She Left Me for the Man Who Destroyed Me

After my shift, I scrolled into a post, [Should I chase someone I like even if she already has a boyfriend?]

One comment said, [Of course.]

[Five years back, I moved to a new city. The neighbor was a smart beauty, and she had a boyfriend then.]

[I first made friends with them, then blamed her boyfriend for hurting me and acted weak so she would pity me, and right away they drifted apart.]

[Later, they argued often; the worst was when the girl came to me crying, and I kissed her. She hesitated at once.]

[And that night, her boyfriend was still upset over not getting into the university]

[Now I think I chose right. She is now a partner of a listed firm, and we are close to marriage. If I hadn’t acted early, how would I have this life now?]

Then the man changed his tone. [As for her ex-boyfriend, too sad. Failed to get into the university,probably doomed to a messy life.]

I froze on the spot, because I knew at once I was the ex-boyfriend he meant.

——

Reading that bragging comment talking about how he stole another guy’s girlfriend, my first reaction was to close the post.

Because I had lived through the same thing.

However, I froze instead, because the profile picture looked familiar.

It was the first picture of Arden Cohen and Calliope Vaughn together, taken on Calliope’s birthday, and I was the one who snapped it.

I couldn’t stop staring at that reply for a long while.

Many people in the comments cursed him, calling him shameless for being a home-wrecker.

But some supported him, saying he just picked the best choice.

[This is a real man. Locked in a rising stock early and climbed up. What’s wrong with choosing better?]

[Even if that didn’t happen, they might have split. I think he did nothing bad.”

At that time, I stood beside the street.

The wind suddenly blew strongly. I staggered, and the food I held dropped into a dirty puddle.

I bent down and tossed the spoiled sandwich into the bin.

In truth, I was the ex-boyfriend that the comment talked about.

Afterward, Calliope and I went our separate ways. I failed to get into the university, and even the mother who cared for me most met with an accident.

In those days, I tried to end my life more than once.

In the later years, days slowly became calm again.

Only then did I notice that the five full years had gone by.

It was the fifth year since I broke up with Calliope, and the third since I fully let her fade away.

The hurt and sadness had long healed like the marks across my palms, thinning like dust in the breeze.

Returning home, I arranged the scattered sketches on the table.

Just as Arden said, I never went to university, nor touched that higher circle again.

Placing the drafts back into the drawer, I suddenly spotted a long-stored letter.

On it, in neat handwriting. “Rayne Zimmerman, personally.”

At the last line of that letter, she wrote she would leave everything to me, yet in the end, it was I who lost it all because of her.

My mind drifted back to the past.

Calliope and I were childhood sweethearts, growing up side by side.

We lived in nearby houses; in those days, she still had a warm family.

Later on, her dad’s company expanded, and he returned less.

She often slipped over to my place, saying that mine felt like home, and hers did not.

When she turned six, her dad cheated.

Her mom broke things across the house overnight and stopped caring for her.

During the divorce, her parents tossed her back and forth like a toy; neither wanted her.