The day I was diagnosed with cancer, my boyfriend asked for a breakup. Again. I smiled and told him to wait a little longer. He flew into a rage, smashing everything in the room. "Why couldn't it have been you?" he screamed. Three months ago, his first love died in a car crash. He blamed me, said my jealousy stopped him from driving her home. I lowered my eyes, my voice a soft echo of itself. "Just wait a little longer." Just wait. Soon enough, it will be. 1 Leo was drunk again, that deep, sloppy kind of drunk that saturated the air with the stale stench of whiskey and smoke. I wrestled him into bed, cleaned up the mess, and only then, in the suffocating quiet, did I let myself look at the diagnosis report again. His slurred whispers drifted from the bedroom, his ex-girlfriend's name a ghost on his lips. A laugh, brittle and humorless, escaped me. I could recite every word on that paper, but the brutal truth of it still felt like a language I couldn't comprehend. The living room light flickered on, jolting me from my trance. I crumpled the report into a tight ball and shoved it deep into my pocket. It didn't matter. Leo wasn't even looking at me. He scrubbed at his temples and walked straight to the mantelpiece. To her picture. He lit a candle, his movements reverent, his head bowed in worship. After Cassie died, Leo had insisted on displaying her portrait—a large, smiling photo from their college days—in the middle of our living room. "I want you to look at her every day," he'd said, his voice cold. "And repent." Repent for what? The night of the accident, at a college reunion, Cassie had gotten wasted. She’d thrown her arms around my boyfriend, sobbing about how she’d never gotten over him. She ignored me, the actual girlfriend, with a blatant, drunken disregard that made everyone else uncomfortable. I finally snapped. I pulled her off Leo and shoved her away. When he insisted on taking her home, I’d sneered, "Look around, Leo. There's a dozen people here. Why does it have to be you?" The standoff ended when one of Cassie's admirers offered her a ride. It was supposed to de-escalate things. Instead, they crashed. Neither of them survived. And Leo laid all the blame, all the guilt, all the crushing weight of it, right at my feet. It was absurd. Did he wish he'd been in that car, too? 2 After his silent vigil, Leo turned to me, his shadow falling over me as he stood there, looking down his nose. "Your turn," he commanded. I let out a soft, tired laugh. "How long are you going to keep playing this game?" His brow furrowed, a storm gathering in his eyes. He kicked the small table in front of me, sending it crashing against the wall. "You don't want to? Then let's break up. But you wouldn't dare, would you? Not when I'm your precious cash cow." That was his favorite threat. His new addiction. We’d been together for four years. Our online persona as the perfect influencer couple had netted us over six hundred thousand followers. They all said we were meant to be. They said the way Leo looked at me was proof of true love. He used to say it, too. "The way I look at Elena will never change, not even when we're old. Actually, at eighty, my eyes will probably be so bad I won't be able to see my little old lady clearly anymore." But people change. Especially as the years pass, as the initial fire cools into embers. It’s then that other thoughts, other possibilities, start to creep in. I never realized how much he still thought about his ex until that reunion. The ghost of a first love, the one that got away—it’s a powerful thing. His ghost had never forgotten him, and suddenly, he remembered all the reasons he'd loved her. And me? I was just the familiar face, the one who’d grown older alongside him. Less exciting. Maybe, after I'm gone, he'll talk about me with this much tortured passion to his next girlfriend. At first, I played along with his bizarre mourning ritual out of pity. He was being eaten alive by guilt and regret, and I thought if he could displace that onto me, maybe he could breathe again. I just never expected him to get so lost in the role. 3 "Just wait a little longer," I said with a smile, getting up to head for the shower. He took my dismissal as a final insult. The rage was instantaneous. He started breaking things. Not random objects, but our things. The furniture we’d picked out together, the little trinkets we'd bought on trips, each one a vessel for a shared memory, a private joke. He raged, a storm of flailing limbs and guttural roars, his voice tearing through the chaos, "Why couldn't it have been you?" Looking at the wreckage, a strange, unnerving calm settled over me. My smile felt genuine. "Just you wait." Really. Just a little longer. Liver cancer. They gave me three to six months. Leo didn't understand the meaning behind my words. He lunged, grabbing my