Chapter 5

It was drizzling outside when the plane landed.

I turned on my phone and found it flooded with notifications.

Hannah had called more than thirty times. Her messages gradually shifted from affectionate concern to impatient questioning.

[Honey, where are you?]

[Stop this. I told you I’d marry you.]

[Why did you delete all your posts?]

The last message had been sent at 4 a.m..

[Honey, I’m sorry. Please answer the phone.]

I stared at the words “I’m sorry” and found them bitterly ironic.

She didn’t apologize to me when her friends humiliated me.

She didn’t apologize to me when she said she would marry me while promising Josh a wedding.

She didn’t apologize to me when I discovered that she had lied to me for three years.

She apologized when I had really left.

That was why she was panicking.

My parents were waiting for me at the arrivals gate. The moment Mom saw me, her eyes turned moist with tears. She simply pulled me into her arms without asking any questions.

The familiar scent of her laundry detergent surrounded me. The tears I had held back throughout the entire journey finally began to fall.

Standing beside us, Dad awkwardly held out a tissue. His voice was gruff. “You’re home now. No matter how bad things get, you’ll always have us.”

I slept for most of that day.

By the time I woke, it was already evening. My phone lay silently on the nightstand.

Hannah was calling again.

I was about to decline the call when Mom, sitting beside the bed, gently patted my hand.

“Answer it if you feel ready. You don’t have to force yourself if you don’t. But Eric, don’t keep all that pain bottled up inside. You’re not alone.”

I looked at her and suddenly found the strength I needed.

I answered, but I did not say anything.

Hannah’s voice came through immediately, raw and hoarse. “Honey, you finally answered. Where are

you? I’ll come to you.”

I said, “No.”

She continued as though she had not heard me. “What happened yesterday was my fault. I shouldn’t have said that you were just a friend. I was just worried Josh would get upset. He’s fragile. He couldn’t

handle that kind of shock.”

I snorted. “And you thought I could?”

There was a brief silence on the other end.

Her voice softened. “Eric, after seven years together, you must know that you’re the one I love most. I’ll sort things out with Josh, but I need time. Just come home, and we can talk this through.”

“Hannah, I’m not coming back.”

Her breathing grew heavy. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means we’re over.”

I had expected those words to leave me in so much pain that I could barely breathe.

They did not.

Instead, they felt like a blade finally cutting through a rope that had long since rotted away.

Hannah let out a disbelieving snort. “Eric, you’re not scaring me with another breakup. You’ve said that before. But you never really left me.”

My grip tightened around the phone.

So she had always known that I could not bring myself to leave her.

That certainty had allowed her to test my limits time after time, knowing I would eventually forgive her

and take her back.

I offered no further explanation and hung up.

Seven years.

I had loved her from the girl she once was into the woman she had become.

I stood beside her when she had almost nothing. I watched her grow into someone confident and successful.

I knew her stomach was sensitive. I knew she liked to leave the curtains slightly open at night. I knew she twisted her ring without realizing it whenever she was nervous.

I used to think that remembering all these little things was what forever looked like, though I was wrong.

A relationship could not survive forever simply because you remembered every little habit.

Once trust broke, no amount of time together could hold the relationship in place.

That night, I lay in my old bedroom.

Mom had remade the bed with the sheets I used as a teenager. On the windowsill still sat the empty pot from a succulent I had managed to kill in high school.

Everything was old and familiar, yet somehow, it made me feel safe.