In the seventh year of our relationship, Lauren Hughes seemed to lose the capacity to feel anything at all. At least, not with me. She walked through our life together like a ghost haunting her own routine—unmoved, detached, perpetually numb. Desperate to figure out what still made her heart beat, I bought an emotional biometric tracker. It was a sleek, minimalist band designed to measure autonomic arousal—the sudden spikes of adrenaline, warmth, and desire that people casually call a spark. I fastened the band around her wrist myself, kissing the delicate curve of her pulse. When we went to the movies, the app registered an attraction score of 1. When we climbed Mount Mitchell and I kissed her under the freezing mountain wind at the summit, it crept to a 5. On her twenty-seventh birthday, when I slid an antique diamond ring onto her finger, it flickered to an 8. Seven years together, and I couldn’t coax a single ripple out of her. I was on the verge of taking the band off and tossing it into the trash, convincing myself it was nothing more than an overpriced novelty scam. Until the first night of Lauren’s out-of-town business trip. My phone, resting on the nightstand, began vibrating violently against the wood. “Biometric Alert: Monitored User Attraction Level: 90.” I stared at the screen, the blue glare stinging my dry eyes. At 1:00 a.m., the notification chime pinged again. “Attraction Level: 100.” It stayed pegged at maximum capacity. An unwavering, breathless surge of physiological euphoria that lasted straight through the night. It never dropped. Not once. My trembling thumb tapped open the device’s live GPS tracker. The glowing blue pin didn’t land on a boutique hotel in Chicago. It sat quietly over a condo downtown. A building I knew by heart. It was the apartment of Eli Townsend—my lifelong best friend. It turned out Lauren hadn’t lost her ability to feel passion. She had simply given every last spark of it to someone else. … I sat on the living room sofa all night, watching the gray dawn slowly swallow the shadows. Around seven in the morning, the front door clicked open. Lauren walked in, wheeling a small leather carry-on behind her. When her eyes found me sitting in the dim light, a momentary flicker of surprise washed over her features, replaced instantly by an easy, practiced smile. She crossed the room and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Sam, I missed you so much,” she whispered against my jaw. “I couldn’t sleep a wink these past two days thinking about you. The minute the meetings wrapped up, I took the red-eye straight home.” I rested my chin on her shoulder, feeling the familiar warmth of her body. But my eyes were fixed on the crook of her neck, just beneath her collar. A vivid, mottled purple bruise bloomed against her pale skin. Fresh. Aggressive. A wave of nausea hit the back of my throat. Lauren felt me stiffen. Without missing a beat, she reached up and tugged her collar higher, her tone dismissive to the point of casual cruelty. “Summer mosquitoes are awful down there. I got eaten alive.” I didn’t call her out. Instead, a suffocating flood of memories crashed over me. The late-night alerts from our shared car app, when she claimed someone had backed into her bumper in a parking lot, leaving me pacing the floor in a panic until sunrise. The smudges of berry-toned lipstick on her tailored shirts, which she swore were stray drops of pigment from an agency gallery opening. She had fed me so many flimsy, paper-thin excuses over the years. And every single time, I had chosen to swallow them whole. Not because her lies were airtight, but because I loved her so deeply that I took a needle and thread and stitched closed every gaping hole she left behind. “Today’s my last real bachelor bash before the wedding,” Lauren said, letting go of me and scooping her keys off the marble console. “I’m going to pick up Eli first. He lives on the other side of town, so it makes more sense. I’ll swing back and grab you in a bit.” Before I could say a word, the heavy oak door clicked shut behind her. I wanted proof. I wanted to look at the wreckage with my own two eyes. So, I stayed in my clothes and waited. I waited three hours. Finally, my phone buzzed with an incoming dropped pin from Eli. It was a location out in the industrial outskirts of the county. “Hey Sam, change of plans!” Eli’s text read. “We switched venues at the last minute and ran out of time to loop back for you. Just grab an Uber and meet us here.” It took an hour and a half in the back of a cab to reach the address. When the car pulled away, kicking up dust, I looked up. It wasn’t a private lounge. It was a condemned, derelict motel, boarded up with plywood and covered in graffiti, surrounded by overgrown weeds and rusted chain-link fence. I dialed Eli’s number. The line connected, and the sound of rowdy laughter and clinking glasses spilled through the speaker. “Wait, did he actually go?” someone yelled in the background, howling with delight. “Is he seriously that stupid? How has Lauren survived seven