The Trash I Left Behind

Crashing dinner at my childhood best friend's house. The guy I had been secretly dating for four years. His mom, Cynthia, casually joked right in front of me about him and another girl. You two are heading overseas for that exchange program. Don't go making a baby over there.

The dining table fell dead silent.

I just smiled. Played along perfectly. "You two are a perfect match. Why not give it a shot?"

The second the words left my mouth, Silas's expression shattered. A heartbeat later, he slammed me against the wall. His teeth sank into my bottom lipa sharp, punishing bite. His eyes were bloodshot. "What the hell do you mean, a perfect match? You used to lose your mind if I even brought her up!"

I stared back at him. My chest was entirely hollow. He didn't know. I wasn't joking. I really just didn't want him anymore.

Chapter 1

Silas shoved me against the hallway wall. His teeth grazed my bottom lip, dragging in a punishing bite. "What the hell do you mean, a perfect match?"

His fingers dug hard into my hips beneath my shirt. His breath hitchedragged and heavyfanning hot against my bruised mouth.

I managed to drag in a shaky breath. My eyes stung, blurring his furious features. "You are," I whispered. "Last year, you and Chloe completely dominated the MIT CS department's anonymous Confessions page. The ultimate 'what-if' couple."

I remembered exactly what the posts said. One was Professor Gregory's star prodigy. The other was Professor Gregory's golden child.

They co-authored a paper in undergrad. The review board fast-tracked it straight into a massive tech conference. A pure power couple. Two brilliant minds colliding.

It didn't take long for the internet sleuths to dig up an old photo of them from a national high school hackathon. Even pixelated, their chemistry was undeniable. Beautiful and untouchable.

The comment section blew up with hundreds of comments. Everyone was obsessed. Everyone shipped them.

It had made me physically sick. I sat in my dorm room, aggressively downvoting every single comment. I pushed Silas until he finally caved. He logged on, using his real name, and posted a clarification to the entire thread.

"I have a girlfriend."

That was all it took to turn the ultimate power couple into the ultimate tragedy. The ship that never sailed.

Snapping back to reality, the heavy silence set in. Silas wasn't kissing me anymore. The intense heat rolling off him morphed into sheer confusion. He stared down at me, his chest rising and falling.

"Fallon," he rasped, his voice thick with a chaotic mix of anger and panic. "You used to lose your mind if I even said Chloe's name. What is going on with you today?"

My pulse didn't spike. My throat didn't tighten. The overwhelming, crushing jealousy that used to claw at my ribs? Gone. Just a hollow, echoing emptiness. I really just didn't care anymore.

Silas and I had history. Deep, tangled roots. We grew up side by side. The summer after high school graduation, our families rented a cabin in Tahoe. While Cynthia and my parents played mahjong inside, Silas and I wrestled in the hot tub.

Water splashing. Breath catching. And then, the space between us just evaporated. He kissed me.

It was the third year of my agonizing crush on him. Right then and there, our friendship crossed the line.

When he finally pulled away, his chest heaved. Water dripped from his dark hair onto my collarbone. "Fallon," he murmured, his thumb swiping across my swollen lip. "Let's keep this quiet. Just until we figure things out." He swallowed hard. "If things go south if you ever decide to drop me, I don't want it to wreck our families."

So, we became a secret. Silas crushed his finals. Valedictorian. Shipped off to MIT's engineering program. I was just an average student. I barely scraped by, ending up at a local state college back home.

Year three of the long-distance grind. Valentine's Day. I bought a bus ticket to Boston. I held a stupid box of homemade chocolates in my lap the entire ride, buzzing with the thrill of surprising him.

That was the exact day I met Chloe. She intercepted me right outside the robotics lab. Her posture was flawless. Her gaze looked right through me. "I'll pass along the message," she said, her voice smooth, gesturing vaguely at my box. "But you can take that back. Silas hates sweets."

Before I could argue, the lab doors swung open. Silas froze. "Fallon? What are you doing here?"

