ACCIDENTAL ROOMMATE

Contemplating

The room felt heavier after that.

I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling while my phone sat beside me, the screen dark now.

But the two reels Ryan had sent kept replaying in my head.

Girls asking for money.

Girls having male friends.

My chest tightened again.

Why would he send that to me?

I tried to think back through our entire relationship. Every memory, every conversation, every moment where I might have done something that made him think I was like that.

Nothing came to mind.

I had never asked him for money.

Not even jokingly.

If anything, he was the one who insisted on paying sometimes, and I usually argued about it.

And the male friend thing…

That hurt the most.

I had only one male friend back home. Just one. We used to talk about school and homework and random things like movies. There was never anything romantic about it.

But Ryan didn’t like it.

I still remembered the way his voice sounded when he told me.

“I don’t want you having guy friends.”

At the time, I didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t want to start a fight.

So I blocked my friend.

Just like that.

A friendship gone because my boyfriend wasn’t comfortable with it.

And now, after everything, he was sending me videos like that.

Like I was the kind of girl those reels were talking about.

My fingers slowly reached for my phone again.

I opened our chat.

The two videos were still there.

Ryan hadn’t said anything else.

For a moment, anger flickered quietly inside me.

Maybe I should just block him.

The thought sat in my mind longer than I expected.

If I blocked him, that would be it.

No more messages.

No more wondering what he meant.

No more waiting for his replies.

My thumb hovered over his profile picture.

All I had to do was press a few buttons.

Block.

Done.

Clean.

Simple.

But the moment I imagined doing it, something inside my chest twisted painfully.

Because blocking him would mean accepting that it was really over.

And part of me still wasn’t ready for that.

I sighed quietly and locked my phone again.

“No,” I whispered to myself.

Not today.

Maybe someday.

But not today.

Instead, I opened my music app and put on my headphones.

Soft music filled my ears almost immediately.

I turned onto my side, facing the wall, letting the sound drown out my thoughts.

Across the room, Ethan was typing on his laptop again, the quiet clicking of the keyboard barely reaching me through the music.

I closed my eyes.

The day had already been too full of emotions.

Between moving into college, the awkward roommate situation, the memories of Ryan, and those stupid videos he sent…

My mind felt exhausted.

The music helped a little.

Each song blended into the next, slowly calming the storm of thoughts in my head.

For now, I didn’t want to think about Ryan.

I didn’t want to think about the past.

I just wanted a few minutes where my brain could finally be quiet.

So I stayed there on my bed, listening to music, staring at no