The Other Woman's Post

The man this homewrecker had the whole internet rooting for her to go after? My boyfriend of six years.

I found out on the flight home, scrolling a viral confession post. Even from a single side profile, I knew him instantly Connor. The man this girl was parading all over her feed, begging strangers for permission to take.

"Stuck playing the side character in his library should I go after my own happiness?" That was her post.

And down in the comments, she was tearing the "real girlfriend" to shreds:

"I'm a grad student at an Ivy. She couldn't even get into a four-year school that's the only reason she went abroad."

"He's never once posted about her anywhere online. So I've got a shot, right?"

She'd even put up a cozy little photo of the two of them.

(I post for a living, more or less. I know exactly what a photo like that is engineered to make people believe.)

The day I left, I threw away the matching ring he'd given me.

A friend tried to comfort me. "Maybe Connor never actually crossed the line."

I shook my head. "No. But he let everyone else cross it."

1

I hadn't told Connor I was flying home this time. I'd wanted it to be a surprise for the holidays.

By the time I'd wheeled my suitcase into the Hartwell arena, it was halftime. Cheers rolled down from the court.

Connor came off the floor, and a girl came bouncing right up to him with two drinks.

"Left hand's our favorite soda, right hand's the healthy water which one do you want?"

Connor took the soda from her without a second thought and cracked it open. "I'll drink the water. Here, I already opened this one for you."

She bit her lip and nodded, delighted.

The students in front of me were pretty much all gossiping about the two of them.

"Honestly never thought Madison would actually land Connor. Guess it's true what they say fortune favors the bold."

"Front-row seat to a real-life rom-com. Started with him dodging her like the plague, and now he's out here opening her bottles for her."

"For real. Last semester she wrecked someone's lab samples and it blew up into a whole thing Connor's the one who pulled all-nighters for a week straight fixing it for her."

"If they weren't both so smart, I'd swear it was the whole nerdy-guy-meets-ditzy-girl trope come to life."

Last semester. Lab partners. Slowly falling for each other.

My phone buzzed. That post again, freshly updated: "Y'all, I genuinely cannot resist a boy who's half-dead from a game and still drags himself over at halftime just to open my drink."

A reply, right away: "Just ask him straight up after the game. If he really likes you, he'll for sure break up with the girlfriend."

Madison liked it.

Not long after, Connor's team won by a wide margin. The crowd cleared out fast. I stood off in a corner where I could just barely make out what they were saying.

"Second half was all Connor carrying us hits different after a drink from Madison, huh."

"Watch it, or sis'll smack you!" Madison raised a hand in mock outrage. "You make it sound like I'm his girlfriend"

And as she said it, her eyes were locked dead on Connor, watching for his reaction.

"Oh, come on go tell anyone out there it's 'just friends' and see if a single person believes it. Quit putting on a show for us"

"Lab samples last semester, the thesis this one, you burned your hand last week, midnight food run after the lab yesterday every single time, who do you call? Connor. And when has he ever not shown up?"

"Doesn't Connor have a girlfriend?"

Someone tossed it out, and the whole court went quiet.

My hand curled into a fist before I knew it. Even my breathing pulled tight.

The ring on my finger dug in until it hurt.

"I do."

Connor's voice. A little heavy.

He always spoke to me gently, soft and clear. The only other time it ever went flat like this was the once my phone died and he couldn't reach me for hours. When he got scared, when he got upset, his voice went exactly like that.

And even so I let out a small, secret breath of relief. Maybe this wasn't as bad as I'd feared.

"Girlfriend? What girlfriend none of us have even seen a photo. Madison, don't listen to him, he just loves the drama"

"She's real. I just keep it private. I'd like a normal life, that's all."

Before anyone could really sit with that, Madison couldn't hold it in. "So we we really don't have even the smallest chance?"

"I told her when we got together as long as she never asks to break up, we never break up." Connor pulled his jacket on, forcing it light. "A girl as wonderful as our Maddie deserves someone better, obviously"

"But that's not fair to you"

2

"What if one day you finally meet someone who's actually right for you? Then you'll have thrown all this away for nothing!"

Madison said it half in tears, brimming with hurt and resentment.

I don't know how long it was before I finally heard Connor's voice.

