A Week After He Dumped Me I Was Forced to Mentor His New Girlfriend

Ethan broke up with me without any warning.

I stared at the words on my phone, trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong.

“Being with you is exhausting.”

“I thought love was enough to make it to the end, but I’ve realized… I’m just not interested anymore.”

There was no cheating, no big fight. Seven years of my life, erased by the simple, brutal need for something new.

My thumbs hovered over the screen. I typed and deleted a dozen frantic paragraphs until only one word remained.

“Okay.”

1

It was raining the day I moved out of our apartment.

Ethan didn’t answer my calls. He just sent a text: “Just take your stuff. Leave the key in the usual spot. I’m not coming back.”

He’d ended it last night.

I’d thought maybe it was because I’d been so buried in work lately, that I’d neglected him. But scrolling back through our messages, I saw the truth. During all those days I was drowning in deadlines, he hadn't just been quiet; he had been absent. The silence had been growing for weeks.

I’d sent a flurry of texts. Playful ones, apologetic ones. All of them were met with a wall of silence, until finally, five words appeared.

“We should break up.”

The message hit me like a physical blow.

I didn’t understand. Just a few days ago, we were curled up on the couch watching a movie. We were laughing, teasing each other, loving each other like we always had. Now, we were strangers.

This had to be a joke.

“Did I do something to upset you?” I typed, my hands shaking.

The three little dots appeared and disappeared for a long time.

“No.”

“It’s me,” Ethan wrote. “I’m stuck.”

“I tried to get the feeling back, I really did. But our conversations… every day just feels so draining.”

“I think we’ve just reached the end of the line.”

A heavy pressure built in my chest. I fought back the lump in my throat, trying one last time to salvage us. “Maybe it’s just a rough patch. That doesn’t mean the love is gone.”

“Is that all it is?” he texted back. “At first, I thought so, too. But then I realized.”

“Sophie, I’m not in love with you anymore.”

My fingers froze over the keyboard.

I looked at that final line from him, then methodically deleted the long, pleading paragraph I’d been composing. All that was left was a single word.

“Okay.”

2

The summer air was thick and sticky.

I stood on the sidewalk with my suitcase, watching the cars hiss by on the wet pavement.

Ethan and I met in college. He pursued me for a solid year, bribing my roommate with coffee and concert tickets to engineer moments for us to be alone. He planned elaborate surprises, never forgot a birthday or an anniversary. We even survived two years of long-distance before finally ending up in the same city.

Our friends always joked that when we finally got married, they’d better be on the guest list. Ethan would just grin, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he pulled me tighter. “Of course,” he’d say, his voice full of certainty.

But even the most certain promises crumble under the weight of the seven-year itch. In the face of time, commitment is fragile.

Rain pattered against my umbrella. My eyes started to burn.

I picked up my suitcase to cross the street, but a car sped through a puddle, sending a wave of grimy water arching through the air. I couldn't move fast enough. A dark, muddy spray splattered across my white sneakers.

I looked down, staring at the stain.

I remembered when I first bought these shoes. I treated them like treasure, carefully stepping around any potential scuffs or smudges. I was terrified of someone stepping on them.

But after a while, I stopped caring. They got dirty, they got old. You just throw them out.

To Ethan, I was that pair of shoes.

My phone buzzed. It was my best friend, Maya.

“Soph? What do you mean you’re moving your stuff to my place? Since when does Ethan let you out of his sight?”

My throat tightened. I forced the words out. “We broke up.”

She laughed, a loud, disbelieving bark. “You broke up? No way. Ethan would have a full-blown meltdown if you even joked about that.”

I cut her off, my voice coming out colder than I intended.

“He dumped me.”

The other end of the line went silent. Maya let the weight of it sink in. “The key code is the same,” she finally said, her voice soft but firm. “I’ll be back from my business trip in a week. When I get home, we’re going out.”

3

In the week after Ethan and I broke up, we didn’t speak.

It was a mutual, unspoken agreement. We vanished from each other’s lives as if we had never met.

I went to work, ate my meals, went to the movies, all by myself. I was slowly, painfully, getting used to the quiet.

He went on a trip to the mountains in Colorado with a new group of friends.

His Instagram told the whole story. A nine-photo grid. A group shot of six people, three guys and three girls, all beaming.

The caption: Got my joy back.

The irony was a physical ache. Breaking up with me had brought him freedom, happiness. The only time he was unhappy, apparently, was when he was by my side.

