You Exited My Story

At the holiday dinner, I followed the directions Winifred Cooley sent me, the way I always did,

only to end up at the public restroom behind the restaurant.

Before I could even ask, her message came through.

I'm your superior. It looks bad if we walk in together. Wait in the restroom for ten minutes, and come out when I signal you.

By the time I finally found the private room,

Conrad Cobb was already sitting beside Winifred.

Out of habit, I ladled her a bowl of chicken soup.

Winifred glanced at it, then waved her hand for someone to dump the whole thing, bowl and all.

The coworker next to me smirked.

"Can't even suck up right. Don't you know Ms. Cooley's a germophobe?"

The next moment, Conrad set a peeled crab leg into Winifred's bowl.

She ate it without even looking.

Then, under the table, she texted me again.

"Conrad has mild depression. Don't hold things against a sick person."

I watched the two of them trade food back and forth,

while the coworker group chat lost its mind, flooding the screen with strings of "99" for half an hour.

After dinner, she ordered afternoon coffee for everyone.

The iced americano from the place Conrad always drank from.

Three hours into the meal, Winifred met my eyes for the first time.

"Go downstairs and pick up the coffee."

Six years of a hidden relationship, and for the first time I realized,

some things should end.

...

I stayed seated.

"My hands hurt. I can't carry things. You know that, don't you?"

Winifred clearly hadn't expected that answer.

She froze for a second.

A coworker beside me clicked her tongue.

"There he goes again, cozying up to Ms. Cooley. Who'd know his hands hurt? A grown man, and this fake and clingy!"

"Right. That coffee's for Conrad, we're all just riding his coattails, and this clown's over here putting on a whole show."

The mood in the room turned strange,

and Conrad stood up and said he'd go himself,

which finally got a few people scrambling to head downstairs,

throwing me a glare on their way out.

The phone in my pocket buzzed.

I didn't look, but I knew it was Winifred.

Probably scolding me for being petty, or maybe something else.

But she was barely two feet from me,

and to avoid suspicion, she wouldn't even glance my way.

She'd probably forgotten my hands got hurt making a cake for her.

That Saturday she did something she rarely did she said she wanted a cake,

and I scalded both hands red to finish it, brought it to the office, and even had to pass it off as delivery.

Then she turned around, and the cake went into Conrad's stomach.

Through the blinds, I saw Conrad smile at her.

"Thank you, Ms. Cooley. The cake from this place really is good. Shame you never tell me where you buy it."

"I'll buy more if you want it," Winifred said.

That was when I understood. No wonder Winifred, who never cared for sweets, kept asking me to make desserts.

Only because someone else liked them.

A hand set an iced americano in front of me.

I followed the hand up. It was Winifred.

Signals like this, quiet little ones, used to make me feel sweet inside.

But for some reason,

all I could taste in my mouth now was bitterness.

Winifred stuck a straw into a fresh cup and handed it to Conrad.

The words came out almost before she could stop them.

"Your stomach's bad. Don't finish this cold one."

It set a few coworkers off, hands over their mouths, squealing.

Conrad blushed under the teasing and stepped back,

knocking over the half-finished bowl of soup.

The soup spilled all over my shirt, soaking a huge patch.

"Oh, Blake Weston, I'm so sorry! Did it burn you?"

Conrad's eyes went red with fright.

But Winifred caught his wrist.

"Stop worrying about other people. What about you? Are you hurt anywhere?"

I stood up without a word and walked to the restroom.

Halfway through cleaning my shirt, the grease stain wouldn't come out no matter what.

Behind me, a coworker I got along with came over and called to me.

"How are you getting home later? Is your girlfriend coming to pick you up?"

Right then my phone screen lit up.

From Winifred.

"Walk to the bus stop about half a mile down the road later. I'll come get you after I drop Conrad off."

I swiped the message away and turned around with a smile.

"I broke up. I'll grab a cab home myself."

When I stepped out, the party had already broken up.

