Chapter 13: The Ones Who Pretend Not to Care

It's funny, isn't it?

How the ones who act like they've moved on are always the ones who look back the most.

They'll laugh louder.

Post pictures with people they don't even like.

Fill up their feed with places they never cared to go.

All to prove a point.

To you.

To themselves.

To the silence that replaced your name in their phone.

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He looked happy the last time I saw him.

Too happy.

The kind of happy that feels rehearsed.

Like he'd practiced it in the mirror a dozen times before showing up.

Like he needed everyone else to believe it—so maybe he could believe it, too.

He threw his head back when he laughed.

Wore a shirt I once said looked good on him.

Had a girl on his arm who smiled like she didn't know she was being used.

I watched from across the room.

And it didn't hurt the way I thought it would.

Because I'd already grieved the version of him I loved.

And that guy?

He didn't exist anymore.

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I don't think people ever really get over the ones who shook their core.

They just learn how to walk around the damage.

Paint over the cracks.

Call it growth.

Call it healing.

Call it whatever makes it easier to breathe.

But every now and then, in the quiet of a sleepless night or the middle of a song they didn't expect to hear—

the truth creeps in.

He thinks I don't know.

But I do.

I see the way his gaze falters when someone says my name.

The way he still wears that chain I once touched.

The way he scrolls through old pictures and locks his phone like the memories might burn his fingertips.

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The ones who pretend not to care?

They care the most.

They just don't know how to say it without breaking.

And him?

He was always scared of breaking.

Which is why he let me do it first.