I Left on Our Tenth Anniversary

At the company's annual charity gala, in front of everyone, the man I'd been with for ten years asked me if he could have the first dance with the new intern.

I didn't argue.

I didn't make a scene.

I stepped aside, turned around, and walked out.

For ten years I'd been there.

The tiny apartment with no heat. The credit card debt I helped him pay off. Every rung of the ladder he climbed to get where he is.

I put up with his arrogance. I put up with being talked down to. Because once upon a time, he'd said he would love me for the rest of his life.

I knew him too well.

To him, my silence was just a sulk.

He was sure I couldn't leave him. Sure that, like every other time in the last ten years, I'd swallow it and come back around.

He was planning to propose on our tenth anniversary. Down on one knee, in front of all our family and friends.

He thought one diamond ring would make me forget every humiliation and bring me home.

What I never told him was that the night of the gala, I packed ten years of memories into a cardboard box and threw it in the trash.

On the day of our anniversary, when I still hadn't shown up, he had someone call to ask where I was.

I was at the airport, waiting to board a flight to the West Coast.

"Please tell him happy anniversary," I said evenly. "And tell him there won't be any more."

————

At the company's annual charity gala, in front of everyone, Julian asked if he could have the first dance with Mia.

I didn't argue. I didn't make a scene.

I just stepped aside.

Julian hesitated. He looked genuinely surprised. But in the end, he took Mia's hand.

The music started, a slow waltz, and the two of them turned under the spotlight.

I walked away.

Outside the hotel, the night air had a bite to it.

A little later my phone lit up. Julian.

He must have noticed I was gone.

I told you, Mia's shy, and she only just learned to dance. She's not comfortable with anyone else!

Evelyn, can you please do something about the jealousy?

Or when we get to HQ next month, I'm not telling anyone you're my girlfriend!

Every message ended in an exclamation point. Every one had that tone I knew so well, the tone of a man scolding someone beneath him.

As if I'd done something wrong again. Overreacted again. Owed him an apology again.

I read them twice, then deleted them.

What he didn't know was that I'd already turned down the executive transfer to the East Coast headquarters and applied to the autonomous driving lab on the West Coast.

It was over.

Half an hour earlier, I'd still believed we had a good future.

When I walked in on his arm in my black velvet gown, I could feel people looking at us with envy.

I couldn't make myself smile.

From the moment we arrived, his attention was somewhere else.

He kept looking down at his phone. When I handed him a glass of champagne, he took it without drinking and set it on the bar beside him, eyes never leaving the screen.

I knew who he was waiting for. Mia.

She'd started six months ago, an intern in the marketing department.

Fresh out of college, on her own in the big city. Julian was her direct supervisor, and he'd taken it upon himself to be her mentor.

At first it was walking her through projects and buying her the occasional coffee. Then it was lunch together, late nights at the office together, and eventually weekends shopping downtown.

People had warned me. They said Julian was getting a little too generous with the intern.

I told them it was fine. He had a kind heart.

But the line between a kind heart and a crush can be thinner than paper.

Ten minutes before the gala started, Mia finally showed up.

Her dark blue dress didn't quite fit, but she was young and fresh-faced, and that made up for it.

The second Julian saw her, he lit up.

I knew that smile. It wasn't the polite one. It was the one that reached his eyes.

"I was starting to think you weren't coming," he said, going to meet her. There was a softness in his voice I had never heard before, not even with me.

"Sorry, traffic." Mia smiled and took a little gift box out of her clutch. "For you."

Julian opened it. Inside was a handmade bracelet.

Pink and white plastic beads on a string. At a roadside trinket stand it might have cost three dollars.

He loved it.

"God, it's beautiful!"

He looked down and started unfastening the custom watch on his left wrist.

The watch I'd given him.

On the back of the case, I'd had it engraved: Forever.

Five years ago, the day he got his promotion, I had a friend bring it back from Switzerland, and I put it on his wrist myself.

"Evelyn," he'd said that day, "I'm going to wear this forever."

Now he took it off. Easily, casually.

He slipped that very expensive watch into his jacket pocket, tied on the cheap plastic bracelet, and held his wrist up to the light, grinning.

I looked at the watch he'd tossed aside, and something tightened in my chest.

I turned my head. I didn't want to see any more.

"Evelyn." Julian turned to me, his tone as light as if he were talking about the weather. "I'd like to have the first dance with Mia. Is that okay?"

Before I could answer, Mia spoke up.

"Julian, I don't think that's a good idea." She frowned a little, the picture of innocence. "Evelyn's your girlfriend. You two should have the first dance."

But her eyes told the truth. They flicked to me, then went right back to Julian.

There was a little gleam of triumph in them, like a current under still water. She thought she was hiding it. Everyone could see it.

Julian watched me, waiting. He probably expected me to frown, to push back, to make a fuss the way I had last month when he went to dinner alone with Mia.

"She just learned to dance. She's nervous with anyone else," he added, like he was doing me a favor and giving me a graceful way out. "I can't just leave her standing there by herself."

I didn't argue. I didn't make a scene.

I just looked at him for ten seconds.

A lot went through my head in those ten seconds.

The two of us right out of college, eating instant noodles in that tiny apartment with no heat.

All those late nights. Paying off his credit cards. Rewriting his résumé. Getting him, step by step, all the way to marketing director.

I'd always thought we were building a future together.

Ten seconds were up.

I took a step back and gave him the floor.

Julian froze.

He hadn't expected me to give in that easily.

The surprise in his eyes turned into something uncomfortable, as if I'd gone off the script he'd written.

It lasted less than two seconds. Then he took Mia's hand and practically pulled her onto the dance floor.

I didn't watch.

I turned and pushed through the hotel's glass doors.

Without thinking, I touched the old watch on my own wrist, the one Julian had given me.

The strap was worn, the leather starting to crack. I looked down at it and smiled, and left it where it was.

Not because I couldn't let go of it.

Because it didn't matter anymore.