Divorced and Kicked Out: But Wait... He Wants Me Back?

I divorced my husband. He hired the best lawyer he could find to make sure I walked away with nothing.

Just an hour ago, under his lawyer’s persuasion and thinly veiled threats, I signed the divorce agreement that left me penniless.

The lawyer finally looked satisfied once he had the signed papers in hand. He pushed his glasses up his nose and told me to wait while he went to report back to my soon?to?be ex. Ten minutes later, my ex texted me:

Friday, 10 a.m. Arlington Civil Affairs Bureau.

…

It was only Tuesday. That night, Olivia Bennett texted to say she’d booked a booth just to celebrate my return to single life.

It should be a celebration.

But the one who really ought to be celebrating was Ethan Hawke, the man I’d clung to, shamelessly, for eight damn years.

The lawyer had already left. I sat in the café, staring into space for a long time, until the sky outside turned dusky.

I still couldn’t figure it out—this boy I’d met when he was young and green, the one I’d dragged along, stumbling with me through eight years… and this was how it ended. You could call it a breakup without even the courtesy of pretending to be civil.

I stood up to leave, and the waiter hurried over. “Ma’am, that’s two coffees, seventy?four yuan.”

Maybe it was that cold, merciless seventy?four yuan, but I ended up getting shitfaced at my own single?life party.

Olivia took one look at the wreck I’d become and leaned in. “I honestly don’t get it. You’re the one who insisted on the divorce, so why are you acting like it’s the end of the world?”

Olivia was the witness to my so?called love with Ethan—and the eyewitness to eight years of me clinging to him like a damn barnacle.

“I’m probably heartbroken over the fact I’m walking away with nothing,” I said.

Olivia pushed away the hand of some young guy trying to toast her and bent so close our faces were nearly touching. She stared at me like she’d just heard the biggest plot twist of the year. With the bar’s shifting neon lights spilling over her face, she looked… outrageously dramatic.

In the end, when yet another college?boy type came over to hit on her, Olivia used me as an excuse, said I needed to go home and recover, and called her driver to take me back.

Typical. Abandoning your best friend the moment a hot guy appears.

Thankfully, my parents had left me an apartment before I got married, which counted as premarital property. Otherwise, I really might have ended up on the streets.

I was drunk and didn’t bother washing up. I just collapsed on the bed, my mind spinning in circles, and suddenly I thought of the day I told Ethan I wanted a divorce.

All because he’d rushed off to work without eating the breakfast I’d made for him—though, to be fair, he had never once eaten any breakfast I cooked.

But that day, maybe the temperature was just right, the sunlight just right, and it hit me: we’d been married four years and he’d never eaten it, so why should I keep making it? After all, junk that’s been sitting in the same corner for four years should probably be cleared out.

Maybe I was still clinging to something, because at noon I drove to Ethan’s company. The receptionist told me I didn’t have an appointment and couldn’t see Mr. Hawke.

Maybe it was because I rarely visited his office, but no one seemed to recognize me. I just felt a little sorry that the chicken soup I’d stewed that morning would have to be thrown out. I didn’t have the appetite for it myself.

After I got home, Ethan’s assistant called. Her voice was sweet as sugar. She said Mr. Hawke wouldn’t be able to come home and keep me company that night.

Oh.

In reality, aside from the early days when he was starting his business and I was always by his side, once his company took off and we got married, Ethan almost never came home to be with me.

Especially now that he had such a beautiful assistant at his side.

Men really do turn to shit once they’ve got money.

I kept thinking about it, and somewhere in the middle of that, I called him and told him I wanted a divorce.

Yeah, it was impulsive. But I so rarely heard Ethan’s voice anymore, and even over the phone it could still mesmerize me. He told me to think it through. I said I had. He asked me why. I said I didn’t know.

We were quiet for a few minutes, and in that silence I heard his pretty assistant asking him, in a soft, concerned voice, if he was okay.