Late at night, I was idly scrolling through my phone when a trending topic caught my eye. "Which is worse: winning the lottery and having the ticket expire, or never winning at all?" The top answer belonged to Serena, a lifestyle influencer with millions of followers.

She wrote about how a relative’s child had broken a glass jar full of folded paper stars—a graduation gift from her high school crush of three years.

She had spent the evening grieving the end of her youth, mourning how her past was being swept away into a trash can.

Until she smoothed out one of the ruined paper stars and found words written inside: "Let’s be together.

I’ve liked you for so long." She posted a photo of the flattened paper stars spread across her desk, every single one covered in handwriting. "I’ve been in love with you for 921 days." "When are you finally going to notice?" The comment section was in absolute frenzy.

The internet was taking it harder than the actual people involved. "Are you both single right now? If yes, it hasn't expired yet!

Go get him!" "You were too young back then to make it work anyway. Now is the real right time!" I locked my screen. The display went dark.

Beside me, Adam was fast asleep, his breathing steady and slow. Once the golden boy of our high school, he was now my husband.

I stared at the sharp outline of his profile in the dark.

If that shattered glass jar wasn't the exact confession gift I had folded and given him all those years ago, maybe I would have shed a tear for their tragic, missed romance, too. … The longdormant high school alumni group chat exploded.

Even the classmates who hadn't posted in years were suddenly popping up. "The ship I hailed in high school is actually real!" "I never knew Adam was such a romantic.

Hiding a confession in paper stars? Unbelievable." "Remember that track meet senior year?

Adam finished the threethousandmeter run, refused water from everyone, and walked straight over to the humanities section to find Serena." "Yes!

And that rainy afternoon when he walked her home under his umbrella? His whole left shoulder was soaked." "What about the talent show sophomore year?

Adam played the guitar and kept staring at her side of the auditorium the entire time.

I knew something was up!" "I heard Adam only ever went to the humanities class reunion after graduation, even though he skipped our own class parties.

Too bad Serena couldn't make it that night..." I scrolled up, line by line. Memories were being picked apart, chewed over, and reimagined.

Someone dropped a screenshot into the chat. Serena had just updated her status, and it was already blowing up: "Ten years lost.

This time, I’m going to be brave." The attached photo was a screenshot of an iMessage thread with a contact whose profile picture was a starry night sky.

The message was brief: "Can we meet?

I have something to tell you." The reply was a single word: "Okay." The group chat erupted into chaos. "A tenyear secondchance romance!" "They’re finally getting their happy ending." "Looking at my snoring husband right now... my dead teenage memories are officially attacking me." Then, someone asked the obvious: "Serena is single, right?

What about Adam?" Someone tagged me directly. "@Betty, didn't you and Adam grow up next door to each other? You must know if he’s married!" I didn't reply.

I backed out of the app, turned off my phone, and set it face down on the nightstand. Adam shifted in his sleep, his arm instinctively reaching out to rest across my waist.

His palm was warm—a warmth that hadn't changed in ten years. I closed my eyes, but my mind betrayed me, pulling up a memory of high school.

I saw Adam and Serena sitting together in the library corner. They were sharing a pair of wired earbuds, one in his ear, one in hers, their heads almost touching.

Adam was scribbling something on scrap paper, and Serena leaned in closer, the tips of her hair brushing the back of his hand. It was a quiet, intimate picture.

So many years had passed, yet the memory remained impossibly sharp. Like a handful of tiny splinters buried under the skin.

I thought I had plucked them out long ago, but reading that trending topic tonight made me realize they had simply grown into my flesh.

The moment something pressed against them, the pain flared right back up. I didn't drift off until just before dawn.

When I woke up, Adam was already standing by the edge of the bed, adjusting his tie. Morning light filtered through the gap in the curtains, catching the hard angle of his jaw.

Elegant, handsome, distant. The lingering bitterness from the night before seemed to soften slightly at the sight of his face.

