7. The Ex From College
THE EX FROM COLLEGE
I arrived at Tightrope Café a little earlier than planned.
From the outside, the place didn’t try too hard to impress. No loud signage, no over-the-top design—just clean lines, grey tones, and glass that let you peek into what felt like a very intentional space.
It was the kind of place that didn’t need to convince you it was cool.
I pushed the door open and stepped inside, and the first thing I noticed was how everything felt stripped down, but on purpose.
The walls were raw, almost unfinished, like exposed concrete that hadn’t been softened or covered up. The floors carried that same, muted industrial tone, while the ceiling showed its structure without apology—pipes, beams, everything left visible like part of the design.
And somehow, it worked.
Right in the middle of the space sat a long coffee bar, with machines lined up. The baristas moved with quiet focus, measuring, pouring, adjusting, like every cup had a process behind it that actually mattered.
The lighting was soft but deliberate. Just enough to make everything look better than it probably did in real life.
But today, there was something different.
There were flowers all around.
Not overwhelming, not enough to change the identity of the place, but scattered in small ways. A few on the counter. Some by the windows. Soft touches of color against the grey.
But I wasn’t quite sure why they were there. Maybe an event had happened earlier that day and the café just let them sit until closing time. Maybe a delivery gone early. Maybe nothing at all.
And for a second, I wondered if that was why I was there too.
I looked around and spotted him almost immediately.
Francis was seated in one corner, posture straight as ever, a book and his phone neatly placed on the table. Some things—apparently—didn’t change.
He looked up, and the moment our eyes met, his face softened into a smile.
A real one.
Not forced. Not polite. Just warm.
He stood up as I approached, and before I could even say anything, he pulled me into a hug.
It caught me off guard for half a second, but I quickly realized that Francis had always been a hugger.
I relaxed into it.
“Hey,” he said as we pulled away. “How are you?”
“I’m… calmed down,” I answered, slipping into my seat across from him. “You, professor?”
He laughed, shaking his head. “I’m stressed as a teacher.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You? Stressed? That’s like God getting tired of being himself.”
That got a louder laugh out of him.
“That’s blasphemy,” he said, still smiling. “But I’ll take it.”
A little later, a male barista approached our table, placing our drinks down with politeness that matched the atmosphere of the café. We thanked him almost in sync, and for a brief moment, it felt like we had done this a hundred times before.
Maybe we had.
I wrapped my hands around my cup of frappe, letting the warmth settle in as the conversation eased into something softer.
We started talking about college.
How chaotic it was. How everything felt like it mattered more than it probably should have. The orgs, the classes, the drama that somehow always found its way to me.
“You were always in the middle of something,” Francis said, shaking his head with a small smile. “There was always an issue—a fight, or some kind of tension around you and your group.”
I scoffed lightly. “Excuse me, you’re trying to say I’m a mean girl.”
He tilted his head, amused. “No, you weren’t.”
I gave him a look—waiting.
“You were the kind one,” he continued, “in a group of mean girls, though.”
I let out a laugh. “That’s still an insult, Francis.”
“It’s an observation,” he corrected, smiling into his cup.
The conversation flowed easily after that, slipping between memories and small updates. The kind of rhythm that only happens when you’ve known someone long enough to skip the formalities.
For a moment, it almost felt like nothing had changed. Like we had just picked up where we left off.
But then Francis set his cup down, his expression shifting into something subtle.
And just like that, I knew.
We weren’t just here to reminisce.
He looked at me, steady, and asked, “Whatever happened to us?”
For a moment, I didn’t answer.
I just looked at him, the question settling between us like something that had been waiting a long time to be asked.
I let out a breath, leaning back slightly in my chair as I tried to find the right place to start.
“I think,” I began, then stopped, shaking my head faintly. “I don’t think anything big happened.”
He frowned a little, but still listening.
“We just… faded,” I continued. “One day we were okay. Then we had small fights that we never really fixed. And then somehow, without even realizing it, we just stopped talking the way we used to.”
I let out a humorless laugh.
“It’s actually kind of crazy when you think about it,” I said. “You can go from talking every day to not talking at all, and there’s no exact moment where it ends. It just… disappears.”
Francis stayed quiet, letting me speak.
“We also got busy,” I added. “Graduation was coming up. Requirements, deadlines, everything just kept piling up. I guess… I guess we thought we could just pick things back up later.”
I paused.
“But we never did, did we?”
The silence that followed felt heavier this time, because that wasn’t the real answer.
Not completely.
I looked down at my hands, fingers loosely wrapped around each other.
“And honestly,” I said, my voice tightening slightly, “it killed me.”
I glanced back up at him.
“It killed me seeing you every day and not talking to you the way we used to. Like we were just… normal people again.”
My throat felt dry, but I kept going.
“I remember walking past you on campus and pretending everything was fine. Acting like I didn’t care. Acting like it didn’t bother me the way we barely spoke anymore.” I let out a small breath. “But it did. It actually did.”
A lot.
Francis’ expression softened, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I didn’t want to be that kind of boyfriend,” I continued. “The demanding one. The clingy one. The one who always needed reassurance or attention. I didn’t want to be too much.”
I shook my head, almost at myself.
“So whenever something felt off, I just… kept it to myself. I told myself it wasn’t a big deal. That it would pass. That you had other things to do.” I looked at him again, this time holding his gaze. “But it didn’t pass.”
