MARISSA
It was a stuffy night, weighing on me like an invisible, unshakable burden I couldn't shake. That once-safe room, so full of people, now felt foreign and unwelcoming. Whispers accompanied me everywhere I moved, with furtive glances. It was like everyone knew something I didn't, and that thing gnawed at my stomach.
The tension had been building for weeks, the threads of my relationship with Thomas unraveling before my eyes. I had convinced myself that it was temporary, that I just needed to remind him of the way things were. But part of me knew that I was clinging to an illusion—a us that no longer existed.
The thin whisper of laughter coming from upstairs cut into my thoughts, soft and intimate in a way that sent shivers down my spine. It was Thomas. I would recognize his rich,
