After the Typhoon Hit, I Dumped My Boyfriend

The typhoon made landfall, and the floodwater tore through everything.

My boyfriend risked the storm to come find me. Then he took only my supplies and left.

It's fine, don't worry, your place is high up, the water can't reach you. Just stay home. I'm going to be with Clem, she scares easily.

I called after him, but he walked off without looking back.

That night the typhoon went wild and ripped every window out of my apartment. I only survived by curling up in the bathroom.

The next day the storm passed and left wreckage everywhere.

It was only after I went downstairs that I learned several residents on the high floors had been swept away and killed. They were all over the headlines.

Plenty of friends messaged to check whether I was safe. The only thing my boyfriend sent was four cold words.

"You're not dead, are you?"

...

What a cold thing to say.

Did he think he was being funny?

The second I read those words, whatever warmth I still felt for him turned to disgust in an instant.

Four years together, and he could say something like that?

I didn't answer him. I hurried after the crowd to the property office and got a single cup of instant noodles.

Hungry all night, cold, terrified. No one could know how steady that one mouthful of noodles made me feel. I even drank the last of the broth down to nothing.

But Alex James kept texting me, and he sounded plenty put out.

"Fiona Bennett, why aren't you answering me? You've got time to answer them but no time to answer me? I've been so worried about you."

Worried?

I couldn't see any of it.

Once the network came back, videos started loading again, and the first scroll landed me on Alex and Clementine Mason's faces.

They were running a charity drive at the college, handing out supplies to the people hit by the disaster.

Clementine was beaming, foundation on, lipstick on, and the thing that caught my eye first was the protective-charm pendant around her neck.

That was mine!

It was the one thing my mother left me. I kept it in my bedroom drawer. Yesterday, in the rush to save my own life, I forgot to put it on, and now it was hanging around Clementine's neck.

I couldn't take it anymore and called Alex. He was still on his high horse, sneering, and every word out of him grated.

"Told you you wouldn't die."

"What, finally remembered to answer me? You replied to all of them one by one, and I'm the only one you skipped?"

I had no interest in going back and forth with him, and I no longer cared how he felt. I just wanted my necklace back.

"You took all my supplies yesterday. And you stole my necklace too? Put it on Clementine?"

Alex paused, then dropped his voice and told me to stop making a scene.

"Clem got a bad fright yesterday. You know how the old folks say jade wards off harm and keeps you from getting scared? So I took it and put it on her."

"I've just been swamped with the charity thing today and didn't get a chance to tell you. Don't be so nasty about it."

Nasty?

I hadn't even said the nasty parts yet.

He knew exactly how much that necklace meant to me. He knew everyone here had just lived through a disaster, that she was out running a charity drive, and how much backlash it would draw for her to wear it in plain sight.

But Alex just had to indulge Clementine!

"Alex, I don't want to fight with you, I don't want to argue. Get Clementine to take the necklace off, right now, and give it back to me."

"Otherwise I'm calling the police. And when it gets ugly, don't blame me."

He gave a couple of cold snorts and hung up on me, annoyed.

Half an hour later he sent me a photo of the necklace and said it was already off her.

The picture was clear, and blown up, I could plainly see the cracks running across the protective charm, like it had been dropped.

It was obvious they hadn't treated my things with any care. They'd been wrecking it.

I couldn't hold back the anger and the hurt. I begged everyone I could and even made up a few lies, all so I could take a kayak to the college where Alex and Clementine were running their charity drive.

Soaked to the skin, feeling like I'd crawled through every trial the flood could throw at me, I finally reached the college gates.

The moment I got word of where Alex and Clementine were, I ran over, only to hear the two of them talking about me.

"Alex, your girlfriend won't be mad later, will she? What if she picks a fight with you? I'd feel just awful about it."

Alex sounded dismissive, not the least bit concerned about how I felt.

"It's fine. She sulks for a couple of days at most. I know she can't stand the cold shoulder, so I'll give her the silent treatment for a few days, and she'll come crawling back to me on her own."

"But this really is my fault. Maybe I should go apologize to your girlfriend"

"Don't do that. You apologize and she'll never let it go. She'll have you in tears, and then I'm the one who has to smooth things over."

They both laughed, a faint flush rising in their cheeks.

The intimacy hung thick and sticky in the damp air, and it made me sick.

I stepped forward out of nowhere, and Alex flinched hard.

The second he saw me, he instinctively moved in front of Clementine, as if terrified I'd get jealous and start a scene with her.

But my heart had already gone cold.

I had neither the urge nor the energy to make a scene.

"Give me back the necklace."

I didn't want to waste a single word more.

Alex froze, then deliberately changed the subject.

"There's flooding everywhere. How did you even get here?"

