1 Nathaniel was a certified genius, admitted to an Ivy League at fifteen, associate professor by twenty-three. Seven years of marriage, and every Valentine’s, Christmas, anniversary, and birthday, he buried himself in thesis papers while I stared at walls. On our seventh anniversary, I cooked a lavish dinner and bought ninety-nine red roses. He sighed. “Charlotte, I know you’re hinting for flowers, but it’s a waste of time. Surely you’re not actually excited by the severed reproductive organs of a plant? Focus on new recipes. The steak was overcooked.” I swallowed my hurt, telling myself geniuses are wired differently. That excuse held until Chloe, a researcher a year younger than him, joined his department. Nathaniel started picking up his phone constantly. The day before my birthday, mopping the floor, he looked up and asked, “What do women nowadays actually like?” Hope flickered. “Roses,” I said softly. That joy died the next morning. Ironing ties in his study, I found a massive bouquet of ninety-nine red roses on his desk. Tucked in the center was a card in his immaculate handwriting: Chloe, Happy Birthday. … The grandfather clock chimed 7:15 AM. Nathaniel sat at the dining table exactly on schedule, cutting into his breakfast while reading a research paper, precise to the very second. “Don’t wear that tie today,” I said, my voice trembling slightly as I stared blankly at the flowers on the counter. “Which one should I wear, then?” “The burgundy striped one. Chloe mentioned the dark ones make me look a bit dated.” Nathaniel was incredibly rigid about his routines. His daily wardrobe was usually planned out weeks in advance. That burgundy tie was the wedding anniversary gift I had given him years ago. He had never worn it once, tossing it into the very back of his closet. But now, simply because another woman made an offhand comment, it was suddenly seeing the light of day. I switched off the iron, pulled out my chair, and sat down to eat. “I don’t have time to look for it. Plus, I don’t even remember where I put it.” For the first time all morning, Nathaniel actually looked up from his paper. A flicker of genuine surprise crossed his dark eyes. After a moment of silence, he stood up and walked into the bedroom himself. Ten minutes later, he walked back to the table, holding the burgundy tie out to me. Waiting for me to tie it for him. I kept my head down, stabbing a piece of fruit with my fork. Nathaniel pressed his lips into a thin line and clumsily tied it himself. When he sat back down, the sound of his knife scraping against the plate was a little louder than usual. “The steak is overcooked again today.” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s been years, Charlotte. How do you still not know exactly how I like my steak? If you were one of my grad students, I would have expelled you by now.” I slammed my knife and fork down onto the table. I looked up at the crooked, hastily tied burgundy knot resting against his collar. “You can expel me right now. Let’s get a divorce.” Nathaniel’s brow furrowed in deep annoyance. “How old are you, Charlotte? You’re acting like a child. Threatening divorce just to get my attention? Do you hear how ridiculous you sound?” I couldn’t take it anymore. “Do you even know what day it is today?” Nathaniel followed my gaze to the large calendar pinned to the wall, right to the date I had circled in thick red marker. [June 20th – Charlotte’s Birthday] He walked past that calendar dozens of times a day. Nathaniel let out a small, dismissive scoff. “I haven’t celebrated a birthday or holiday since I was five years old. It’s a pointless waste of time and energy.” I didn’t say a word. I just stared intensely at the blindingly red roses sitting on the counter. Nathaniel didn’t look guilty in the slightest. “Oh, is this about the flowers? Are you throwing a tantrum over that?” He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Chloe is a colleague. She gave me a gift to celebrate my new paper getting published. It’s basic professional courtesy to return the favor for her birthday.” He stood up, walked over to the massive bouquet, precision-picked a single rose that was starting to wilt, and casually tossed it into the trash. “Next time, just say what’s on your mind. My time is extremely valuable. I don’t have the patience to play these passive-aggressive guessing games with you.” He grabbed his briefcase and walked to the entryway mirror. He paused, turned his head, and finally offered me what he considered a generous compromise. “Charlotte, come here and fix my tie.” I didn’t move. I sat there like a broken machine, methodically slicing the beef on my plate into tiny, meaningless pieces. Nathaniel finally lost his temper. He ripped the tie off his neck, threw it onto the floor, and walked out. The