I thought we were exclusive. Apparently we weren't.

Two months. Every weekend, most weeknights, texting good morning and good night without fail. I met her roommates. She met my best friend. It felt, from the inside, like a relationship in every way that mattered — we just hadn't put a label on it, because it seemed obvious enough not to need one.

Then I saw her name pop up in a mutual friend's story — tagged at dinner with someone I didn't recognize, the kind of photo that wasn't ambiguous. I asked her about it, genuinely confused more than angry at first. She seemed confused too, but for a different reason: "We never said we were exclusive."

She wasn't wrong, technically. We hadn't. I'd just assumed that two months of that level of closeness came with an unspoken agreement, the way it always had in every relationship I'd been in before. She'd apparently been operating on a completely different set of assumptions the entire time.

We didn't fight about it, exactly. We just both realized, in that conversation, that we'd been dating two very different relationships without knowing it. I don't think either of us did anything wrong. I think we both just assumed the other person meant the same thing we did, and never checked.

I ask now. Every time. It still feels awkward to bring up early. It feels a lot less awkward than this did.