Once Parted, the Spring Never Returns

Six years together, and Marlin Carr and I did everything but kiss.

He wouldn't share a set of utensils with me, wouldn't eat from the same slice of cake, even insisted on serving spoons at home.

Because, he said, the mouth is one of the most bacteria-dense parts of the body.

So I kept up with dental care, ate clean, worked out harder.

A checkup every month, always at my best.

And still he wouldn't allow it.

Until the drinks that night at the class reunion, when we started playing truth or dare.

The bottle pointed at Edith Hardy, seated beside me, and the card she drew read:

Kiss the nearest man for three seconds, full-body contact, no pulling away. Refuse and drink three glasses.

And the man beside her happened to be Marlin Carr.

I reached for the glass, ready to spare her, but the next second Marlin turned and kissed her.

The whole room froze.

Time up, and Marlin's mouth curved into a smile.

"It's a game. Rules are rules. No sense ruining everyone's fun."

My hand went still on the glass, my eyes on his shifting throat and Edith's flushed face, and I drank down everything in the cup.

Then I pulled off my engagement ring, threw it on the table, and said to him.

"I'm done playing this game."

"And I don't want you either."

The ring spun twice on the table and rolled under the cabinet.

The air locked up for a beat before someone jumped in to smooth it over.

"Sophia Matthews, come on, is it really that serious?"

"You and Marlin have been together six years. We've all been waiting to toast at your wedding."

"Right, it's a really common thing overseas!"

They pressed in from every side, and every word said the same thing: I was making too big a deal of it.

But only I knew what that kiss meant.

It was the one thing I'd never gotten in all these years, no matter how many reports I produced, how many tricks I tried.

And with him and Edith, it was somehow just a common courtesy.

"Stop it, all of you!"

Edith cut in, her voice catching, her eyes going red.

"Sophia, this is my fault today. I shouldn't have sat next to Marlin."

"Don't be angry. I'll go find your ring right now."

She dropped to the floor in a panic, reaching under the cabinet for the ring.

She was in a short skirt, and every wide, scrambling motion flashed the safety shorts underneath.

Most of the room was men, and their eyes kept sliding that way.

I kept mine fixed on Marlin's face.

Watched it go from calm, to a slight pinch of the brow, to a shout.

"Enough!"

He stripped off his jacket, tied it around Edith's waist, and pulled her up.

Then his sharp gaze met mine.

"Sophia, does it feel good, backing everyone into a corner like this?"

Six years together, and even in a fight, Marlin never lost his temper with me in front of others, never once made me look small in a crowd.

But today he'd done it twice.

Both times over the same person.

Something tightened in my chest, and I let out a scornful little laugh.

"I'm making a scene?"

"So my fianc locking lips with the woman who used to chase him, that's the fun part, is it?"

Everyone here knew how hard Edith had chased him back then.

From paper cranes to designer gifts.

Ads all over the city, from taxi rooftops to shopping malls.

Every campus for miles knew about that grand, out-in-the-open crush.

But Marlin never budged. Turned her down clearly every time, buried in his studies and every major competition.

Junior year, Edith sang a love song at the school gala, and the next day she vanished for good.

People who knew said her father lost out in the family power struggle, got sidelined by his brothers, and to cut off her resources they shipped her overseas.

Watching his eyes drop, I gripped my bag tighter and laughed softly.

"You two go on."

"As for why the wedding's off, you can explain that to your parents yourself."

At the words "wedding's off," something like panic crossed Marlin's face, and he took an instinctive step forward.

"Sophia!"

Edith's sob came right on cue, pulling his attention back.

I walked out in my heels, and behind me came his voice, gentle as anything.

"Edith, don't cry. It's bad for you."

Out in the night, I flagged a taxi and gave the address, and the moment I took out my phone, a message from my best friend Greta Lyons popped up.

This guy's back in the post, why does it look so much like your man?

I opened the link, and one line hit me.

Eight years later, we've finally kept our promise of a first kiss to each other.

The photo was Marlin from behind, shrugging off his jacket.

The way he'd stammered this morning when I wondered aloud why I was the only one who hadn't gotten a reunion invite came back to me, and all at once it made sense.

So much for truth or dare.

So much for overseas courtesy.

The truth was I had never been part of this game at all.