sound of the front door slamming echoed loudly through the empty house. I finally stood up, walked over to the entryway, picked up the burgundy tie, and threw it into the trash can right next to the wilted rose. I didn’t start my usual morning routine of cleaning the house. Instead, I walked back into the bedroom, opened my laptop, and typed Nathaniel’s name into the university’s publication database. Sure enough, a new paper had just been published. I clicked it open and scrolled straight to the acknowledgments section at the bottom. A certain Miss Chloe, who prefers to remain unnamed, complained that she has never been published in this journal and demanded I include her name. While I find the behavior incredibly childish, I suppose it’s not entirely impossible to accommodate. Thank you for the pastries you brought to the lab. They were quite good. The text on the screen started to blur. I thought back to the countless times I had begged him—sometimes joking, sometimes entirely serious—just to mention me in one of his acknowledgments. Every single time, I was met with the same icy rejection. “Absolutely not. An academic paper is not a place for your childish jokes.” In that moment, staring at the screen, I didn’t feel angry. I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. I closed his paper and opened a blank word document. Key by key, I typed out the title. [Divorce Agreement] After drafting a basic framework for the division of assets, I emailed the document to a lawyer friend of mine. I ordered a small cake for myself and ate the entire thing in silence. I wiped my mouth and whispered to the empty room, “Happy thirtieth birthday, Charlotte.” Packing my things was almost pathetically easy. The master closet was completely dominated by Nathaniel’s custom suits and button-downs. My clothes barely took up a single corner. I had quit my job barely a year after college to become a full-time housewife, dedicating every waking moment to taking care of a genius who couldn’t even operate a washing machine. While reaching into the very back of the closet, my hand brushed against a worn notebook. On the cover, written in Nathaniel’s sharp, commanding script, were the words: To my wife—Charlotte. Nathaniel had always been devastatingly handsome and terrifyingly brilliant, but he was famously cold-blooded. On the first day of middle school, a girl had confessed her crush to him. He looked her up and down and flatly said, “You are very ugly.” His reputation was sealed from that day on. One afternoon, he got so engrossed in a math problem that he missed the lunch period entirely. I was sitting in the classroom eating my homemade bento box. Noticing him staring at my food, I asked purely out of politeness, “Do you want some?” He didn’t hesitate. He took my box and ate every last grain of rice. That very same night, Nathaniel marched up to my house alone, knocked on the door, and calmly told my mother he was going to marry me. He nearly gave her a heart attack. His “proposal gift” was a meticulously organized binder of all his study notes. “I’m going to be a professor at the state university. If you study these notes carefully and follow the daily schedule I’ve drafted for you, you should barely be able to get accepted there.” I never could have imagined that in eleven years of knowing him and seven years of marriage, that notebook would be the only gift he ever gave me. My phone rang, shattering my trip down memory lane. My mother-in-law’s piercing shriek blasted through the speaker. “My son is in the emergency room because of you! Where the hell are you?! Get your ass over here right now!” I didn’t have time to process it. I dropped everything and rushed to the hospital. When I arrived at the ER, Nathaniel’s mother spotted me, and her fury finally found its target. “What is wrong with you?! You know my son is deathly allergic to peanuts, and you purposefully bought a cake with peanuts in it?!” She stepped into my space, practically spitting in my face. “What do you get out of poisoning him?! Did you really need to celebrate your stupid little birthday that badly?!” Her screaming drew the attention of half the waiting room. I opened my mouth to defend myself, but before I could get a word out, Chloe stepped out of the patient room and gently took the older woman’s arm. “It’s okay, Mrs. Sterling. I’m sure Charlotte didn’t mean to do it on purpose.” Nathaniel’s mother glared at me with pure hatred. “If I had known you were this incompetent, I would never have let Nathaniel marry a piece of trash like you.” Chloe smiled, her tone soothing and perfectly composed. “Mrs. Sterling, his IV bag is almost empty. Do you mind finding a nurse to swap it out?” As soon as the older woman left, Chloe smoothly grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the