I spent five years in a clandestine relationship with my boss. Because he couldn’t stand sugary drinks, I cut out sugar for five years just to match him. Yet on a Friday afternoon, a decadent iced strawberry cold foam latte sat squarely on his mahogany desk. Penny breezed past, casually picked it up, and took a sip through the straw. "Edric, it's way too sweet." Edric looked up from his screen and offered a soft, indulgent smile. "I’ll order it with half-sweetness next time." Penny leaned against his desk, asking what they should get for dinner. "Nothing spicy," he replied gently. "Your stomach can’t handle it. Whatever else you want is fine." I stood by the copier clutching a cup of bitter black coffee, silent. My mind flashed back to the previous night, when searing stomach cramps had kept me curled on the floor until three in the morning. What had he said when I texted him in agony? "Oh, right." He’d sent two words: "Drink water." 1 On my way home from the office, my mother called to ask if I had eaten the vacuum-sealed smoked sausages she’d mailed from home. I went quiet. Because Edric hated strong cooking smells, the parcel had sat unopened in a corner of our balcony for two months. For five years, I had lived like a thief in our shared apartment, hiding away every piece of myself that displeased him. Only now did the truth finally click into place: what he disliked most wasn’t the food. It was me. "Don't worry, take your time with them. They won't spoil," my mom said. Her voice was carefully bright, but I knew her too well not to hear the subtle trace of disappointment. My eyes stung with sudden heat. "Mom... I think I’m coming home." The ground rules of our secret romance had been laid down by Edric from day one. He claimed corporate politics were cutthroat and that going public would jeopardize both our careers. In the beginning, he had genuinely cared. When I had a raging fever during our first year, he had driven across the entire city in the middle of a torrential downpour to bring me medication. He’d wrapped me in blankets, scolding me for not taking care of myself while clumsily simmering ginger broth on the stove. Everything changed when Penny joined the firm. She was the daughter of Edric’s favorite college mentor, hired straight out of graduate school. Edric’s protective, doting treatment of her was obvious to everyone on the floor. At first, I tried to convince myself it was harmless. He told me she was like a younger sister, and I chose to believe him. Except sisters don’t claim the front passenger seat of your car every single day. They don’t share every private lunch, and they certainly don’t demand personal door-to-door rides home after late-night overtime. When I finally voiced my discomfort, he only frowned, calling me narrow-minded. "What do you think she wants from me? She has a boyfriend," he’d snapped. Penny did have a boyfriend—one she dumped within two months. After that, Edric stopped offering explanations altogether. On Saturday afternoon, my phone rang. A rare weekend call from Edric. "Come into the office tomorrow," he said without preamble. "Help Penny finalize the quarterly revenue reports. She can’t manage the workload alone." "I’m not her assistant." A heavy silence settled over the line. When Edric spoke again, his tone was laced with irritation. "Do you really have to be like this?" "Like what?" "Petty. Passive-aggressive." I bit down hard on my lower lip. For five years, every single boundary I tried to set, every whisper of hurt, was branded as irrational jealousy. "Nine o'clock sharp tomorrow," he commanded. "Don't be late." He ended the call. I tossed my phone onto the mattress and stared blankly at the ceiling. A stray tear tracked down my temple, pooling cold and sharp inside my ear. 2 Sunday morning, I didn’t go. For the first time in five years, I defied him. I slept straight through until noon. When I checked my phone, there were five missed calls and two text messages, all from Edric. "9:10 AM: Where are you?" "9:40 AM: I honestly have no idea what your problem is anymore. You’re exhausting." Propped against the headboard, I typed a flat reply: "Overtime on weekends is not part of my job description." His response was instantaneous: "The department has an urgent deadline. Why do you have to throw a tantrum now?" I didn’t bother answering. I got up, washed my face, and made coffee. By late afternoon, our department lead tagged me in the team group chat, typing cautiously: "Sadie, Edric needs you to finish the quarterly data reconciliation first thing Monday morning." Before I could type "Understood", a message from Penny popped up. "Don’t worry about it! I went ahead and finished it for her :)" The chat fell dead silent for a few seconds. Then Edric dropped a voice note into the thread, his tone dripping with fond warmth: "Penny’s always the reliable one." A dry, bitter laugh caught in my throat. Strangely, the urge to cry was gone. At dusk, I took out the trash and ran into an elderly neighbor walking her golden retriever. I remembered when that dog was just a tiny, trembling puppy she carried inside her coat like a fragile treasure. Five years had passed; the puppy was fully grown now. I sat on the wooden bench in the courtyard for a long time. The autumn