Right before lunch, Meg Dudley scrolled past a post tagged #ToMyEx.

"I know you're still thinking about me. Stop secretly watching my videos. We're happy together."

"I take her out to meet friends and never ask her to put on makeup first. I buy her favorite gifts just because she took an extra bite of something she liked. All the things I never did for you? I do them all for her."

"Maybe you weren't wrong back then. Maybe I really didn't love you."

A flash of irritation surged through her. She was about to leave a comment about how delusional some people were these days.

Then she saw the pinned letters in the comments section, and froze.

MD.

Meg Dudley.

Those were her initials.

Her stomach dropped.

She looked again, this time at the poster's profile picture. It was the silhouette portrait she'd taken of her ex-boyfriend eight years ago.

Her brow furrowed. Slowly, she typed out a reply.

"I've been married for five years. My kid is three. Funny—I had no idea I still had an ex I couldn't get over."

……

Before she could hit send, a friend request popped up on her phone.

She tapped it open and saw the same familiar image—a cartoon avatar made from one of the portraits she'd shot of Gerard Sanchez, back before she'd injured her wrist.

Her heart kicked twice, hard and fast.

She steadied herself and hit Accept.

The old habit of always being the first to message him still lingered somewhere inside her. But too much had happened. There was nothing left to say.

Still, out of courtesy, she sent a reminder.

"Please don't feed my photos to an AI generator, and don't use them as your profile picture. People will get the wrong idea."

The moment her message went through, two replies appeared in the chat window simultaneously.

"I knew you weren't over me. No one else would 'get the wrong idea'—only you."

"That video was meant for you. Stop stalking me across every platform. My girlfriend gets jealous."

Her chest clenched. The civil conversation she'd hoped for never materialized.

She thought about that vicious video and drew a long breath.

She'd barely started typing You're reading too much into this when his next messages arrived.

"All these years I've been with her, she's not as terrible as you make her out to be."

"Can you stop talking about her behind her back?"

"I know you're not over me, but no matter what you do, I'm never getting back together with you. She's the one I love!"

A vein pulsed at her temple.

Her hands shook with fury as she typed a single question mark.

"?"

"Who cares about your pathetic little love story? I'm MARRIED. Get back together? Are you out of your mind?"

The second that last message went through, her screen showed she'd been blocked.

She quickly switched to the social media app—and found their entire chat log posted in the newest comments, her profile picture blurred out.

Gerard had captioned it with a single line.

"I'll leave it at that."

Plenty of users rallied behind the so-called ex.

"Seriously? Don't use every dirty trick in the book on your ex. She watched a few of your videos—she didn't desecrate your family grave."

"Has the person above never seen a jealous girlfriend at work? The poster was obviously coached by his current girl. Otherwise, why would a grown man make a whole video calling out someone for watching a few clips? It's clearly just showing off the new relationship to twist the knife."

"Yikes. The ex got the raw end of this deal. Years after the breakup and still getting dragged out for public humiliation. Bet you anything HE'S the one who isn't over her, his girlfriend found out, and she made him post the video to prove his loyalty."

Amid all the biting commentary, Gerard's reply was almost eerily calm.

"Say whatever you want. It won't change anything. I know her."

Just a handful of words—but they landed like a fist against Meg's ribs, a dull, inexplicable ache blooming behind her sternum.

She couldn't remember the last time anyone had spoken about her with that kind of certainty.

It was true—he had once been the person who knew me best in this world, the one I was closest to.

But so what? No matter how well someone knew you, there always came a day when you drifted apart.

Gerard Sanchez and I met when we were eight years old.

By the time we separated, we had spent sixteen years side by side.

Back then, I was the kid who looked nothing like her adoptive parents—wrong features, wrong skin tone—and had spent a full year being mocked by classmates. Dug out of a dumpster. Crawled out from under a rock. A feral child. That was what they called me.

He was a naive boy raised in a loving home, the kind of kid who fancied himself a hero.

He had a habit of showing up when I didn't need him, planting his hands on his hips like a tiny adult and firing back at every classmate who laughed at me.

I told him more than once that words like those barely registered. Growing up in the orphanage had given me skin thick enough that schoolyard taunts felt like a feather brushing my arm.

But he stubbornly believed I was being threatened and intimidated, too scared to stand up for myself.

So he volunteered to be my protector.

He begged his parents to transfer him into my class. He begged our teacher to seat him next to me. He even threw a full-blown tantrum—screaming, rolling on the floor—until his parents agreed to move to a house closer to mine, all because his old neighborhood wasn't on my route and made it hard to "keep me safe."

His over-the-top antics surprised me, but I knew how children were. They loved new things and grew bored just as fast. The orphanage was full of older kids who'd been returned after the biological children in their adoptive families got tired of them, or simply decided they didn't want a sibling anymore.

I figured once he got bored of hanging around me, he'd find some other friend.

I never expected him to follow me around like a shadow for eleven years.

From elementary school through high school, I went from resenting the intrusion on my solitude to growing used to having him beside me. A girl's feelings have a way of taking root without her noticing.