private room. “I am so sorry, Charlotte. I had no idea Nathaniel was allergic to peanuts. I was the one who gave him a slice of my peanut butter birthday cake.” She let out a soft sigh. “I wanted to confess to his mother, but he explicitly forbade me from telling her.” Inside the room, Nathaniel was lying in the hospital bed, looking pale. He was casually scrolling through a tablet. I looked at him. “Nathaniel, do you have anything you want to explain?” He didn’t even lift his eyes from the screen. “You know how my mother is. If she finds out, she’ll go to the university and cause a scene, and it will disrupt the entire department.” He flipped to the next page. “Chloe isn’t like you. Her time and reputation are incredibly valuable. This was the most logical solution.” A sickeningly bitter taste flooded the back of my throat. Chloe is valuable. I am worthless. I deserve to be publicly humiliated and screamed at by your mother. I forced my voice to stay quiet. “I thought you prided yourself on being perfectly objective and fair?” When I was a senior in high school, Nathaniel was already in college. I worked myself to the bone just to get accepted into his university. When I got there, he actually became one of my professors. During his lectures, he would purposefully call on me for the hardest questions. When I inevitably struggled, he would ruthlessly humiliate me in front of the entire auditorium. “You can’t even solve a basic equation like this? Has the standard for admissions dropped this low?” He never gave me private tutoring. He never gave me study guides. He never bumped my grade by a single decimal point. Because, according to him, “That would be unfair to the other students.” It took me until today to realize that the heartless, objective Nathaniel Sterling was perfectly capable of showing blatant favoritism. I just wasn’t the one he favored. Nathaniel finally looked up at me, his eyes narrowing. “Did you forget to take your medication today, Charlotte?” Sensing the tension, Chloe immediately stepped in to play the peacemaker. “Nathaniel, don’t be so harsh on her.” She turned to me with an apologetic smile. “It’s entirely my fault. Charlotte, why don’t you tell me exactly what he’s allergic to so I know for next time?” Nathaniel rejected the idea instantly. “No. Don’t waste your time memorizing that. I’ll have her type it up into a spreadsheet and email it to you later.” He turned back to me, his tone shifting into his usual commanding bark. “Go home and pack me a change of clothes. Then make some porridge and bring it back. Bring three portions, not two.” I stared at him with complete, icy calm. I looked him dead in the eye and fed him the exact same line he used to reject me for years. “You need to schedule these requests in advance. I don’t have the time.” Nathaniel’s brow furrowed so deeply it looked like it might permanently crease. Before he could snap at me, his mother walked back into the room with a doctor, aggressively shoving her shoulder into mine to push me out of the way. Chloe gave me a brief, dismissive glance before pasting a bright, sweet smile onto her face to greet the older woman. The doctor was an old family friend. As he swapped the IV bag, he made polite small talk. “Is this lovely young lady your daughter-in-law? She has such a great presence.” “Oh, no,” Nathaniel’s mother said proudly, patting Chloe’s hand. “She is my son’s colleague. Also a brilliant professor at the university.” I purposefully walked as slowly as I could out the door and down the hall. But from the moment I turned my back until the heavy hospital doors swung shut behind me… Nathaniel didn’t utter a single word of correction. Nathaniel stayed in the hospital for two days. He didn’t text or call me a single time. I spent that time finalizing my packing and browsing apartment listings online. I no longer had to mold my life around Nathaniel’s psychotic sleep schedule. I woke up naturally whenever I wanted. I no longer had to rack my brain during dinner just to find a topic he deemed “intellectual enough,” only to be met with a condescending sneer. I no longer had to watch television with the volume on mute, terrified of being called “unproductive trash.” On the evening of his discharge, he finally sent a text. It was characteristically brief. The department’s celebratory dinner for the new publication is at the VIP room in the faculty dining hall. Come. In the past, whenever I begged to visit the campus, he flat-out refused, treating me like some embarrassing plague he needed to hide. My first instinct was to decline. But then I changed my mind. I had spent years making sure his entire life ran perfectly so he could focus on his research. A fraction of the credit for that publication belonged to me. Why shouldn’t I go? When I pushed