years with this guy?” “You’ve gotta have zero brain cells to think anyone would throw a party in the middle of a wasteland!” another voice chimed in. My fingers tightened around the phone until my knuckles turned stark white. Having had his fill of entertainment, Eli finally took the phone back, his voice dripping with mock innocence. “Oops, sent the wrong pin, Sam! Here’s the real one.” A new address popped up on my screen. An ultra-exclusive rooftop club downtown. I tapped the navigation link. The venue was barely half a mile from Eli’s luxury condo. And it was over thirty-five miles from where they had abandoned me. The sun was sinking below the tree line, dragging the sky into deep shades of bruised purple. I opened my rideshare apps, frantically tapping for a ride. “No drivers available in your area.” The local transit route had stopped running an hour ago. Panic seized my chest. I have severe nyctalopia. Night blindness. In pitch darkness, my vision disintegrates into a terrifying, shapeless static. Walking alone at night has always been my deepest fear. And Lauren knew that better than anyone on earth. Whenever I worked late at the office, she used to park her sedan right outside the glass doors, hazard lights blinking amber in the dusk. Seeing that gentle pulse of light through the dark was how I knew I was safe. Once, during a city-wide blackout, I had been trapped in a twenty-fifth-floor stairwell, paralyzed with terror. Lauren had climbed every single flight with a flashlight in hand, drenched in sweat, holding the beam steady over my feet before she even caught her breath. “Call me the second it gets dark,” she had told me back then, her eyes fierce with protectiveness. “I don’t care where you are in the world. I will always come get you.” Tonight, I called her thirty-seven times. Not one call was answered. My phone battery dropped to three percent. Gritting my teeth, I switched on the flashlight feature and began inching forward along the shoulder of the cracked asphalt, relying entirely on the small pool of white light at my shoes. I barely made it thirty feet before my foot caught the edge of a washed-out ditch. My ankle rolled, and I crashed violently into a bed of sharp, jagged gravel. Pain exploded in my knees. The phone slipped from my grasp, skittering several yards into the darkness, its screen flickering and dying instantly. I lay in the dirt, gasping for air, the pain turning my vision white. Minutes or hours passed before a pair of headlights cut through the gloom. An old farm truck rattled to a halt beside me. The older driver stepped out, pointing a heavy work light at my face. “Son? What in God’s name are you doing out here alone in the dark? Where’s your folks?” I pulled myself up against the rusted fender, trembling so hard my teeth clicked. “Sir… please. Could you drive me toward the city where I can catch a cab? I have money. I’ll pay whatever you want.” It was past ten o’clock when I finally pushed through the brass doors of the private VIP room downtown. The moment the door swung inward, a party popper exploded directly in front of my eyes. Cheap, synthetic glitter and metallic foil stuck to my sweating face. Eli erupted into giggles, covering his mouth. “Oh, look! The guest of honor finally made it!” The room fell abruptly silent. A dozen people turned to look at me. I was covered in dried mud, my shirt torn at the shoulder, my dark trousers soaked through with blood around both shattered knees. Then, someone snickered. Eli’s friends looked me up and down, their expressions curdling with overt disdain. “Dude, it’s a bachelor party. Why are you clinging to Lauren like a stray dog?” “I always heard he couldn’t survive five minutes without her apron strings, but this is pathetic.” “No wonder Lauren feels suffocated. Imagine being shackled to a guy like this.” Every word landed like an open-handed slap across my face. I looked across the lounge to Lauren. She was sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Eli on a plush velvet banquette. Her eyes drifted down to my bloodstained knees, and her brow twitched with faint irritation. Eli leaned into her space, nudging her shoulder like a child begging for praise. “See? Aren’t I a genius? Making him show up means we weren’t the last ones through the door. No penalty drinks for us!” Lauren reached over, playfully pinching Eli’s nose, her gaze softening into pure fondness. “You’re terrible. Always scheming.” She didn’t ask how a man who couldn’t see in the dark had crossed thirty-five miles of desolate highway. Two of their mutual friends slammed a tray of ten heavy shot glasses onto the glass table before me, each filled to the brim with amber liquor. “House rules, Foster,” one smirked. “Last one to arrive downs the penalty tray. Ten shots. Bottoms up.” I hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning. My stomach was a knot of raw acid and nausea. Instinctively, I looked at Lauren, praying for a shred of decency. She finally spoke, but not to save me. “Sam, you’re always complaining that you feel left