Outside, the autumn rain fell without letting up.

Winifred Cooley had pulled the car up to the door.

Conrad Cobb climbed into the passenger seat, then leaned his head back out.

"Winifred says there's still room in the back. Did anyone not manage to get a cab yet?"

The people close to Conrad started trading looks and smirks.

"We'll pass. You two head home first, you and your Winifred~"

For once, Winifred glanced at me.

"Get home safe, everyone. You too, Blake."

I didn't look at her. I raised my umbrella and walked off ahead of them.

I was already home when her message came in.

Conrad's stomach hurts. I'm taking a detour to buy him medicine. I'll come pick you up in a bit.

Then, a little later.

Let me make some porridge first, then I'll come get you.

Then, an hour later.

Blake, where are you?

It never once crossed Winifred's mind that I'd make my own way home.

Of course it wouldn't.

She'd surely forgotten the last road trip,

when Conrad said he was feeling low,

and she left me at a rest stop for five hours.

By the time she circled back to get me, she was worn out,

and no one brought up how that weekend had started as a road trip meant for just the two of us.

"Blake, be more mature about it. Conrad has depression. As his manager, if something happens to him, it's hard on me too."

That day, the exhaustion on Winifred's face lined up exactly with the one in front of me now.

So she was already back.

In that instant, something came clear to me.

All along, Winifred had saved her patience for Conrad,

and given me the tiredness and the boredom.

I was the one she'd been with for six years,

and now I was just another subordinate to be managed.

"Why didn't you tell me you got home on your own?"

I looked up at her from the couch.

"Weren't you avoiding gossip? So I came back by myself."

Winifred sighed.

"You wear me out when you act like this."

"He's sick, that's why he needs more looking after. I'm not asking you to understand me, just don't make trouble, okay? If you keep this up, when am I ever going to feel safe going public with us?"

This place looked more like a model home than a model home did.

For the sake of avoiding suspicion, the two of us had picked nothing but dark, cold, heavy colors.

No photos. Nothing that said a couple lived here.

The only thing that had kept me moving forward all this time

was Winifred's promise that we'd go public.

I said it quietly.

"Then there's no need to go public."

"Let's break up."

Winifred froze.

When she came to, she gave a small laugh and covered half her face with one hand.

"Fine, break up. How many days do you want to break up for this time?"

She didn't take me seriously.

Fair enough.

I was the one who'd left a long-distance thing to be with her in person,

who quit my job, came to this city, and interviewed my way into being her subordinate.

I could have been promoted at my old company.

Now, to avoid suspicion, I'd passed up three chances to move up.

My mother yelled at me, said I threw everything away for love,

and that sooner or later people would look down on me.

So Winifred probably looked down on me now too.

I didn't argue with her. I grabbed the blanket and went to the spare room.

It didn't matter which room. They were all cold, nothing like a place that was supposed to be a home for a married couple.

The next morning I woke and got to the office before Winifred did.

Usually she'd drop me at a corner near the building,

and I'd slip out of the car so we walked in one after the other.

I went to my direct manager

and handed in my resignation.

He seemed sorry to hear it.

"If it's just a change of scenery you're after, I've got an opening for a training program here."

I knew he meant well, but I still shook my head.

"My family's not in the metropolis. I've been away six years. I want to go home and see them."

Seeing how set I was, he didn't push it.

"Then finish out these next few days, and do a proper handover with HR."

Not long after I came out of his office,

they called an emergency meeting.

And for once, against all habit,

Winifred kept her eyes locked on me.

Her face dark, she threw the proposal down on the table.

"I've stressed this before, again and again. Whether you can do the job well or not, you put in your own effort and do it honestly! Blake, just last month you said you wanted a promotion. Is this the attitude you show me?"

I opened the proposal and found that what was printed on the white pages wasn't text at all,

just a string of garbled English characters.

I couldn't believe it.

"This isn't what I wrote!"

