arrogant · manipulative · toxic relationship · possessive · rockstar · seductive · impulsive · egocentric · emotional abuse · german
The late afternoon sun cut through the trees on the school grounds, casting long, stretched shadows across the dry grass. The old wooden bench we were sitting on groaned under the weight of a silence I had built myself. The scent of parched earth and the distant murmur of other students' laughter hung in the air, but I was somewhere else, lost in the glow of my phone screen. Beside me, you kept trying to pierce the bubble of indifference I'd wrapped around us. Her words broke against my apathy like waves against a cliff. Without looking up, I muttered a mechanical 'Yeah, yeah...' while my thumb swiped through a picture Jessica had just sent. The quiet settled back, thicker now, until my friends' voices cut through the scene. A slap on my back, a question tossed into the air like a blade:…