out of my circle,” she said coolly, swirling the wine in her glass. “Fitting in takes effort, not just whining. I can’t break the rules for you just because you’re my fiancé.” The truth settled in my chest, cold and heavy. She knew. She knew a single word from her would make them back down. But she chose to sit back and watch them tear me apart. Someone stepped behind me, blocking the door. I picked up the first glass and swallowed. The cheap liquor hit my empty stomach like liquid fire, scorching down my esophagus. I gagged violently, coughing into my sleeve. The room erupted into harsh laughter. “Puking doesn’t count! Start that one over!” “Come on, Foster, don’t tell me you can’t even handle ten little drinks?” By the time I choked down the tenth glass, the room was spinning violently. My knees buckled, and I bolted into the restroom, collapsing over the porcelain bowl, retching until dry heaves tore through my ribs. When I finally dragged myself out, gripping the icy tile wall for support, I heard voices shouting by the bar. “Eli lives down the street and barely beat Sam here! He owes us a drink too!” Eli made a show of reaching for the glass, but Lauren swiftly snatched it from his fingers and tossed it back in one smooth motion. “I’m the one who made him late,” she said smoothly, wiping her lip. “Put this one on my tab.” I leaned against the wall, a deep, hollow ache blooming beneath my ribs that had nothing to do with alcohol. This golden circle I had spent seven years trying so desperately to join had never been a community. It had only ever been an arena where they fed me to the lions for sport. My hands shook as I unlocked my cracked phone and typed out my location to my father. “Dad, I was wrong. Can you come take me home, please?” When I walked back to the booth, the group was seated in a circle playing Truth or Dare. The empty bottle spun and pointed directly at Lauren. Truth. “When was the last time you felt that crazy, head-over-heels spark?” a girl asked with a knowing smirk. Lauren smiled, reaching out to take my cold, limp hand. “Last night,” she answered smoothly. Her mouth was aimed at me, but her eyes looked past my shoulder, locking straight onto Eli. Eli flushed, playfully kicking her shoe beneath the table. In my pocket, my phone buzzed against my thigh. “Biometric Alert: Monitored User Attraction Level: 98.” Lauren kept talking, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. “I missed Sam so much I couldn’t sleep.” I stared down at the glowing notification in my lap. It felt as though someone had taken a scalpel to my sternum, peeling back the tissue and letting the freezing air rush in. The bottle spun again. It landed on Eli. Dare. “Pick someone of the opposite sex in this room and give them a real, breathless kiss.” The lounge dissolved into deafening cheers and wolf-whistles. Eli made a show of groaning, pretending to resist, but his eyes never once left Lauren. Lauren looked at me, as if expecting me to intervene, to laugh it off and take the bullet for him like I always did. In the past, I would have. I would have protected him because he was supposed to be my brother. Now, I just sat there, hollow and still. Lauren’s expression hardened at my silence. When Eli stood up, feigning annoyance, and took a deliberate step toward another girl across the table, Lauren shot up from the leather sofa, roughly shoving the other woman aside. Before anyone could speak, she cupped Eli’s face with both hands and pulled his mouth down to hers. My phone vibrated so hard it nearly slipped from my fingers. “Biometric Alert: Monitored User Attraction Level: 127.” Off the charts. My eyes burned as I watched them devour each other in front of everyone. Minutes slipped by, thick and suffocating, before they finally broke apart, both of them flushed and breathing hard. Eli wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, affecting a look of theatrical disgust. “God, you’re a terrible kisser, Lauren. Only Sam could possibly put up with you.” Lauren tugged down the hem of her silk blouse, avoiding my eyes. But when she saw the stony stillness in my face, she reached over and patted my forearm with condescending reassurance. “Sam, Eli and I grew up together. Nobody looks at him like an actual man. Don’t be dramatic.” I looked at her, and a strange, quiet laugh caught in my throat. “Nobody looks at him like an actual man.” Yet her pulse had hammered at 127 beats of pure chemical lust against his lips. I pushed down the dull ache in my chest and shook my head. “I don’t mind.” I didn’t mind because when something has rotted completely through—whether a lover or a friend—you don’t try to salvage it. You throw it out with the trash. My phone lit up with an incoming text from my father. Before I could swipe it open, Eli leaned over and snatched the device cleanly from my hands. “Come on, Sam, why are you always glued to your screen? You’ll never be one of us if you keep sulking.” In the scuffle to grab it back, my canvas messenger bag fell off the booth, its contents scattering