She scrolled back to the very beginning. Their first date. A grainy photo taken by a waiter at a cheap Italian place. She looked so much younger then. Her eyes were full of hope, the kind of hope only someone who has never been truly shattered can possess. She looked at the way Julian was holding her hand on top of the red-checked tablecloth.
He had approached her. He had pursued her. He had told her she was beautiful when she was at her most vulnerable.
"You saw me," she choked out through her sobs. "You saw me before I had anything to give you. You saw me when I was just a girl in a library. If I was so ugly, Julian, why did you choose me?"
She went through the videos next. Short clips of him laughing. A video of him blowing out candles on a cake she'd baked. A video of him dancing poorly in the living room to make her laugh when she was sad about her parents' anniversary.
In every video, she heard her own laughter in the background—a sound she didn't recognize anymore. It was the sound of a woman who felt safe. It was the sound of a woman who believed she had finally found a place where she belonged.
She watched a video from six months ago. They were walking through a park, and Julian had turned the camera on her.
"Say something to the future us, Clara," his voice said from behind the lens.
The Clara in the video had blushed, covering her face with her hands before peeking through her fingers. "I hope we're still this happy," she had said. "And I hope you still look at me like I'm the only person in the room."
In the video, Julian had laughed—a sharp, charming sound. "Always, Clara. Always."
Clara hit the 'replay' button.
"Always, Clara. Always."
She hit it again.
"Always, Clara. Always."
The word "always" began to lose its meaning. It became a hollow vibration, a cruel mockery of the truth. She stared at the screen until her eyes burned, until the blue light felt like it was searing the images into her retinas.
She thought about the woman in the bed—Sasha. She wondered if Julian was taking photos of her right now. She wondered if he was looking at Sasha's thin, elegant frame through a camera lens and thinking about how much better she looked in a frame than Clara ever did.
The thought was a physical pain, a stabbing sensation in her gut that made her want to throw up. She gripped the phone so hard her knuckles turned white.
She looked at a photo of them at a friend's wedding. Julian looked like a movie star in his tuxedo. Clara was wearing a navy blue dress that she had thought made her look sophisticated. Now, all she saw was a girl who didn't fit—a girl who was taking up too much space in the life of a man who wanted to be unburdened.
She remembered how he had insisted they leave that wedding early. He had said he had a headache. Now she realized he was probably just embarrassed to be seen dancing with her.
One by one, she began to go through the memories, re-contextualizing every smile as a lie, every touch as a duty, and every "I love you" as a debt he was tired of paying.
She didn't stop until the sun began to bleed through the cheap curtains of her apartment, casting a pale, sickly light over the room. Her phone battery was at 2%, the screen dimming as if it, too, was exhausted by the weight of her history.
Clara dropped the phone onto the floor. She laid back, staring up at the cracked ceiling, her face stiff with dried salt and her eyes swollen nearly shut. The pictures were still there, trapped in the memory of the device, but the woman who had lived them was gone.
The morning sun did not bring warmth; it arrived as a harsh, judgmental glare that cut through the thin fabric of Clara's bedroom curtains. It exposed every tear-stained inch of her pillowcase and the hollow, bruised circles beneath her eyes. For a long time, she simply lay there, staring at the ceiling, watching the dust motes dance in the light. The silence of the apartment felt heavy, a physical pressure on her chest that made every breath a conscious, difficult effort.
Then, her eyes landed on the closet.
The "wedding closet."
Something inside her snapped. It wasn't the fiery, explosive rage that Mia possessed, but a cold, numbing resolve. It was the survival instinct of someone who had already lost everything once as a child and realized she was currently losing herself for the second time.
She stood up, her legs feeling like lead. Her joints were stiff from a night spent curled in a fetal position, but she forced herself to move. She walked to the hallway closet and pulled out a stack of collapsed cardboard boxes she had kept from their move-in six months ago. Back then, they had been symbols of a new beginning. Now, they were coffins for a dead life.
The sound of the packing tape screeching as she pulled it across the bottom of the first box was the only noise in the apartment. It was a violent, jarring sound that seemed to scream into the emptiness.
She started in the bedroom.
She grabbed the heavy, expensive sweaters he had left in her cedar chest because "they took up too much room" in his penthouse. She didn't fold them. She shoved them into the box with a frantic, trembling energy. Then came the silk ties she had bought him for every anniversary—the blue one that matched his eyes, the emerald one he'd worn to his first big pitch, the charcoal grey one he'd worn when he promised her they would buy a house with a garden.
Into the box.
