Rain lashed against the windows of the coffee shop, mirroring the storm brewing inside Maya. She'd been waiting for Liam for twenty minutes, each tick of the clock amplifying the knot in her stomach. He was always late, but today it felt different, heavier. She'd just seen his LinkedIn profile, gleaming with a prestigious job title she knew for a fact he didn't possess. The emails, the phone calls, the late nights 'working'... all fabrications. Her breath hitched, the warmth of the latte doing nothing to soothe the sudden chill that had gripped her.
He finally arrived, grinning apologetically. "Sorry, babe! Long day at the office." He winked, completely oblivious. Maya forced a smile, the muscles in her face aching from the effort. "Oh yeah? What exciting things were you doing at your office?" she asked, the question laced with a saccharine sweetness that felt foreign to her.
His response, a detailed account of a project that sounded suspiciously like something she'd read about online, felt like a slap in the face. She gripped her mug so tightly that her knuckles turned white. All these months, she'd admired him, envied his supposed success, and now she felt a deep, pervasive emptiness, a feeling like she'd been robbed of something precious.