The first silence frightened her.
The second confused her.
By the third, it began to hurt.
Joshua stopped calling the way he used to. Messages that once arrived easily now took hours, sometimes days. Tiana watched her phone like it held her heartbeat, checking it in the morning, in the afternoon, in the quiet hours of night when loneliness spoke loudest.
When she finally reached him, his voice felt different.
"You're disturbing me," he said once, irritation sharp in his tone.
"I need to study," another time.
"You don't understand how school works."
"You're a distraction."
Each word reminded her of the distance between them—not just miles, but worlds. She wasn't in school yet, and he made sure she felt it. He used it as a shield, as a weapon, as proof that her presence was inconvenient.
She cried quietly after those calls.
Still, she apologized.
She learned to shrink herself so he could feel bigger. She learned to wait without complaint, to text less, to ask for less. She learned to accept days of silence as normal, convincing herself that love sometimes needed space.
But silence, she discovered, could be cruel.
Joshua ghosted her often. Days would stretch into weeks. When he returned, there were no apologies, only explanations she forced herself to accept. And sometimes, after ignoring her completely, he would ask for money again.
And Tiana would send it.
Because she believed love endured.
Because she believed patience was proof.
Because she believed if she held on long enough, he would return to who he once was.
But Joshua had changed. Or maybe he had always been this way, and love had hidden it. He took her presence for granted. He treated her devotion like an obligation. And slowly, he stopped caring how much his absence hurt her.
Tiana told herself it was love.
She did not know that love should not leave you anxious.
Love should not make you beg for attention.
Love should not turn silence into punishment.
For one year, this became her reality—waiting, sending, forgiving, hoping. And in that year, the girl who once felt chosen learned what it meant to be ignored by the person she loved most.
This was not the end of her story.
But it was the moment her heart began to break.