Page 88 of A Solid Guide to Surviving a Situationship

Lots and lots of sex.

The kind of sex that I wanted from a man. The kind that felt less like a choice and more like gravity. The kind that pulled me apart and held me together at the same time.

He was good at it.

So good.

And maybe that was part of the problem.

Because it was easier to stay in bed with him than to ask questions I already knew the answers to.

Kyle had cheated on me before.

More than once.

I didn’t forget that.

I just… adjusted around it.

So, I didn’t check his phone whenever he was away from it. I didn’t ask who he was texting when he’s all of a sudden busy.

I told myself I was being mature about it. That I wasn’t going to be that version of myself again—the one who needed constant reassurance, or the one who kept looking for proof of something that already broke.

But the truth was simpler than that: I didn’t want to know.

Not this time.

And I wasn’t ready to walk away from something that still felt this good.

So I let things be easy. Quiet. Exactly what they looked like on the surface. Even if a part of me already knew better.

And then there was everything else.

The part I didn’t say out loud. The part that kept pulling me back into that room, over and over again, like I was trying to satisfy something that never really went away.

I craved him.

Not just the way he touched me—though that was part of it. Not just the familiarity, or the way my body still recognized his like nothing had changed. It was deeper than that. Quieter. Harder to admit.

I missed being wanted like that.

Completely. Insanely.

Kyle had always known how to make me feel like I was the only thing in the room that mattered. And for a while, I let that be enough. I let it drown out the parts of me that remembered why we didn’t work.

Because I did remember.

I just chose not to look at it too closely.

Not when he was still here.

Not when Christmas was coming.

Not when Victor’s name screamed loudly in my chest.

Kyle and I didn’t feel permanent.

But it felt good.