A dimly lit restaurant, late evening. The kind of place that pretends to be intimate but mostly serves as a backdrop for people trying not to feel too much. The table is small. The space between them is not.

She stirred her drink slowly, watching the ice melt like it owed her something. Across from her, he scrolled through his phone, thumb moving with the rhythm of someone who’d mastered the art of selective attention.

“Am I quiet?” she asked, voice low but deliberate. “Or do you just try to never listen?”

He looked up, startled—not by the question, but by the fact that she’d spoken at all. She wasn’t supposed to break the script. She was supposed to smile, nod, and let the silence do the heavy lifting.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“No,” she interrupted, calm as a scalpel. “You meant to not notice. That’s different.”

The waiter passed by, offering refills and distractions. She waved him off. This wasn’t a scene for witnesses. This was a reckoning.

“I’ve been here,” she continued, “in every pause, every ‘sorry, I’ve just been busy,’ every reschedule that treated my time like a suggestion. I’ve been loud in ways you refuse to hear.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. The silence between them wasn’t empty—it was crowded with every unsent text, every half-reply, every moment she’d made herself smaller so he could feel bigger.

“I’m not asking for a spotlight,” she said. “I’m asking for presence. For the kind of listening that doesn’t require a crisis.”

The candle flickered. Her glow didn’t.

“I’m done auditioning for your attention,” she said, standing. “This was never a whisper. You just chose not to hear.”

She left the table with the grace of someone who’d finally stopped translating herself into a language he refused to learn.