1: 1
My mother's surgery had failed. She had maybe three months left.
The grief sat in my chest with no one to give it to, so I turned to my boyfriend, Ned Henson.
"Are you busy?"
No reply.
Half an hour later, I tried again.
"Do you have time to talk? It's about my mom."
Another half hour passed, and Ned answered with a single "1."
I stared at that "1" for a long time. It was always like this.
When I'd run a fever of a hundred and three and begged him to take me to the hospital, all I got back was a "1."
When my mother was first hospitalized and I asked if he could help me get a better specialist's appointment, half a day later a "1" showed up.
Even last month, when we fought and I asked whether he still cared about me at all, he waited a whole night and sent back a "1."
Now my mother was dying, and I truly had no one to tell.
A new post from his junior secretary popped up in my feed.
【It's all my fault, I completely botched the client proposal—so grateful Mr. Henson stayed with me revising it till dawn, I'm so touched I could just marry him~】
How absurd. How laughable.
Ned was always busy. Call his phone and his assistant picked up first.
Even a date with him had to be booked three days in advance.
Yet he was willing to sacrifice his precious time to personally sit and fix a proposal with a junior secretary.
I tipped my head back to keep the tears from falling, and for the life of me I couldn't figure it out.
Why had I gotten together with Ned Henson in the first place.
A boyfriend like this—no loss letting him go.
1
I stared at the junior secretary's post for a long while.
There was a photo attached, too. A photo of Ned.
Black suit, eyes locked on his laptop, coffee set beside him.
Latte art swirled on top, and even the cup was pink.
Like something a girl had picked out herself.
I thought of how every year, for his birthday, I picked out a cup for Ned.
And every time he got one, he'd toss it into the cabinet, where it gathered dust, never used.
Once, eyes stinging, I asked him, "Do you not like them?"
Ned paused, then ruffled my hair.
"The ones you give me are too precious. I want to keep them."
"When I'm fifty, I'll take them all out and count them one by one."
"Don't overthink it. I just don't care much about this stuff. I've got things to do."
But that pink coffee cup—I'd seen it before, in the junior secretary Deidre Simmons's feed.
It was a freebie that came with a coffee she'd bought.
And Ned had taken it.
I scrolled up. He'd liked her post before that one too.
Of her last seven posts, he'd liked six.
But thinking back on my own feed, for nearly two whole years he hadn't liked a single thing.
Forget likes—I doubt he'd even glanced at more than a few.
I reached back and tapped like too.
Then I read the room, closed the chat window, and stopped typing.
The screen went dark.
Let it stay dark.
No matter how many messages I sent, all the chat window would ever gain was one more "1."
There was no point to any of it.
I put my phone away and got up to see to my mother's arrangements.
When it was all done, I dragged my exhausted body home.
I opened the door to the living room lights on.
I thought Ned was back—but instead I found the junior secretary, Deidre Simmons, wrapped in a towel, just stepping out of the bathroom.
"Oh! Sorry, Debbie Delgado, I thought you weren't coming home tonight."
"Mr. Henson sent me to pick up some documents, and I got all sweaty, so I figured I'd borrow your shower..."
"We leave first thing tomorrow morning on a business trip, gone a whole week."
Deidre shot me a smug look, then walked straight into the bedroom to grab a change of clothes for Ned.
I said nothing. I just stared at the spare key in her hand.
"How did you get that?"
Deidre glanced back and raised an eyebrow. "Oh, this?"
"Mr. Henson gave it to me, of course."
Hanging from the spare key was a little rabbit officer charm.
It stabbed straight into my eyes.
If I remembered right, Ned's own keyring had a matching fox charm on it.
When had that shown up? Three months ago, six months ago? I couldn't recall.
"These are all Mr. Henson's, right? They look like his style."
Deidre had already opened the closet.
She went through Ned's clothes as if they were her own.
"I remember this shirt—we just picked it up shopping around when I went on that business trip with him."
"And this jacket, the coffee stain on it is from when I slipped and spilled on it, ha, still hasn't washed out?"
I stood in the doorway like a stranger passing through,
watching Deidre gather up Ned's most personal clothes one by one, the bitterness twisting hard inside me.
Sensing something, maybe, Deidre turned to look at me.
"Debbie, don't get the wrong idea. I'm just Mr. Henson's secretary. Everything between us is completely aboveboard. There's nothing going on at all."
I tugged the corner of my mouth. "I'm not getting any ideas. Take your time."
With that, I turned and went back into the study.
The moment the door shut, my body slid heavily to the floor, and the tears came pouring out.
Shaking, I pulled out my phone and sent Ned one message.
"Ned Henson, let's break up."
Sure enough, five minutes later, my phone buzzed.