The only leading lady was Edith.

I leaned back against the seat and watched the dim yellow streetlight filter in through the branches.

Six years. What a joke.

Back home, I felt my way through the dark, and my toe caught on something hard. The pain shot through me and I flinched.

I flipped on the light. It was the wedding-prep materials, along with the invitation list I'd sorted before heading out.

I rolled up my sleeves, box and all, and threw the whole lot into the storage room.

Then I dropped onto the couch and stared up at the light Marlin and I had installed together six months ago.

The moment that light first came on had been one of the happiest of my life.

But right now, I actually found myself wishing it had never lit up at all.

Restless in my own skin, I went and showered. As I reached for my skincare, the jar of face cream slipped and hit the floor.

A shard flew up and scraped across the top of my foot. A bead of blood welled up.

I went to the living room for the first-aid kit. I'd just finished disinfecting the cut when Marlin came home.

He crossed the room in quick strides, bent down, gripped my chin, and kissed me.

The unfamiliar feel of it, the cloying sweetness of perfume, flooded my nose.

My stomach heaved. I shoved him off hard and doubled over by the trash can, gagging.

The temperature in the room dropped. Marlin's brow knotted tight, plain anger in his eyes.

"Sophia, am I too dirty for you?"

I looked up, my view half-blurred by the film of tears.

"What? Weren't you the one who said the mouth is one of the highest bacteria-density spots on the human body?"

He paused, then reached over and pulled a sheet from that stack of oral-health reports on the table.

"Report's clean. It's fine now."

"From now on, do whatever you want."

Listening to those words, I dug my nails slowly into my palm, my voice gone hoarse.

"Six years. Not too soon, not too late."

"But once you'd kissed Edith, then it was fine. Is that it?"

Marlin frowned, his tone cold.

"Sophia, it was just a game!"

"Edith had heart surgery. She can't drink!"

"In a setting like that today, it was the only thing I could do!"

"But you could clearly drink those three shots for her!"

My chest was heaving. I dragged in a breath and shouted it at him.

I stared straight at him and let the mockery out.

"Or have you been waiting for that moment for years?"

Marlin's body went rigid, his face darkening in an instant.

"You're never going to let this go, are you?"

"Do you even know that after you left today, Edith scraped her hand raw trying to get the ring back!?"

He pulled the ring from his pocket and tossed it on the table.

Along the outer edge of the diamond, faint traces of blood.

I pulled out a tissue, wrapped the ring in it, and threw it out the window.

I met his eyes and mocked him.

"She loves picking things up so much, you can send her downstairs to pick it up."

"This time she'll probably break a leg."

"You are absolutely impossible!"

"How did I ever end up with you!?"

The words were barely out before he snatched up his coat, grabbed the car keys, and headed for the door.

The door slammed shut.

In the huge apartment, there was only me.

The top of my foot throbbed, and the tears kept spilling over, unstoppable.

Those few words echoed in my ears, and my heart felt gripped in a huge hand, squeezed hard, as if even my breath had frozen.

My eyes fell on the date circled on the desk calendar, and the emotion crashed over me harder still.

In another two weeks, it would be our seventh anniversary as a couple.

Senior year, Marlin and I met through a competition.

Out of ten students school-wide, only the two of us made it to the finals, teaming up to represent the school in an international contest.

Three months, side by side day and night, two people so alike and so in sync, drawn to each other as if it were the only thing that could happen.

The night the competition ended, Rothenburg got its first snow of winter.

I'd forgotten my scarf and stood there hunched against the cold, watching it fall.

He took off his coat and wrapped me up snug in it, then gently brushed the snow off me.

Once we were back home, Marlin started pursuing me.

Maybe it was just his nature, but the way he courted a girl had nothing to do with romance.

He'd meet me at the library, take me to eat in the dining hall, and the only things he talked about were the competition or work.

My roommates all called him a blockhead.

But I thought his way was far more interesting than all those clichd tactics for chasing a girl.

The day we took our graduation photos, he brought me a bouquet of sunflowers.

My roommates egged us on to take a picture, and the instant the shutter clicked, our hands, hidden under the loose folds of the graduation gowns, were laced tightly together.

After graduation, we each got solid job offers, one after another.

