You get home long after dark. The clock glowing in the corner of the room tells you it is 1:22 am. You slip out of your work clothes, covered in a days’ worth of dust and coffee stains and throw them in the direction of your hamper. You haphazardly tie your hair up, splash water on your face and swish a small mouthful of mouthwash around in your mouth. You take an old t-shirt from the top of your clean laundry chair, neatly folded clothing you have yet to put away, and shrug it on. You rummage around in a drawer for some underwear, and then shut your blinds and collapse into bed, tugging the blanket around your shoulders.

This is the time of night he would text you. It sounds sweet, but it’s not. It was always about other girls—prettier girls, more successful girls, better girls, but you were so patient with him. You waited for Sehun’s messages with gentle eyes and a sympathetic smile and open arms, and a hidden aching heart, but you waited. You waited because, oh god, you loved him even though he was kind of a douche and even though he couldn’t be trusted with his own life, let alone yours, even though a million other things. You loved him even though he seemed to love everyone except for you.

First it was one of your good friends. She looked remarkably like you, really, just skinnier and shorter and a little gentler. You had fallen for Sehun months and months before and she had just gotten out of a relationship that she had ruined by being petty. But you were happy for them, you know? You were so happy, you laughed with them and pretended that you were going to steal her away from him, that if you three went out shopping, he’d be the third wheel. You happily gossiped with her about how she’d spent the weekend up at his cabin. She was his first so she had to teach him and she laughed with you about how clumsy he really is, can you believe it? and you shook your head and giggled along with her because you weren’t supposed to know that he was always tripping over his limbs despite the fact that he danced and danced well. You weren’t supposed to know the curve of his waist and neck and jaw, each wrinkle of his eyes when he smiled. So you giggled and said really? that’s so crazy, he’s graceful onstage because you couldn’t say that you’d memorized him long before she saw her way out of her first relationship.

Then it was the pretty theater girl. She met him at a studio; her voice had caught the ear of a couple of agencies in town. She was even skinnier and shorter and gentler than your friend and both of you loathed that you could not hate her. She was so kind and sweet to everyone, and yet you knew she knew she was just using him. He fell and made her his whole world, but she was always looking up. Away. At night you imagined clawing her stupid eyes out because you would have given everything to be in her position, and you would have only looked at him. But she didn’t, and it absolutely killed you. When she finally dumped him, he got drunk and called you and cried to you about how he gave her everything and how he couldn’t believe that a) she did that to him and b) he still loved her. You could only nod and tell him he would find someone else. You comforted him, offered to let him come over even though it was late and you had work the next day. He showed up at your door and you let him in, made him drink water and eat little bits of food so that he wouldn’t be hungover the next morning and hurt even more. You let him cry on your lap until your shirtsleeves were soaked with his tears. When he passed out on your bed, you only tucked him in, and slept on the couch. The whole time, all you wanted to do was kiss his forehead.

And then it all became a blur. He’d meet a model or an actress and hook up with her and then come to you the next morning boasting afterglow and swearing up and down that she was the one. Two weeks later, she had smashed his heart to bits and he was high and texting you that he had lost the love of his life. And sometimes you wanted to say that you’d been losing the love of your life over and over and over again for the past year but you didn’t. You knew it was all his fault, that if he wasn’t such a desperate mess all the time, if he’d look past a girl’s waist and hair that maybe he could find someone, even if it wasn't you, that could treat him well, but it didn’t feel that way most of the time. Most of the time you got mad at those other girls even though you knew that if you had any smarts you’d do the exact same thing to him and never look back. But you were never too smart, until recently.

And now. You hate yourself for having put up with it all. For sticking around as long as you did, for growing accustomed to those swooping blows to the gut every time he came to you with tears in his eyes and a cryptic message about hurting himself every time one of those relationships didn’t work out because oh god you had loved him for so long and had never thought about taking leftover pain medicine from when you got your wisdom teeth removed or drinking until you had to have your stomach pumped or getting crossed every night so that you wouldn’t have to care because that was the thing, you loved caring about him. And you hate yourself for that, too. But most of all, you hate that even now, even after a long day when your body and your mind are both so weary, all you can think about is him. Still. But the last time he came crying to you, you just couldn’t do it. You’d always been so kind, but not this time. Not anymore.

Your phone lights up on your desk. You itch to see if it’s from him, but you force yourself to stay under the covers. The light from your phone fades, and you finally drift into sleep.

The next morning, you see that it was a snapchat from him, but you are way too concerned with the email your boss just sent you to have time to open it and deal with that kind of mess, now. You leave it unopened and rush into the office to work on some problem that’s manifested itself overnight. By the end of the day, you’ve forgotten all about it. Just as, you’re quite sure, he’s forgotten all about you, you think when you remember it a couple of days later. He sent it to you by mistake, you tell yourself. Don’t bother opening it. 

You stare at it anyway, that little blue chat square, and then go into settings and clear the conversation entirely without checking to see what it was.

You never get a message from him again, and maybe, you tell yourself on lonely 1am nights when your heart feels like it’s trying to drown itself in your lungs, maybe it’s for the best after all.