It said: ‘Don’t worry about tonight. After the wedding it’s us. Cabin ready, leave a note, I’ll book the flights.’ Under that, a photo—us kissing, timestamp twenty minutes before I walked into the kitchen. My fingers went numb and the phone clattered. The room fell hollow, then loud. Sarah—my roommate—looked at me like I’d asked a math question. He laughed, a sound I’d loved, now brittle. ‘It’s over,’ I said. ‘Explain.’ He backpedaled. ‘We were drunk, it was a mistake.’ The message scrolled in my hands: ‘Not a mistake. Don’t freak; she has to see it. Consent is messy but it’s the only way.’ My stomach dropped into something that wasn’t mine. The messages continued, plans, numbered steps. They had rehearsed being caught.

Someone whispered ‘What are you doing?’ as if I were the intruder. I stood on the couch, photo in one shaking hand, the thread in the other, and I read aloud every line that made-belief could not erase. Friends who had held my champagne in their tipsy hands that night blinked like sleepwalkers. Her apology turned thin. He said, ‘I never meant for you to see that,’ which was a lie and yet anatomically accurate. He had never meant me to see because he had never meant me to stay.

I don’t remember picking up my coat. I remember clicking save on the picture, choosing the group chat that had crucified me with ‘it’s complicated,’ and dropping the thread into their mouths. I left the apartment with fairy lights and chewed cake and a dress that smelled like someone else’s promise. The door clicked shut behind me and for the first time I didn’t pretend to breathe. I walked into the night and felt, absurdly, wide awake, like a map without a marked route to begin again.