We Stopped Loving Each Other

There was only silence inside the house as my fiance, Nicholas Shipley, stared at me.

After a long moment, he sighed deeply in resignation, as if he was tolerating my unreasonable tantrum.

“What are you upset about now?”

“I’m just not in love with you anymore, okay?” I said flatly.

But deep inside, I was hurting terribly.

Old memories kept resurfacing and hurting me over and over again.

When we first met, we were both still very poor.

When I mentioned my craving for donuts from Baylume, he immediately took on the most difficult client and went all the way to Baylume just to buy those donuts for me.

The donuts were very sweet. It was even sweeter when he promised to earn good money so that I could eat whatever I wanted.

My friends all said he was head over heels with me.

Whenever I mentioned something, he would drop everything and do it right away.

It did not matter whether it was roses in the morning or a good midnight snack.

As long as I said something, he would do it without a second thought.

All these years, he had always been that gentle with me, as if nothing had ever changed.

But I knew things had changed.

There would no longer be fresh flowers on the table.

Whenever I was craving a certain food, he would plan it out and then postpone it indefinitely.

If I wanted to go somewhere, he would always be too busy.

Our destination wedding had been in his planning for two years.

He kept putting it off again and again.

I had thought it was simply the result of a laid-back stability of a long-term relationship.

Never had I been more wrong. That day’s events made it all clear to me. It was impossible to ignore at that point.

I could see that all his love, attention, and devotion for me had shifted to Annie Croce, the young assistant intern who worked for the manager.

I could have kept lying to myself and told myself it was nothing.

But I refused to just suffer in silence.

“I’m sorry. Come on, don’t be like that. Let’s not fight, okay? I love you. I don’t want to break up,” he said with a gentle smile.

Inside, I was consumed by pain and fury. Every single breath hurt. But on the surface, I was eerily composed.

“Tell me then, what are you sorry about?”

He recited it like he had it memorized, “I’m sorry I kept putting off the trip, answered work calls while we were together, and—”

“Nicholas, how unreasonable do you think I am?”

My eyes were brimming with tears, and all I felt was a stinging, raw ache.

My voice was choked and hoarse as I said, “You didn’t keep putting off the trip because you never planned to go at all. You weren’t even handling work with those calls, but a whole other plan.”

Over the years, I had always counted myself lucky to have met his best self at the best time of my life.

While my friends were being pressured by their parents into marriage and settling for someone of equal social standing just to get by, Nicholas and I were deeply in love.

But it was precisely because I had seen how he loved me that I could clearly see how he felt toward Annie.

Before he could retort, I placed the tablet in front of him.

I repeated, “Nicholas, let’s break up.”

He stared stiffly at the tablet and tried to explain. “Rey, I was just doing a colleague a favor. Nothing’s going on between us.

“I’ll have her cancel the tickets right now. I won’t ever put you in discomfort.

“You can’t just break up with me over some baseless suspicions.

“Rey, just give me one more chance. Please?”