Winifred ignored me and held up another proposal for everyone to see.

"I want to give Conrad some credit here. Conrad's work is careful and thorough. His proposal has already been approved, and your bonus this month will land right on time."

I snatched the thing out of her hand,

and one look was all it took to know that this was mine.

Every word, every character, I'd typed it out myself.

Winifred knew perfectly well I'd stayed up three nights on this proposal.

My head snapped around.

"Conrad, why did you steal my work? This is clearly what I wrote!"

Conrad's eyes went red in an instant.

He rose to his feet.

"I didn't..."

I laughed, cold.

"Fine. Then tell everyone how you were thinking when you wrote this proposal."

"Enough, Blake!"

Winifred raised a hand to cut me off,

her gaze sharp as a blade.

"What matters right now is reflecting on your own mistakes, not pushing the blame onto someone else!"

"Meeting's over!"

Conrad hurried over, his voice cracking as though he were about to cry.

"Blake, I really didn't steal your proposal."

Several coworkers stood beside him, and every one of them looked at me with contempt.

"Somebody's just jealous of you and Ms. Cooley. Don't waste your breath on him. Come on, tell us more, what kind of watch did Ms. Cooley give you?"

They passed by me,

and I caught a glimpse of the silver band flickering at Conrad's wrist.

Two months back, before Valentine's,

I'd seen it in Winifred's shopping cart.

At first I thought she'd bought it for me.

She rarely gave me jewelry,

said wearing it out might expose our relationship.

So when I spotted that watch in her cart, I was happy for days.

Then, on Valentine's, she worked late,

and I stayed with her until midnight.

That night I took an Uber home by myself again.

I never imagined the watch I'd wanted would end up on Conrad's wrist.

I knocked on Winifred's office door with both proposals in hand.

When she saw it was me,

the softness in her face cooled a little.

My heart felt like it had been stabbed with a hot needle,

a dense, spreading ache.

"You knew all along that Conrad's version was the one I wrote. Why..."

"I knew. So what?"

I went mute all at once,

not knowing what to say.

Winifred lifted an eyebrow and went on.

"The words are already out. It doesn't matter who wrote the proposal. Besides, Blake, I did it for your own good. Do you have any idea how many people on your team can't stand you?"

"By doing this today, I drew their attention off you. Now you'll have an easier time fitting in. You really should learn from Conrad. People find him easy to like."

The office air-conditioning left me cold all over.

"And it makes you like him too, is that it?"

Winifred frowned.

Then, a knock at the door.

Conrad poked his head in.

I walked out of the office in silence.

And I heard a few voices behind me.

"Ms. Cooley's about ready to write 'I hate you' across her face, and he's still fawning over someone who wants nothing to do with him. Pathetic."

"Right? Ms. Cooley and Conrad are even wearing matching couple pieces. They just haven't gone public. Can't he stop throwing himself at her?"

When that was said, someone started laughing, though I couldn't tell who went first.

My eyes landed on Conrad's desk.

The markers, the vase, even the blind-box figurine,

all of it should have been mine.

To avoid suspicion, Winifred wouldn't use matching items with me.

So I bought her lots of things in the same color families and pressed them on her.

Even then she wouldn't take them.

When she finally did,

those gifts were on Conrad's desk by the next day.

Winifred said,

"I can't very well throw the things away. You bought them, after all."

I bought them,

but if I'd known from the start they'd end up in another man's hands,

I'd have thrown them out myself.

Conrad came out of the office, all smiles.

Someone winked and made faces at him.

"See? I told you Ms. Cooley only drinks the coffee you bring her."

Conrad touched his hair.

"She's just gentle, that's all."

Then he walked over and asked me, eyes crinkling.

"Blake, do you want some coffee? Winifred says it's good too."

I shook my head and kept looking at my computer.

But my hands only pounded blindly at the keyboard.

Winifred doesn't like bitter things. I only found that out a year into our relationship.

Because around me, she always went along with what I liked.