I propped myself up, intending to get out of bed to make him breakfast. He reached out and gently pressed a hand against my shoulder. "Stay in bed, Betty.

I'll just grab a breakfast sandwich on the way to the office." His voice was low and smooth, holding the same gentle warmth it did every morning.

I nodded and lay back down obediently. He walked toward the bedroom door, then paused on the threshold. "I have a late dinner with a client tonight.

Don't wait up." "Okay." The door clicked shut. I lay in the quiet room for a long time before the anomaly hit me.

In five years of marriage, this was the first time he had ever left for work without kissing me goodbye. My head was a chaotic mess, so I invited my best friend, Keira, to dinner.

After listening to me lay out my spiral of doubts, she scoffed and dismissively took a sip of her drink. "So what? That was ten years ago.

Even if there was something between them back then, it’s ancient history. You’re his legal wife, Betty. You won." I looked down, stirring my cold latte with a straw.

To the rest of the world, Adam and I were childhood sweethearts who transitioned seamlessly from childhood neighbors to high school sweethearts to a dream wedding.

Smooth, inevitable, perfect. But there were three years in the middle of our story—three years I had spent a decade trying to forget.

During that time, Adam suddenly had secrets he wouldn't share with me. The first time I really noticed Serena was at the track meet during our freshman year of high school.

He had just finished the threethousandmeter run, and I was standing near the finish line holding a bottle of water for him, just like I always did.

I was about to step forward when Serena ran out from the humanities section and reached him first. She beamed up at him, saying something that made him smile.

Then he took the water bottle from her hands and drank it down. That was the first time he had ever accepted a drink from another girl.

I was disappointed back then, but I brushed it off quickly enough. After all, outside of that single bottle of water, he treated me exactly the same as always.

Not long after, I was sweeping the hallway after school when I bumped into Serena doing her classroom chores.

She leaned on her broom and struck up a casual conversation. "You and Adam are really close, aren't you?" I didn't know how to answer and was about to give her a polite, vague smile when the classroom door behind us swung open.

Adam, who had been waiting for me so we could walk home together, stepped out. He looked slightly tense as he spoke. "Yeah, we grew up together.

She's like a brother to me." That day, I lied and told him I had an errand to run. I fled, leaving him behind. I remember it was snowing heavily.

Before I left the school grounds, I turned around and looked back. Far up on the second floor, Serena and Adam were standing side by side near the window at the end of the corridor.

She was standing on tiptoe, reaching out to catch the snowflakes drifting inside.

Adam stood behind her, slipping off his high school varsity jacket and placing it over her shoulders.

On the left shoulder of that jacket was a tiny, goofy cartoon figure I had drawn with a blue ballpoint pen. Serena was dazzling, brilliant, and effortless.

Back then, the only thing I had going for me was being the childhood friend of the school's golden boy. My deepseated inadequacy took root right then. I hid my feelings.

For the rest of high school, I quietly pulled back, watching him stand next to someone else, pretending I didn't care.

Right before I moved abroad for college, I folded a jar of paper stars. Inside every single one, I wrote a secret wish.

I slipped the jar into his desk on the last day of school, putting a quiet, painful period at the end of my years of unrequited love.

When I returned home during the winter break of my sophomore year of college, I ran into Adam again.

He was the one who asked, "Do you want to try dating?" I thought it was a second chance. I thought we were finally meeting halfway.

Now, sitting in a dimly lit restaurant, I couldn't stop myself from wondering: Was I just Adam settling for second best?

On my drive home, I pulled up to a red light near a luxury downtown hotel and looked out the window. A man and a woman were walking out of the lobby side by side.

The woman had a long grey wool coat draped over her shoulders. I recognized that coat. I had bought it at the airport during a business trip to Paris last month.

It was tailored, structured, and expensive—it gave Adam an effortlessly refined look whenever he wore it. Now, it was resting on another woman’s shoulders. The light turned green.