But Marlin said he wanted to start his own company, to take his own ideas and make them real by his own hand.

The problem was, he couldn't find a suitable partner for the company.

Knowing the way he operated, I figured that even if he did find a partner, they'd probably clash somewhere down the line.

So without a second thought I started the company with him, working every kind of dinner and negotiation.

For a single point I'd argue a client into the ground until my throat gave out into bronchitis, drank until I perforated my stomach.

The investments I pulled in for him grew larger each time.

Two years later, the company went public.

The app we launched broke eighty million downloads on day one.

In one stroke it became a rising force in the regional tech industry.

We stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of the top-floor office, looking down at the crowds streaming below.

He held my hand, his eyes reddening, his voice trembling.

"Sophia, the luckiest thing in my life is meeting you."

And yet today, he didn't understand why he was even with me.

The phone screen lit up with a notification: A user whose profile you've visited has posted an update.

I tapped it open. It was Edith.

Eight years on, I've finally kissed your lips. This time it isn't a game.

The attached photo was a live shot of a window view, and the location tag was the city's largest luxury hotel.

The image played on a loop, and the man's familiar, tender voice bored into my ears again and again.

"Edith, I finally have the right."

Scrolling down, the comment section was a handful of familiar handles.

Eight years later, the couple I shipped is finally real.

Edith, whatever you do, don't go soft on him tonight!

Edith replied.

Of course not. After everything I gave up back then, I'm collecting every bit of it from him tonight!

And honestly, he's as good as I imagined. Nearly finished me off.

The hand holding my phone kept tightening until my fingertips went white.

So the kiss just now had been about the three seconds that hadn't gone his way today. Nothing more.

I lost count of how many times I read it. Then I curled my lip, picked up the stack of test reports on the desk, and fed them into the shredder.

Then I grabbed the ceramic figurine from the cabinet, the one we'd painted together six months ago, and hurled it at the lamp.

The light flickered a few times, then died.

The figurine hit the floor and shattered into pieces.

I walked to the window, scrolled my contacts to the very bottom, and opened the chat.

One week from now, I'll start.

The reply came fast.

You've decided? If you come, the wedding gets pushed back, you know.

I typed back quickly.

I only agreed to marry him because I'd lost my head. I'm awake now.

The other side sent a smirking dog emoji.

All right. Looking forward to having you on board, Ms. Matthews. Good night.

Early the next morning, I'd barely reached my office when I spotted a box of soup dumplings on my desk, from the old place I loved most.

Ken Salazar set the coffee down and answered before I could ask, following my gaze.

Mr. Carr left those.

For six years, everyone at the company knew about me and Marlin Carr.

But at work, he never had a fiance in his sights. Only the job.

Which was why nothing but files had ever landed on my desk from him.

I was about to toss the box in the trash when Marlin pushed the door open.

What? Still angry with me?

Yesterday was my fault, I'll admit that.

He came around behind me and looped his arms around me from the back, the way he always used to, and fastened a delicate diamond-chip necklace at my throat.

My nose stung, sharp and sudden.

All these years, every piece of jewelry he'd given me, I'd chosen myself and he'd paid.

I'd complained about it a few times, said I wanted a surprise.

He always laughed it off.

I've got no eye for it. Afraid a surprise would turn into a shock.

Even the engagement ring, I'd picked out.

Now I'd finally gotten something he chose himself, and the style happened to be exactly to my taste.

Except it came the morning after he'd spent the night wrapped around another woman.

The nausea surged up again and lodged in my throat.

I bit down on the tip of my tongue and swallowed the words back, one by one.

The people under me had followed me since graduation, in perfect sync, loyal to the bone.

I couldn't let my private feelings derail their careers.

I had to take them with me.

Seeing me stay quiet, Marlin assumed I'd been coaxed around, just like every time before.

He let go, and his tone slid naturally back to work.

The theme illustrator for the app update, have you settled on one?

I stepped out of his hold, took a sip of coffee, and only then did my whole body ease.

Not yet.

He nodded and said softly,

You've had it rough lately, handling the wedding prep. Leave this one to me.

The phone on the desk buzzed. A message from the equity contact. The terms were reasonable, it just meant I'd have to fly out.

Setting everything else aside, when it came to business, Marlin was flawless.

