Just friends

My head throbbed, a dull ache that mirrored the confusion swirling in my mind. The doctor had warned me about possible amnesia after the accident. I tried to make a joke of it, turning to the man sitting by my bedside and asking, "So, remind me, who are you again?"

He hesitated, his expression unreadable. "We're... just friends," he finally said, his voice flat.

Just friends? I stared at John, the "just friends" hanging in the air like a stale scent. This wasn't John, the John who'd spent the last seven years of my life making me playlists filled with inside jokes and songs that reminded him of me. This was a stranger, his eyes cold and distant. My planned "Gotcha!" died in my throat. If the doctor hadn't called him, I doubted he would have even shown up.

I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. "Oh," I managed, forcing a smile. "Well, thanks for being here."

He gave a curt nod, as if my very presence was an inconvenience. He checked his phone. "Since you’re awake, I should get going. Work stuff."

Before I could respond, he was already at the door. Just as he pulled it open, he paused, maybe a flicker of guilt in his eyes. "Take care," he mumbled before disappearing into the hallway.

The smile plastered on my face finally crumbled. No one at work knew about John and me. We'd kept our relationship secret since college, especially after we both landed jobs at the same top-tier marketing firm in Chicago. Back then, it was about avoiding office gossip. Later, as we climbed the corporate ladder, becoming rival team leaders, it became a matter of professional strategy.

I'd suggested going public a few times, especially since there wasn't an official policy against dating. He’d always brushed me off, a distracted, "Yeah, we'll talk about it later" that never materialized. I’d started to wonder if we were even still a couple. Now, I knew.

The doctor had mentioned temporary memory loss, assuring John I’d recover quickly. Yet, knowing this, he'd still told me we were "just friends." He wasn't worried about me "remembering." He didn't care if I was joking. He probably wanted to break up. It all clicked into place. Without a breakup, he couldn’t pursue Ashley, the new intern in his department.

A woman's intuition is rarely wrong. Things had been off between us for a while. Seven years is a long time, and we knew each other as well as we knew our own reflections. I'd noticed the shift when Ashley arrived. She was pretty, vivacious, and the daughter of the CEO, Mr. Lee.

At first, John had explained away his attentiveness to Ashley as simply navigating office politics. "Wouldn't want to ruffle any feathers," he’d said. "Besides, she's just a kid, not my type. You're overthinking it." I didn’t mention that "kid" was two years older than me.

But then the little things started adding up. Like when I logged into his long-dormant music account and saw he was following Ashley. He'd practically stopped listening to music in the last two years, consumed by...