He said, "Then I guess the only one to blame is the right person for showing up too late."

The right person, showing up too late?

My eyes fell shut on their own, and the tears slid down before I could stop them.

So then what did that make me?

Just the girl who'd happened to get lucky by showing up early?

Some words really can't survive a second look. The more I turned it over, the more it stung.

I still remembered junior year of college, when Connor flew all the way out to spend Christmas with me on two years' worth of saved-up scholarship money. The long flight and the mad rush had worn him down to nothing. But he still planted himself outside my school gate and waited until my last class let out. "I want to be the first thing you see. And I want to be the first one to see you."

We'd holed up in my tiny rental making Christmas dinner together, and he'd hugged me from behind and grumbled, soft, about why there couldn't just be some magic door you could step through to anywhere, so he could come see me whenever he wanted.

When the first snow started drifting past the window, he carefully slid a ring onto my finger, one of a matching pair paid for with his part-time wages, and launched, glowing, into every plan he had for our future.

When he looked at me, his eyes were gentle, and fixed entirely on me.

"Quinnie, everyone says love can change in a heartbeat. I think so too.

"I think I'm going to love you a little more with every second that passes."

So when, exactly, had this love of ours turned into the thing standing between him and the "right person"?

I didn't know whether I should rip the ring off my finger, throw it in his face, and scream myself hoarse at him.

Or just leave without even bothering to say the word breakup out loud.

But this much I knew for certain: Connor and I were well and truly finished.

Finished the moment he let other girls' fingerprints start showing up, over and over, all across what the two of us had.

Finished the moment he told another girl who wanted him that the only reason they couldn't be together was that she'd "come too late."

Love can go mute faster than the seasons turn faster than a whole street's worth of leaves coming down at once.

I pulled the matching ring off my finger and dropped it, without a shred of ceremony, into the man-made lake outside the arena.

The water closed over it without a sound. That's how love evaporates quietly, not even needing a reason.

I dragged my suitcase down the road with nowhere in particular to go.

Right next to Hartwell stood the high school Connor and I had gone to together.

Through the railings, I watched a boy and a girl in the tree-lined lane, conspicuous in their school clothes.

And all at once I was back at the graduation party six years ago. On this very same road.

"Quinn."

The voice I'd just been turning over and over in my head came from behind me.

It was Connor.

"I keep wondering if I just stayed quiet and walked behind you, would you ever turn around and look at me?"

I pulled out one earbud, dazed, not quite believing it. "Wh what?"

Then Connor smiled. "I said I like you. I was scared that if I didn't say it now, I'd never get another chance."

The boy I'd just been mourning as someone I'd never get to see again he'd said he liked me.

I couldn't have told you why I liked him back. The same way I couldn't have told you why he'd ever liked me.

Maybe it was that, during freshman orientation, when I was one of the orientation leaders, I'd sat quietly with him in the nurse's office one whole afternoon.

Maybe it was that, the time he got framed for stealing his deskmate's money, I was the one person in the entire class who staked everything on believing him.

3

Or maybe it was the time some guys from the rougher school across town came looking for him, and I grabbed a fistful of his sleeve and ran with him down one alley after another.

The memories flickered past like film through a projector.

"But I'm leaving the country soon" I'd said, hesitating.

I'd taken my exams, gotten my acceptances but studying abroad had been the plan for years.

"I know," he said. "I'll work for it. Wherever you go, I'll come find you."

Eighteen-year-old Connor, terrified I wouldn't believe him, raised his right hand and swore it: "Every plan I make for the rest of my life starts and ends with Quinn. Wherever she wants to go, that's where I'll be."

After that I started living for summer for the summer wind, for summer Connor, and most of all for the chance to become Connor's summer.

The day before I flew home, my office was buzzing like always. The AC hummed overhead, and every so often a coworker would drift past my desk and ask about my plans.

I'd smile and say I was going back to Boston no matter what I'd set up a lemonade stand on a street corner if I had to.

Because Connor was waiting for me.

What I didn't know, back then, was that in that eighteen-year-old summer of ours there was already no one left standing there at all.

I found a coffee shop, sat down, and pulled up the poster's profile.

It was all there. Every little piece of the two of them.

I scrolled. One post after another some of it text, some of it screenshots of their chats.

"Dec 20, 2023