This software was the company's flagship. He knew exactly what it was worth.

I nodded.

Fine. I'll scout the southeastern market while I'm out there.

With his answer, he turned and left the office.

I took off the necklace, looked out the window, and murmured,

One last time. Here's hoping it's a pleasure doing business.

A few days later, the moment I signed the contract, I hurried straight back.

Then a typhoon rolled in and delayed my flight by twelve hours.

While I was waiting in the lounge, I overheard the people beside me.

"What is this garbage game doing? What kind of update is this?"

"I'm so mad. I spent that much money on it too!"

I glanced over, and it was our company's software.

I updated it right away, and when the page loaded, my whole body went rigid.

Our immersive farm-life game, built on a classic Eastern aesthetic, had been crammed full of Western elements. The most iconic character's costume had been completely redesigned.

The second my plane landed, I went straight to the office.

I'd barely stepped through the door when Ken rushed over with a folder, his voice choked.

"Ms. Matthews, it's over"

I opened the folder and saw the illustrator's signature under a pen name I'd never heard of.

I flipped further and saw the real name. My hand clenched. Edith Hardy.

My chest went numb, my breath tight.

I looked at Ken.

"Upload the first version to replace it. Keep the losses as small as possible."

Then I pushed open the door to Marlin's office, ready to speak.

But there he was, playing some little tablet game with Edith, a tender smile on his face.

The instant he noticed me, his brow furrowed and irritation crossed his face.

"Why didn't you knock?"

I tossed the folder onto his desk and looked straight into his eyes.

"So this is the person you picked, and the work you did?"

He glanced at the folder, then looked at Edith beside him, tense and uneasy, and his body instinctively shifted to shield most of her from view before he turned back to me.

"Edith just came back to the country. As an old classmate, I figured this was a good chance for her to get some practice."

"Besides, your PR skills are so strong. For you, this is nothing."

I watched the way he was guarding Edith, and I thought back to the year the software first took off, to how earnest he'd looked.

He'd said that no matter how the company grew from then on, this software would always be the most important thing in his heart.

Because it was what the two of us had built together.

I dropped my eyes and forced down the ache rising in my throat, steadying myself.

When I looked up again, I caught the diamond bracelet on Edith's wrist and the little chip-diamond necklace Marlin had given me as an "apology." Same raw material.

And just like that, it came together.

So the necklace he gave me was made from the leftover scraps.

The so-called apology was really about buying himself a chance to let Edith practice.

A cramp of pain twisted in my stomach. I looked at Marlin, and my throat worked.

"And if I told you that this time, I don't want it anymore?"

Marlin blinked, then laughed.

"Sophia, you won't."

"I know what this software means to you."

I twitched a corner of my mouth up, pulled out my phone, took the resignation notice I'd drafted long ago from my bag, and set it on his desk.

"You're wrong."

"Right now it means nothing to me."

"Do whatever you want with it."

I turned to leave.

Marlin's expression froze, and he lunged forward to grab my wrist.

"Sophia, listen to me"

"Marlin, I can't breathe"

Edith cried out and slumped into the chair, her face drained white.

He yanked his hand back, scooped her up, and rushed for the door.

As he passed me, he threw out one line.

"Sophia, wait for me. We'll sit down and talk this through."

Once he was gone, his assistant's eyes swept over me, tinged now with pity.

I drove home, packed my bags quickly, arranged to ship the car registered in my name, and listed my property for rent.

I bought a one-way ticket to the new company.

I canceled the wedding dress I'd ordered and the venue I'd booked.

I deleted his parents' contacts and left that necklace on the table.

From now on, my life and Marlin's would never cross paths again.

The next morning, after sitting up all night with Edith and finding that the online backlash still hadn't died down, Marlin finally lost his nerve.

He rushed over to Sophia's department, only to find every desk empty.

"What's going on here?"

His assistant lowered his head and answered.

"Once the whole department heard Ms. Matthews had quit, they left with her."

The veins stood out on his forehead as he shouted.

"Who approved that? Why don't I know about it?"

A voice came from behind him.

"I did."

"Mr. Carr, from now on, I'm afraid you'll be losing on both fronts, in love and in business."

Marlin turned around, and the moment he saw who was speaking, his pupils shrank sharply.