Love Has Faded, Each Left in the Cold

1: 1

My brother had just fought with his girlfriend for the ninety-ninth time, and now he'd come to talk me into a divorce, still fuming.

What do you say, Neville James? You file for divorce, I'll file for a breakup.

Let's run off together. Let them be the ones stuck on business trips forever, never coming home!

It all came down to the fact that our partners were twin sisters.

Beautiful, thoughtful, well-off.

Their one flaw was how busy they were, always traveling, home only once every two or three months.

That was why my brother felt so insecure, always ending up in a fight with his girlfriend.

I sighed and soothed him the way I always did.

And suggested it again:

"Why don't the two of you just go get a marriage license too? It'd put your mind at ease."

I'd started dating the younger of the twins first.

She said she'd made up her mind about me for life, and married me the moment we graduated.

That little red marriage certificate was what gave me the strength to get through countless lonely nights on my own.

But my brother, who was always loudly declaring in front of me that he'd "only ever marry her," went quiet for a long time after I said it.

In the end he pushed me away, his expression complicated.

"Neville, you don't get it."

I had no idea what he meant.

Not until my wife, Mabel Cox, rushed off on a business trip and left her messaging app open on her laptop, the screen lighting up.

A message came in from an avatar identical to my brother's.

This is the ninety-ninth time you've refused to divorce. I don't want to keep playing this twin-sister game with you anymore.

That day I didn't use anything. The physical says you're pregnant.

Pick me or pick him. It's your call.

The truth spilling out in those few lines was too absurd to be real.

I stared blankly at those two lines and couldn't come back to myself.

And it hadn't been long ago that Mabel, with the company already calling to hurry her along, still made a point of rising up on her toes to kiss me.

"Wait a little longer, Neville. When I get back this time, I'll use up every bit of annual leave I've saved."

"We'll go to the snow-capped mountains, the plains, and finally take those travel wedding photos you've always wanted."

Behind the chat window, an unclosed webpage still had row after row of suits and wedding gowns.

Now the sunlight slipped through the gap in the curtains and fell across them, so white it stung.

The screen flickered. The account that stood for my brother sent another message pressing her.

Think it over and tell me before midnight tonight.

Mabel was still on the plane. She hadn't replied.

My fist clenched until it went stiff, and it was a long time before I forced down the urge to demand answers.

The mouse slid gently.

The intense feelings the two of them had hidden under all that calm laid themselves out right in front of me.

Mabs, I'm craving the wontons from that place on the east side. Bring me a bowl after work.

Okay.

The company was on the north side. The round trip took over three hours.

I remembered that bowl of wontons.

That day, to celebrate Mabel landing a new project, I'd taken time off early and gone home to cook a whole table of food.

But by nine at night, after I'd reheated the dishes three times, Mabel finally strolled in.

She was holding two bowls of wontons and gave me an apologetic smile.

"A coworker said this new place is really good, that it tastes just like where you grew up."

"I figured you'd like it."

Two sentences, and all the sulking I'd built up out of worry melted away.

I took the wontons and wiped away a tear.

"A bowl of wontons, three hours round trip. I'm not that precious."

That's what I said, but I ate that bowl clean.

Even the cilantro and chili I never touch.

The other bowl went to my brother, who lived right across the hall. She said it was on the way.

Now that I think about it, cilantro with extra numbing spice and heat was always exactly how my brother liked it.

Got caught in the rain and I've got a fever, feel awful. I want my wife Mabs to come take care of me.

That day I'd had too much to drink at a work dinner and threw up in the bathroom until I was half-conscious.

Mabel ran up and down, wiping me clean, changing my clothes, boiling a broth to sober me up.

Through the haze, I saw her eyes gone red with worry for me.

But when I woke in the small hours, the other side of the bed was empty and cold.

There was a message from her on my phone.

Something came up at work. I've gone back to the office to put in some overtime.

So while I was at my worst, she was sleeping in someone else's bed, holding another warm body.

There were so many chat logs I scrolled and scrolled and couldn't reach the top.

I skimmed fast, not daring to look closely.

But their words, like a couple deep in the throes of new love, kept forcing their way into my eyes.

Mabel, I want to eat something you cooked~

Mabs, I miss you.

Mabs

Working hours, off hours, business-trip hours.

Whatever my brother sent, Mabel answered.

My first year on the job, one of my calls interrupted a meeting Mabel was in.

Her boss reprimanded her.

Mabel didn't blame me. She just ruffled my hair, her smile a little tired.