I gripped the steering wheel, my nails biting into my palms.

I drove aimlessly around the city for hours, circling block after block, wiping away tears that kept refilling my eyes, until I finally stumbled back into my apartment.

Adam was already home. He was standing on the balcony smoking, his profile bathed in the dim city light, looking inexplicably lost.

Years ago, when his startup was going through a brutal patch, he would smoke a cigarette or two to take the edge off.

But six months ago, when we decided to start trying for a baby, he had quit entirely. There were already three butts stubbed out in the glass ashtray beside him.

I didn't know what had disturbed him so deeply that he felt the need to light up again. "Adam..." I called his name. The words I wanted to ask died in my throat.

I was terrified of hearing him admit it. And I was even more terrified that if he denied it, he would be lying to my face.

He turned around, crushed out his cigarette, and walked over to me.

He reached out and brushed his hand through my hair, a routine gesture of affection. "Why are you home so late?" "I was shopping and having dinner with Keira." He nodded, asking no further questions. "Get some sleep.

It's late." When I stepped out of the bathroom after washing up, Adam was on the balcony again, making a phone call.

Through the thick glass sliding door, I couldn't hear his words, but I knew his body language. He looked relaxed, soft, almost tender—an expression I knew all too well.

When he came back into the bedroom, I closed my eyes and feigned sleep. He slid under the covers gently, careful not to wake me.

But he didn't pull me against his chest from behind, the way he usually did. In the middle of the night, his phone screen flashed in the dark.

I silently reached over and picked it up. I talked myself through unlocking it a thousand times in my head. In the end, my fingers trembled, and I set it back down.

Adam occupied almost every major memory of my life. I couldn't even pin down the exact moment I had started relying on him, loving him.

I was terrified that he had already changed the passcode—a passcode that was once my birthday. I didn't have the courage to face whatever secrets were waiting behind that screen.

The next morning, noticing how pale I looked, Adam offered to drive me to my gallery studio.

As I reached over to fasten my seatbelt, my fingertips brushed against a hard object wedged in the gap between the passenger seat and the center console. I pried it out quietly.

It was an earring. A delicate pearl drop, elegant and classic. It was not a style I ever wore.

I squeezed it tightly in my fist, the thin metal hook pressing into my palm until it throbbed.

After stepping out of the car, I stood under the harsh July sun, my hands shaking so violently I could barely hold my phone. I opened Serena’s public social media page.

In her recent posts, the earrings she wore in almost every photo were identical to the one resting in my palm.

It was midsummer, the sun burning bright overhead, yet a bonechilling cold washed through me. Over the next few days, I tried to numb myself with routine.

I went to the gallery every day. I met with clients. I let Adam touch me, kiss me, pretend everything was fine.

I even pretended not to notice when he quietly started using protection again. The cracks between us were everywhere now, wide and jagged.

I knew it better than anyone, but I simply lacked the courage to be the one to shatter the illusion completely.

I just hadn't expected that even my selfdeception wouldn't last long. A stranger posted a photo online.

It showed Serena and Adam walking into a luxury hotel together, side by side. The angle was intimate, the lighting cinematic.

Shortly after, a screenshot surfaced in the comment section—a post Serena had shared and deleted within seconds.

It was a photo of Adam standing in the hotel lobby, looking down at his phone. The caption read: "Reunited. He's still the same boy from back then." The internet exploded.

Someone quickly recognized Adam. As the founder of a highprofile tech startup, his face wasn't hard to find in business publications.

Gossip blogs leaped on the story with dramatic headlines: "Top Influencer Serena Spotted at Hotel with Tech CEO: A TenYear Crush Finally Realized?" It didn't take long for internet sleuths to figure out that Adam was married.

Then, they found me. An independent art curator. A decent family background, but nothing extraordinary.

The initial wave of public opinion took my side: "A married man stepping out?" "So Serena is a homewrecker!" But very quickly, the narrative took a bizarre, sinister turn.

