The new secretary brought my boyfriend home at midnight. “Don’t blame him,” she said earnestly. “It’s all my fault for not being able to hold my liquor. Mr. Sterling shielded me, which is why he ended up like this.” I felt like laughing. The boss shields the secretary, the secretary speaks up for the boss—this mutual care could easily be submitted as a sweet workplace romance. 1 “Alright, just don’t pick a fight with him when you get back. He’s only busy with work, it’s not like he did it on purpose.” My parents had traveled thousands of miles across the country just to see me. I originally wanted to give it my all, putting on a grand display of our affection so they could finally stop worrying about me. Instead, my boyfriend, aside from picking them up at the airport on the very first day, was practically invisible for the rest of their trip. Busy with his absolute bullshit work. For tonight’s farewell dinner, the great CEO Sterling finally graced us with his presence. Yet, before the main courses were even served, he took a phone call and vanished. Even after all that, my mom was the one turning around to comfort me, terrified that I’d cause a rift with him. Thinking about how they had flown all this way, even booking their own hotel room in advance out of fear of causing me any slight inconvenience, my chest tightened with overwhelming guilt. At the TSA security checkpoint, watching their shuffling, aging figures blending into the crowded line, my nose stung, and my vision blurred into a watery mess. God only knows how five years ago, I found the heart to leave my parents behind, pack my bags, and follow Owen Sterling to a city so completely far away from home. 2 The person who brought Owen back late that night was his new secretary. She was struggling to support a thoroughly intoxicated Owen, standing awkwardly at the doorway. “Ma’am, could you step aside? Let me help Mr. Sterling onto the couch.” Ever since I stepped down from active operations in the company, I hadn’t paid any attention to personnel changes. No one had bothered to tell me that his secretary had been replaced by such a young girl. The executive assistant position at a firm of our scale was practically an executive management track. I remembered Owen’s previous secretary—an Ivy League graduate with five years of brutal corporate experience. Her professionalism was beyond question, and she navigated high-stakes business dinners effortlessly. At the very least, she had never allowed her boss to be dragged home blackout drunk. “Don’t blame him,” Amber Cox explained, her expression dripping with raw sincerity. “It’s all my fault for not being able to hold my liquor. Mr. Sterling shielded me, which is why he ended up like this.” I felt like laughing. The boss shields the secretary, the secretary speaks up for the boss. This level of mutual devotion could easily be submitted as a sweet workplace romance novel. If the guy in question wasn’t my boyfriend, that is. But I wasn’t about to lose my temper on a young girl. I simply nodded, politely thanked her, and prepared to see her out. Amber didn’t leave, though. She hovered by the door, staring at Owen as he groaned on the sofa, her face a portrait of deep, agonizing concern. “Is there something else?” I asked. “Mr. Sterling’s stomach always acts up after drinking. You should mix some warm honey water for him to soothe the lining.” The blinding concern in her eyes made it seem like I was the one who was thoroughly incompetent. I brushed her off casually. “We don’t have any left at home.” “Oh, yes you do,” Amber replied entirely naturally, as if she were the actual mistress of the house. “In the top kitchen cabinet, the second shelf over, there’s a huge jar of it!” I smiled faintly. “So, you’ve been here before?” 3 If it had been the me from seven years ago, I probably would have splashed a bucket of ice water directly onto Owen’s face and demanded an explanation word for word. Now, I simply told Amber to leave in a flat, monotone voice, then helped Owen out of his suit jacket and guided him to bed. As I wiped his face with a warm towel, an unseasonable thought crossed my mind: the Owen from seven years ago would never have put me in such a deeply humiliating position. Back then, right after I agreed to be with him, he would be so ecstatic that he’d suddenly laugh out loud in his sleep. He would call my name over and over like an absolute idiot. “Hazel,” “Hazel,” “look how perfectly our names fit together.” When I checked his phone on a whim back then, I used to dramatically complain, “They say no one comes out of their boyfriend’s phone alive, so why is there absolutely nothing here?” He would look incredibly aggrieved. “What did you expect to find? I don’t have an ex; you’re my first love. No flirty side-pieces, and my profile picture is literally you.” Back then, his phone only held dates entirely related to me—my birthday, my cycle, the hundredth day since we met, the hundredth-day anniversary of being together… It was as if every single day spent with me was a milestone worth celebrating. Now, I could only catch fleeting glimpses of his past self from the way he subconsciously nuzzled into the crook of my neck while drunk, whining for me to pat his back. 4 Once he was back in his sharp, tailored suit, CEO Sterling didn’t look up from his iPad once throughout breakfast. As if anything on the virtual network was infinitely more important than the living, breathing person sitting right across