open the door to the private room, the table was loud with laughter and clinking glasses. “To Professor Sterling and his lovely wife! Cheers!” The second I walked in, the cheering died instantly. One of the grad students lowered his glass, looking utterly confused. “Wait… all the guests are already here, aren’t they?” Chloe smoothly stood up from the seat next to Nathaniel, offering a graceful smile. “Oh, let me introduce everyone. This is Nathaniel’s actual wife, Charlotte.” The students instantly shifted awkwardly in their seats, murmuring embarrassed apologies and greetings. One of them whispered entirely too loudly, “But I saw Professor Sterling and Professor Chloe shopping at the mall together last week… I thought they were…” Chloe smiled gracefully and began to step away from her chair. “Here, Charlotte, take my seat.” Nathaniel spoke up for the first time since I walked into the room. “You stay right there. There’s no need to move.” Chloe immediately sat back down, looking effortlessly obedient. A young male student sitting to Nathaniel’s left hurriedly gave up his chair so I could finally sit down. Chloe reached over and handed me a clean set of silverware. “Please don’t misunderstand, Charlotte. The students were just joking when they called me his wife. Nathaniel and I played a married couple in the faculty theater production for the New Year’s gala last year.” One of the bolder students chimed in, laughing. “Romeo and Juliet! They even had a kissing scene! We watched them rehearse it a million times!” Chloe’s cheeks flushed a delicate pink. she glanced shyly at Nathaniel. “It was just a stage kiss. It was fake.” It sounded completely like a guilty conscience trying to cover its tracks. Nathaniel chuckled—a sound I hadn’t heard in years—and offered a casual explanation. “Professor Chloe caught a massive flaw in my data set. I promised her a favor in return. That was it.” I took a slow sip of my hot tea. I remembered last New Year’s Eve perfectly. I had begged and pleaded for weeks until Nathaniel finally agreed to go on a proper date with me. I booked an impossible reservation at a Michelin-star restaurant half a month in advance. The day of, he texted me saying he was “too busy” to make it. For the next two weeks, he came home well past midnight every single night. I had assumed he was buried under the weight of his research. I was too terrified of breaking his concentration to even send a single text asking when he’d be home. It turns out he was busy rehearsing kissing scenes with Chloe. For the rest of the dinner, the table buzzed with intense conversations about laboratory data, curriculum changes, and inside jokes about the faculty. I was completely, utterly isolated. I kept my head down and quietly ate my food. It turns out the highly praised faculty dining hall tasted like absolute cardboard. Halfway through the meal, one of the female grad students suddenly spoke up, her voice ringing clear over the chatter. “Professor Chloe really is the ultimate role model for modern women. Not only is she a genius researcher, but she also acts and paints traditional watercolors.” She let out a dramatic sigh. “Not like those pathetic housewives who spend their entire lives revolving around a man without a shred of dignity. Women like that completely drag down the reputation of our gender.” Chloe shot a panicked glance in my direction. The girl immediately realized what she had said. Her face turned beet red. “Oh my god, Charlotte, I am so sorry. I totally didn’t mean it like that.” Nathaniel took a slow sip of his wine, his gaze sweeping over me with cold indifference. “Why are you apologizing? You were just stating a biological fact, weren’t you?” My fingernails dug so hard into my palms they almost broke the skin. I couldn’t endure another second of this suffocating room. I stood up and pushed my chair back. “You all enjoy yourselves. I have errands to run.” The cool night wind blew across the university track field, brushing against my hot cheeks. I had almost completely forgotten that years ago, Nathaniel—who despised physical exertion—used to sneak onto this exact track with me under the cover of night, holding my hand as we jogged together. