Chapter 2

"It’s too late tonight. I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning."

At 1:47 a.m., Ethan Shaw’s message popped up.

Only the spotlight above the blending table was on in the studio, and the base notes of agarwood and cedar wrapped around me, cold and clean.

Not gardenia.

The second message came right after. "Lily Hart just drank too much and got her dress dirty, so she came over to shower. Don’t twist everything into the dirtiest possible version."

Lily Hart.

He gave me a name. Earlier at home, he had called her "a coworker," but now she had become Lily Hart.

I did not reply right away. I unscrewed a bottle of petitgrain essential oil and brought it to my nose. My sense of smell could calm me down.

Gardenia fabric softener was not a scent that clung after one shower. Those molecules seeped into the fibers, and it would take at least two to three straight weeks of use.

I had studied perfumery for eight years, and my nose was more honest than his mouth.

After organizing my words, I typed back, "She wears size S, uses gardenia fabric softener, and loves Coke. Those three things all happened during the half month after you changed the password. Ethan, there is no gardenia fabric softener in my apartment."

His "typing" indicator flashed six times.

In the end, he sent a voice message.

I tapped it open. First came two seconds of silence, then a long, drawn-out sigh.

"The company’s new product has been under a lot of pressure. She helped me run channels and took care of a few daily things along the way. It was only for this period, and it won’t happen again."

Daily things.

Changing his fabric softener and washing her own floral dress in his apartment. He called that "along the way."

I sent him a voice message, and my voice was even calmer than I had expected. "Are you admitting it?"

"What am I admitting?" He typed faster than he talked. "Serena Cole, can you stop obsessing over details? I didn’t handle it well enough, but you can’t erase three years of us because of a bottle of fabric softener."

Three years.

He brought up three years.

Three years ago, he wanted to start a business, and there was forty thousand in the account. I sold three exclusive formulas and scraped together eight hundred thousand as his startup capital. Those formulas were based on what my mother had left me, and they were half my life.

At the folding table in our rental apartment, he pressed his thumbprint on a piece of paper and wrote a crooked line: Half the company shares are yours, and the front door password will always be your birthday.

Always.

Back then, it was always. Now it had become "it won’t happen again."

I typed, "Three years. Are you talking about the three years when I invested eight hundred thousand and three formulas?"

"See, you’re keeping score again," he replied instantly. "I’m talking about feelings, and you drag money into it. That’s your problem."

My problem.

I stared at those two words for a long time.

I closed SnapChat and placed my phone face down on the blending table.

When dawn was almost breaking, I returned to the apartment. I opened the fridge, and my hand stopped in midair.

The fridge was packed full of Coke.

There were handwritten sticky notes on the cups, the handwriting round and cute, with a little smiley face drawn on them—"Special sweetness for Mr. Shaw~ You worked hard! —Lily"

Lily.

She had given herself a nickname in my fridge.

I took them out one cup at a time. There were eight cups in total.

I opened the closet too. My coats and sweaters were still there, but an extra pink storage bag had appeared in the bottom drawer, with a teddy bear keychain hanging from the zipper and two neatly folded pairs of leggings inside, size S.

There was also a new pink cup on the bathroom cup rack, printed with the words: SMALL BUT MIGHTY.

I took my own toothbrush away and left that pink cup untouched.

When I opened the jewelry box, Ethan’s engagement ring was still in the top compartment. One carat, and he said he had bought it with the company’s first profit. But the formula for that order had come from me.

In the end, I had given it to myself.

I walked back to the kitchen. A thin layer of condensation had formed on the outside of the eight Coke cups in the trash can.

I threw the ring in.

It sank to the bottom, wedged between the bottom of a cup and one of "Lily’s" sticky notes.

My phone rang again.

Ethan: "Are you coming back today? Let’s talk about last night in person. Don’t overthink alone."

I picked up my suitcase and took one last look at the apartment. Twelve hundred square feet, south-facing, a listing I found, a lease I signed, and now it smelled like someone else’s home.

I only replied with one message: "I cleaned out the fridge. There’s something in the trash can. Remember to take it out."