Two months—such a short time to forget someone, yet long enough to learn how to live around the absence. We still move within the same walls, like strangers rehearsing the past in silence. I see you in the reflection of glass doors, in brief glances you never notice. I don’t expect you to.

When I left, you were falling apart. I remember that version of you—tired, brittle, trying to hold everything together while I stood there, useless. I told myself I was doing the right thing, that leaving would spare us both from more damage. It was a clean exit on the surface, but it wasn’t mercy—it was avoidance. I know that now.

Coming back wasn’t a choice, it was necessity. Same company, same department. Life doesn’t bend for heartbreak; it just places you back where it hurts the most and waits to see if you’ve learned restraint. So I stay composed. I speak when needed. I look through you instead of at you. My voice stays even, my smile brief.

You don’t want my presence—I can feel it in how you breathe differently when I enter the room. Still, I exist near you. Quietly. Like an echo that refuses to fade completely. I don’t ache the way I used to; it’s something duller now, settled deeper, almost comfortable.

Maybe that’s what’s left of love when it’s past saving—not longing, not pain, just a quiet awareness that once, it was real… and now, it’s just there.

One day.

It’s ironic, really. Out of everyone on the marketing team—six of us, barely holding projects together—they paired us. Again. They say it’s because we “work well together,” that our chemistry reads naturally on camera. Maybe once it did. Maybe that’s what makes it worse now.

When we stand side by side, it’s muscle memory—how to face the lights, how to tilt our heads just enough to look approachable, how to sell something we don’t believe in anymore. The camera shutters keep flashing, and each click sounds like a reminder of what we used to be.

You don’t look at me. You don’t have to. The silence between us says everything—sharp, polite, unspoken. Our smiles are thin, calculated. Just enough to pass as professional. I can feel the distance even when our arms almost brush. It’s microscopic, but it’s there—intentional.

I can tell the team senses it too. The way they talk quieter when they see us, the way they pretend not to look. They know we used to be something real, something that didn’t need direction to look convincing. Now it’s all angles and restraint. We’ve become the kind of story people whisper about, not out of malice, but curiosity. What happened?