shoulders, shaking me so hard my teeth rattled. "If you don't want to break up, then you'll pay your respects to her. Do it!" In the end, I did. Because his screaming was giving me a headache. And when a child throws a tantrum, you learn it's easier to just give in. 4 That night, sleep was a stranger. I gave up trying and sat up, watching Leo's back. He always slept facing away from me now, a chasm of cold sheets between us. I had to prop myself up on an elbow, leaning precariously over the gap just to see his face. He slept fitfully, his brow furrowed into a tight knot. The boyish face I loved was etched with a premature weariness. His lashes, long enough to be a sin, cast spidery shadows on his cheeks. His perfect nose was a sharp line in the dim light, and a fine, dark stubble was already shadowing his jaw. I drank in the sight of him, my mind drifting back to the day we met. He was eighteen, a freshman overflowing with boundless energy, sweat glistening on his skin as he dominated the university basketball court, a chorus of adoring girls screaming his name. I was twenty-three, back on campus for an alumni event, and I’d wandered over to the courts, drawn by the noise and the sea of fresh faces. When he sank the winning three-pointer, I screamed with the rest of them, a jolt of pure, youthful excitement shooting through me. He spotted me in the crowd, his eyes locking with mine, a proud, cocky grin spreading across his face. I gave him an enthusiastic thumbs-up. He tucked the basketball under his arm and jogged right over. "Hey," he said, slightly breathless. "Are you one of the professors?" Under the bright afternoon sun, his skin was almost translucent, his amber eyes clear as a stream. He was so close I could smell the clean, boyish scent of his sweat and the grass. "Professors don't get called 'hey,'" I teased, tilting my head back to meet his gaze. I held it, watching a faint blush creep up his neck and tint the tips of his ears, before I let him go. Back then, our intentions were perfectly clear. I wanted to flirt with him. He was interested in me. Neither of us expected it to detonate into real love, a chaotic, beautiful four-year journey. Because I was the older one, I naturally indulged his moods, his immaturity. In return, he gave me the fierce, untainted romance that only a young man can offer. But lately, his tantrums had gone too far. And he'd forgotten to give anything back. 5 I didn't sleep at all. When I finally drifted off, it was already dark again when I woke. Moonlight streamed through a gap in the curtains, painting a ghostly stripe across the floor. Habit took over. I grabbed my phone, checking the backend of our social media accounts. The team had posted the scheduled content, and the affiliate sales numbers were stable. I'd started this influencer agency with Leo. I put up the money, and I ran the business. All he had to do was show up, look handsome, and follow the script. I often thought he was born in the right era. A man who could genuinely make a living off his face. A very, very good living. But early success, easy money—it's rarely a good thing. It had warped me, and now I saw it had warped him, too. I called his name a few times. Silence. I got up to go to the bathroom and flinched as Cassie’s smiling face caught me by surprise again. I grabbed a few tissues and draped them over the photo before continuing on. A harsh voice cut through the silence from behind me. "What are you doing?" I froze, then turned. I hadn't even noticed Leo on the balcony, a cigarette glowing in the dark. The cherry-red tip flared as he inhaled, smoke momentarily obscuring his face. He was clearly furious about my disrespect to Cassie’s portrait. "Thought she might be cold," I mumbled, stepping into the bathroom. He stormed to the doorway, his eyes bloodshot. "She's dead. Why do you still have to humiliate her?" A real laugh escaped me this time. "Humiliate her? Oh, sweetheart. If I wanted to really humiliate her, I would have stood up at her funeral and told everyone she was pregnant with your child." I’d spent the whole night thinking. It was time to lay the cards on the table. In my condition, there was no point in playing dumb anymore. I’d found out two days ago. Leo had been blackout drunk, spilling his guts, and had no memory of it the next morning. No memory of me slapping him twice, stripping him naked, and leaving him on the balcony to freeze for half the night. That’s when it all clicked. The depth of his guilt, the desperate need to make me the villain so he could keep living. My original plan had been to methodically untangle our business finances, minimize my losses, and then break up with him. But a cancer diagnosis tends to change one's plans. Time for a new game. I might be a sugar mama, but I wasn’t a pushover.
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