After that, when my car got rear-ended, when a hospital misdiagnosed me with something serious, even at the height of my panic I'd send her a line first: "Is this a good time?"

By the time I'd scrolled to the very top, my fingertips had gone slightly numb.

One glance, and the truth stabbed into my eyes.

Setting aside the system notice from when they first added each other, this was the first thing Mabel had ever actually said to my brother.

We were both drunk that night.

Whatever you want as compensation, I'll give it to you. Just keep your mouth shut and don't take this to Neville.

The date was July 3rd, two years ago.

That was the day Mabel and I went and got our marriage license.

At the little family dinner to celebrate, some relative with bad intentions kept pushing drinks on me, and Mabel took every one of them for me.

That night, she didn't come home.

Tears fell one drop at a time, scattering into small wet marks on the desk.

I sat withered in front of the computer until night came down.

Ding, ding

The special alert I'd set just for her sounded in the dark.

I moved my stiff body and picked up my phone.

It was Mabel's habitual check-in.

Honey, I've made it to the hotel.

I didn't reply. I only glanced at the time.

Ten minutes to midnight.

I knew Mabel had definitely seen that message of his.

After all, in her phone, he was the other pinned name, besides me.

He'd said: Pick me or pick him. It's your call.

What would Mabel's answer be?

10, 9, 8, 7

In those ten short minutes, it was as if a dull knife were dragging slowly through the flesh of my heart.

Dragging until it ran with blood, until nothing was left but numbness.

The moment the clock struck twelve.

The computer screen flickered again.

But I didn't look. I closed the messaging app first thing.

I thought, I had my answer too.

2: 2

The next morning, first thing, I handed in my resignation.

The HR director looked at my letter, and something in his face shifted toward surprise.

No wonder.

Everyone at the company knew how hard I pushed myself. Working through my days off was normal for me.

My coworkers used to joke about it, asking who I even had in Southport, that I'd grind myself down like this just to get a foothold here.

"Have you really thought this through?"

He set the letter down gently on the desk and rubbed at the space between his brows, tired.

"That project of yours went well. Once it's finalized, your promotion to manager is a done deal."

"Leave now, and you walk away with nothing."

The word manager made something in me stir.

The fingers hanging at my side curled tight without my meaning them to.

Freshman year, I signed up for the English speaking competition. My timid nature and the way my back would never straighten got me cut by the teacher.

It was Mabel, our class president, who stepped up for me.

"Neville's spoken English is excellent. I think he should get a shot."

Sophomore year we joined the photography club together.

She taught me composition and color grading with her own hands, coached me until I took first place in a photography contest.

Junior year, the startup competition.

The business plan, the slides, the pitch on stageevery step, Mabel walked me through it, and she put me up on that winner's platform.

I know I'm not clever.

Every step I took forward, I was stepping into footprints Mabel had already laid down for me.

So even as we walked step by step toward being in love, there was always gossip trailing behind us that we could never shake.

The year we graduated, we joined the same company.

That was the first time I wanted to stand on my own, to stand beside Mabel through my own ability.

I said, "Can we hold off on going public with our relationship?"

"Mabs, just wait for me."

"Within three years I'll make manager, and I'll stand shoulder to shoulder with you."

Back then Mabel had come in through the talent-recruitment track, starting at manager level.

I was an ordinary campus hire, still anxious every day about making it past probation.

Winters in Southport are cold.

Mabel scooted over next to me, gave a little wave of her hand, and wrapped me in with her under that cashmere blanket she treasured most.

She didn't ask me why. She didn't call it a pipe dream.

There was only the same support and trust she always gave me.

"Neville, go for it, no holding back."

"Whatever happens, I'll be right here waiting for you."

This year happens to be my third at this company.

The new deal was worth over a hundred million, and I'd spent close to half a year grinding to close it. From the very start I'd been aiming for that manager's seat.

Soon we'd be able to go public, and start planning the wedding.

When I turned around, Mabel was in fact still there where she'd been.

Only now there were two roads forking in front of me.

That night, I went home from work alone.

The apartment was pitch dark and dead quiet.

I felt along the wall and switched on the living room light.

Standing in the doorway, I took a long look, for the first time in a while, at this little home that belonged to me and Mabel.

The plates I hadn't had time to wash before leaving that morning were still stacked in the sink.

The cashmere blanket I'd tossed on the couch during my Sunday nap was still there days later, half of it drooping to the floor.

This was just how the apartment was.

Three hundred out of three hundred sixty-five days, the only signs of life in it were mine.

Before, I never once felt lonely.

