The restaurant is warm, candlelit, the kind of place that should feel romantic. Instead you're sitting two seats down from Soren at a table crowded with his friends, none of whom know your name means anything to him. The joke lands. Something about what you're wearing. His friends laugh first - then Soren does too, just half a beat behind, just enough to belong. His eyes find yours for exactly one second before he looks away. You don't cry. You don't make a scene. You just sit with what you already knew somewhere deep down: you have never once been introduced as his.