The Professor's Betrayal,She Walked Away Forever

Under a post about real girlhood confessions, one comment had racked up hundreds of thousands of likes.

“My girlhood confession is that I've never met anyone I couldn't get. Pretty boring, honestly. Even my professor was no exception.”

“When I was in grad school, my professor was the youngest in the whole university, and ridiculously handsome. His wife, though? Plain as they come. She couldn't even hold down a job without him pulling strings for her. She was nowhere near his league.”

“I thought he'd be the exception, but after he met me, he turned into this big lovesick boy who'd never dated before. He'd blush just from holding my hand.”

“My favorite thing to do back then was sneak my hand into his under the dinner table whenever I came over to their house, and kiss him in their bedroom.”

Then the comment took a turn：“I did have to play a few cards, though. He was good to me, but he could never quite bring himself to file for divorce.”

“I wasn't about to be some nameless side piece, so I deliberately sent messages to provoke his wife until she snapped and ruined his awards ceremony.”

“He was furious. She ended up getting maneuvered into leaving the marriage with nothing. He married me not long after, and now I don't have a care in the world.”

The post shot to the top of the trending page within hours. Internet sleuths dug up even more of the truth. That same night, I received a friend request from Winston Dudley.

He said he was sorry. He said he'd been too impulsive back then.

I didn't accept it.

The rain had already stopped. There was no point offering an umbrella now.

——

When I first saw that comment, so smug and self-satisfied about wrecking someone else's relationship, my first instinct was to close out of the post entirely.

But my finger hovered there, frozen.

The commenter's profile picture was a shot of two people from behind, and I recognized the man immediately. It was Winston.

I stayed on that comment for a long time.

The replies had already piled up. Some people tore her apart. Others cheered her on.

“You're actually bragging about being the other woman? How are you not ashamed of yourself?”

“The nerve to post this publicly. Who gave you that kind of audacity? Want a trophy for it?”

“I know about this case. The professor's ex-wife got it really bad. DM me if you want the real story.”

“Why are you all so pressed? Love doesn't follow a first-come-first-served rule. The one who isn't loved is the real third wheel.”

I drew in a slow breath.

The man in this story was Winston Dudley, my ex-husband. I was the plain professor's wife she was so proud to have replaced.

During the divorce, I was diagnosed with severe depression. The quiet, respectable job I'd had vanished along with everything else.

After Winston and I split, I had no job, no family, and a new title courtesy of everyone around me: failure.

I came close to ending it more than once. It wasn't until the last couple of years that life finally began to steady itself again.

Only now did it hit me. Three years. It had been three years since the divorce, and three years since I'd truly let him go.

All the pain, all the humiliation, had faded with the scars on my wrists, carried off by the wind.

When I first met Winston, he wasn't some genius professor. He was just a homeless little boy.

I was five the afternoon I spotted him huddled in a corner of our neighborhood, crying.

Outgoing and curious as I was back then, I walked right up and asked what happened. That was how I learned his parents had died in a car accident. He had nowhere left to go.

I brought Winston home that afternoon, shared every snack and toy I loved with him, and only then did a small, reluctant smile finally surface on his face.

After that, I kept finding excuses to invite him over. Sometimes I'd tell him my mom had baked cookies. Other times I'd say my dad bought me a new toy.