Chapter 4The 28th Floor Drop: Notes on a Crematorium

Honestly, I don't know how Julian and I became what we are now. Before he confessed about the mistress, I hadn't doubted him for a single second.

We had too many years of history. I trusted him completely. I never checked his phones, his social media. When he traveled for work, came home late, or had business dinners, I never questioned him.

Even when he first told me he had someone else and wanted a divorce, I thought something was wrong with him.

Was he sick? Terminal cancer? Was the company bankrupt? IRS trouble? Had he broken the law?

I spent two months systematically ruling things out. Only then did I have to accept the truth: he was just a regular guy who cheated. A guy who simply didn't love me anymore.

He just... wanted to leave me.

After we initially confessed our feelings in college, he still pursued me for a long time. Even though we both knew I would say yes, when he finally formally asked me out, his voice was shaking.

I rarely saw him anxious. But that young man, standing in front of me, trying so hard to be cool while asking me to be his girlfriend, his hands sweating with nerves—that Julian was the perfect image of love in my mind.

When I blushed, smiled, and nodded, he lunged forward to hug me. He was so excited he was babbling. "This is great, Sarah. You have no idea how long I've waited for this day."

He said it was love at first sight. He had waited three years to finally be with me.

Back then, we were just broke students. He spent half his monthly allowance treating my entire dorm to dinner to celebrate. At the table, he draped his arm over the back of my chair, looking at me with total adoration, smiling non-stop.

Finally, he solemnly asked my roommates to look out for me, because I was clumsy and he worried when he wasn't around. My roommates giggled and agreed, their eyes full of envy and blessings.

Everyone said we were a match made in heaven.

We had walked together for so long. Now he tells me he loves someone else and wants a divorce. How could I be resilient? How could I be dignified?

Using my life to threaten a man who doesn't love me only makes him disgusted, but I had no other options. I was in absolute agony.

I couldn't sleep, day or night. I kept wondering what went wrong. I wasn't ugly, I was educated, my body hadn't fallen apart over the years. Men at the office still hit on me.

I became mentally drained, weeping without realizing it.

Julian and I had one calm conversation. I remember sitting at the dining table, trying my best to look composed. I had spent countless days and nights psyching myself up to say these words.

"I don't blame you, Julian," I said. "I forgive you."

He just looked at me coldly. Very, very coldly.

"Don't you get it yet, Sarah? I don't need your forgiveness. I love someone else. I want to take responsibility. The reason I'm telling you this is because I want a divorce so I can marry her. Whether you forgive me or not means absolutely nothing. Let's divorce."

I screamed. I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and hurled it at him.

I rarely lost control like that. My upbringing was strict; I was taught to be a lady, demure and polite. Since I was a child, the compliment I heard most was how sweet and gentle I was.

But when a heart is cut over and over again with a blunt knife, any gentle, polite woman will turn hysterical and hideous.

Julian would never understand why I was so crazy. In his mind, I had nothing to lose in the divorce.

He readily admitted he was the at-fault party. He was giving me everything: the house, the cars, all the marital assets, except for his own newly formed company. We didn't have kids.

In his mind, he felt bad, but he had compensated me financially. It was a massive fortune. So why couldn't I just be a good girl and let him go? Why did I have to cling on like this?

I didn't know either. Maybe because thirteen years is too long. From high school to now. He occupied over half my life. Our love was fused into every inch of my being, like a seed planted in my veins, rooted deep. Thirteen years—any seed would grow into a massive tree.

I couldn't just walk away smiling like everyone advised me to. That would require me to rip out those roots and branches, bit by bit, from my own body.

But it was part of me now. Ripping it out would kill me.

In the dark of night, I curled up in bed, hugging myself tightly. The pain was unbearable.

Chloe tried to convince me to let go. She said Julian was a man who chased emotional highs. A hedonist. He had been with me for over a decade—for a man like him, that was his limit. He followed his desires. He wasn't producing dopamine for our love anymore.

He was bored.