Chapter 4: Breaking the News

When I reached the building entrance, my phone buzzed. The February air bit at my face as I fumbled for my phone with numb fingers.

It was Derek’s friend Jake, his voice sharp with accusation. "Rachel, what the hell did you do this time? Derek’s three shots in and threatening to wreck my bar."

"You gotta come get him. He’s about to break something expensive."

My suitcase handle dug into my palm. I felt hollowed out.

"I don’t know what happened," Jake went on. "He came in, flipped a table."

He paused. For once, Jake sounded genuinely thrown. "You don’t know? He said you had dinner with another guy and he found out. The guy even drove you back to your hotel. Derek’s losing it."

I let out a breath. "It was a client. Our dinner was all business—he only drove me because it was pouring and I couldn’t get an Uber." I pictured the rain lashing the city, the client—Mr. Yamamoto, who was old enough to have grandkids in college—insisting on dropping me off. But sure, Derek thought I was running off with him.

So that was the real issue—not the missed Valentine’s Day, but Derek’s imagination. He’d always been possessive, jealous of everyone from the barista who remembered my order to the sixty-year-old security guard who said good morning.

I’d always chalked it up to love, to caring too much. But now, I just felt exhausted.

"I can explain everything. I just don’t get it." My voice was thin, almost swallowed by the wind. "Why does he tell you everything, but never ask me?"

I remembered asking my best friend what she did after a fight with her boyfriend. She’d shrugged over brunch, mimosa in hand. "Once you both cool off, you talk it out. That’s what adults do."

But Derek didn’t do that. He’d rather confide in Jake, Marcus, Tommy—anyone but me. Communication was a foreign language he refused to learn.

Later, my therapist called him "difficult," eyes flicking up to see if I’d flinch. Derek was the most difficult person I’d ever met—and I’d worked customer service through college.

Sensitive, moody, a walking pressure cooker. Every conversation a minefield, every answer a potential explosion. The relationship podcasts and even my own mom had warned me: difficult people aren’t built for relationships.

But I hadn’t listened. I’d charged in, thinking love could fix everything. Now, all I had left was a suitcase and an echoing question: if only one person is always reaching out, does it even count as love?