across the floor. A heavy, cream-colored card slipped out: my handwritten wedding vows. I had stayed awake three nights in a row, carefully inking every single syllable onto that parchment. Lauren bent to pick it up, but Eli’s friend lunged forward and grabbed it first. “Ooh, what’s this sappy garbage? Let’s hear it!” “Give that back!” I snapped, lunging forward, but they passed it out of reach, laughing like hyenas. One of them cleared his throat, reading aloud in a mocking, theatrical voice: “Because of my night blindness, I was lost in the Great Smoky Mountains, and you spent an entire day and night searching through the woods to bring me back…” The room went dead silent for half a second. Then, an explosion of howling laughter tore through the lounge. “Holy shit, he actually believed that?!” “Hiking trip! Eli was the one who told us to hike ahead without him to see if he’d notice, and the idiot actually got lost!” “Lauren stayed down at the resort drinking with us for twenty-four hours! She only went back up the trail the next afternoon because she was worried the park rangers would get the police involved!” Another guy flipped the page, wheezing with laughter. “Do you remember Lake Norman? When I fell from the dock and you jumped into the freezing water without hesitation to pull me out? That was the day I knew I would love you for the rest of my life.” “Wait, isn’t that the time we took bets on whether the rich boy knew how to swim and shoved him off the pier?” “He thought it was a heroic rescue?! He’s been carrying that around like a sacred debt for seven years?!” A bone-chilling cold settled into my marrow. Those sacred memories. The moments I had clung to during our worst fights, the emotional bedrock upon which I had built seven years of devotion. They were never acts of love. They were pranks. Cruel, humiliating games designed to mock me while I worshiped the hand that shoved me underwater. The very last spark of hope I had harbored for our future withered and died. Eli snatched the paper away, waving it with an exaggerated pout. “You guys are so cynical! This is peak romance!” He turned the card toward Lauren, batting his eyelashes. “Lauren, darling, will you take me to be your lawfully wedded husband?” The table erupted into drunken roars. “Say yes! Say yes!” Lauren glanced at me, her tone defensive. “Quit it, guys. My fiancé is sitting right here.” I looked at them both and offered a quiet, bloodless smile. “Don’t let me stop you,” I said. “You two should get married. I’m calling it off.” Eli’s eyes instantly welled with theatrical tears. “Sam… did you misunderstand something? Please don’t be mad at Lauren. It’s my fault, I’m sorry—” “Why on earth are you apologizing to him?!” Lauren snapped, stepping fiercely in front of Eli, her glare turning razor-sharp as she faced me. “Sam, drop the passive-aggressive act. It’s pathetic.” A stray kick from one of the men caught the edge of the low table. A highball glass tipped over, shattering on the floor. A shard of glass sliced through the denim at my calf, leaving a sharp, stinging trail of blood. Lauren saw it. Her immediate, instinctive reaction was to pull Eli back half a step, shielding his designer sneakers from the broken glass. “Eli and I have nothing to hide,” she spat, her chin lifted. “You have no right to slander us with your dirty mind!” Her friends chimed in, circling like wolves. “If Eli hadn’t brought you around, an uptight loser like you wouldn’t even be allowed in the same zip code as our crowd!” “We’ve been family since kindergarten! You think seven years of sleeping with Lauren puts you on our level?” “If you can’t take a joke, get the hell out. Don’t ruin our night.” Eli put on a show of pulling at Lauren’s sleeve. “Lauren, don’t… he’s just upset…” Lauren grasped Eli’s hand firmly. “Eli, your problem is that you’re too damn kind. That’s why people walk all over you.” She turned her venom back on me. “You apologize to Eli right now, Samuel, or we are done. Permanently.” I looked at the woman before me. The woman who had once sworn she would never leave me in the dark. I couldn’t even summon the tears to cry. My phone rang. The caller ID flashed: “Dad”. I turned on my heel and walked toward the heavy exit doors. Lauren’s voice shrieked after me, echoing off the high ceilings: “Samuel Foster! If you walk out that door tonight, don’t think for a second I won’t replace you at that altar!” I didn’t pause. “Go right ahead.” As the heavy soundproof doors swung shut behind me, a deafening cheer erupted inside the lounge, accompanied by the clear sound of Lauren loudly declaring that she was proposing to Eli on the spot. I stepped out into the cool night air and climbed into the waiting black sedan idling at the curb. The moment the door closed, my body began to shake uncontrollably. My father sat in the shadows of the backseat. He remained silent for a long time, watching me tremble, before he reached out and placed a heavy, grounding hand over my shoulder. “Son,” he murmured quietly, “a child with true fortune does not enter a