When I woke up, I was lying on the restroom floor.

A stranger was helping me. "You need a doctor."

"I'm fine." I struggled to stand up.

I couldn't break down here. I couldn't let them see me in this state.

I straightened my clothes and fixed my makeup. The woman in the mirror was pale, but her eyes were calm—a dead kind of calm.

Back at the door of the private booth, they were kissing.

Victoria held her wrist high, the bracelet sparkling in the light.

I called an Uber, but after waiting thirty minutes, there were still no cars.

Nathan came out holding Victoria. The early autumn morning was chilly, so he draped his jacket over Victoria's shoulders—the jacket I picked out for him last month.

Seeing me, he looked a bit awkward. "Elena, she's still recovering. At the check-up last time, the doctor said..."

He stopped abruptly, realizing he slipped up.

Last time.

So they had been in contact.

For these past few months, they never stopped talking.

Their car arrived.

"See you, Elena," Nathan said, his gaze not even lingering on me.

I waved my hand, my voice very soft. "Goodbye forever, Nathan."

The New York wind blew my words away.

He didn't hear it.

In the following days, Nathan contacted me frequently.

Day 5: He called to ask about his suit brand.

I was deleting photos from Google Photos—over ten thousand of them, from Harvard to Wall Street. I wiped the cloud storage clean.

Day 10: He texted saying he couldn't find his tie clip.

I was sweeping up broken glass—our matching coffee mugs from pottery class that said "N&E forever."

Day 15: He sent a courier to pick up documents.

I was shredding photo albums. The pictures piled up in half the room. The sound of the scissors, snip snip, sounded like cutting through seven years of entanglement.

Day 20: He sent flowers to my office—it wasn't my birthday, just a random day.

I was on Craigslist selling the genuine leather sofa we ordered from Italy. Too many nights spent waiting on that couch.

Day 30: Movers cleared out the study.

That study, which I never let him enter, was originally filled with "surprises" prepared for him—proposals, handwritten letters, souvenirs, gift sketches.

Every single item was a romance I wanted to give him.

Now, everything was sent to the charity shop.

Just as the movers left, Nathan came back.