I knew it was over when I started dreading her replies instead of waiting for them

Dear Delyara, That shift was everything. There was a time when her name lighting up my phone felt like warmth. Then, slowly, I started feeling my stomach sink instead. Not because she had become openly cruel, but because every reply felt like a test of tone. Would it be short? Cool? Late? Half-there? Did I imagine the distance? Was I now the kind of person who reads too much into punctuation because the heart already knows and doesn’t want to say it out loud yet? I think the cruelest friendship endings are not the ones with fights. They are the ones where your body notices the loss before the facts become clear enough to defend. That’s what happened here.