I Walked Away When I Learned My Girlfriend Loved Her Childhood Sweetheart—Then She Begged Me Back After I Got Married

After I finished dealing with things at the company and got home, the house was pitch-black. [Mia.] I called out my girlfriend’s name softly, but no one answered. I collapsed onto the sofa, and a deep sense of helplessness wrapped around me. After a full day of exhaustion, my body felt like a machine that couldn’t move because of a broken gear. It had already been a week since our last fight. I looked at the flowers in the vase. The once beautiful, bright blooms had already started to wilt. I had won this bouquet at a friend’s wedding a while ago. My friend even laughed at me for being a grown man fighting a bunch of girls for it. I just smiled and didn’t say anything, then handed the flowers to Mia. But when Mia looked at them, her face turned dark at once. She didn’t dare blow up because there were too many people around. The moment we got home, she threw the flowers at me and shouted at me. [I don’t want to get married so early. I want to be more stable at work first.] [Why do you have to push me?] I opened my mouth, but said nothing. I looked at Mia, whose eyes were full of blame and resentment. For some reason, I thought of the old Mia, the one who used to lean against my shoulder and say she wanted to marry me as soon as possible. Mia dropped those words and left without looking back. She said she was going out with her friends to clear her head. But for an entire week, she never came home. I stared at the flowers in a daze, then picked up the watering can and sprayed some water on them. I hoped they could live a little longer. Just then, my phone rang. Mia sent me a location and a message. [I’m drunk. Come pick me up.] The location was a bar. After coming back from my friend’s wedding, I had talked to her about marriage. Mia said I was pushing her. So she was going out with her friends for a single-girl party. A nice-sounding excuse for enjoying the last bit of freedom before marriage. I forced my tired body to drive to the bar. When I arrived, I didn’t like drinking, so I rarely came to places like this. In my suit, I looked completely out of place here. But I still spotted Mia at a glance. She was leaning against a man, sitting in the middle of a group of people. Someone suggested they play King’s Game. The man next to Mia had to feed someone wine mouth-to-mouth. The man curled his lips, staring straight at Mia. Mia didn’t refuse. Instead, she sat directly on the man’s lap. She bent down, parted her lips, and kissed him back without restraint. Their figures blurred before my eyes. I saw Mia’s phone. It was in the man’s long, bony hand. Needless to say, that message had been sent to me by the man. I knew this man. He was Mia’s first love and childhood friend, Eric. When I first got together with Mia, she had confessed everything to me. The two of them had grown up as neighbors and were very close. They had started dating in high school. But later, Mia got into a top university, while Eric didn’t even make it into college. As time went on, the gap between them grew bigger and bigger, and Eric became more and more of a mess. So they broke up. Back then, Mia told me that even though Eric had once been her youthful first love, now I was the only one in her heart. The Mia who said I was the only one in her heart overlapped with the Mia in front of me. I watched as she took the initiative to deepen that kiss. The two of them were kissing so hard they couldn’t bear to let go. I saw the matching couple rings on their intertwined fingers. Those were made by Mia herself. I had found them in her bedside drawer before. I had naively thought they were a gift for our anniversary. But now the rings were on another man’s hand. I understood. Eric had sent me that message because he wanted me to come and see this. I didn’t step forward to stop them. I just turned and left. The Mia I once knew was gradually shattering in my heart.I got back into the car and tried hard to calm myself down. My phone rang again. It was an unknown number, sending me a photo. I opened it, and it was the scene of Mia and Eric feeding each other wine just now. The owner of the number sent me another extremely provocative message. [So what if you’re about to get married?] [A first love is way more powerful than you. I just have to curl my finger and she’ll come over obediently.] Before I could reply, another message came through with a social media account. I opened my phone. It was Mia’s private Instagram account. The name was—Mia and Eric’s Little Love Journal. I let out a sneer. A little love journal. Then what was I? I clicked in and looked. The account had been created in high school, so by the timeline, it should have been right when they first started dating. Then it stopped updating for a long time, probably around the time they broke up. But starting last year, Mia began updating it very frequently. Every post was about Mia and Eric’s daily love life. She and Eric went to dessert shops to check in, and the two of them fed each other cake affectionately. Mia had told me many times that she was away on business trips. It turned out she had been traveling with Eric. She prepared gifts for Eric for every holiday, big or small. I caught sight of a scarf in one of the photos. [I knitted this scarf for Eric. I ruined several before I finally got this perfect one.] Eric commented below it, [The scarf is so warm, just like having you by my side.] I had also received a scarf before, but the workmanship was much worse than Eric’s. I had always thought Mia knitted it herself, so I treasured it very carefully. Looking at it now, mine was probably just a failed trial piece. Ding dong— Mia posted a new update. It was two photos. One showed her kissing Eric at the top of the Ferris wheel. The other was the photo Eric had sent me earlier, with their matching couple rings looking especially blinding in my eyes. Caption: [You said kissing at the top of the Ferris wheel means being together forever, so why do I still have to separate from you?] A notification suddenly popped up on my phone. Ding dong— [Today is the fourth anniversary of being with Mia!] I stared at that notification, stunned. I opened the app, and the page showed that today was the fourth year of being with Mia. The background was a photo of me kissing Mia. Right now, looking at this photo made me feel sick. This app was something Mia had downloaded for me. She said it was so I could remember how many days we had been together. I rarely downloaded random apps on my phone, but that day I let Mia install it for me. She even changed the background to a photo of us together. I pressed and held, then deleted it. The number vanished instantly. This relationship should come to an end.