When My Boyfriend Let His Coworker Replace Me

I bought groceries on autopilot.

That's the only explanation I have. My hands just did it — picked up the reusable bag by the door, walked to the market three blocks from my apartment, filled it with the things Donovan liked. Sourdough. The good olive oil. Those little cherry tomatoes he ate straight from the container. Five years of Tuesdays, and my hands didn't know how to stop.

I didn't even realize what I was doing until I was already in his elevator.

The doors opened. I let myself in with my key.

The apartment smelled like takeout and something floral — a perfume I didn't recognize. Donovan was in the kitchen, phone to his ear, back to me. He raised a hand in my direction without turning around. A wave. Like I was a delivery.

And then I saw her.

Aylin was on the couch, legs tucked under her, a throw blanket pooled around her waist. She looked up when I walked in and gave me a soft, slightly startled smile — the kind that said *oh, you're here* without actually saying it. She was wearing a cream-colored sweater, her dark hair loose, and around her neck —

I set the grocery bags on the counter.

I set them down very carefully, because my hands needed something to do.

The pendant caught the lamplight. Two interlocking circles, silver, hanging on a delicate chain. Simple. Unmistakable. I had pressed my fingers to a store window for it once, on a cold November afternoon, breath fogging the glass. *That's so beautiful,* I'd said. Donovan had been standing right beside me. He'd smiled and said nothing and steered us toward dinner.

That was fourteen months ago.

Aylin reached up and touched it absently, the way you touch something you've already forgotten is new.

Donovan hung up the phone and turned around. "Hey. You didn't have to —" He gestured at the bags. "You want to stay? We were just about to order more food."

*We.*

"No," I said. "I'm good."

My voice came out normal. I don't know how.

I left the groceries on the counter and walked back out. The elevator doors closed behind me, and I stood there watching the numbers count down, and I thought: *fourteen months.* I thought: *he remembered her size, her taste, her neck.* I thought: *he smiled and said nothing.*

Outside, the July air was still warm. I walked home without feeling my feet on the pavement.

---

I called him that night.

I sat on the edge of my bed, back straight, and I called him. He picked up on the third ring.

"Hey." He sounded relaxed. Unbothered. Like the evening had been entirely ordinary.

Maybe it had been. For him.

"I need to say something," I said. "And I need you to actually hear it."

"Okay —"

"If we're not married by the 26th," I said, "we're done. Not a break. Not a conversation. Done."

A beat of silence. Then he laughed — short, a little incredulous. "Steph. Come on."

"I mean it."

"You're doing this because of last night? Because of a string?"

"I'm doing this," I said, "because of fourteen months. And March. And April. And every time I stood somewhere waiting for you to show up and you were already somewhere else."

He exhaled. I could hear him shifting, settling into the familiar posture of this argument — the one where I was being too much, wanting too much, making things too complicated. "Your mom put this in your head," he said. "That astrologer thing. You're letting superstitious nonsense run your life."

"The 26th," I said.

"You're pressuring me. You know I hate ultimatums."

"I know."

"Steph —"

I hung up.

I sat there for a moment with the phone in my lap. My thumb drifted to my left wrist. I caught it this time. Held my own hand still.

Then I set the phone on the nightstand and turned off the light.

---

I stopped calling the next morning. Stopped texting. No *good morning,* no *did you eat,* no links to things I thought he'd find funny. I just — stopped. Closed the tap.

He noticed, I think, the way you notice when the refrigerator stops humming. A background sound, gone. Nothing urgent. He sent one text on Thursday — *you still mad?* — and when I didn't answer, he didn't follow up. He told himself, probably, that I was sulking. That I'd come around. That I always did.

He wasn't wrong about the *always.* He was wrong about the *this time.*

I spent that week very quiet. I went to work. I had dinner with Kiara on Wednesday and didn't talk about Donovan at all, which felt strange at first and then felt like taking off a coat I'd been wearing so long I'd forgotten it had weight.

I thought about the pendant. The way it caught the light.

I thought: *he knew exactly what he was buying.*

I thought: *so do I.*