My ex-boyfriend’s exclusive new restaurant blew up. And so did his new girlfriend, the one he went public with less than a month after we broke up. Isabella Carbonari, a food blogger with a million followers. In her latest livestream, she was nestled in his arms, smiling with an air of effortless grace. “Honestly,” she said, “Noah’s success wasn’t just about talent. It was about shedding the dead weight from his past.” The comment section went wild. [She’s so wise!] [The idea that you owe your past anything is so outdated! You go, girl!] I silently closed the stream and pulled out a yellowed, old ledger. I snapped a photo and posted it to my socials with a simple caption: [Noah, remember the first pot I bought for our business? It was $12.99. Do you remember?] 1 The silence in my tiny studio apartment was broken only by the sound of instant ramen slowly bloating in its bowl. I was scrolling numbly through my phone when a local food blog’s post popped up. [This Year’s Breakout Star: Maison Noah and the Artistry of Chef Noah Wells.] In the photo, he looked sharp and confident in a crisp, white chef’s coat. I was about to scroll past it. But another notification immediately followed. Exclusive Interview: Rising-Star Chef Noah Wells and Food Blogger Isabella Carbonari on How the Right Love Breeds Success. I tapped on it. It was a photo of him with his arm around Isabella’s shoulders. They were standing in his restaurant, a space so meticulously designed it looked more like an art gallery. Good for him. In the article, Isabella was quoted as saying, “I simply opened a window for him, allowing him to see the vaster, more beautiful sky of the culinary world.” My phone buzzed. A message in my old college dorm group chat. Someone had cautiously tagged me. “Chloe, are you okay?” Below the message was a link to a livestream. I stared at it for a long, long time before finally tapping it. On screen, Noah was dressed in a tailored blazer, looking less like a cook and more like a celebrity. Isabella sat beside him. They really did look perfect together. The host was smiling. “Chef Wells, to have achieved so much at such a young age must have been incredibly difficult.” Before Noah could answer, Isabella took his hand. “He’s always been lost in his own world,” she said, her voice soft and melodic. “It’s just that before… no one truly understood him.” A wave of [Poor baby!] comments drifted across the screen. I watched, my face blank. Another message popped up in the group chat. [Chloe, turn this off. It’s just going to hurt you.] [What is Isabella trying to say? Who is she shading?] I typed back: [I’m fine.] Then I muted the group chat. The livestream continued. “So what was the catalyst?” the host asked. “What made you finally decide you had to open this restaurant?” Noah was silent for a beat. Again, Isabella answered for him. “I think it was finally finding someone who could walk beside him, not behind him.” “The right kind of love,” she mused, “makes you both better people.” The chat was now a waterfall of [OMG, relationship goals!]. I picked up my fork and lifted a strand of ramen. It had gone cold. It was disgusting. I put the fork down, ready to close the app. But just then, the host noticed a trending question from the audience. “Oh? A viewer is asking, we’ve heard that Chef Wells was in a very long relationship before this. Did that experience have any influence on your current success?” The studio fell quiet. Noah’s gaze seemed to travel through the camera, landing somewhere far away. I held my breath. Then, I saw Isabella smile. She leaned her head on Noah’s shoulder and said, in that same light, breezy tone: “Honestly, Noah’s success wasn’t just about talent. It was about shedding the dead weight from his past.” Dead weight. She was talking about me. In that instant, the livestream’s comment section completely lost its mind. 2 Noah sat beside her, head bowed, saying nothing. His silence was an admission. “She’s right! It’s all about growth!” “YES. This is the kind of self-aware queen we need.” “Some women are just anchors holding men back. Good for him for cutting the rope.” “Leaving you was the best decision he ever made!” I stared at the words on the screen. Every letter was a tiny, sharp needle jabbing into my eyes. I closed the livestream. The room was quiet again. I scraped the soggy ramen into the trash can. Then, I walked to my bed and knelt down, pulling a dusty old suitcase from underneath. I unzipped it. There was nothing of value inside. Just a few old clothes and a notebook wrapped in brown kraft paper. I picked up the notebook and blew the dust off its cover. I opened it to the first page. My own neat handwriting filled the lines. “Month X, Day X. First day in the new apartment. Rent is $600, first and last month’s plus security deposit. I paid. Noah said he’d pay me back.” I flipped to the middle. “Month X, Day X. Bought our first pot, $12.99. Noah used it to make me our first meal: scrambled eggs with tomatoes.” I turned the pages, one by one. For a long, long time. Finally, I closed the ledger. I took a picture of its simple, brown