Serena’s massive, fiercely loyal fanbase launched a coordinated defense. "Serena obviously didn't know he was married!

She's a victim too!" Even more people started rallying around the "starcrossed lovers" narrative. So what if he was married?

This was true love, a tragic tenyear separation finally being rectified.

A new rumor gained traction: "I heard his marriage was just an arrangement, purely business." "They're basically roommates with a legal contract." Then, a post from an account claiming to be a former high school classmate went viral.

The post was detailed and malicious: "Back in school, everyone knew Adam and Serena were the dream couple.

Betty was just his pushy nextdoor neighbor who wouldn't stop chasing him." "I always wondered why Adam and Serena didn't end up together after graduation. Now it makes sense.

Someone obviously played dirty to keep them apart." Screenshots of the post circulated like wildfire.

The comments turned uniform: "My heart hurts for Serena." "So the wife was the actual villain all along?" "Despicable." My gallery studio’s public contact information was leaked.

Funeral wreaths started arriving at my doorstep. A package arrived containing a plastic doll smeared with red paint, a thick needle plunged directly into its chest.

Harassing calls rang night and day. When I picked up, voices spat vile insults: "Who do you think you are? You don't deserve Adam!" "Serena and Adam belong together.

You're nothing!" My personal social media accounts were overrun. Every comment was a blade, striking repeatedly at the screen, striking at me.

I deleted my public contact details and set my phone to reject unknown numbers. I hired private security to guard the studio.

When the scandal peaked, Adam happened to be overseas on a business trip.

He rushed back, landing two days later, and drove straight to our home. "There were other people at the hotel that day, Betty," he explained, his eyes fixed on mine, urgency in his voice. "Serena is launching a media project and needed investors.

She asked me to introduce her to a few people. We were waiting in the hotel lobby to have dinner with a venture capitalist.

There were four or five people present—the photos were cropped." He paused, taking a breath. "And the coat—she spilled coffee on her sweater, so I lent it to her." He looked at me, his tone earnest. "Betty, I didn't tell you because I thought it was nothing worth mentioning.

I didn't want you to overthink things or cause unnecessary drama." I didn't cry. I didn't scream.

I calmly reached into my pocket, pulled out the pearl drop earring, and set it on the table between us.

Adam stared at it, confused. "I found this wedged in the passenger seat of your car. It's Serena's." He froze for a fraction of a second. "I just gave her a ride.

You have to believe me, Betty, that was the only time I saw her—" "Okay. I believe you," I interrupted quietly. "Then post a public statement.

Explain that you weren't alone with her that day.

State clearly that there is nothing personal between you two." I looked up into his eyes. "And state that I never barged into your life, that whatever happened or didn't happen between you and her in the past had nothing to do with me." Adam frowned, a crease forming between his brows. "Publicly responding to internet rumors only gives them more fuel.

Once the news cycle moves on, people will forget." He hesitated before continuing. "Besides, Serena hasn't made a statement yet.

If I rush out to draw a line in the sand, it pushes her into the crosshairs to take the hit. How is she supposed to handle her career after that?" I stared at him, numb.

My husband, facing a reality where his wife was being called a homewrecker, sent funeral wreaths, terrorized online, and risked having her career destroyed, was worried about how the instigator would survive the public fallout.

And then he stood there, telling me to just endure it until it blew over. "Adam, I am the one being hurt right now," I said softly. "Betty, I know this is unfair to you," he said, taking a step closer. "But you're my wife.

You know who I am. What strangers say online doesn't matter. We just need to focus on our life together." I pulled at the corner of my mouth, a hollow smile forming.

Tears threatened to spill, but I forced them back.

What he failed to understand was that the blades thrown by the outside world were cutting into me, causing real, bleeding wounds. "Adam," I said, my voice flatter and calmer than I ever thought possible. "Let's get a divorce."