I actually thought I was the special one, the one who could make someone who hated bitterness willing to try it.

The day dragged by in a fog like that.

I organized my files, getting ready to resign.

By the time work ended and I'd just reached the ground floor,

I heard someone scream.

"There's someone on the roof about to jump!"

The phone in my bag buzzed without stopping,

and the second I answered, Winifred's furious shout came through.

"Get up to the roof right now, this instant, and come see what you've done!"

By the time I reached the rooftop,

a crowd had already gathered.

Conrad sat on the rooftop railing, a knife pressed to his own wrist.

His eyes were swollen from crying.

The moment I stepped out, every head turned, all of them looking at me like I was something strange.

"Blake, I never stole your proposal. Why would you post everything online and set people on me like that?"

Winifred's eyes were ice-cold.

"You even put all of Conrad's personal information up there. In the last ten minutes he's taken twenty calls from strangers cursing him out!"

"Blake, if I got something wrong, I can apologize publicly. But there's no reason to drag in someone innocent!"

She opened the post and held it up for me to see.

The IP, the avatar, the username, all identical to mine.

But the last four digits of the account number were different.

I shook my head helplessly.

"That account isn't me. I never posted anything. You can check my phone!"

I pulled out my phone, unlocked it, and held it out.

Winifred's gaze flickered, like something in her wavered.

"Never mind. I was wrong, all right? I misjudged you!"

Conrad sobbed the words out, the blade already fraying thin lines of blood along his wrist.

"Blake, apologize!"

Winifred's voice came cold and hard.

I stared at her in disbelief.

"I didn't do it. Why should I"

"I don't want to hear it. Wrong is wrong!"

In that instant, it felt like all the air around me had been drained away.

The coworkers around us chimed in one after another.

"Apologize! Conrad's already depressed. Are you trying to get him killed?"

"Don't you know Ms. Cooley and Conrad are already engaged? What you're doing wrecks two families!"

"Apologize!"

Engaged?

I lifted my head, dazed,

and caught the way Winifred's eyes slid away from mine.

And suddenly I thought,

if today it had come out that she and I were the ones engaged,

Winifred would have set everyone straight in a heartbeat.

It wasn't as if that kind of thing had never happened.

Once, on a company hiking trip,

because she wouldn't reach out and pull me up,

I rolled all the way down from the slope to the foot of the hill.

I stepped back and bowed deeply to Conrad.

"I'm sorry. It was my fault. Please forgive me."

Conrad went limp all at once,

collapsing into Winifred's arms.

Their hands overlapped, and I finally saw clearly what was on them.

Two pairs of blue cufflinks.

I'd seen them in a fashion magazine.

The designer's concept was a set meant for an engaged couple.

Seeing that Conrad was fine, everyone let out a breath.

Conrad's close buddy strode up to me

and slapped me across the face.

"Trash!"

His nails raked across my eye.

A sharp sting shot through my left eye, and blood dripped from the corner.

I covered my eye and looked at Winifred.

"Winifred, so this is where you stand, is it?"

She helped Conrad up without sparing me a single glance.

"Go home tonight and write a written apology. Have it on my desk tomorrow."

Conrad leaned against her shoulder

and moved his lips at me, mouthing two silent words.

"Dumb ass."

Everyone who followed her out bumped me with their elbows on the way past, on purpose.

I was knocked down, and a few more feet came down on my hands.

Winifred's text didn't come until an hour later.

"We'll talk when I'm back tonight."

But there was nothing left for the two of us to talk about.

I stood up and walked down off the rooftop, one step at a time.

That night, neither of us went home.

The next day she drove Conrad in to the office

and they walked into her office together.

There was no written apology on the desk.

Winifred frowned, went out into the main work area,

and found my seat empty.

"Did Blake call in?"

Someone from HR happened to be passing.

Hearing her, they answered offhand.

"Blake quit. Something about going back to his hometown to get married, I think?"