breeze cut through my cardigan, sending a shiver through my spine. I knew with absolute clarity that even if I vanished for three straight days, Edric wouldn’t go looking for me. He never checked my whereabouts, never showed a flicker of jealousy, never asked who I spent my weekends with. For years, I had romanticized his detachment as profound trust. Now I understood that absence of jealousy wasn't trust. It was apathy. When I climbed the stairs back to the flat, my phone screen lit up. For a fleeting second, I thought it might be him. It was a text from my mother instead. "Sweetheart, what would you like to eat when you get back? Let Mom know early so I can prep the groceries." Beneath was a list of every childhood comfort: "Smothered pork chops, buttermilk biscuits, slow-roasted pot roast, and that creamy chicken soup you love." I read through the names one by one. Each dish felt like a needle pressing into the softest, most bruised part of my chest. I replied: "I want all of it." My mother instantly sent back three laughing emojis. Late that night, I scrolled backward through my camera roll, stopping at a photo taken right after college graduation. I had my hair in a high ponytail, smiling so broadly my eyes crinkled into crescents—radiant, whole, untouched. Then I glanced in the vanity mirror: a faint, muted smile, eyes hollowed out of light. Every corner of this apartment screamed the same undeniable truth: I had poured five years of my youth into a bottomless well. I was done pouring. 3 On Monday morning, I walked into the office fifteen minutes late. Edric was already standing beside my cubicle, holding a thick folder, his face storm-cloud dark. "Sadie, who authorized you to format these numbers this way?" I took the folder, flipped through the first few pages, and realized immediately that this wasn't my work. When I looked up at him, his gaze was frigid—the look a supervisor gives an incompetent intern. "That was me," Penny’s meek voice drifted from behind us. She stepped forward, looking suitably contrite. "Friday was so hectic. I must have missed a few cross-references." The harsh lines on Edric’s face vanished in an instant. He turned toward her, his tone dropping into something infinitely softer. "It’s fine. Just double-check it next time." Then he turned back to me, the warmth instantly freezing over into sharp professional detachment. "Fix her errors and have the finalized deck on my desk before five." My fingers tightened around the folder. "This isn't my assignment." The open-plan office fell dead quiet. Nearby colleagues kept their heads down, pretending to type. Edric’s jaw clenched. He stared at me for three agonizing seconds before saying, "My office. Now." I followed his brisk stride down the long hallway. His corner office sat at the far end of the executive suite. Years ago, when we were both junior associates, I had looked at that office with ambition and shared dreams. But after he made director and moved in, I had never stepped foot inside during work hours. I had policed myself meticulously, ensuring our secret relationship remained pristine and uncompromised. Edric leaned against the edge of his mahogany desk, crossing his arms. "What is going on with you lately, Sadie?" "Nothing is going on." "Penny told me you’ve been sneaking out the second the clock hits five, refusing team dinners, acting completely disengaged." Penny again. The corner of my mouth pulled into a dry smirk. "She certainly keeps close tabs on me." "Drop the attitude," he snapped, his patience running out. "How many times do I have to tell you? Penny is like family to me. She’s alone in this city, trying to build a career, and looking out for her is my responsibility. Stop acting like a jealous child!" I laughed. A genuine, hollow laugh. "Edric, did it ever cross your mind that I’m all alone in this city too?" He froze. "I have no family here to back me up. I don’t have a professor father whose reputation precedes me. And I have a boyfriend... whom I’m not even allowed to acknowledge in the light of day." The room went dead silent. Edric loosened his crossed arms and brought a hand up to rub the bridge of his nose—a gesture so painfully familiar it made my chest ache. He did it every single time he decided I was being unreasonable. "Can we not do this at work?" he muttered, sounding weary. "We'll talk at home tonight, okay?" I didn't answer. Five years of "we’ll talk tonight". And then tonight would come, and he’d be bogged down with overtime, or too exhausted to listen, or Penny would call with an emergency. Every single grievance had been postponed to a "tonight" that never arrived, left to rot in mutual silence. "Go fix the deck," he said, turning back to his desktop—a clear dismissal. I walked to the door, paused, and looked back at him. His head was bent over his paperwork, his profile calm and composed, identical to the man I fell in love with five years ago. Yet everything beneath the surface had decayed. When I stepped out, the fluorescent lights of the hallway felt blindingly harsh. My phone vibrated in my pocket. Penny had posted in the company Slack: "Thanks for all the hard work, team! Ordering gourmet milk teas for the floor this afternoon on me!" A flurry of enthusiastic replies followed. Edric