I buried my face in my pillow.

It was raining again.

A week later, Maya came home. The second she walked through the door, she dropped her bags and just wrapped me in a hug. She didn’t say anything for a long time.

“You’re so damn lucky,” she finally whispered into my hair. “You’re lucky you saw his true colors before you married him.”

A laugh escaped my lips, but it quickly choked into a sob.

There hadn't been a dramatic fight, no cheating scandal, no earth-shattering betrayal. It was just… over. Like a train pulling into its final destination. We both got off and walked away in different directions. It was painfully, crushingly, ordinary.

“Come on,” Maya said, wiping a tear from my cheek with her thumb. She pulled back, a fierce grin spreading across her face. “We’re going for a drink. I’m introducing you to some hot guys.”

The bar was loud, the lights strobing and overwhelming. But the deafening music was a relief. It filled up all the empty spaces in my head, leaving no room for my own thoughts.

Maya was scrolling through her phone while nursing a vodka soda.

“Hah,” she scoffed, taking a long drink. “Look at him, living his best life. Hiking, climbing… He’s really been set free, huh?”

She kept scrolling, but then her brow furrowed. Her expression shifted.

“He’s in a relationship.”

My hand, holding my glass, froze mid-air.

I tried to hide the tremor, bringing the glass to my lips and taking a huge gulp. I feigned indifference. “Oh, really?”

Ethan was handsome. A strong jaw, a great physique. Girls were always after him in college. It wasn't surprising that he’d moved on so quickly.

But still… how could he let go of me, of us, so easily?

“Wait a minute,” Maya said, squinting at her screen. “This girl… isn’t she the one from that Colorado trip? That was just a few days ago, and now they’re together?”

In the photos, Ethan had his arm around the girl’s shoulder, planting a shy-looking kiss on her cheek. There was a shot of them silhouetted against a sunrise, locked in a deep embrace. Another one on a mountain peak, gazing into each other’s eyes.

Holding hands, hugging, kissing. Everything that was once mine, he had given away to someone else without a second thought.

I pulled out my phone and opened Ethan’s contact. His profile picture had been changed. His feed, once filled with pictures of us, was completely blank. A clean slate.

“He blocked me.”

“Are you sure?” Maya leaned over to look. She scrolled up and down my screen. “Maybe he just… deleted you?” she suggested, her voice uncertain. “Try sending him a dollar on Venmo.”

I navigated to the app and tried to send the payment. As expected, a notification popped up: This user is not on your friends list.

Maya had no words.

A bitter laugh escaped me. “Guess he doesn't want the new girlfriend to get the wrong idea.”

I navigated back to his contact, found the ‘delete’ button, and pressed it without hesitation.

Maya watched me, then a slow smile spread across her face. She clinked her glass against mine. “He’s got a new life, Sophie. Now it’s time for you to get one that’s a hell of a lot better.”

The glasses chimed. We looked at each other and smiled.

I have to live better than him.

4

I poured everything into my work. I hustled, I saved, and I finally moved out of Maya’s place and into my own apartment. My proposal for a new ad campaign got approved, and I was made the lead on the brand’s biggest fall athletic line project.

My life was becoming full again, one day at a time.

Then, one morning, a new hire started at the office, fresh out of college. My boss, wanting to get her acclimated, assigned her to me as her mentor.

I looked at the sweet, smiling girl and my world tilted on its axis.

I wasn’t mistaken.

She was Ethan’s new girlfriend from the Instagram post.

Lexi.

“Hi, I’m Lexi,” she said, beaming at me. “It’s so nice to meet you. I’m really looking forward to working together.”

I just stood there, frozen. It took a nudge from my boss for me to stiffly extend my hand. “Hi. Sophie.”

“Sophie?” Her eyes widened with delight. “Wow, what a coincidence! We have to stick together!”

I forced a tight-lipped smile and mumbled a few pleasantries before making a quick escape.

Lexi fit in at the office immediately. She was young, energetic, and everyone seemed to gravitate toward her.

Ethan was like that, too. Always buzzing with an infectious energy, pulling me into new adventures, trying new things.

Until he wasn't.

I took a deep breath, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes.

Stop thinking about him, I told myself. Ethan has a new life.

But seven years of love doesn’t just disappear. It grows roots deep in your soul. I couldn’t just rip it out like he had. I could only try to untangle it, one painful inch at a time.

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