I divorced my husband. He hired the best lawyer he could find to make sure I walked away with nothing.

Just an hour ago, under his lawyer’s persuasion and thinly veiled threats, I signed the divorce agreement that left me penniless.

The lawyer finally looked satisfied once he had the signed papers in hand. He pushed his glasses up his nose and told me to wait while he went to report back to my soon?to?be ex. Ten minutes later, my ex texted me:

Friday, 10 a.m. Arlington Civil Affairs Bureau.

…

It was only Tuesday. That night, Olivia Bennett texted to say she’d booked a booth just to celebrate my return to single life.

It should be a celebration.

But the one who really ought to be celebrating was Ethan Hawke, the man I’d clung to, shamelessly, for eight damn years.

The lawyer had already left. I sat in the café, staring into space for a long time, until the sky outside turned dusky.

I still couldn’t figure it out—this boy I’d met when he was young and green, the one I’d dragged along, stumbling with me through eight years… and this was how it ended. You could call it a breakup without even the courtesy of pretending to be civil.

I stood up to leave, and the waiter hurried over. “Ma’am, that’s two coffees, seventy?four yuan.”

Maybe it was that cold, merciless seventy?four yuan, but I ended up getting shitfaced at my own single?life party.

Olivia took one look at the wreck I’d become and leaned in. “I honestly don’t get it. You’re the one who insisted on the divorce, so why are you acting like it’s the end of the world?”

Olivia was the witness to my so?called love with Ethan—and the eyewitness to eight years of me clinging to him like a damn barnacle.

“I’m probably heartbroken over the fact I’m walking away with nothing,” I said.

Olivia pushed away the hand of some young guy trying to toast her and bent so close our faces were nearly touching. She stared at me like she’d just heard the biggest plot twist of the year. With the bar’s shifting neon lights spilling over her face, she looked… outrageously dramatic.

In the end, when yet another college?boy type came over to hit on her, Olivia used me as an excuse, said I needed to go home and recover, and called her driver to take me back.

Typical. Abandoning your best friend the moment a hot guy appears.

Thankfully, my parents had left me an apartment before I got married, which counted as premarital property. Otherwise, I really might have ended up on the streets.

I was drunk and didn’t bother washing up. I just collapsed on the bed, my mind spinning in circles, and suddenly I thought of the day I told Ethan I wanted a divorce.

All because he’d rushed off to work without eating the breakfast I’d made for him—though, to be fair, he had never once eaten any breakfast I cooked.

But that day, maybe the temperature was just right, the sunlight just right, and it hit me: we’d been married four years and he’d never eaten it, so why should I keep making it? After all, junk that’s been sitting in the same corner for four years should probably be cleared out.

Maybe I was still clinging to something, because at noon I drove to Ethan’s company. The receptionist told me I didn’t have an appointment and couldn’t see Mr. Hawke.

Maybe it was because I rarely visited his office, but no one seemed to recognize me. I just felt a little sorry that the chicken soup I’d stewed that morning would have to be thrown out. I didn’t have the appetite for it myself.

After I got home, Ethan’s assistant called. Her voice was sweet as sugar. She said Mr. Hawke wouldn’t be able to come home and keep me company that night.

Oh.

In reality, aside from the early days when he was starting his business and I was always by his side, once his company took off and we got married, Ethan almost never came home to be with me.

Especially now that he had such a beautiful assistant at his side.

Men really do turn to shit once they’ve got money.

I kept thinking about it, and somewhere in the middle of that, I called him and told him I wanted a divorce.

Yeah, it was impulsive. But I so rarely heard Ethan’s voice anymore, and even over the phone it could still mesmerize me. He told me to think it through. I said I had. He asked me why. I said I didn’t know.

We were quiet for a few minutes, and in that silence I heard his pretty assistant asking him, in a soft, concerned voice, if he was okay.

“Sophia, this is the kind of thing you should talk to me about in person.”

That was the last thing he said before adding that he was busy and hanging up.

I didn’t know when my face had gotten wet with tears; it was probably when he called me Sophia.

He only ever called me Sophia when I was throwing a fit and he thought I needed to be coaxed.

He probably figured I was just being a little dramatic, and a little drama could be soothed.

I thought back. The first time he ever called me Sophia, he was drunk.

Later, there was another time—when he secretly met up with his first love. I found out. I hadn’t planned on making a scene; I’d actually been thinking about breaking up, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And then he kept calling me “Sophia, Sophia” over and over…

So annoying.

I pulled the blanket over my head and fell into a heavy sleep.

When I woke up, it was already afternoon. My head was pounding, and I still wanted to sleep.

But I dragged myself up and scrolled on my phone for a while.

Just as I was about to go back to my long hibernation, a message from Ethan popped up.

I didn’t want to reply. I didn’t even want to look at it.

He’s my ex-husband now. I don’t have to indulge him anymore.

So I buried my face in the pillow and pretended not to hear, not to see, not to care.

“Your phone’s ringing! Babe, your phone’s ringing!…”

It was Ethan calling. I fought with myself for five seconds and still answered.

I’ve never had any real resistance when it comes to Ethan. Olivia always says there’s always something that can tame you, and Ethan is probably the one who tames me.

“Sophia, stop making trouble. It’s time to come home.”

His voice was still as pleasant as ever, like he knew exactly how to play me.

“I left with nothing. That’s your home now, not mine.”

For me to say something that ruthless, Ethan was probably heartbroken by now—or at least, that’s what I liked to imagine.