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was my lawyer, sending over the finalized, legally binding version of the divorce agreement. A second later, Nathaniel’s name flashed across the screen with an incoming call. I declined it instantly. Deep into the night, a massive crash jolted me out of my sleep. Nathaniel stumbled through the front door, reeking of expensive liquor, his eyes completely unfocused as he collapsed onto the entryway rug. I immediately rushed over to help him up. He staggered to his feet, swaying heavily as he pointed a shaking finger at the large suitcase sitting by the door. “You knew. You knew the whole time.” I blinked, confused. “Knew what?” He fumbled around in his coat pocket and practically shoved two glossy concert tickets into my chest. They were VIP passes to see Taylor Swift. “It’s tomorrow. I took the entire day off work just to take you.” My eyes subconsciously flicked to the calendar on the wall. At the very bottom, written in tiny print, was a note: [If you absolutely can’t think of a gift, here is a hint: Chloe’s favorite artist is Taylor Swift.] Staring at the two tickets, I felt like an invisible hand had reached into my chest and crushed my lungs. It took me a long time to force three words past my lips. “It’s too late.” Drunk out of his mind, Nathaniel grabbed my wrist, staring at me with the desperate, stubborn eyes of a child. “How is it too late?! The concert is tomorrow!” I slowly shook my head. I reached out and gently took the tickets from his hand. I would treat it as his final goodbye. The next morning, Nathaniel woke up completely sober, reverting back to his usual, freezing demeanor. For once, he didn’t demand I pack his things and dragged his own bag to the door. “Let’s go. We’ll drive there.” It wasn’t until I walked out to the driveway that I realized Chloe was already sitting in the driver’s seat of his car, smiling warmly at me. “Professor Sterling drank a bit too much last night, so I offered to drive.” I wordlessly opened the back door and slid in, leaving the passenger seat entirely open for Nathaniel. Chloe expertly navigated the car onto the highway, her voice dripping with admiration. “Charlotte, you have no idea how brilliant he is. I mentioned casually that Taylor’s tickets were impossible to get.” She laughed lightly. “He spent two hours learning a new coding language, built a bot from scratch, and instantly secured three front-row VIP tickets.” Nathaniel glanced at me through the rearview mirror. “It wasn’t that complicated.” I let out a self-deprecating chuckle, closed my eyes, and pretended to fall asleep. I spent the entire three-hour drive listening to the two of them engage in endless, effortless banter. The stadium was absolutely deafening. Right before the opener started, the massive jumbotron began scanning the crowd for the Kiss Cam. By absolute pure coincidence, the camera swept right past me and locked directly onto Chloe and Nathaniel sitting next to each other. The entire section around us erupted into cheers. “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” Chloe looked at Nathaniel, her face flushed red with visible embarrassment. Nathaniel’s face darkened. He immediately raised his hand, signaling the camera operator to move on. The operator quickly got the hint and panned over to the next couple. The crowd roared even louder when they saw the new pair. Nathaniel tilted his head, his eyes lingering on the side of Chloe’s face for a second too long. The tips of Chloe’s ears burned bright red. She finally turned to look at me. “I am so sorry, Charlotte. We honestly didn’t plan that.” Nathaniel furrowed his brow, cutting her off. “Stop apologizing to her. She doesn’t care. Just focus on the show.” Right on cue, the stadium lights went completely black, and the opening chords blasted through the speakers. My quiet whisper—”It’s fine, it has nothing to do with me anymore anyway”—was completely swallowed by the music. The concert was breathtaking. The music dug deep into my bones. I closed my eyes, let the bass rattle my ribs, and without even realizing it, tears streamed silently down my face. When the show ended, the crowd surged toward the exits in a terrifying wave. For the very first time in public, Nathaniel reached out and grabbed my hand tightly. “Stay close to me.” But before we could take three steps, a sharp cry echoed from behind us. Chloe had been tripped by the crowd. She was sitting on the concrete, helplessly calling out Nathaniel’s name. He hesitated for barely two seconds before letting go of my hand and fighting his way backward through the massive crush of people. “Don’t move! Stay right there, I’ll be back!” I stood perfectly still, watching Nathaniel desperately grab Chloe’s hand and pull her up. But when he tried to turn back to find me, the surging crowd had already pushed us dozens of yards apart. It was the perfect metaphor for our entire marriage. It was doomed from the start. I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I had a million things I wanted to scream at him. But I was done wasting Nathaniel’s precious time. I attached the signed divorce agreement to our chat, hit send, and blocked his number. I turned around, walked away from the stadium, dragged my suitcase out of the trunk of his car, and flagged down a passing cab. “Take me to the airport.”
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