The couple's photo on the cabinet by the door, the matching mugs we'd fired together on the dining table, the handmade dumplings she'd frozen ahead in the fridge.

Mabel wasn't there, but her love was around me all the time.

Now the love had lies mixed into it.

And the apartment turned frighteningly cold.

Then the other door behind me was suddenly flung open.

The draft blowing through from the living room across the hall caught the hem of my shirt and knocked the photo off the wall.

The glass frame cracked where it landed, lying sideways between me and Mabel.

I crouched down on instinct to pick it up, and that was when my brother's excited voice rang out.

"Neville, I've decided, I'm going to get the marriage license!"

I froze, and without thinking opened my chat with Mabel.

No messages.

But that photo of my back, the one she'd kept pinned to her profile for five years, had quietly, soundlessly come down.

3: 3

A month later, Mabel came back.

Or maybe I should call her Joanna Cox, the sister she'd invented for herself.

Right now she was my brother's girlfriend, the older of a pair of twins.

At the restaurant, I sat alone across from the two of them.

Back when we used to eat together, Mabel always insisted on sitting shoulder to shoulder with me.

She said that was how couples were supposed to be, and that the seat across the table was for outsiders.

Now I was the outsider.

Mabel lifted her hand, all business, the way you deal with someone you barely know.

She slid a divorce agreement across to me.

"Joanna must have explained it to you. The new project needs her to be the legal representative."

"She's afraid something could go wrong and drag you into it, so she wants the two of you to divorce for a while, just for show."

It was a flimsy excuse.

I looked into Mabel's eyes.

There was distance in them, coldness, both forced, but not a trace of guilt.

Because she knew I would believe her.

The way I did back in college, when I gave up a secure government job just to follow her to Southport for work.

She'd been so angry she said the first thing that came to her, and she broke up with me.

By the time I'd chased her through the downpour to the foot of her dorm, she still hadn't cooled off.

She pointed outside.

"My bracelet fell out there somewhere. If you find it before daybreak, I'll take you back."

Mabel was allergic to metal. She never wore jewelry.

I knew she was almost certainly just venting, but I couldn't bear even a one-in-ten-thousand chance of losing her.

So I really did search the whole night.

By the time they brought me to the hospital the next day, my fever had hit a hundred and six.

Mabel held my hand, her eyes red-rimmed, swearing she'd never lie to me again as long as she lived.

And now, for someone else, she'd gone back on that.

My chest felt tight and heavy, like I couldn't get a full breath.

I read through that divorce agreement slowly, line by line.

Across from me, my brother had his arm around Mabel's shoulders, laughing and teasing, ordering her to pick out this dish and that.

"Babe, I want that shrimp. Peel it for me!"

Mabel looked down at him with the gentle expression that used to be mine alone, and murmured a doting yes.

The shrimp was carefully peeled, dipped in soy sauce, and fed into my brother's mouth.

And suddenly I remembered what Mabel had said about him the first time she visited my family.

"He'll only eat fruit if it's already sliced, needs someone else to peel his shrimp, and calls a cab for a store that's barely half a mile away."

"Your parents must be blind, dumping you in the countryside all those years and ignoring you, all for a precious oversized baby like him."

Back then she'd been so indignant on my behalf, with nothing but contempt for my parents and their favoritism.

Even my brother, the one who'd gotten everything, caught the edge of her anger.

But little by little, she softened toward him.

"Your brother's a newbie. Yesterday he stayed at the office studying project files until two in the morning before going home. Turns out he can handle more than I thought."

"Your brother brought over a bowl of fish soup today. I didn't know he could even cook. I always figured he was some rich boy who'd never lifted a finger in his life."

Somewhere along the way, she stopped resisting him at all.

When my parents asked her to help find him a place to rent near ours, she agreed without hesitating.

She told me, "There's no grudge in a family that lasts overnight. Besides me, they'll be the ones you can lean on your whole life too."

"Neville, you could try to get along with your brother."

All this time I thought she was thinking of me.

So it turned out she was only making excuses for the man she loved.

Seeing me sit there so long without moving the pen, my brother propped his chin on his hand and grinned at me.

"All right, hurry up and sign it. Once you're done we can eat."

"What are you staring at it for? Afraid your own girlfriend's going to cheat you?"

Mabel nodded along.

"Once the project's up and running a year from now, the two of you can still remarry."

At those words, my brother's face went pale for an instant.

I didn't answer.

I picked up the pen and signed my name, stroke by stroke.

No. We would never remarry.

After dinner, it started pouring.

