Eight Years Later I No Longer Love You Chapter 01
My boyfriend, Adrian Cole, spent eight years going from drowning in debt to standing on the edge of his big break as an indie game developer.
Through the hardest years of it, I worked sales at a SaaS company by day to keep us afloat, and pulled all-nighters helping him hunt bugs.
In eight years, I asked him for one thing. Just one.
“Could you put a bench in the corner of Lovers’ Vale, carve our names into it, and add a little moonlight and some fireflies?”
He didn’t even look up. Two words.
“Childish.”
I nodded, and never brought it up again.
Then, the night before the game went live, I was running a bug sweep and stumbled into a hidden map.
No quests. No enemies. Just a breathtaking meadow under a rain of shooting stars.
There was one line in the code comments.
【Little Fox’s private sleep sanctuary.】
The man who’d called me childish had pulled all-nighters coding a fairy tale for another woman.
I closed the laptop and sat there in the quiet until the sun came up.
Then I wrote my resignation letter.
Eight years. A map that big, and he couldn’t spare me a single bench.
Fine. I’d walk out and find my own moonlight and fireflies.
……
“What is this supposed to be, breakfast?”
Adrian frowned at the takeout oatmeal on the table.
“I pull all-nighters. My stomach’s shot. You know that.”
I stirred the plastic spoon slowly in the bowl and didn’t answer.
“Willow, what is wrong with you?”
“I’m out here grinding for us. Is it really so much to ask for a warm bowl of something in the morning?”
I spoke evenly.
“I didn’t sleep last night. I didn’t have time to cook.”
Adrian waited a beat, and when I didn’t get up and scramble into the kitchen the way I usually did, his face darkened.
“What is it this time?”
I was about to answer when his phone chimed. It was a custom tone, one he’d only ever set for a specific person.
The contact name lit up on the screen.
Little Fox 🦊
【Adrian, I was up till dawn debugging. Can’t sleep, empty stomach. Ended up ordering a coffee.】
Adrian’s fingers flew across the screen.
【Don’t drink coffee on an empty stomach. I’ll send you something warm.】
He was as focused as if he were writing code. He didn’t even notice his own spoon sliding down into the bottom of his bowl.
I sat across from him and watched him swipe through DoorDash like a pro.
Warm taro milk tea, half-sweet, extra taro.
His notes to the order were more detailed than the project requirements documents I’d seen him write.
We’d been together eight years, and he had never once remembered that I drank a black Americano, no sugar.
Whatever she sent back, it made the smile in his eyes impossible to hide.
He stood up and dropped my untouched oatmeal into the trash.
Then he glanced back at me.
“Don’t make a scene over every little thing.”
“We’ll talk after the show. You’ve been on edge lately. I’m not coming home tonight.”
He picked up his laptop bag and headed for the door.
I put down my spoon and called after him.
“Are you free next Wednesday?”
He pulled the door open without turning around.
“PAX pre-show is going to kill me. Everything else waits.”
The door closed.
I looked up at the clock on the wall. It was barely past seven.
He wasn’t going to the studio at this hour. Not a chance.
Not that it mattered anymore.
Next Wednesday was our eighth anniversary.
Last year, he’d promised me we’d fly out to Big Sur this time, to see the wildflowers under the stars.
If this morning, he had said even one thing about the anniversary. About Big Sur.
If he had even apologized for being too busy and pushed it to next year.
I wouldn’t have thought about ending this.
I finished the oatmeal slowly, went back to the laptop, and sent in my resignation.
The offboarding process would take a few days, so I filed a time-off request too. Reason: personal travel.
I hit send again.
Finally, I opened the Delta app and bought that one-way ticket from Seattle to Big Sur for next Wednesday.
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