Chloe blinked, turning to him. Then back to me. "Girlfriend?" A perfectly crafted smirk tugged at her lips. "Oops. My bad. Couldn't tell."

She flipped the switch instantly. Suddenly, she was my best friend. She forced me to add her on Snapchat, sighing dramatically. "Every single holiday, I have to play bouncer," she complained, scrolling through her phone. "If I knew shielding him from all these thirsty girls was a full-time job, I never would have agreed to it." She paused, her eyes flickering over my outfit. "You don't look like you go here. Harvard, maybe?"

I shook my head. When I mumbled the name of my state school, I caught it. A microsecond of pure, unfiltered disdain flashing in her eyes.

I iced Silas out for the entire lunch. I already knew who Chloe was. He had talked about her for three years. The brilliant girl he met at the high school hackathon. For three solid years, Silas had practically worshipped her intellect, casually dropping her name in our late-night FaceTimes.

Chapter 2

"You left out the part where Chloe is a girl."

He let out a low, amused breath. "You never asked." Silas expertly plucked a piece of cod from my dinner plate. He meticulously pulled out the tiny bones, his eyes dancing with mischief. "What, getting jealous already?"

"I don't like her," I shot back. "She completely disrespected me."

"Shes just unfiltered." Silas slid the clean fish back onto my plate. "Spend enough time around her, and you realize she doesn't mean any harm." A fond smile stretched across his mouth.

From that second on, Chloes name morphed into a jagged bone. Lodged deep in my throat. Too sharp to swallow. Too deep to dig out.

Nightmares plagued my sleep. Silas wrapping his arm around Chloes waist, looking at me like I disgusted him. "Fallon, stop hunting me down."

The paranoia gnawed at my insides, constantly keeping me on edge.

Graduation hit. I packed up my life in my small college town and dragged myself to Boston to find a job.

A month dragged by. I went through countless interviews and final rounds, only to be met with dead silence. The wave of rejections crashed over me, leaving me completely demoralized.

Silas promised a vacation to clear my head. A few days prior, his phone screen had lit up with travel ads for Australia. My chest tightened with excitement. I poured hours into planning itineraries. I even picked up a grueling night shift at a diner to bankroll the trip.

Walking home in the dead of night, the hairs on the back of my neck shot up. Heavy footsteps echoed behind me. Lester. The transient guy who always loitered outside the corner store.

My heart raced in my chest. I practically sprinted down the cracked sidewalk, my trembling fingers dialing Silas. One ring. Two. Three. Finally, a click.

"Fallon, my battery is dying. I'll call you back."

A sharp click. Dead air.

I gasped for oxygen, my pathetic sob swallowed by the dial tone. I bolted my apartment door, my lungs burning.

My thumb blindly refreshed Instagram. Chloes latest story popped up.

"Shoutout to my personal photographer for draining his battery for these shots~"

The photo loaded. Chloe, beaming into the lens. Behind her loomed stunning, gothic architecture. Purple jacaranda petals coated the pavement. The location tag glared back at me. University of Sydney, Australia.

Silas finally called back hours past midnight. I dragged the words out of my throat. He met every question with a rehearsed deflection.

"Yeah, Im at USyd. I fly back this weekend."

"A vacation? Are you crazy? The lab has a joint project here. It's a networking summit. Obviously other people came. Gregory, Sean, Morgan it's not just me and Chloe."

A heavy wave of exhaustion washed over me. The adrenaline drained from my veins, leaving behind a hollow, silent void. The desire to confide in him completely evaporated.

"If it's just work, why lie about it?"

"I just didn't want you to overthink it."

Silence stretched through the receiver. A heavy sigh scraped against the speaker. "Fallon, you never used to be this insanely jealous."

It wasn't our first fight. But this time felt different. Ten thousand miles apart. A massive time zone gap. Neither of us flinched. The silent treatment officially started.

My love life tanked, but my career finally sparked. I woke up to an email. My absolute dream job offer.

The silent treatment vanished from my brain. I called him.