house devoid of grace. Seeing who they are before the vows are spoken is a mercy, not a tragedy.” I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the window and closed my eyes. “I know, Dad. I understand now.” … The next afternoon, I returned to the penthouse I shared with Lauren to pack my things. I hadn’t expected to find an audience. Lauren, Eli, and half of their clique were sprawled across the living room furniture, nursing hangovers with mimosas. Eli stood up and blocked the hallway, wearing the triumphant smirk of a victor. “Hey, Sam. No need to pack in such a hurry. Honestly, you can keep the lease on this place if you want. Lauren and I report to Bancroft Enterprises next Monday anyway. We’ll probably buy a place closer to corporate headquarters.” One of Lauren’s bridesmaids scoffed from the couch. “Eli, stop being a saint. He treated you like garbage last night, and you’re still doing him favors?” I gathered my passport and personal documents from the desk, trying to step around them. Lauren stepped into my path, crossing her arms. “Samuel, I am giving you one last chance,” she said, her voice hard. “Apologize to Eli. Properly.” I looked into her eyes. My throat felt like it was lined with crushed glass, every syllable scraping raw on the way out. “I did nothing wrong. I will never apologize to him.” The words had barely left my mouth when a heavy boot slammed into the back of my injured knee. The joint gave out immediately, and I crashed hard onto the hardwood floor. Someone grabbed my collar, forcing my head down. Lauren stood over me, looking down at my face with cold, aristocratic detachment. “You brought this on yourself, Sam.” Behind her, Eli’s friends chuckled, deliberately scuffing their sneakers over the backs of my hands and my bruised shins. The scabs from last night tore open, smearing dark red across the polished floorboards. “Ungrateful bastard,” someone muttered. “Eli was actually planning to put in a good word for you at Bancroft once we got settled. Getting you a janitorial gig at a Fortune 500 company was more than you deserved.” The physical agony was sharp, but the numbness inside me was deeper. Lauren crouched down slowly, her fingers reaching out to wipe away the cold sweat beaded on my forehead. I jerked my head violently to the side, avoiding her touch. Her hand hung in the air. She let out a long, theatrical sigh. “You’re always so stubborn, Sam,” she murmured. “Fine. I’ll give you one week to think it over. In seven days, I’m taking Eli to City Hall to sign the marriage certificate.” Beside her, Eli twirled the platinum engagement ring on his index finger. “Lauren… I actually really love this ring. Do I really have to give it back?” Lauren smiled softly, ruffling his hair. “Keep it, baby. It looks better on you anyway. As for Sam? We’ll pick him up a cheap silver band from a pawn shop later. It doesn’t matter what kind of ring I give him—he’ll crawl back to marry me regardless.” Raucous laughter echoed through the apartment. “Aren’t you worried he’ll actually walk away this time, Lauren?” a friend called out. Lauren didn’t even look in my direction as she stood up, her voice ringing clear and loud enough to ensure I caught every syllable. “With his pathetic, needy personality? Who else besides me and Eli could ever tolerate him? If he could survive on his own, he wouldn’t have spent seven years begging to be part of our lives. The second I crook my finger, he’ll come running back on his knees.” I pulled myself up, gripped the handle of my suitcase, and walked out the door. The sound of their laughter was cut off cleanly by the click of the lock. … Monday morning arrived. The new executive onboarding session at Bancroft Enterprises was scheduled for nine sharp. Lauren and Eli arrived early. Eli’s latest social media post was already blowing up: a polished selfie of him and Lauren standing under the towering marble arches of the Bancroft Tower lobby. His caption read: “A new chapter begins. Conquering the corporate world together!” The comment section was a sea of blue checkmarks and mutual praise. “Congratulations to the ultimate power couple! Career and love in one fell swoop!” “Told you guys belong together! That loser Sam wasn’t even fit to carry your luggage.” “Even if they offered him a mop at Bancroft, he wouldn’t know what to do with it.” Eli was beaming, showing his phone screen to Lauren as they strolled into the executive conference auditorium. The moment they walked through the double doors, their smiles vanished. They stopped dead in their tracks, staring directly at the front of the room. At me. Lauren’s face darkened instantly, her voice rising in sharp reprimand. “Samuel? Who authorized you to come here? Are you stalking us?!” A senior VP standing nearby spun around, his eyes wide with horror, and shoved Lauren back toward the wall. “Are you completely out of your mind?!” the VP hissed. “Keep your voice down! That is our incoming Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer!”
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