cover with my phone. And I posted it. I didn’t hide it from anyone. The caption was simple. “Noah, remember the first pot I bought for our business? It was $12.99. Do you remember?” It was like dropping a bomb into the quiet waters of my social circle. My phone started vibrating nonstop. Private messages from mutual friends, tags from my college group chat, one after another. “Chloe, is what you posted… real?” “HOLY SHIT, a $13 pot? A single dish at his restaurant costs more than that!” Soon, someone screenshotted my post and shared it online. #NoahsFirstPot The hashtag quietly crept onto the bottom of our city’s local trending topics. Noah’s call came almost immediately. His voice was tight, suppressing a rage that I could hear crackling underneath, along with a flicker of panic I didn't miss. “Chloe, what the hell is this?” I said nothing. My silence seemed to infuriate him. “We’re over. What’s the point of dragging this out? Are you trying to make me look bad?” “Am I?” I asked softly. “By posting this, you’re trying to make everyone think I’m some ungrateful bastard, aren’t you?” He said it himself. I still didn’t speak. His breathing on the other end of the line grew heavy. He was losing his composure, that carefully constructed “dignity” of his finally cracking. “Chloe, don’t push it.” “Wasn’t the fifty thousand I gave you enough?” Fifty thousand dollars. He said it with such self-righteous indignation. As if he were shooing away a persistent beggar. I finally laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “Noah, in your mind, were our five years together really only worth fifty grand?” “…” From the other end of the line, I heard Isabella’s voice, intentionally softened. “Noah, honey, don’t be angry. Don’t stoop to her level. It’s not worth it.” She sounded so magnanimous. And so grating. I scoffed and hung up the phone. The world went quiet. A few minutes later, my doorbell rang, sharp and insistent. It was Jenna, my best friend. She stormed in, holding two cold beers, and threw her arms around me. “Chloe! I just saw! That ungrateful son of a bitch! That user!” “How dare he call you?!” “And that Isabella woman, what a piece of work! Dead weight? She’s the parasite!” Jenna’s face was red with anger, shouting all the things I wanted to say but couldn’t be bothered to. She ranted for a long time. I listened quietly, handing her a beer. She took a long swig, then looked at me. “Chloe, don’t be sad. He’s not worth it.” I shook my head. “I’m not sad.” I looked at my phone screen. The hashtag had climbed a little higher on the trending list. Any last shred of hesitation I had vanished. Some debts can only be collected by yourself. 3 “Chloe, look at this,” Jenna said, handing me her phone. It was the latest scoop from a celebrity gossip account. [Sources confirm that popular food blogger Isabella Carbonari will be the special guest on the hit talk show ‘The Midnight Hour’ this Friday. She will exclusively share the love story between her and rising-star chef Noah Wells. The theme of the night: ‘How to Be the Wise Woman Behind a Successful Man.’] Jenna crushed the beer can in her hand. “Wise woman? My ass!” “What is she trying to do? Publicly execute you?” “She’s going to tell the whole world that she’s the smart one, and you were the foolish one who got left behind!” I stared at the post. The comment section was already a party. [Can’t wait! Isabella’s perspective on love is always so on point!] [Finally, a masterclass from Isabella! Taking notes!] [A wise woman teaching you how to pick a winner, hahaha.] And then there was a top-liked comment. [The ex-girlfriend is probably fuming right now. Too bad. People from different worlds are never meant to be together.] Jenna snatched the phone back. “Don’t look at it! It’ll just make you sick!” I nodded. “Yeah. I won’t.” After Jenna left, I was alone again. It was late, but I felt like I should eat something. Almost unconsciously, I opened a food delivery app. My finger scrolled for a long time before stopping on the page for “Maison Noah.” The picture of their signature dish, “Secret Recipe Braised Pork,” priced at $38, was beautifully shot. I placed the order. Half an hour later, it arrived. The packaging was exquisite—a black box with a gold-stamped logo. I opened it. The pork was arranged neatly, each piece cut to a uniform size. I picked one up with my fork and put it in my mouth. It was tender. The spices were overpowering, masking everything else. It was the taste of a restaurant—standardized, flawless, and impersonal. It wasn't the taste I remembered. I put down my fork and looked out the window. It had started to snow. I remembered a winter night, a long time ago. The snow was coming down just like this. I had a terrible flu, a fever so high I couldn’t taste anything. We were living in a rundown apartment building with no central heating. Noah wrapped me in a mountain of blankets until I looked like a burrito. He was frantic. “Chloe, please, you have to eat something. You need your strength.” I shook my head. “Everything tastes like cardboard.” He thought for a long time. Then he rummaged through our things and pulled out a handwritten cookbook from one of my suitcases—one my mother had insisted I bring with me. “I’ll make you this,” he said, pointing to the words “Braised Pork.” That night, the single light in our tiny, one-burner kitchen stayed on all night. Lying in bed, I could hear him clumsily chopping meat, pouring oil, and then hissing in pain as the hot oil splattered on his skin. I could even smell the acrid scent of him burning the sugar on his first try. He tried again and again. Just as the sky was beginning to lighten, he walked to my bedside, carrying a steaming bowl of braised pork. