Love Fades With Bygone Days Chapter 02
Alessia pushed Tomas’s hand away and stepped toward me.
“Esme, let me explain.”
“Explain what?” I asked. My eyes were swimming with tears, but my voice was flat. “Explain that he isn’t your husband? Or that Leo isn’t his son?”
She couldn’t answer.
And in her silence, I understood everything.
No wonder she never wanted me to meet her husband.
No wonder she always looked so strange whenever he came up in conversation.
“I’m the one who wronged you. If you’re angry, take it out on me,” Tomas said, pulling her behind him. “Don’t yell at her.”
I stared at him, barely recognizing the man in front of me.
We had been together for eight years, and this was the first time he had ever shielded someone else from me.
Before, whenever I was upset, he would always be the first to demand, “Who upset you? Tell me. I’ll handle them.”
Now, he was the one who had broken me.
I took a shaky breath, forcing the words out. “When did it start?”
I asked slowly, deliberately.
“Was it when you stopped answering my texts?”
“Or when you made your Instagram private so I couldn’t see it?”
“Or was it all those times you were with me but somewhere else entirely?”
Tomas shook his head.
None of those.
It was the trip the three of us took to Miami.
I’d caught a cold and gone to bed early.
The two of them went down to the hotel bar.
He didn’t spell out the rest.
He didn’t have to.
Alcohol, music, the kind of late-night haze where boundaries blur and mistakes are made.
For a long time after that, he’d tell me he was coming to Manhattan to pick me up from work.
But he would always go to Brooklyn first, to see Alessia.
They kept it hidden from me.
Until Alessia found out she was pregnant.
She had panicked, wanted to schedule an abortion.
Tomas stopped her.
Then, behind my back, he took her to the County Clerk’s Office and married her.
He gave her a home.
He gave her the future I had spent years dreaming about.
And just like that, it belonged to someone else.
Even though I was the one who had been with him for eight years.
We had lived in an apartment with a leaking ceiling. One winter, the heat gave out completely.
When we were at our poorest, we split a single sandwich for dinner.
Later, he landed a job at an investment bank, and things finally started to get better.
But in the end, he still left me behind.
My eyes stung so badly I could barely see.
Finally, I managed one word.
“Fine.”
I turned to leave, but Alessia suddenly sank to the ground.
“Esme, I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault,” she cried. “Do whatever you want to me, but please don’t be like this. You’re scaring me.”
She looked up at me, her body wracked with sobs.
I knew why she was scared.
When my depression was at its worst, she was the one who stayed with me.
So many times, I’d tell her to go home, and the moment she was out the door, I’d find anything sharp and hurt myself.
She cleared my apartment of knives and glass, but I always found a way.
Back then, she would hold me and cry, begging me to stop.
But the pain she had given me today was a thousand times worse than any of that.
Tomas frowned and tried to pull her up.
She refused, staying on the ground, reaching for the hem of my jeans.
“Esme, I don’t want to lose you. You’re my best friend.”
“I can divorce him. I’ll take Leo and leave.”
“Everything that should have been yours… I’ll give it all back.”
She looked at me, her eyes desperate and sincere.
For a second, she looked just like the girl who had lain in that hospital bed all those years ago.
But some lines, once crossed, can’t be uncrossed.
I took a step back, out of her reach.
“We’re not friends anymore.”
“And Tomas,” I added, my voice cold, “we’re over.”