Ethan’s tone didn’t change at all. “If you come home now, we can pretend that agreement never existed.”

He was as calm as if he were negotiating a business deal. It had always been me, carefully tiptoeing around his emotions in every conversation.

“Ethan, will you tell me a bedtime story tonight?”

He’d never agreed before. It’s not that I didn’t want the divorce; I just wanted to test his limits one last time.

Ethan went silent for a full minute. “Sophia, come back early. Stop making trouble.”

Eight years. I knew he used to tell his first love a bedtime story every single night, but with me, all I ever got was perfunctory answers and rejection—even when I used divorce as the bargaining chip, he still turned me down.

It was just a small thing between a couple.

“I remember you don’t have any business dinners this Thursday morning. Tomorrow at ten, I’ll be waiting for you at the Arlington Civil Affairs Bureau.”

Ethan had never voluntarily reported his schedule to me. If I didn’t ask, he wouldn’t say a word.

It’s not that he couldn’t give a woman a sense of security. He just didn’t want to give it to me.

This time, I was the one who hung up.

I don’t think I’d ever hung up on him first before. It was always him saying he had to go and then cutting the call without a second thought.

This time, I wanted to be the one to end it.

After that call, I couldn’t fall back asleep.

I had to admit he could still affect my mood, but I was too exhausted to even try to put my emotions back in order.

Scenes from the past flashed through my mind like a carousel—I knew I was in for a sleepless night.

At eighteen, na?ve and unworldly, I’d stepped onto campus full of expectations for college life. At the freshman welcome party, I saw him at a glance, and that was the beginning of this doomed entanglement.

From finding a way to get his contact information, to figuring out his hobbies, to engineering “chance” encounters again and again, and then watching him confess to his first love…

The whole time, I felt like both a stranger and a participant, as if I were the only one living through the joy of a secret crush and the soul-tearing pain of heartbreak.

I stopped paying attention to him.

It wasn’t until a few months later that I found out he’d broken up with his girlfriend.

The me who’d sworn—so bravely, while he was still taken—that I would let him go… suddenly felt like a pile of dry kindling catching again from a single spark.

I started chasing him openly, shamelessly.

For a whole year.

People said I wasn’t good enough for him. Said I was daydreaming. Said throwing myself at him was cheap.

When I later learned he’d been waiting for his first love to come back, I honestly felt like a clown.

One time, he got drunk—really drunk. His friends egged him on, telling him to call me. He must’ve been out of his mind, because he actually made the call.

And then, to “make it up to me,” he agreed to be with me.

All I knew was that I was genuinely happy then—wildly, insanely happy. I knew that in his friends’ eyes, I was a joke, a girl you could mess with.

Maybe I was drunk on love, because I only got more enthusiastic.

Out of twenty-four hours, I’d cling to him for twenty of them.

Ethan was… good. He never showed even a hint of impatience. He just never responded to me, either.

And then the kind of ridiculous, soap-opera plot twist you only see in novels happened.

Ethan’s first love, Isabella, came back to the country—right on the two-year anniversary of me and Ethan being together.

I’d asked Ethan about his ex before. He always dodged the question. If I pressed too hard, he’d even lie and say he didn’t remember.

I don’t know whether he truly didn’t remember. All I know is that on my twentieth birthday, he was with her.

When I turned twenty, Ethan was a senior. He was already working on starting a business, so when he said he was too busy to come, I was only a little disappointed.

That year, my birthday wish was this: no matter whether Ethan succeeded or failed, I would stay by his side. I hoped the person next to him would always be me.

But outside a private KTV room, I saw him with his arm around Isabella Evans—his face filled with a kind of concern and tenderness I’d never seen from him.

And, damn, Isabella was so much prettier than in the photos.

I couldn’t understand how two people who looked so perfect together could’ve broken up. I even mocked myself in my head—Ethan getting dumped by Isabella was one thing, but if he got dumped by me? That would be humiliating on a whole different level.

So, to protect Ethan’s pride, I decided I’d wait for him to be the one to bring up the breakup.

As for my pride… I’d lost that back when I started chasing Ethan. Asking for dignity now would’ve been fake and pathetic.

I don’t even remember how painful that twentieth birthday was.

God didn’t grant my wish. Every knife sank into me, and I had to endure it on my own.

Now, I can even feel sorry for Ethan—if only he’d understood the way I tried to give him an out when I was twenty.

But he didn’t.

In the end, I was the one who said it.

Olivia asked around and found out from Ethan’s roommate that Isabella had applied to study abroad during sophomore year, and that was why they’d split up.

During that time, I stopped clinging to Ethan. For three whole days, we didn’t fight, and we didn’t contact each other.

I looked it up online. Most people said that in a situation like that, you treat it as a breakup.

Oh. My second heartbreak.

About the seventh day of not speaking to Ethan, there was a campus formal. A guy from my department asked me to be his date. I’ll admit it—I needed something to numb the pain, so I said yes.

But when Ethan showed up in a suit and took my hand, he asked why I hadn’t contacted him for so long, and why I was dancing with Alexander Reed.

For one second, I thought he was jealous.

He was dressed sharp, just like he’d been at the freshman welcome party where I’d fallen for him at first sight. Only that time, I’d said, “Can I get your contact info?”

This time, I looked into his dark eyes—so calm, like he felt nothing at all.

“Ethan,” I said, “we’ve already broken up.”