After Eight Years, They Threw Me Away

Chapter 5: The Guest Room

By the end of the first week, the sofa became mine.

Olivia never said it directly.

She did not need to.

Every night, the bedroom door closed before I finished washing up. Every morning, my blanket was folded on the far end of the sofa, neat and impersonal, like hotel linen left for a stranger.

On Thursday, I came home after three interviews.

The first company asked about the misconduct rumor before asking about my experience.

The second said I was overqualified.

The third smiled through the whole conversation and then offered me a salary lower than what I had earned six years ago.

"Given your current situation," the recruiter said, "we hope you can be flexible."

Flexible.

That was another word people used when they wanted you desperate.

I got home at seven-thirty.

Olivia was at the dining table, eating takeout from a restaurant we used to save for anniversaries.

One set of chopsticks.

One bowl of soup.

One receipt folded beside her phone.

She did not look up when I entered.

"Did you eat?" I asked.

"Obviously."

"I meant, did you order for me?"

She finally raised her eyes.

"You said you had interviews. I didn't know when you would be back."

In the old days, she would have called.

In the old days, if I came home late, there would be a plate covered on the table or a message telling me to heat soup.

Maybe the old days had been dying longer than I knew.

I changed my shoes and went to the kitchen. There was cold rice in the cooker, half a tomato in the fridge, and two eggs.

I made fried rice.

The oil smoked because I turned the heat too high. My hands were tired. My head hurt. My phone kept buzzing with rejection emails I did not want to read.

Behind me, Olivia said, "The smell is too strong."

I turned off the stove.

"I'll open the window."

"It's raining."

"Then I'll turn on the fan."

She sighed, as if my existence had become one long inconvenience.

I took the plate to the small balcony and ate standing up.

The fried rice was too salty.

I finished it anyway.

When I came back in, Olivia was watching a video on her phone. A woman was showing a diamond necklace her husband had bought after getting promoted.

The volume was loud enough for me to hear every word.

"A man who loves you," the woman said brightly, "will never let you worry about money."

Olivia did not lower the volume.

I washed my plate.

"Do you have to watch that now?"

"Watch what?"

"You know what."

She locked the screen and looked at me with exaggerated patience.

"Ethan, if a video can upset you, maybe the problem isn't the video."

I turned off the tap.

"What do you want from me?"

"Stability."

"I gave you stability for years."

"You gave me the illusion of it."

I laughed softly.

That was new.

The life I had built was no longer even real.

Just an illusion.

"The apartment is real," I said. "The car is real. The bills I paid were real."

"And now?" she asked. "Can you pay them next month?"

The answer was not clean enough.

So she won.

I dried my hands.

"I will handle it."

"You keep saying that."

"Because I will."

"When?"

I looked at her then, really looked.

She was beautiful. I had always known that. Even angry, even cold, Olivia had the kind of beauty that made people turn around in restaurants.

When we were young, I used to feel proud when people looked at her.

That was my wife.

Now her beauty felt like a polished door closing in my face.

"I don't know," I said honestly.

Her expression changed.

Disappointment first.

Then disgust.

She stood and walked past me toward the bedroom.

"Olivia."

She stopped.

"Do you remember the basement apartment?"

Her shoulders stiffened.

"Why bring that up?"

"Because back then we had nothing. We shared one heater in winter. The bathroom ceiling leaked. You said as long as we were together, it was enough."

She turned slowly.

"I was twenty-three."

The answer was immediate.

Too immediate.

"I was young," she said. "I thought suffering was romantic."

The words hit harder than I expected.

Suffering was romantic.

That was what our beginning had become in her memory.

A naive phase.

A mistake made by a younger woman.

"And now?" I asked.

"Now I know better."

She walked into the bedroom and began pulling clothes from the wardrobe.

For one wild second, I thought she was packing to leave.

Then she came out with my shirts in her arms.

"What are you doing?"

"Making space."

"For what?"

"For peace."

She carried the shirts to the small guest room at the end of the hallway.

It had once been my study overflow, then a storage room, then the place we used when relatives visited. The window faced the wall of the next building. In summer, the room trapped heat. In winter, it smelled faintly damp.

Olivia opened the wardrobe and hung my shirts inside.

"You can sleep here from now on."

I stood in the doorway.

"So that's it?"

"What do you mean?"

"You move me out of our bedroom like I'm a tenant who missed rent?"

Her lips tightened.

"Don't be dramatic. I need rest. You toss and turn all night. It affects me."

"I toss and turn because my life just collapsed."

"And mine didn't?"

I stared at her.

She folded her arms.

"Do you think this is easy for me? Do you think I enjoy telling my friends my husband is unemployed? Do you know how humiliating that is?"

There it was again.

Her humiliation.

Not mine.

Never mine.

I stepped into the room and took the shirts from her hand.

"Fine."

That single word seemed to surprise her.

Maybe she expected me to argue.

Maybe she wanted me to beg.

I was too tired for both.

I hung the shirts myself.

One by one.

The room smelled of dust and old cardboard.

Olivia watched from the doorway.

For a moment, something uncertain passed across her face.

Then her phone rang.

She looked at the screen.

Her expression softened.

Too quickly.

Too obviously.

"Who is it?" I asked.

She turned the phone over.

"Celine."

But I had seen the name before she hid it.

Adrian Shen.

The room went very still.

Olivia did not answer the call.

She looked at me as if daring me to say something.

I said nothing.

Not yet.

She walked away with the phone in her hand.

A few seconds later, I heard the balcony door close.

Her voice came through the glass, low and gentle in a way it had not been with me for months.

"Adrian, sorry. I couldn't talk just now."

I stood in the guest room, surrounded by my own shirts, and understood that the space beside my wife had not become empty.

Someone else was already standing near it.