There was a brief pause before Francis finally spoke.
“But you never told me,” he said.
Not accusatory. Just honest.
I blinked, caught off guard by how simple it sounded. Like it was something obvious—something that didn’t need explaining.
“You never told me anything,” he continued. “Whenever something was wrong, you just shut down. Even when we fought, you would just go quiet. I didn’t know what you were feeling half the time.”
I opened my mouth slightly—instinctively ready to respond—to defend myself.
But nothing came out.
Because—truth was—he wasn’t wrong.
“I thought you were okay,” he added. “Or at least… okay enough without talking to me. You never gave me a reason to think otherwise.”
I felt something shift in my chest. Not sharp. Not immediate. But heavy. Like something sinking deeper the longer I sat with it.
Because in my head, I had been feeling everything.
Every doubt.
Every insecurity.
Every moment I felt hurt or unsure or left behind.
I had lived through all of it so vividly.
But to him, I had been quiet.
I looked down at my hands, suddenly unsure of what to do with them.
Part of me wanted to push back—to say that he should have known. That he should have seen it. That he should’ve felt it without me having to say it out loud. Because how could he have known…
…if I never told him?
The silence between us stretched, longer than I wanted it to be.
But it didn’t feel empty. It felt like something was forming in the hush. Something uncomfortable. Something I had been avoiding for a long time.
I leaned forward slightly, my elbows resting on my knees, my thoughts finally starting to catch up with me.
All this time, I thought staying quiet was me protecting what we had. I thought not complaining, not asking for more, not saying when I was hurt was what kept things together.
That was what made me so easy to love and easy to keep.
But the truth was, it didn’t keep anything.
If anything, it made things easier to lose, because nothing was ever actually fixed with silence.
Nothing was ever actually understood. It just stayed there—unsaid, unresolved, until there was nothing left to hold on to.
I swallowed, the realization settling in deeper now, heavier than before.
And suddenly, without trying to, my mind went back to Victor.
To all the times I chose silence over honesty, thinking it would protect what we had.
But silence doesn’t protect anything. It just delays the ending.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
The words came out before I could stop them.
But Francis shook his head almost immediately.
“No,” he said gently. “Don’t do that.”
I looked up at him, a little confused.
“Do not ever apologize,” he continued. “Not for that.”
I hesitated. “But I—”
“We both had our lapses,” he said, cutting in softly, but firmly enough to stop me. “It wasn’t just you.”
I stayed quiet, letting him speak.
“I wasn’t perfect either,” he went on. “I got busy. I got distracted. There were moments, I could’ve checked in more, asked more, tried harder to understand what was going on with you.”
He gave a small shrug.
“I just didn’t realize there was more to understand.”
That landed gently in my chest.
“And I didn’t say all that to make you feel bad about yourself,” he added. “That wasn’t the point.”
I nodded slowly.
“I know,” I said. “It just… feels like it is, you know?”
“It shouldn’t,” he replied. “Because that’s not how I see you.”
Tears welled in my eyes, looking at him with gladness.
“I actually fell for you because of that,” he said.
I frowned slightly. “Because I shut down?”
“No. because you knew yourself.”
That caught me off guard.
“You had this… presence,” he continued. “This energy. You are sure of who you are, what you like, what you don’t. You don’t try too hard to fit into spaces that weren’t for you. You just existed as yourself.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“Not a lot of people have that,” he added. “It made you easy to admire.”
I let out a quiet breath, absorbing it.
“But I think,” he went on, but more carefully now, “when it comes to people you really care about, you kind of do the opposite. You don’t lean in… you pull back.”
I swallowed.
“You make yourself smaller,” he continued. “Quieter. Easier. Like you’re trying not to disrupt anything. And maybe you think that’s what love is. But it’s not.”
The words hit like a blow.
I looked down at my hands again, my chest feeling strangely light and heavy at the same time.
Because for the first time, it didn’t feel like I was being judged. It felt like I was being understood.
I looked up at him—really looked at him—and for the first time since I walked in, I didn’t feel the weight of what we used to be.
I just saw Francis.
“I’m glad we talked,” I said.
He smiled, soft and easy. “Me too.”
There was no hesitation in it. No second guessing. Just a quiet certainty that this reunion had been necessary.
But before I let go of that conversation, I felt like there was one last thing I needed to say.
I straightened slightly and met his eyes, something steady settling in my chest.
“We were beautiful even for a moment, weren’t we?” I said, like raising a toast to something that had already passed.
“We were,” he agreed, smiling.
And for some reason, I thought about the flowers around us—how something could bloom so beautifully, even if it wasn’t meant to last.
Francis and I stayed a little longer in the café, talking about lighter things: work, life, the small updates that fill the space between who we used to be and who we had become.
And it felt normal in a way that didn’t hurt.
Eventually, the conversation slowed on its own, like it knew where to end.
And maybe that was the thing about some relationships: they don’t end with a fight or betrayal. Sometimes, they end in silence. In missed conversations. In all the things you thought were too small to say, until they became too big to ignore.
I used to think that staying silent meant keeping the peace. That if I stayed easy, quiet, and understanding, then maybe things would last.
But sitting there, across someone I once loved, I realized something else.
Love doesn’t fall apart because people feel too much. It falls apart because they don’t say enough. Because silence creates distance—one unspoken truth at a time.