We went out drinking with Nicole’s ex and his fiancée. Adam. The kind of man who always felt like a warning.
He drove us all back. I passed out on the couch. Woke up dry-mouthed, aching, bowl beside me, empty. I stumbled into the guest room. Nicole was passed out. Top on. No bottoms.
We went to IHOP that morning. He was too casual. Too familiar. And I remembered—he had already cheated on someone with Nicole once before. That history. That possibility.
She made nothing of it. But my gut made everything.
I saw it: her drunk. Playful. He finds her in the hallway. Says something low. Familiar. She touches his arm. He knows that signal. She doesn’t stop him.
In the dark, behind a guest room door, hands explore what shouldn’t be theirs. She moans too loud. He hushes her with his mouth. His fiancée asleep in the other room. Me unconscious in the next.
No protection. No confession. No acknowledgment.
And she wakes up like nothing happened. Because maybe nothing did. Or maybe everything did. And only I stayed haunted.
This is the ghost I still host. A relic of what she never said. But what my body still feels.