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“Arlo, I know Sage is back.”
“She’s the one you truly love, right?”
I smirked self–mockingly, mercilessly exposing his scheme.
“Now that the one that got away is back, it’s natural for the stand–in to exit the stage.”
The boarding announcement came at just the right moment.
I heard Arlo gritting his teeth as he demanded:
“Zinnia Wilson, where exactly are you?”
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I didn’t respond, hanging up directly.
A few hours later, I arrived in Paris, France, a world away.
As soon as I landed, I changed my phone number and went to the company to complete the onboarding process.
The daily workload was heavy. Not only was I responsible for liaising with French companies, but I also had a large amount of domestic business.
When I first arrived abroad, I suffered from insomnia night after night due to jet lag and heartbreak.
After taking melatonin and finally falling asleep, I would dream of the early days with Arlo, only to wake up with tears streaming down my face.
Later, I simply got up and stopped trying to sleep, letting work fill my life so I wouldn’t dwell on those past happy memories alone.
After some time, I had put Arlo behind me, the pain of that relationship healed by time.
But during that period, it was still unavoidable to hear news about him.
I knew that after I left, Arlo and Sage immediately got together. When I saw their relationship announcement, I quickly deleted Arlo and his friends from my contacts.
But not long after, a mutual friend sent me a gossipy message:
“Arlo and Sage are about to break up.”
I was a bit confused:
“Weren’t they doing well together?”
“Yeah right, Arlo is about to go crazy because of her. He’s at a critical point in his career right now. You used to handle all his life stuff so efficiently, but how would Sage know how to do any of that? She doesn’t have a job, just spends Arlo’s money shopping and partying all day. They fight every other day.”
“And get this! Sage was divorced abroad! She had been trying to hide it from Arlo, but he found her divorce papers. Arlo wants to break up but can’t bring himself to do it. They’re just torturing each other at this point.”
1 really hadn’t expected the story to go in this direction, given how deeply in love they had seemed to me.
But while it was surprising, none of this had anything to do with me anymore.
My next interaction with Arlo was when I was sent back to the States for my first independent project.
I had anticipated this possibility, since our work domains overlapped.
Opening the project brief, I saw it was for Arlo’s company, Muhe.
