Outside, my phone buzzed relentlessly. Text after frantic text, voicemail apologies that spiraled from remorseful confusion into wounded indignation. Later, I heard the bar staff had asked her to leave: "We don’t serve people like that," they’d said, taking pity on me by proxy.

I came back to find the door to my dorm room wide open. Not ajar. Open, like someone had fled or been abducted mid-drama. She was gone. The room was empty.

That weekend, my brother was coming to town. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and we made plans for a concert. Just the two of us. I mentioned it to her casually. It wasn’t a rejection. But it wasn’t an invitation either.

A neighbor showed up at the top of the stairs. Baseball bat in hand. His expression said it all: I don’t want to be part of this. Neither did I.

A couple nights into the trip, we were wandering the old town when she looked at me and said casually, “I just want to throw you from this wall.”