Love Fades With Bygone Days Chapter 04
I didn’t tell Alessia, and I didn’t tell Tomas.
I just packed my things, slowly and methodically, alone in the quiet apartment.
Alessia still came to see me.
She always hesitated at the door, her expression tentative, as if she was afraid I wouldn’t let her in.
“Esme, I’m sorry.”
It was all she ever said.
I would sit on the couch and say nothing.
I couldn’t bring myself to scream at her.
And I couldn’t forgive her.
All those years of friendship had been real.
And this betrayal was real, too.
So all I could do was offer her my silence.
Often, Tomas would come to pick her up.
Leo would be with him.
Every time they were about to leave, Leo would throw his arms around Alessia’s neck.
Then he would whisper what surprise Tomas had for her this time.
Sometimes it was a strawberry cake.
Sometimes it was a dress she’d admired in a shop window but thought was too expensive.
I heard it all, and it all felt so familiar.
The way he loved someone hadn’t changed at all.
After they left, the silence would descend again.
The matching couple’s mugs were still in the kitchen.
A few matching sweaters we’d bought together still hung in the closet.
Only now did I realize that for the past three years, these things had been silent monuments to my own foolishness.
I scrolled through my texts with Tomas. It was mostly a long list of Zelle notifications.
He used to tell me everything.
Then, he stopped even sending a “good morning.”
He rarely replied to my messages at all.
The day before I was due to leave, someone started pounding on my door.
I opened it to find Leo standing there.
“What’s wrong—”
Before I could finish, he started hitting my legs with his small fists.
I stumbled back.
“It’s all your fault!” he screamed. “You’re a bad lady, and you keep making my mommy cry!”
“Daddy and Mommy fight because of you! Mommy cries every day!”
I froze.
I was already leaving. I didn’t understand how I was still the one to blame.
I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t listen.
He grabbed a water glass from the coffee table and threw it at my face.
I wasn’t fast enough.
A shard of glass sliced the corner of my eye. The pain was sharp and immediate, drawing tears and then blood.
But he didn’t stop.
He lunged at me and bit my hand, hard.
“Get away from me!” I yelled, shoving him back.
He stumbled and fell, landing on the broken glass.
I just stood there, my eye throbbing, my hand bleeding, my whole body shaking.
“I bullied your mommy?” My voice was distorted, unrecognizable. “Leo, you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It was your mother who destroyed a relationship. You exist because she did something wrong.”
I had barely finished speaking when the door was kicked open.
Tomas rushed in and slapped me, hard, across the face.
“Esme!” he roared. “He’s just a child. How could you say that to him?”
The force of the slap snapped my head to the side, my cheek instantly burning.
When he saw the blood streaming from my eye, he stopped short.
“What happened to your eye?”
Alessia rushed in right behind him.
She scooped Leo into her arms.
When she saw the small cuts on his arms and legs, her eyes filled with tears.
She looked at me, her voice trembling with fury.
“Esme, if you want to hate someone, hate me.”
“But my child did nothing wrong. You had no right to hurt him.”
With that, she tore the four-leaf clover necklace from her neck.
The one I had given her.
She threw it on the floor and stomped on it with her heel, again and again, until the small green stone cracked.
“From now on, we are not friends,” she said, her voice shaking.
Then she turned and left, carrying Leo.
Tomas immediately ran after them, leaving me alone in a room full of shattered glass and blood.
I went to the emergency room to get stitched up.
Then I went to the airport and boarded the plane to Auckland.
Before takeoff, I looked out the window at the city where I had lived for so many years.
And I watched eight years of my life recede, window by window.
From this moment on, none of it had anything to do with me anymore.