Silas answered, his voice dripping with amusement. "Done throwing a tantrum? Finally decided to call me? I'm already boarding. I grabbed you a souvenir from campus. A jacaranda snow globe. Absolute nightmare to find. I stood in line for hours just for you."

Instantly, the ice in my chest melted.

Chapter 3

I drove to Logan Airport to pick up Silas. I was buzzing with excitement, ready to drop my job offer news the second I saw him.

Instead, I found Chloe.

She sat perched on his hard-shell suitcase, her fingers curling into his hoodie sleeve. She tugged it, tilting her head with a practiced, sickeningly sweet pout. "Silas, my dad said you already finalized your grad school exchange application? Let me see your essays. Please?"

I blanked out for a second.

Back at the apartment, my knee slammed into the edge of the entryway console. A sharp, blinding crack of physical pain shot up my thigh. My eyes watered instantly. I used the pain. I finally dragged the words out. "You're going to Sydney?"

"It's not set in stone." He crouched in front of me. His large hand clamped over my bruised knee, his thumb rubbing soothing circles. "Even if the board approves it, I wouldn't leave until next semester. It's just one year. It's not like I'm never coming back. Fallon, we survived four years of long distance. This is nothing."

Four years. He tossed the words out like spare change.

My desk drawer was crammed with faded Amtrak tickets and boarding passes. Hundreds of trips between my state school and Boston. And him? I could count his visits on one hand.

While I was bleeding myself dry through final-round interviews just to breathe the same city air as him, he was studying for his grad school entrance exams. While I was scrolling through IKEA catalogs, meticulously planning our shared apartment, he was researching the cost of living in Australia.

I stared down at Silas. A broken, jagged laugh scraped its way up my throat. A broken smile touched my lips as hot moisture spilled over my eyelashes. "You're packing up to leave the country with Chloe. What makes you think I'm going to sit here and wait for you?"

The soothing circles stopped. His brows snapped together. "Fallon, I really don't get why you have so much animosity toward Chloe."

Classic gaslighting. Deflect and blame.

"This exchange program is a massive career move. We are both prioritizing our futures. I don't know what kind of paranoid narrative you're spinning in your head." He stood up, towering over me. "In high school, you literally used to hand-deliver other girls' love letters to me. When did you become so suffocatingly insecure?"

The spark hit the gasoline.

"Is there a difference between a friend and a girlfriend to you?" The scream ripped out of my lungs, raw and agonizing. "Because I don't see one!"

He just stared at me, his gaze cold and calculating. "I've been thinking about this a lot lately," he said. His tone was chillingly flat. "Maybe we're better off as friends. I am exhausted from my research and these application essays. I am not doing this with you right now." He stepped back. "Let's just take a break. We both need to cool off."

For the entire first month of our break, my eyes snapped open every morning to a grey, oppressive ceiling. My ribs felt like they were locked in a steel vice. Getting out of bed required a violent, physical effort.

My stomach violently rejected any thought of food. Acid burned the back of my throat. Every breath felt like inhaling crushed glass. The constant urge to cry stung the back of my nose.

I deleted Instagram. I went completely dark. I cut off every single digital connection that could possibly feed me an update on Silas.

Until a random Tuesday. I dragged myself into my apartment after a brutal overtime shift. My phone vibrated. Sharon. "Fallon, did that crate of organic mandarins arrive?"

I stared blankly at the massive, two-foot-tall cardboard box dominating my cramped entryway. A dull throb pulsed at my temples. "Mom, it's too much. I can't finish this. Please stop sending bulk shipments."

"Just split them with Silas. You live right by his campus, don't you?"

The sound of his name was a physical blow to the stomach.

Sharon kept going, completely oblivious to my silence. "Cynthia was just telling me Silas got a new girlfriend. Did you know about this?"

My lungs stopped expanding.

"Apparently, she's absolutely stunning. Tall, slender, super bubbly and outgoing."

White noise flooded my ears.

"Don't just bury your head in work, honey. When are you bringing a boy home?"

The phone slipped from my grip. It hit the floor with a hollow thud. I don't even remember hanging up.