from him. The hangover soup I woke up early to cook sat right by his hand, cooling down inch by inch. Looking at his calm, indifferent face, I suddenly wanted to ask him: Should I swap it for honey water? “Amber told me about last night. I drank too much at a dinner before, and she brought me back once. Don’t overthink it.” He finally looked up at me, his tone so natural and magnanimous that it felt like if I pursued it any further, I would be the one acting entirely unreasonable. I ladled my porridge spoonful by spoonful, but had no appetite. “Why do you keep taking a secretary who can’t drink to business dinners anyway?” “Why should a young girl be forced to drink at those corporate things?” The protectiveness in his words was glaring. I gave a self-deprecating smile, wondering if he could still remember that back when I helped him secure our very first clients, I was just a young girl too. The stomach I ruined back then still couldn’t handle anything spicy today; all the foods I used to love had to be cut out one by one. His brow furrowed slightly, and he walked over to press a brief kiss to my temple. “Sweetie, don’t overthink things. I’m traveling next week, from the 7th to the 9th. Can you help me pack my suitcase?” “The 7th to the 9th?” I looked up at him, almost begging him to remember that within those three days, one of them was my birthday. But he just glanced at his watch. “I’m heading to work.” 5 Owen didn’t have many things, leaving plenty of room in the medium-sized suitcase. Looking at the empty space, I hesitated over whether to pack my own clothes and go with him. If he remembered when the day came, I didn’t want to just hear “Happy Birthday” through a cold phone screen. Just then, Owen, who had been sitting on the couch scrolling through his phone, suddenly stood up, kicked open the cabinet, pulled out the first-aid kit, and tossed a box of medicine into that empty space. I saw clearly that it was motion sickness pills. “Why are you packing that? You don’t get airsick.” “It’s for Amber. She said she didn’t have time to prepare it.” There were so many red flags in that single sentence that my blood boiled, and for a moment, I didn’t even know where to begin. Strictly speaking, as a business matter, Owen couldn’t miss the tenth-anniversary gala of the company’s biggest client. But what was Amber, a girl with zero industry background, doing going with him? Could she win over new clients, or could she subtly fish for information while socializing with competitors? “I’m just taking her to see the world a bit, so she can hold her own in the future,” he explained offhandedly. The way he put it… there were thousands of qualified people submitting resumes to get into the company, and countless others stretching their necks to climb the ladder inside. Why was it her turn to see the world? Why did CEO Sterling have to personally guide her from a blank slate to someone who could hold her own? I took a deep breath, pressing down the agitation in my chest. “Let me go with you instead. There will be so much networking at the gala; a young girl won’t be able to handle it.” “Your health isn’t great, you should rest at home. Be good, wait for me at home.” The words coming out of his mouth were all for my sake, but his eyes spared no time to actually look at me. Before I could say another word, he had already looked back down at his phone. His expression was pleased, his eyes carrying a faint smile. I didn’t know when he had become so brazen—his body was right next to me, but his heart and eyes easily passed through me, ignoring me, drawing happiness solely from someone else. 6 On my birthday, I sat alone at home all day, my phone ringing every now and then. There were birthday wishes from my parents and friends on text, double-point promotional texts from merchants, sales associates saying they had prepared a small gift for me, and even two clients I was close with called to catch up. Everyone except Owen. I waited until dusk fell and the streetlights flickered on, waiting until the day ended without a single drop of magic. The last call before midnight came from a client at the gala. “Hazel, happy birthday.” Grant Harrison’s deep, resonant voice traveled into my ear, laced with a faint disappointment. “Why didn’t you come this time? I’ve been looking forward to it for so long. I wrote the invitation for you with my own hands, but you didn’t give me the honor.” I had never received any invitation. But in a split second, I understood—it had probably been intercepted by Owen because it was “special” and written “by hand.” Grant had indeed pursued me in the past. No wonder Owen refused to let me accompany him on this trip no matter what. But that was all in the past… For a moment, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and I had to smooth things over for Owen. “Thank you for your kindness, Mr. Harrison. There were some matters at the office that required someone to stay behind, so my apologies.” “It’s my fault. I thought everyone could gather together, so I scheduled the event on this day. I didn’t expect you wouldn’t be able to make it, and it ended up keeping Owen from spending your birthday with you.” “It’s fine, I don’t mind,” I said half-heartedly, preparing to hang up, when I heard a low chuckle from the phone. “Then if I told you his secretary went into his room almost an hour ago and hasn’t come out yet, would you still not mind?”
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