I started to pack his things so that I wouldn't change my mind. I brought garbage bags from the kitchen (I couldn't give him his brand-new suitcase!) and began to empty his closet. Somewhere I read that this is a necessary stage in the breakup, they say, then it will be easier. Well, it's all lies!

I was ready to get hysterical over every shirt. There were memories associated with all of them. If memory could be formatted like a hard drive, I would have done it.

I couldn't even get half of it done, and I fell asleep in the middle of the mess.

In the morning, I felt even worse than yesterday. My leg hurt even worse, my face was swollen, and my eyes were puffy. I couldn't go to work tomorrow in such a state; I'd better tell them I was sick and take a few days off. I didn't want to sit alone in the apartment, but it was better that way than to catch the interested looks of my colleagues and listen to their whispers. At the same time, I remembered my phone, which I hadn't even seen yesterday. It was left in the bag brought by Andrew, and I had completely forgotten about it. It took a decent amount of time to find the phone. The apartment was a mess.

After rewarding myself with another sandwich, I checked the contents of the bag. Nothing seemed to be missing, but it felt like it had been rummaged through. Probably Andrew was looking for my ID to get my address. But my phone surprised me: it had zero battery life. I realized the reason as soon as I turned it on: I had never had so many calls in one day. Everyone called: friends, colleagues, acquaintances. The messages in messengers were no less mysterious: "Wow!", "What happened?", "Well, you're crazy, friend!", and the "icing on the cake" was a message from the principal about the call to the pedagogical council, the reason for which should be my unworthy behavior.

Understanding absolutely nothing, I clicked on the first link sent to me and realized that I would be fired. Although I have a chance to go to the bottom of the Moscow River simply out of shame! Turns out there was a newly minted paparazzi in that ill-fated restaurant, so the entire performance I put on was filmed and posted on TikTok! The comments were horrendous and the highlights were plastered on memes!

Obviously, the video with the title "A woman caught a man cheating and made a scandal in a restaurant" was instantly recommended and spread all over the Internet!

Choking back another batch of tears, the only person I responded to was the assistant principal. After informing her that I had twisted my leg and couldn't walk, I disconnected the phone again. I just didn't have the energy to get mocked or be sympathetic to what had happened.

Two days flew by. I didn't leave the apartment once during that time, partly because of my leg. The swelling was slow to go down, despite all the anti-inflammatory ointments. But I suddenly had a lot of time to finish watching a TV series I had started long ago. I somehow managed to forget that in the absence of a man and work, you don't have to cook every night, one eye looking into the pot, the other – in a notebook. There was no one to litter either. Having collected all of Alex's belongings, I brought them over to my neighbor's place. We had agreed that if Alex showed up, my neighbor would hand them over to him.

He couldn't resist knocking on my neighbor's door to inquire about my whereabouts.

In any case, someone rang the doorbell, but I decided to ignore it by putting on my headphones, pumping up some music, and not going to see who it could be.