The year we graduated high school, I asked him a question, keeping my voice light.

If it had been someone else getting picked on back then, would he have had the same harebrained impulse to trail after them like a lost puppy?

He saw right through the smile to the insecurity underneath.

And he caught it, steady as anything.

"It's strange. Ever since I started following you around, I've thought more than once about how ridiculous it would be to just latch onto some random person and play hero. It would make no sense."

"It's like it was meant to be. My whole hero complex existed just so I'd be ready when you came along."

I held on to those words for years and years.

I was still holding on to them even after he started playing hero for someone else.

By my first year of grad school, we had been together for five years. Both sets of parents agreed we would marry after graduation.

Everything was moving along exactly as planned—until our engagement party.

Leila Graves, who had grown up in the same orphanage as me, shattered it all.

She brought the orphanage director with her, armed with fabricated evidence, and announced in front of every single guest that she was the one my adoptive parents had meant to choose.

She was the one Gerard was supposed to protect. The one he was supposed to love.

She claimed that when my parents came to pick a child, I had tricked her into taking sleeping pills so she would miss her chance. We were the only two girls of the right age. With her out of the picture, I became the only option.

And because of that, she said, she had been condemned to a nightmare—a living hell—when she was sixteen.

I assumed everyone could see through it. A pathetic, jealous lie, and a clumsy one at that.

After all, during the years she had pretended to be my friend, she had stabbed me in the back more times than I could count.

When she couldn't scrape together enough from her part-time jobs to cover living expenses, I fought to get her a financial aid grant—wrestled it away from a classmate who came from money but pretended to be poor. Leila turned around and told that classmate I had targeted her on purpose, that I resented anyone with wealth.

When her jobs ate into her study time and finals were approaching, I didn't just organize my notes for her and stay up reviewing with her until three in the morning. To keep her from failing, I even tried to slip her my answers during the exam.

But she turned around and told the teacher I was trying to cheat.

Every time I vented to Gerard about it, he'd get so angry he could barely contain himself. He told me to stay far away from people like that, the kind who repaid kindness with cruelty.

Yet he not only believed her, he canceled our engagement over it.

My adoptive parents took my side at first, comforting me, telling me not to worry. They told me to wait until Leila calmed down, until the investigation cleared things up.

But that wait stretched on for an entire year.

During that year, I was terrified of losing them. I walked on eggshells, did everything they asked, deferred to Leila at every turn, and watched as they slowly stopped noticing me.

Until finally, the disgust in their eyes made it clear they'd decided I was exactly what she said I was: a scheming thief who'd stolen someone else's life.

While I was lost in thought, my phone chimed. A private message from Leila.

I know you saw it. Drop the act. We've been happy together all these years. Don't even think about being a homewrecker.

I scoffed and didn't bother replying.

I tapped into her profile instead. Her account was full of photography content she'd shared. A handful of followers. A low-tier photographer certification, the kind anyone could buy.

I laughed.

Gerard ruined my career to pave the way for yours, and you still can't amount to anything.

Back then, under the weight of their cold stares, I'd earned a spot in an international exchange program through competition alone. I thought that would be enough to win back their affection.

But one week before I was supposed to leave, Gerard took all of my work and reported me to the photography competition organizers, claiming I'd plagiarized Leila's work.

The school and the organizers revoked my exchange spot immediately.

I watched Leila trail behind Gerard, satisfaction and a thin veneer of pity on her face.

I could barely get the words out.

"Why?"

His expression was colder than the day I'd refused to let him follow me around when we were eight.

"She may not be as talented as you, but she works harder. She needs this opportunity more than you do. Besides, if it weren't for what you did back then, she'd be the one with all of this."

"You're the one who stole from her."

In that moment, everything he'd said when he was eighteen felt like a lie.

The rage hit me so hard I collapsed and ended up in the hospital.

When I woke up, Gerard was sitting by the bed. He sighed.

"There's no need for such a dramatic reaction. She said she only wants a career. She won't compete with you for anything else. I'll still marry you. But I have one condition."

"From now on, you can't do any work related to photography publicly. But privately, whenever she needs help, you help her."

His words were vague, but I understood perfectly.

I stared at him, trembling.

"You want me to be her ghostwriter?"

He grunted in acknowledgment.

"You owe her that. That award-winning piece is something she'll never be able to produce in her lifetime. So to make it up to her, you'll shoot for her until she decides she doesn't want to be a photographer anymore."

That day, I destroyed everything in the hospital room like a woman possessed.

It didn't change his mind.

The day before Leila left the country, she came to see me. She was carrying my award, holding my exchange spot, and clutching an offer from the prestigious magazine that had been meant for me. My boyfriend stood beside her as she thanked me.

I snapped. I screamed and hurled everything within reach against the walls.

After Gerard left, I quietly pulled out my phone and drew her into conversation.

She didn't suspect a thing.

She laughed.

"Honestly, I was just jealous of you. So I made up a lie. I never expected them all to actually believe it."

I swallowed the storm raging inside me. After she was gone, I filed an appeal and posted every last word of it on the school's forum.