valarr should have seen it coming.

Breakups didn’t end cleanly when they’d lasted too long. With Keira, it had turned into a pattern⎯arguments looping back on themselves, apologies that sounded rehearsed, every attempt at fixing things feeling more like preparing for the next fight. By the end, the word “relationship” felt dishonest. Battlefield fit better.

So they ended it.

Three months later, Valarr was still carrying the quiet aftermath⎯no shouting, no slammed doors, just the absence of noise where something loud used to live.

That was when Matarys insisted on lunch.

“It’s just food,” Matarys had said, too casually. “You look like you’re forgetting how to be a person.”

Valarr should have known.

The restaurant was warm, busy enough to feel impersonal. They ordered. They sat. Then Matarys’s girlfriend arrived⎯with someone else. Introductions blurred. Names passed too quickly. And just as quickly, Matarys stood.

“Forgot something in the car,” he said.

He didn’t come back with his girlfriend.

Valarr stared across the table at the stranger left behind⎯someone who looked just as unimpressed with the situation. The voice claim it's not like what they've been planned.

“Same,” Valarr replied.

For a moment, neither tried to fill the silence.

Then Valarr asked, quieter this time⎯

“Was yours complicated too… or just exhausting?” he asked about the latest relationship.