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, and there was a red mark on his cheek from an oil burn. “Chloe, try it.” “I followed your mom’s recipe. I don’t know if it’s right.” I was too weak to sit up, so he fed me, one spoonful at a time. It was strange. Even though the fever had stolen my sense of taste, I could clearly taste that bowl of braised pork. It wasn’t too salty, just a little sweet. The meat was so tender it melted on my tongue. It was the taste of my mother’s cooking. The taste of home. As I ate, tears started to fall. He panicked. “What’s wrong? Is it bad?” I shook my head, swallowing the piece of pork in my mouth. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.” … The memory receded like the tide. I looked at the takeout box in front of me. And I thought about how Isabella was about to go on national television and brand me as the “dead weight” on Noah’s path to success. She was going to redefine all my most precious memories as nothing more than the “mundane baggage of an unambitious woman.” I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes. My gaze hardened, shifting from sorrow to an unshakable resolve. You want dignity? I’m not giving you any. 4 The next morning, I called in sick to work. I found the contact information for the talk show online. When I called, the operator’s voice was formal and detached. “Hello, you’ve reached ‘The Midnight Hour.’” “Hello, I’d like to speak to your producer.” “Do you have an appointment?” “No.” “I’m sorry, but our producer—” “Tell him I’m Noah Wells’s founding partner from when he first started his business.” I paused, then added, “I saw that you’ll be having Ms. Isabella Carbonari on your show next week to talk about Mr. Wells’s success story.” There were a few seconds of silence on the other end. “Please hold.” A moment later, a sharp, savvy-sounding male voice came on the line. “Hello, this is Mark Wallace, producer for ‘The Midnight Hour.’” “Hello.” “And you are…?” “My name is Chloe Reed.” I could feel the breath catch on the other end of the line. He clearly recognized the name. “Ms. Reed, hello!” His tone immediately became warmer, more enthusiastic. “What can I do for you?” “I hear Ms. Carbonari will be sharing the inspiration behind Noah’s cuisine on your show?” “Yes, as Chef Wells’s… soulmate, Ms. Carbonari has a very deep understanding of his creative philosophy.” I smiled. “Your show values exclusivity and authenticity, correct?” “Of course. It’s the foundation of our brand.” “Good.” I spoke each word clearly and deliberately. “I know the real, never-before-told stories behind every single one of Maison Noah’s signature dishes.” “And I think your audience might be more interested in that than in Ms. Carbonari’s philosophy on love.” The line went completely silent. I could picture the expression on Mark Wallace’s face. As a media professional, he had to smell the massive, explosive potential of this story. After a full thirty seconds, he spoke again, his voice thick with suppressed excitement. “Ms. Reed, are you saying…?” “My meaning is simple.” “Give me a live video call-in. I’ll give you the ratings.” “Done!” Mark didn’t hesitate for a second. “Ms. Reed, our show is all about the truth! You can rest assured we will provide you with a fair and impartial platform.” “During the live show next Friday, we’ll set up a ‘Live Call-In’ segment. I will guarantee you at least ten minutes of airtime.” “Perfect.” I hung up. I looked out at the gray, overcast sky. But inside, I felt a calm I hadn't felt in a very long time. I walked to the mirror. My face was pale, with faint dark circles under my eyes. My lips were a little chapped. This was me. The me who worked two jobs to pay off debts. The me who hadn’t bought new clothes in ages to save money. The me who, after the breakup, couldn’t be bothered to dress up for anyone. I stared at my reflection for a long time. Then, I turned and pulled open a drawer. From the very back, I retrieved a makeup bag lightly coated in dust. Noah had bought it for me a long time ago, with his very first paycheck from a part-time job. I opened it. The contents were still good. I took out the tube of Dior 999. I used to only wear it when we went to important dinners together. I twisted the lipstick open and looked at the person in the mirror. Then, slowly, carefully, I painted my lips a brilliant, commanding red. The person in the mirror, it seemed, had just come back to life.
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