commented: "Make sure yours is warm. Ice isn't good for your digestion." I didn’t touch the report. At four-thirty, I printed the original draft with all its glaring errors, slipped it into a manila folder, and dropped it onto Penny’s desk. I slapped a bright yellow sticky note on the cover: "Your project. Your responsibility." When I walked out of the glass tower, the brisk March wind swept over my face, carrying a sharp, clean chill. Standing at the bustling street corner, I realized I had nowhere I wanted to go. My phone rang. Edric’s name flashed across the screen. "What is your problem?" His voice was thick with suppressed fury. "I think the note was self-explanatory." "You are openly defying your team." "I am simply refusing to do work that isn't mine." On the other end of the line came the dull thud of something being slammed onto wood. Then, a long, suffocating silence. He refused to speak, and I offered no words to fill the void. Five years in the shadows had taught me how to endure silence. "You've changed," he said at last, his voice dropping into ice. I looked up at the bruised purple hues of the evening sky. Across the intersection, a young couple stood waiting for the light to change; the girl had her arm looped through his, laughing out loud without a care in the world. "Edric," I said quietly, "did you ever stop to think about who made me this way?" I hung up before he could respond. That evening, I opened my travel app and booked a one-way train ticket. A text from my mom popped up: "I put clean pink sheets on your old bed. The soft cotton ones you love." I stared at the screen until my vision blurred. I took a screenshot of my ticket confirmation and sent it to her. Her reply arrived within seconds: "Good, good. Dad and I will be waiting at the station early." 4 The next morning, I submitted a sick leave request. Edric rejected it within minutes, texting me immediately: "What are you trying to pull?" I ignored it, wheeled my suitcase out the door, and headed straight for the station. On the high-speed train, I leaned my temple against the cool glass window, watching the endless flat fields blur into streaks of green and gold. My phone chimed. A notification from Penny’s social media feed. A photo taken in the breakroom: Edric’s clean profile as he tilted his head back, sipping a cup of coffee. Her caption read: "Working late isn’t so bad when the boss keeps you company <3" The comment section was filled with cheeky office banter. Edric had left a comment: "Get off your phone and get back to work." The words sounded stern, but the intimacy between the lines was unmistakable. My gaze drifted to his shirt in the photo. It was the tailored, luxury designer piece I had bought him for his birthday last year. He had praised the breathable cotton, wearing it constantly, washing it with care. How ironic that he could wear the shirt I paid for while pouring every drop of his tenderness into someone else. I closed my eyes. A dull pressure built behind my eyelids, but not a single tear fell. I arrived home by midday. The kitchen table was overflowing with food. My father’s hair had silvered noticeably at the temples, though his posture remained straight and proud. Without a word, he dropped the meatiest pork chop into my bowl, then went back to his rice. "It’s delicious," I mumbled, my mouth full. My mother beamed, the crinkles around her eyes deepening with unmistakable relief. At one in the morning, my phone lit up with an incoming call from Edric. "You’re not at the apartment," he said, breathless and irritated. "Where are you?" "I’m home. At my parents'." His voice turned instantly frosty. "Why didn't you tell me you were leaving town?" I lay in the bed I had grown up in, rolling onto my side to watch the pale moonlight wash over the wooden floorboards. "Edric." "What?" "Where were you last month on our fifth anniversary?" He hesitated. "I told you, I was entertaining an important client." "Was that client named Penny?" This time, the silence stretched so long I almost thought the call had dropped. "I spent four hours cooking that night," I continued evenly. "A full table of your favorite dishes. I waited up until midnight. And at twelve-o-one, Penny posted a photo of the two of you sharing a booth at a late-night diner. When you came home the next morning and I asked if you’d eaten, you lied to my face and said you were too busy to grab a bite." A faint rustle came through the speaker—the sound of him leaning heavily against the balcony railing back in our city apartment. "I only lied because I didn't want you making a scene over nothing..." his voice dropped slightly. "So you lied to protect yourself." Silence. "Edric, how many times have you lied to me over the past five years?" "Sadie..." "Let me finish," I interrupted, cutting him off for the very first time in our relationship. "I never demanded that we go public. You said it would hurt your career, and I respected that. You told me we needed to keep our distance at work, and I played along. You asked me to trust you, and I gave you everything I had. But trust isn’t a blank check for you to throw in the dirt." I drew in a steady, clean breath. "Edric, we're over. Let's break up."
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