Chapter 4

At 1:00 AM, I grabbed the massive bag of mandarins like a woman possessed, completely ignoring the freezing wind. I ignored my absolute lack of dignity. I marched straight to Silass apartment.

It had been an entire month. He opened his door. Fresh haircut. Still infuriatingly flawless and put together.

"Don't listen to Cynthia's gossip," he murmured, his voice a low, calculated hum. "Chloe and Gemma just happened to visit our hometown. I only played tour guide for an afternoon."

He had the entire script written in his head. He knew the rumor would reach me. He knew I would crack. He fully expected me to come crawling back to his doorstep.

He stripped off his North Face jacket and draped it over my shivering shoulders. The heavy nylon smelled intensely of cedar and him.

I wrapped my arms around his waist, burying my face into his chest. "You're right," I whispered, forcing a fragile softness into my tone. "It's just a year."

The second the apartment door clicked shut, the suffocating tension shattered. Silas shoved me against the hallway wall. His mouth crashed down on mineravenous and desperate.

A low, guttural groan ripped from the back of his throat. His rough palms gripped my waist, his calloused thumbs dragging heated friction right through the fabric of my shirt. The air in the narrow hallway burned. I could hear the frantic, wet sound of our breathing. The sharp hitch in his lungs. The metallic rasp of a zipper tearing open.

His skin was blazing hot. The flex of his muscles, the heavy, frantic thud of his pulse drumming against his throatit consumed every inch of my sensory focus.

By 3:00 AM, the half-empty box of Trojans in his nightstand was completely gone.

Silas finally passed out, his chest rising and falling in an exhausted rhythm.

I lay perfectly still in the dark. The residual heat of his body pressed heavily against my side. But the chaotic, desperate haze in my brain? It evaporated, leaving behind a cold, sharp clarity.

Four years of the long-distance grind. Four years of explosive fights and exhausting apologies. Silas had been conditioned to watch me break first. He was used to me yielding.

But tonight wasn't about saving our rotting relationship. I was just desensitizing myself, so I could finally walk away.

I slipped out from under the heavy duvet. The hardwood floor was freezing against my bare feet. I grabbed my phone, opening an email that had been sitting in my inbox for weeks.

"Fallon, do you formally accept the one-year Management Trainee rotation to the S?o Paulo branch in Brazil?"

My thumb hovered over the glowing screen.

"Yes."

To my surprise, my work visa was already approved.

Over the last six months, I had crushed every metric in my department. The company's overseas market was exploding, and my director, Maxine, had my back. She fast-tracked my name for the Brazil rotation. "Survive a year in S?o Paulo," she had promised, "and you come back to a senior title."

My parents were entirely on board, but completely baffled. "This is a massive win, Fallon," Wayne had said over FaceTime. "But why the secrecy? Why not tell Silas and his family?"

I forced a bright, practiced smile. "Good news like this needs to be delivered in person."

After the holidays, I flew back to Boston. Silas was swamped with his USyd grad school enrollment. He didn't even bother to come to my apartment.

We were supposed to have dinner on Valentine's Day. My phone buzzed. "Fallon, I'm sorry," Silas started, hesitation bleeding through the speaker. "Something came up last minute"

I wedged the phone between my ear and my shoulder. I folded my last cashmere sweater, dropping it into the cardboard moving box at my feet. "Okay. Go do your thing."

I waited for the click. Nothing. Just the sound of his heavy, unsettled breathing.

"You're not going to ask what came up?"

Weird. I stopped begging for scraps of his time, and suddenly his ego couldn't handle the silence.

Before I could answer, a bright, melodic voice echoed in the background. "Silas, is that Fallon?" Chloe. "It's just the lab group for the farewell party," she chimed in, her voice projecting perfectly into the mic. "Tell her to come hang out."

"Fallon isn't a fan of these kinds of parties," Silas muttered to her.

Chloe let out a crisp, airy laugh. "Oh, come on. She wouldn't blow you off on your big night, right?"

