Right after all that drama, I somehow found myself meeting two of Lila's best friends, and I wish I could say it was accidental and uneventful, but of course it wasn't. Let's call them Kabir and Dev, because they had that exact energy of guys who think they're effortlessly charming when in reality they just agree with whoever they find attractive in the moment.
Now Lila already had this running insecurity that I was slowly turning her friends against her, which, to be fair, sounds dramatic until you actually see how her friends behave. Within ten minutes of meeting them, it was very clear that they had zero sense of loyalty and even less ability to hide it. Anything I said was instantly correct, even if it made no sense, while Lila could probably present a fully researched argument and still be ignored. It wasn't even subtle, and honestly, if I were her, I would've been annoyed too.
One of them, Dev, casually joked that Lila would absolutely lose it if she saw us hanging out, especially because he had skipped her parents' anniversary party without giving her any real explanation. He just didn't show up, let her assume whatever she wanted, and then somehow had no issue spending time with me instead. The logic was missing, but the audacity was very much present.
So naturally, I sent her a snap.
Not because I'm proud of it, but because at that point it felt deserved. If she had already decided I was the villain in her story, I might as well play the part properly.
The next day, I find out that Ryan had gone to that same anniversary party, which made absolutely no sense considering he had been perfectly available to hang out with me. The whole thing started to feel like some badly written script where characters just show up wherever the plot needs them to.
And then, as if things weren't messy enough, I heard that Lila had seen the hickeys I'd given him earlier, which were still very visible, and her friends had made sure to point them out in a way that was clearly meant to provoke her. What exactly she told Ryan after that is still unclear to me, but whatever it was, it worked, because his behaviour towards me changed almost overnight.
He became distant in that very specific, frustrating way where nothing is directly said but everything feels off. Replies got shorter, questions got stranger, and there was this underlying tone that made it seem like I had done something wrong without being told what it was. When I finally brought it up, hoping for at least a normal conversation, he did what he always did, which was avoid any real confrontation and jump straight to an ending.
He told me we should stop talking.
Just like that, with no real explanation, as if we were wrapping up a casual chat and not something that had been going on for months. I remember staring at him and thinking that we hadn't even gone to the planetarium yet, which sounds ridiculous, but in my head that plan had somehow become symbolic of everything that hadn't happened.
That's when he told me he was still in love with his ex, a girl named Naina, and the way he spoke about her made it sound like she existed in a completely different emotional universe where nothing could replace her. She was his first love, he said, and he hadn't been able to move on.
What I couldn't understand was how this realization arrived after six months of talking, meeting, and everything in between. It wasn't like we had just started speaking the previous week. There had been enough time for him to figure out what he felt, and yet he chose this exact moment to suddenly become emotionally self-aware.
Naturally, I looked her up.
I wasn't expecting much, but I also wasn't prepared for what I found, which was a video of her eating noodles in a way that was so intense and oddly aggressive that I genuinely had to pause and process what I was watching. It wasn't even about comparing appearances at that point, it was more the disbelief that this was the person he was still emotionally stuck on while I was sitting there trying to make sense of his behaviour.
A month passed without us speaking, mostly because I told myself I had enough self-respect not to reach out first, although a part of me kept expecting him to come back and explain himself. He didn't, which somehow made the silence louder, and eventually curiosity got the better of me.
So I texted him and asked if he wanted to go to the planetarium, as if we could just pick up where things had ended.
He agreed immediately, which should have been my first sign that nothing about this situation was normal, and somehow the plan shifted from a public outing to me going over to his place. I told myself it would just be a movie, something simple and uncomplicated, even though I already knew it wouldn't stay that way.
When I reached his society, I called him to come downstairs and get me, because that's just basic courtesy, but he said he was in a meeting and asked me to come up on my own. I was already uncomfortable navigating the building and dealing with the guards, and the fact that he couldn't take a few minutes to come down made it worse. By the time I finally found his flat, I was irritated, anxious, and questioning why I had come at all.
Inside, the atmosphere felt strange from the beginning. I was nervous in a way that didn't feel exciting, just heavy and uncomfortable, and at one point I even texted my friend Aksh something overly emotional that probably sounded like I was about to make a terrible decision. He immediately asked if I was okay, which I wasn't, but I didn't know how to explain it.
Ryan, on the other hand, handed me a two-litre water bottle instead of an actual glass, noticed that I was clearly upset, and then chose to ignore it entirely. We put on a movie, but he wasn't interested in watching it, and the whole situation started to feel one-sided in a way that made me uneasy. It wasn't that I didn't want to be there, it was that I didn't feel seen at all.
After everything, he disappeared into the shower and left me waiting for nearly two hours, which gave me more than enough time to sit with my thoughts and realize how absurd the situation was. When he came back, instead of addressing anything, he casually mentioned that he was getting late and asked if I could leave on my own.
At that point, I didn't even have the energy to argue properly. He eventually came downstairs with me, but his attitude made it seem like he was doing me a favour, and the entire walk felt unnecessarily tense. When he put me in a cab and waved goodbye, I didn't respond, partly because I was annoyed with him and partly because I was disappointed in myself for going along with something that I already knew wouldn't end well.
A few days later, I saw him in college with his friends and instinctively walked in the opposite direction, which felt ridiculous even as I was doing it. I ended up in the washroom, asking myself why I was the one avoiding him, and when he tried to approach me, I chose to ignore him and walk away.
That seemed to affect him more than anything else, because suddenly he had an attitude, suddenly he was distant, and suddenly I was the one being ignored. The shift was almost ironic, considering how things had played out before.
The last time I spoke to him was on his birthday, 13th July 2022, when I sent a simple message wishing him well. There wasn't much to say beyond that, and whatever had been between us had already run its course in the most confusing way possible.
What happened later, in September, is something I still can't quite believe, but that's a story for another time.