I ignored him and reached straight into his pockets. When I found nothing, I went to check Clementine's, but he grabbed my wrist, hard.

"Search my pockets if you have to. What gives you the right to go through Clem's? Have you got any manners at all?"

"Manners? So manners means you can steal the necklace my mother left me? Don't you know that's the only thing I have left of her?"

I said it low and fierce, and Clementine's face changed.

I expected her to be embarrassed. Instead, what came out of her mouth was even more revolting.

"Huh? Alex, it's a dead woman's keepsake? Something a corpse wore? Won't wearing it bring me bad luck?"

Alex looked stricken and rushed to apologize to her.

"I didn't think it through. I just saw it was a jade protective-charm pendant and figured it'd help calm your nerves. Didn't think it'd be a problem."

Clementine let out a breath and wiped at her neck with her sleeve, her face twisted with disgust.

"Good thing it's gone. I'm not wearing it anymore either way."

"Gone?"

Rage shot through me.

"What do you mean, gone? Where's the necklace? Where is my necklace?"

Seeing that I was really furious, all Alex could do was tell me to keep my voice down, to let him save a little face.

"All right, all right, Fiona, stop shouting. The school inspection team confiscated the necklace a little while ago. I'll get it back for you later."

"That's my necklace. Why would they take it?"

"It was during the charity livestream. Some viewer stirred things up, said Clem had makeup and lipstick on and was parading around wearing a necklace, said it looked bad. So the inspection team took it away."

The anger boiled over. I wanted to shove both Alex and Clementine into the flood and rinse their brains out.

"But it's my necklace! The only thing my mother left me! Why would you steal it out to give to Clementine, and then lose it on top of that?"

"Alex, I'm not done with you two! There's no reason for us to keep dating either. We're breaking up, right now!"

"And if you don't get my necklace back for me, I'll call the police and have Clementine arrested!"

I yelled at the two of them, and Clementine burst into tears, all wronged innocence.

Watching her cry looked like it broke Alex's heart clean in two.

He shoved me hard, sent me stumbling into the standing water, and then turned it all around on me.

"Enough! There's no need to be this aggressive, Fiona. There are people everywhere, and Clem just got chewed out by the inspection team. And now you're coming after her too?"

"She didn't do anything wrong. If you want to blame someone, blame me. I'm the one who put your necklace on her. Why are you making her life hard?"

I laughed, cold and half out of my mind, and flung water at them.

"Then get the necklace back. The necklace is all I care about!"

After the blowup with Alex, I went home and cleaned up the wreckage alone. Every pane of glass had been ripped out; my place had taken a beating too.

Mom didn't leave me much when she died, but this home held more of our memories than anywhere else, and now even those had been scattered by the wind.

I cried while I scrubbed the place clean, forcing myself to pull it together.

Three days later, Alex finally brought the necklace back to me.

But when the thing was returned to its owner, I couldn't recognize it anymore.

"This isn't my necklace."

"How is it not? This is your necklace. I went and got it back from the inspection team on purpose. It's just that... they dropped it and it cracked."

Cracked.

The protective-charm pendant had lost its jade luster too.

It used to hang at my mother's throat, worn to a deep shine by her skin, and now it looked like nothing but an ordinary stone.

"Alex, do you have a heart at all? You knew this was what my mother left me, so why did you give it to Clementine? Now it's broken. It can't be put back the way it was."

Alex looked guilty then, dropping his head to watch me cry.

He knew he was in the wrong on this, and he'd meant to apologize. That was when Clementine's call came through.

"Alex, emergency, I need you! My stomach hurts, my period just started, and I can't find pads anywhere. Can you bring me a few packs?"

Alex went into a panic, shoved the necklace into my hands, his mind already flying to Clementine.

"Okay, Fiona, stop crying. Once the flood goes down, I'll take you to buy a new one exactly like it."

He tore off, busy delivering pads to another woman.

That night a video from Clementine popped up on my feed. She'd added a few photos, and a handwritten sticky note.

I knew that handwriting at a glance. It was Alex's, because back when he was chasing me, he wrote me plenty of love letters.

This time he'd written it for someone else.

"Take good care of yourself, my little crybaby who only pretends to be strong!"

Half teasing, half flirting. It had Clementine floating on air.

The photos showed all the different brands of pads he'd bought her, plus overnight underwear, brown-sugar water, and even heat patches on hand.

I have no idea where he dug it all up, a big bag of it, all handed over to Clementine.

Moved by it all, Clementine had even set it to a love song to pour out her feelings.

"Turns out the days when you don't have to fake being strong are this wonderful. So happy!"

I stared at the screen without a word, took a screenshot, and tapped like, helping the two of them collect their proof of love.

Later the flood receded and the typhoon was gone.

