The night after their chat, Nathan's messages wouldn't leave her alone.
Every word — every insult, every twisted truth — circled her head like a song she didn't like but couldn't stop hearing.
Even though she had typed back boldly, the guilt still found her.
She replayed his sentences in her mind: "You think I didn't notice?" … "You did what you did because you wanted to."
They echoed until they began to sound like her own thoughts.
Maybe he was right.
Maybe she was the reason everything fell apart.
Maybe she should have kept quiet that night instead of trying to explain.
Elena sat on her bed, staring at the ceiling, whispering to herself,
"I'm sorry… I didn't mean to mess things up."
But no one answered.
She carried that guilt through her days.
In class she looked fine, even smiled when someone cracked a joke, but inside she was drowning.
She would catch herself scrolling through old messages, reading them like punishment.
Each time, her chest tightened a little more.
Marcus kept texting — almost every day now.
"Hey, you okay?"
"Come outside, let's take a walk."
She ignored most of them, but he never stopped.
One afternoon he caught up with her after lecture, laughing as he tapped her shoulder.
"Elena, you can't keep avoiding me forever," he said playfully.
Something in her snapped.
All the anger she'd been holding — anger at herself, at Nathan, at the whole mess — exploded in that moment.
"Marcus, please!" she yelled, louder than she meant to.
"Just stop acting like you care when you don't even understand! You don't know what I'm feeling, so just stop texting me, stop waiting for me, stop—"
Her voice broke before she could finish.
People turned to look. Marcus stood still, eyes wide, shock replacing his smile.
He opened his mouth to speak but she was already walking away, tears burning down her face.
That night, she lay in bed replaying that moment now — the way she had shouted at someone who didn't deserve it.
Guilt layered on guilt until she couldn't tell which one hurt more — Nathan's words or her own.
She whispered into the dark,
"Why do I keep ruining things? Why can't I just breathe?"
But deep down, she knew the truth.
She wasn't angry at Marcus.
She was angry at herself — for still loving someone who had already moved on, for still letting his words decide how she saw herself.