A dry, hollow smile stretched across my lips. "She's right," I said into the receiver. "I'll be there."

Of course I was going. Silas still had half his life packed into my apartment. It was time for him to come clean out his trash.

When I walked into the venue, Silas was standing in the open kitchen. The heavy, rich scent of his signature chicken curry hit the air. For a split second, my ribs tightened with a phantom ache of nostalgia.

Chapter 5

For our one-year anniversary, Silas had spent weeks perfecting this exact chicken curry.

Back then, the kitchen was a total disaster zone. He was entirely out of his element, burning dish towels and swearing under his breath. But when I took the first bite, my eyes lit up.

His thumb brushed against the corner of my mouth, swiping away a stray fleck of parsley. "If my girl loves it this much," he murmured, his gaze heavy and fixed on me, "I guess Im making this for you until were eighty."

I squeezed my eyes shut. I forced the memory back into its box. "Silas. Your luggage"

"What?" He twisted the dial on the stove, cutting the heat. A heavy, exhausted sigh dropped from his chest. "I know it's Valentine's Day. I'm sorry I blew you off. But I'm leaving the country for a year. Sean, Morgan, and the rest of the lab are graduating soon. Who knows when we'll all be in the same room again. Just cut me some slack."

I opened my mouth to speak.

He bulldozed right over me. "Come on, Fallon. Don't kill the mood. If you want to pick a fight, save it for when we get home. Okay?"

Gemma wandered out of Chloe's study. "Oh my god, Chloe, this snow globe on your shelf is gorgeous. Where did you get it?"

Chloes eyes curved into perfect, smiling crescents. "Ask Silas."

Silas's gaze snapped to me instantly. "I grabbed it at the USyd bookstore. It was just a throwaway impulse buy when I was getting Fallon's souvenir."

My expression didn't shift. Not a single muscle twitched.

He grabbed my elbow, dragging me a few steps down the hall. "I swear to you," he kept his voice low, a frantic edge bleeding into his tone, "it meant absolutely nothing."

I nodded slowly. "Yeah. Got it." I dropped my gaze back to my screen, typing out a quick reply to Logan, my leasing agent.

Silas's brows crashed together. "Fallon. You're not jealous?"

My screen lit up. An incoming call from Logan. "Hold on. I have to take this."

It was exactly what I needed. Logan had just pushed my apartment listing live, and Avery was already requesting a tour. I needed to get back fast.

Walking past the open kitchen, I froze.

Silas was holding a spoonful of the freshly plated curry. He lifted it directly to Chloes mouth. She leaned in, taking the bite.

My chest tightened painfully for a split second. A microsecond of pure, agonizing physical pain. And thennothing. Total, absolute numbness.

I was already lacing up my boots in the entryway when Silas stormed out. The veins in his neck were rigid. "Where the hell are you going? Why are you throwing a tantrum now?"

Chloe trailed right behind him, her face a mask of wide-eyed innocence. "Fallon, please don't misread that! I had grease all over my hands from the apps, so Silas just fed me a bite. It's my fault, I was just too hungry."

My voice was dead. Stripped of any inflection. "Someone is waiting at my apartment for a walk-through. I have to leave."

The blood drained completely from Silas's face. "A walk-through?" The words stumbled out of his mouth. "Are you moving? Where? Why wouldn't you tell me something massive like this?"

He reached out, his fingers desperately trying to cage my wrist. "Fallon, I snapped at you earlier, and I was out of line. But you're twisting this. I've been slaving away in that kitchen just to make a good impression on the lab group. That's it. Stop icing me out. I already agreed to leave the party early so we could do our Valentine's dinner." His voice dropped into that soft, coaxing register he always used when he wanted me to submit. "Let's go back to your place, tell Avery to leave, and text Logan to pull the sublet listing. Come on. Play nice."

I yanked my arm out of his grasp. I locked my eyes onto his, holding his gaze with unwavering certainty. "Silas. Do I look like I'm playing a game with you? But since you're so desperate to come home with me, perfect. You can pack the rest of your trash and get out."

Chapter 6