Chapter 61 Chapter Fifty-Seven
{Few days later}
Alex’s point of view
Nothing dramatic has happened the past following days.
The world didn't split open. The sky didn't fall.
My phone didn't light up with messages demanding explanations.
I woke up to the same pale light through my blinds, the same ache in my shoulders from sleeping wrong, the same low hum of life continuing like it always did.
It felt like an insult.
I lay there staring at the ceiling, waiting for the weight to hit me the way it had that night.
I was waiting for the panic or the regret or something loud enough to justify how hollow I felt.
Instead, there was just this quiet, gnawing awareness.
Demi was still ignoring me, and it hurts to see him ignore my stares in public or act like we weren’t best friends, but just ordinary friends.
It feels like I have no idea how to exist with that.
I told myself it didn't matter.
That just both had to cool off. That things would settle back into whatever they were before everything got complicated.
And that we would be best of friends in a matter of time.
Friends.
That was the word I kept reaching for.
Just friends.
I repeated it in my head as I got dressed, as I brushed my teeth, as I checked my phone and pretended not to notice that his name wasn't lighting up my screen.
We are just friends.
By the time I walked into school, the lie already felt thin.
I saw him before he saw me.
Demi stood near the lockers with a couple of our friends, laughing at something one of them had said.
Everything looked normal, too normal.
If I didn't know better, I would've thought nothing had changed between us.
But I did know better.
His laugh cut off the second his eyes landed on me.
It wasn't dramatic.
There was no glaring, no visible flinch. Just a subtle pause-half a beat too long-before he looked away again.
Something twisted in my chest.
I walked over anyway, forcing my feet forward like this was just another day.
"Hey," I said, my palms got sweaty as I stood in front of Demi.
"Hey," Demi replied.
The word landed flat between us.
Our friends didn't notice at first. They kept talking, kept joking, kept moving around us like we were still part of the same easy rhythm.
But I noticed everything.
The way Demi didn't want to meet my eyes.
The way he angled his body slightly away from me as if telling me he didn’t want me so close by.
The way the space between us felt intentional.
I tried to fill it.
"So, uh," I said, hating how awkward I sounded, "you good?"
He nodded once. "Yeah, I’m good."
That was it.
No follow up, no you? No sarcasm. No warmth, no nothing.
It shouldn't have bothered me. I was the one who said we couldn't be together.
I was the one who didn't know what he felt.
So why did it feel like rejection?
We walked to class together because that's what we'd always done. Side by side.
But it wasn't the same, it didn’t feel the same.
Our shoulders didn't brush.
Our steps weren't in sync.
The silence between us wasn't comfortable, but it was tense, fragile, like one wrong word could crack it open.
"Did you finish the assignment?" I asked finally.
"Yeah," Demi replied shortly
"Cool."
Another dead end.
By the time we reached our classroom, I felt like I'd run a mile without moving anywhere.
Days passed like that.
On the surface, everything looked fine. Demi showed up. I showed up. We sat in the same places, laughed at the same jokes, existed in the same spaces.
But nothing lined up the way it used to.
Every interaction felt slightly off, like we were both reading from scripts that no longer fit.
We avoided being alone together. Avoided touching. Avoided anything that might remind us of what we'd been.
And people started to notice.
"You guys good?" one of our friends asked one afternoon, eyes flicking between us. "You've been... weird."
"Yeah we’re fine," I said too quickly.
Demi nodded. "Yeah, I’m just tired that’s all."
It wasn't convincing.
At home, it wasn't any better.
My mom asked why I was quieter than usual.
My younger sister asked why I kept staring at my phone like I was waiting for it to explode, but I brushed them off, retreated into my room, told myself I was just stressed.
But every night, when things finally went quiet, my thoughts circled back to him.
To the way his voice sounded when he said he loved me.
To the way he'd walked away.
I told myself missing him didn't mean anything.
People missed friends all the time.
But this felt different.
This felt like standing in a room where someone had moved all the furniture an inch to the left. Familiar, but wrong enough that I kept bumping into things.
A week in, Demi stopped sitting next to me altogether.
He chose different seats. Different routes. Different conversations with different people.
That hurt more than I expected it to.
I caught myself watching him laugh with other people, wondering if he looked freer without me hovering at the edge of his life.
Maybe this was better for him.
That thought should've brought relief.
It didn't.
By the second week, the tension was thick enough that even teachers noticed.
"You two have a falling out?" one of them joked when Demi asked to switch lab partners.
Demi smiled politely. "No, just wanted to mix things up."
I didn't smile though, it wasn’t funny.
That night, lying in bed, I made a decision.
If I kept thinking about him, if I kept feeling this wrong, unsettled ache, I was going to lose my grip on whatever normal I had left.
I just needed proof.
Proof that what I felt was just confusion.
Proof that I wasn't like him.
The idea came to me quietly, fully formed, like it had been waiting.
Maybe i could get a girlfriend.
Maybe all this is because I’m not with someone and I’ve relied too much on Demi being my safety net, the person I lean towards.
I need someone safe. Someone obvious. Someone who fit the version of myself I was trying so hard to hold onto.
If I could do that—if I could want her, be with her—then everything else would fall into place.
The ache would go away.
Demi would just be a friend again.
And I could finally breathe.
I didn't know yet who she would be.
But by the end of that night, I knew one thing with absolute certainty:
I was done feeling like this.
No matter what it cost.
I wanted everything to go back to normal.