My brother, his arm around Mabel, looked at me with a slightly troubled expression.

"Neville, my fiance and I still have a date to get to. Would you mind grabbing a cab yourself?"

I nodded, and watched them walk away.

Through the driving rain, what arrived before the taxi was an onboarding notice in my inbox.

Mr. Neville James, thank you for joining Crestwell Group.

Your one-year training program begins next month. Please report to the Germany headquarters by August 3rd.

I tapped my finger and pressed confirm.

Received.

4: 4

From that day on, Mabel moved into my brother's place in the open.

Before, even with the twin-sister excuse, the two of them had kept their dates half-hidden. I'd barely run into them a handful of times.

Now they came and went through the complex all the time, and photos of their dates started flooding Caspar's messaging feed.

People at the company were surprised by how close Caspar and Mabel had gotten.

He only smiled and never explained that this was Mabel's twin sister.

When neighbors asked, he introduced her freely.

"This is my fiance. We're getting our marriage license soon."

I figured my brother had actually taken my advice to heart.

Getting the license really would put his mind at ease.

And thanks to the way he was dragging Mabel around on dates out of spite, she'd lived across the hall from me for a month and still hadn't noticed that I'd already quit my job and started slowly moving out.

The day my Germany visa came through, it started pouring again.

When I got home, I happened, for once, to find Mabel waiting outside my door.

A man's coat hung over her arm as she leaned against the wall, the toe of her shoe tapping the floor out of boredom.

It was the same thing she used to do back when she waited for me before a date.

Seeing me, she straightened up, as if to cover for herself.

The next second she caught sight of my soaked clothes and frowned.

"Take a hot shower when you get in, and remember to drink some ginger tea before bed."

Then it seemed to register with her, and she rubbed her nose and added a line.

"Joanna told me to say that."

"She said you've got a weak constitution, that getting caught in the rain easily gives you a fever, and once it starts it spikes past a hundred and four. She told me to keep an eye on you."

I didn't answer. I keyed in the code and opened the door.

"Mabel's the one who always made the ginger tea. I don't know how."

"If there's anything, she can tell me herself when she's back."

Behind me, a long silence.

When the door was knocked on again, there was a takeout order of ginger tea sitting on the floor.

Mabel's message came through too.

Babe, I heard you got caught in the rain. I'm not there with you, but remember to drink some ginger tea before you sleep, okay?

I stood there a long time.

Then I lifted my hand and dropped the ginger tea into the trash.

Before I knew it, it was the end of July, the day I flew to Germany.

My flight was booked for two in the morning, which put me there right at dawn, easy for someone to meet me.

In the middle of the night, I followed the map to find the driver's car, which he'd stopped at the wrong intersection.

In the empty, out-of-the-way alley, the streetlight stretched my shadow out long, so long.

Then a dark figure bore down on me.

My heart jumped, and I couldn't stop myself from walking faster.

But the figure only kept closing in.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the flash of a blade, and a wave of liquor breath.

Cold sweat slid down, drop by drop.

My hand shaking, I sent Mabel a message on reflex.

The alley by the south gate of the complex. Someone's following me!

Just before I left, I'd seen Caspar's latest post.

They were having a late-night bite at the complex's gate. Three minutes and they could be here.

Mabel wrote back quickly.

Hope had just risen in me.

The next second, it was like being slapped hard across the face.

Babe, don't panic, I'll call the police for you right now.

Try to head toward somewhere with lights, and if you see a shop, duck inside.

If only I weren't away on this trip. I could come to you right this second.

Here I was in real danger, and she was still playing out that twin-sister act of hers.

Looking at those few lines, I had never felt so utterly hopeless, so completely done.

The smell of liquor behind me grew heavier.

And my heart sank lower and lower.

Just as that figure was about to swallow up the last of my shadow, a beam of light suddenly cut in from the mouth of the alley.

"Who are you! What do you think you're doing!"

The figure froze for a moment, then turned and ran.

It was the driver I'd called earlier.

I hadn't shown up, so he'd tracked my location to come find me.

He hurried out of the car and over to me, glancing back warily.

"Some drunk."

"Son, you want to call the police now or not?"

My suitcase propped up my weak legs.

When I opened my phone, Caspar had just put up a new post.

A hundred things to do while in love. Number 88, late-night barbecue, done!

Next stop, a private midnight horror movie.

In the photo, the two of them held movie tickets, fingers laced together.

The location tag was already a theater two miles away.

It was a long moment before I raised my head.

"No need."

"Would you mind taking me to the airport?"