Bit by bit the whole city climbed back from ruin to normal.

I cleared the clutter out of my home, and swept the relationship out along with it, and had a sturdy, storm-proof security screen installed over the windows.

Alex and I fell into an unspoken standoff at the same time, neither one reaching out, both of us leaving the other to stew, a cold war that dragged on for over a month.

I knew he was wearing me down, waiting for me to be the one to come to him.

In our four years together, he loved using the cold-war tactic to settle things.

And I'm the impatient type. A cold war is the one thing I can't stand, so every time I was the one who ate the loss in silence.

But this time was different.

I kept holding out. By the third month, Alex was the one who cracked first and texted me on his own.

"You busy?"

I didn't want to answer him. If anything, it grated on me.

That one message, popping up out of nowhere, had wrecked a whole day's worth of good mood.

I'd thought Alex was reaching out to pick up the pieces of what we'd had. Instead he'd fired off a screenshot and demanded an explanation.

"Three months. No texts, no calls, like we're strangers. And you sneak off to a gynecologist? Don't you think you owe me an explanation?"

I opened the screenshot. It was his chat log with Clementine, and he'd even saved her under a cozy little nickname, "Clem."

She'd played her game perfectly, sending him a photo of me at the gynecology clinic in the dead of night, wrapping it in a whole simpering speech.

"Alex, I know it's not my place to say this, and I really shouldn't butt in, but your girlfriend hasn't contacted you in three months and I'd hate for you to be kept in the dark! Look, here's a photo of her getting treated at the gynecologist."

The person in the photo was definitely me.

No idea who took it, but they'd deliberately framed me right beside the gynecology sign, then twisted it into a rumor the second they opened their mouth.

Worst of all, Alex bought it. He didn't stop to sort out fact from fiction before he laid into me.

"Fiona, I never imagined you were this kind of person. All prim and proper on the surface, and God knows what you've been hiding from me behind my back! You're not even married! Out there sleeping around until you get a gynecological infection?"

"If I hadn't asked, if I hadn't come at you with proof, were you just going to figure you'd gotten away with it? Four years together, and this is how you treat me?"

He tore into me, then sent over my medical record from the visit as confirmation that it was a gynecological infection.

I saved every bit of it as evidence. I was going straight to the hospital to find out exactly who had leaked my private information.

I wasn't angry, wasn't upset. I just let Alex spiral through his own paranoid theories until he'd driven himself half-mad and couldn't stand it anymore, and called me.

"Fiona! Did you not see my messages? What's going on with you? You just ignore me, don't answer me, is that it? Have you done something behind my back?!"

I laughed, so worked up it nearly hurt.

"Alex, do you really enjoy sticking horns on your own head that badly? And besides, three months of no contact, doesn't that mean we're broken up by default? Isn't that what you said before? So why are you picking a fight with me now?"

I didn't wait for him to answer. I cut in and let him have it.

"I went to the gynecologist because the flood hit while I was on my period, and I waded through that floodwater to go get the necklace back from you and Clementine, and that's how I got a bacterial infection! I'm not like the two of you. When I'm sick, I get treated. I don't walk around sick and clueless about it, the way you two do."

"Oh, and this is the photo and medical record Clementine sent you, right? Then do me a favor and tell her this. Tomorrow I'm going to the hospital to file a complaint, and anyone with a hand in this, not a single one of them is getting away."

Alex froze. All that fury of his got choked right back down.

He was quiet for a long time, and in the end all he managed was something that meant nothing at all.

"Why didn't you tell me you were sick? I could have gone with you."

"No need. Like I said, we're already broken up by default. This is as good a time as any to make it clear. Don't contact me again."

"You..."

Alex wanted to say more, but I hung up on him.

Early the next morning I went to the hospital, straight to the complaints department, printed out every screenshot Alex had sent me the day before, and handed a copy to everyone I passed, livestreaming the whole thing.

"Everyone, take a good look. This hospital has no ethics. A young woman comes in for a gynecology appointment and gets secretly photographed and slandered. She pays for the visit, and on top of that her reputation gets destroyed, and who knows how many looks and how much contempt she has to swallow after this!"

"I'd advise you all not to come to this hospital. There's zero privacy here!"

The hospital panicked and hurried to sit me down, promising to investigate at once.

Once they threw their weight into it, it took less than half an hour to find the person who'd photographed me, a young intern who'd just started, named Naomi Finch.

I didn't know her, but she knew me.

The moment she saw me she burst into tears and pulled out her phone to call Clementine.

"Cousin, you... you need to get down to the hospital, now. That thing with the photo I took for you got reported, and my job's on the line! Fiona's come to the hospital looking into it."

Clementine panicked too. In under twenty minutes she showed up with Alex in tow...