Me: Nothing else to do right now.
Cade: Your boyfriend must be gone again, huh?
Me: So what if he is? Stop watching me.
Cade: Get over yourself. I built an alert for when you start digging for Albanian data. Leave it alone.
Me: You’re seriously the most annoying person I’ve ever met.
Six Months Later
Cade: They must not give you enough work over at Stonewood Enterprises.
Me: Well, you’re technically my boss, although you’re never in the office. You might want to tell the manager who’s there every day about it.
Cade: Izzy, I swear to all that’s holy, knock this shit off.
Me: Just let me be!
Cade: Go to bed. Fuck your boyfriend. Watch a show. Do anything other than this.
Me: I’m not tired, boyfriend’s out of town, and shows are boring.
Cade: Starting to think you need a new fuckboy if he’s always gone.
Me: That’s none of your business.
Cade: Well, get a new hobby. Go travel with him or is he that dull?
Me: I hate you. LEAVE ME ALONE.
1
Izzy
“It’s not me. It’s you.” My boyfriend of almost a year patted my shoulder with his soft, sweaty hand.
I wanted to tell the jerk that someone didn’t break up with that line—it was supposed to be the other way around. But all I could do was stare at his phone in shock.
We’d dressed as Harley Quinn and the Joker for my work party. It was an early October Halloween one, and I’d been excited, even put together a really good costume, but as we were about to get out of the car, his phone had beeped with a text.
I didn’t think much of it when I grabbed it off the seat for him, but when the screen flashed a pair of completely fake breasts at me, I had to tap the message open.
Who wouldn’t?
Text after text after text came up.
Gerald Johnson III was everything I’d wished for. Kind of. The neat box of emotions I’d built for myself really complimented his even-keel attitude. He was your average working man with soft cheeks and blond hair, a quiet demeanor, and was amicable to almost everyone he met. I’d thought everything about him other than his job was perfect. He had work trips that took him around the world. But his father owned a big investment firm, and that’s what they had to do—or at least, that’s what he told me.
And it’s not like I didn't trust him. I’d been on the trips. He’d shown me he was truly working on them.
Or so I’d thought.
His last trip had been two whole months long, and two weeks into him returning home, he wanted nothing to do with me. So much so that I started to question if I was good enough, if something was wrong with me. Had I pushed him away?
Which, now I’d like to say, was absolutely legitimate, considering the texts. But it wasn’t my fault. It was his. I held the phone up for him to see, only for him to reply with that line. “It’s not me. It’s you.”
My fault? How was him cheating on me my fault?