She moved to the nightstand. A leather-bound journal he'd given her, where he'd written on the first page: "To my Clara, the only woman who truly knows me." She stared at the handwriting—strong, slanted, and confident. A year ago, those words were her anchor. Now, they were a mockery. She closed the book with a sharp thud and dropped it on top of the ties.
Then came the "wedding corner."
On the vanity sat the guest book they had chosen together—pearl-white with gold filigree. Beside it was a stack of swatches for the table linens. Clara picked up a scrap of "eggshell" silk. She remembered the heated debate they'd had over this specific color. She had wanted ivory; he had insisted on eggshell because it looked "more expensive." She realized now that his entire life was a pursuit of looking "expensive," and she was the only part of it that had been real—and therefore, to him, she was cheap.
She swept the swatches, the guest book, and the "Save the Date" magnets into the box in one desperate motion.
Then she reached the back of the closet.
The garment bag was long and white, hanging like a ghost in the shadows. Her wedding dress. She hadn't even finished the final fittings. She reached out, her fingers trembling as she unzipped the bag just a few inches. The lace peeked through—delicate, hand-stitched, and beautiful. She remembered the seamstress's kind eyes as she had pinned the waist, telling Clara she looked like a goddess.
Julian's voice echoed in her head: "Fat, ugly, and a burden."
Clara let out a choked, jagged sob, her forehead resting against the cool plastic of the garment bag. She wanted to rip the lace. She wanted to shred the fabric until it was as unrecognizable as her heart. But she didn't. Instead, she zipped it back up with a final, decisive zzzzzt and shoved it into a separate, larger box. It was a heavy, awkward fit, much like she had been in Julian's life.
She moved to the kitchen.
The "Best Fiancé" mug she had bought him as a joke. Smash. No, she didn't smash it. She didn't have the energy for theatrics. She simply placed it in the box, padding it with the hand towels his mother had gifted them. She took the fancy espresso machine he had insisted on keeping at her place so he could have "decent coffee" in the mornings. It was heavy, its chrome surface reflecting her broken, puffy face. She hoisted it into the box, her muscles straining.
Every object was a memory. The bottle of cologne he'd left in the bathroom. The spare toothbrush. The expensive shampoo that smelled of sandalwood and arrogance. The half-finished book on architecture on the coffee table. The framed photo of them on the mantelpiece—the one where he was kissing her cheek and she was looking at the camera with a glow that could have powered the city.
She took the frame and, for the first time that morning, she felt a flicker of heat. She didn't put it in the box. She turned it over, popped the back, and took the photo out. She didn't tear it. She simply placed the photo face down on the table and put the empty, hollow frame into the box.
Hours passed. The sun climbed higher, moving across the floor like a spotlight, documenting her progress.
By noon, the living room was filled with four large, taped-up boxes. The apartment looked stripped, the walls suddenly bare where his influence had once hung. The spaces on the shelves looked like missing teeth.
Clara stood in the center of the room, her hair disheveled, her hands covered in dust and tape residue. She was exhausted, her body aching from the physical labor and the emotional vacuum she had created. But for the first time since the door had opened on Julian and Sasha, she felt a strange, cold lightness.
She looked at the boxes. They contained his past, his preferences, and his insults. They were the physical manifestation of the man who had discarded her.
She knew Julian wouldn't want her to come to his penthouse. He wouldn't want her "burdening" his new life with his old trash. And he certainly wouldn't want his friends to see her delivering his failures in cardboard boxes.
But there was one person Julian feared more than anyone. One person whose judgment could make Julian's "ascended" world crumble with a single look.
His father. Arthur Sterling.
Clara looked at the address she had written in her contact book years ago, one she had never been allowed to use. Julian had always kept her away from Arthur, claiming the old man was "cold," "judgmental," and "hated everyone."
"If I'm a charity case," Clara whispered to the empty room, her voice hardening, "then I might as well deliver your things to the man who actually owns the charity."
She didn't know why she was doing it. Maybe it was a last-ditch effort for protection. Maybe it was a subconscious desire for a father figure she never had. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because Arthur Sterling was the only person powerful enough to make Julian feel as small as he had made her feel.
She picked up the phone and called a courier service to help her move the heavy boxes to the curb. As she waited, she went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. She looked at herself in the mirror—really looked.
She saw the "plump" curves Julian had mocked. She saw the softness of her jaw. She saw the grief in her eyes. But she also saw the girl who had survived being an orphan. She saw the girl who had built a life out of nothing.
"You're not a burden," she told her reflection, her voice trembling but certain. "You're just too much for a man as small as he is."
The courier arrived. One by one, the boxes were taken out. The apartment felt larger now. Echoey. Empty.