There’s a version of loyalty that looks like love but functions like surveillance. The difference is whether the other person is allowed to change without permission.

She noticed it the first time she mentioned a weekend pottery class. Not his words — those were supportive enough, a casual “that sounds fun” delivered without eye contact. It was the silence that followed. The way the evening’s temperature dropped two degrees. The questions that surfaced later, framed as curiosity but functioning as inventory: How long is the class? Who else is going? Is this going to be every weekend?

By the third week, she’d stopped going. Not because he asked her to stop.