Taking Care of His Best Friend's Wife Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Scraps of His Other Life

The silence in the house was a physical presence. I moved through it like a ghost, the dull ache in my body a constant reminder of the choice I had made. The life I had ended to save it from a future of neglect.

The front door clicked open. Lu Chen’s footsteps were heavy in the hallway. He appeared in the living room doorway, holding a plastic container.

"You weren't answering your phone," he said, his tone a mix of accusation and forced normalcy. "I brought you some soup. Su Qing made it. She said it's good for recovery."

Recovery. The word hung in the air, obscene in its ignorance. He placed the container on the coffee table. I caught a glimpse of it through the translucent plastic—a greasy, congealed broth with sparse, pale shreds of chicken. It looked like leftovers. It smelled of ginger and a cloying sweetness I associated only with her.

A wave of nausea, visceral and powerful, rolled through me. I clamped a hand over my mouth, stumbling towards the kitchen sink.

"Lin Wan, for God's sake!" His patience snapped. "I'm trying here! Can you stop being so difficult? It's just soup!"

I gripped the edge of the sink, my knuckles white, dry heaves wracking my empty body. Just soup. It was never just soup. It was a symbol of his divided loyalties, his misplaced priorities. He was offering me the scraps from his other life and wondered why I was choking.

I turned around, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. The look on my face must have been something terrible, because he took a half-step back.

"I'm not being difficult, Lu Chen," I said, my voice eerily calm. "I am recovering. From the abortion of the child you couldn't be bothered to notice I was carrying."

The color drained from his face. His mouth opened, then closed. Confusion, then dawning horror, then—inexplicably—anger flickered in his eyes. "You… you were pregnant? And you… you didn't tell me? You just… got rid of it?"

The audacity. The sheer, breathtaking audacity. The dam inside me broke.

"Tell you?" The calm shattered, my voice rising to a scream that scraped my throat raw. "When? When you were holding her sonogram? When you were comforting her through her morning sickness? When you were here, in this very room, calling me self-absorbed for growing your child inside me?"

He stared at me, his jaw tight, his fists clenched. He didn't deny it. He didn't apologize. He just looked… betrayed. By me.

"I can't do this anymore," I whispered, the fight suddenly gone, leaving only a vast, desolate emptiness. I walked to the desk, pulled out the folder, and threw the divorce papers onto the coffee table, right next to the container of soup. "I'm not asking. I'm telling you. This is over."

He looked from the papers to my face, his expression one of pure, uncomprehending shock. "You're… you're serious?"

"I have never been more serious in my life."

A muscle twitched in his jaw. The shock hardened into something colder, uglier. "Fine. If that's what you want." He turned on his heel, grabbed his car keys from the bowl by the door, and left.

The slam of the door echoed through the house.

I stood there, alone, listening to the silence. Then, my phone buzzed. A new post from Su Qing. A picture of my front door, from the outside, with the caption: *"Don't be sad, brother Chen. You always have a home with me and the baby."*

He had gone straight to her.

And in that moment, I felt nothing at all. It was the most liberating feeling in the world.